Siamese Connection (1879, 1884); Underdog (1884)

[Baker, John]

        Incidentally, the quotation below is from an account of an 1856 camp-meeting.  That would make it an antedating, if you trust the writer's account.

John Baker


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Subject: Re: Siamese Connection (1879, 1884); Underdog (1884)


        If it's really from the Barker poem (that is, if Barker really originated the phrase, rather than using an existing term), then it seems to have spread rapidly.  From the Dec. 1862 Harper's, via Making of America (Cornell):

        <<"And, bretheren, you and I know that occasionally, if not oftener, I've been the under-dog in the fight.  Many's the lammin' I've took from him.  But when he had the best of it, and I was jes ready to give in beat, the Lord reached out the hand, and I up and at him agin."

John Baker