“Comrades Fill No Glass for Me” was submitted for copyright deposit on November 23, 1855, by Miller & Beacham, Baltimore. The songs lyrics were published in the Cincinnati Gazette on January 22, 1857, in an article on Foster written by John B. Russell.

According to Evelyn Foster Mornweck’s The Chronicles of Stephen Foster’s Family:

In the six months immediately following his father’s death, Stephen published only two songs, “The Village Maiden” and “Comrades, Fill No Glass for Me.”

Later she writes:

“Comrades, Fill No Glass for Me,” although decidedly a temperance song, is not of the same inferior order as Stephen’s gospel hymns. It is the cry of a young man who has ruined his life and broken the hearts of his parents, with his slavish devotion to alcohol.