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Simon Legree Killed Tom

by Bob A. Feldman

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A protest folk song whose lyrics tell the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic 19th-century anti-slavery protest novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that was written after re-reading Stowe's novel in 2005.

lyrics

(chorus)
Simon Legree killed Tom
When Tom did not inform
Simon Legree was master
But Slavery was wrong.

(verses)
Tom lived in Kentucky
Where he sang religious songs
He worked hard for Mr. Shelby
Whose Kindness made Tom feel secure
But Shelby owed some money
To a greedy slave trader
So he sold him his slaves Tom
And Eliza and her kid. (chorus)

Eliza and her child
Ran away in the night
Crossed the Ohio River
By walking across on ice
But Tom was taken South
And forced to leave his wife
Yet another kindly master
Put hope back in Tom's life. (chorus)

Then Tom's master was stabbed
While breaking up a tavern brawl
To Tom he had promised freedom
Yet failed to sign all the forms
So when the master died
His cruel wife now sold Tom
At an auction in the slave market
Where mothers and children sobbed. (chorus)

Tom's new master was brutal
His name was Simon Legree
Ex-slaves were his overseers
And they whipped without mercy
In the field of the plantation
Picking cotton seven days a week
No time to read his Bible
Tom felt the worst kind of slavery. (chorus)

Simon Legree tried to make Tom
Become a person less saintly
By beating Tom all the time
To get him to renounce his beliefs
But Tom would not sell his soul
And when Legree's slave women escaped
Legree said "Tell me where they hide
Or a slave's death is your fate." (chorus)

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Bob A. Feldman image

Bob A. Feldman Boston, Massachusetts

Bob A. Feldman has written public domain protest and biographical folk songs on a non-commercial basis in the Guthrie-Ochs-MacColl-Moore tradition for many years. He also has written a lot of public domain love songs.

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