These pieces varied in tone from low comedy to sentimental and pious; his material was sometimes confused with that of Stephen Foster as a result.

Hays eventually received the nickname "Shakespeare" for his writings, an appellation he made a formal part of his name.

Over his career, Hays is credited with over 350 songs, and he may have sold as many as 20 million copies of his works, making him more prolific than most of his 19th century peers.

[1] His songs show a great variety, ranging from austere hymns to base minstrel tunes.

In his later years, Hays claimed to have written the lyrics to "Dixie", a song that had enjoyed unprecedented popularity since before the American Civil War and that was by then usually attributed to minstrel show songwriter Dan Emmett.

On June 4, the subcommittee chair announced that he had received word from a man in Texas who claimed to have a copy of Hays's sheet music, published through D. P. Faulds.

Furthermore, Faulds wrote that only the lyrics had been copyrighted, since the music came from an earlier English song that began "If I were a soldier wouldn't I go .

[2] In 1916, Edward Le Roy Rice, journalist for The New York Clipper, wrote to Mrs. Hays and explained that he was researching a book on "Dixie" and wished to settle the authorship argument once and for all.

She wrote to The Etude that her father had written "Dixie" for the Buckner Guards "when they were called south during the Civil War".