"John Brown's Body" (Roud 771), originally known as "John Brown's Song", is a United States marching song about the abolitionist John Brown. The song was popular in the Union during the American Civil War. The song arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. According to an 1889 account, the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of Union soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own battalion. Various other authors have published additional verses or claimed credit for originating the John Brown lyrics and tune.
The "flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence" led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest "John Brown" lyrics. This in turn led to the creation of many variant versions of the text that aspired to a higher literary quality. The most famous of these is Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic", which was written when a friend suggested, "Why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?" Kimball suggests that President Abraham Lincoln made this suggestion to Howe.
Numerous informal versions and adaptations of the lyrics and music have been created from the mid-1800s to the present, making "John Brown's Body" an example of a living folk music tradition.
History of the tune
"Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us", the tune that eventually became associated with "John Brown's Body" and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", was formed in the American camp meeting circuit of the late 18th century and the 19th century.Stauffer & Soskis, p. 21. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014 These meetings were usually held in frontier areas, when people who lacked regular access to church services would gather together to worship before traveling preachers. These meetings were important social events, but developed a reputation for wildness in addition to wild religious fervor experienced by attendees. In that atmosphere, where hymns were taught and learned by rote and a spontaneous and improvisational element was prized, both tunes and words changed and adapted in true folk music fashion:
Early versions of "Say, Brothers" included variants, developed as part of this call-and-response hymn singing tradition such as:
This initial line was repeated three times and finished with the tag "On Canaan's happy shore".Stauffer & Soskis, p. 22. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014
The first choruses included lines such as
The familiar "Glory, glory, hallelujah" chorus—a notable feature of the "John Brown Song", the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and many other texts that used this tune—developed out of the oral camp meeting tradition sometime between 1808 and the 1850s.
Folk hymns like "Say, Brothers" circulated and evolved chiefly through oral tradition rather than through print.Stauffer & Soskis, p. 19. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014 In print, the camp meeting song can be traced back as early as 1806–1808, when it was published in camp meeting song collections in South Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts.Stauffer & Soskis, pp. 17, 21, 26. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014
The tune and variants of the "Say, brothers" hymn text were popular in southern camp meetings, with both African-American and white worshipers, throughout the early 1800s, spread predominantly through Methodist and Baptist camp meeting circuits.Stauffer & Soskis, pp. 24, 27. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014 As the southern camp meeting circuit died down in the mid-1800s, the "Say, brothers" tune was incorporated into hymn and tune books and it was via this route that the tune became well known in the mid-1800s throughout the northern U.S. By 1861, "groups as disparate as Baptists, Mormons, Millerites, the American Sunday School Union, and the Sons of Temperance all claimed 'Say Brothers' as their own."Stauffer & Soskis, p. 27. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014
For example, in 1858 words and the tune were published in The Union Harp and Revival Chorister, selected and arranged by Charles Dunbar, and published in Cincinnati. The book contains the words and music of a song "My Brother Will You Meet Me", with the music but not the words of the "Glory Hallelujah" chorus; and the opening line "Say my brother will you meet me". In December 1858 a Brooklyn Sunday school published a hymn called "Brothers, Will You Meet Us" with the words and music of the "Glory Hallelujah" chorus, and the opening line "Say, brothers will you meet us".James Fuld, 2000 The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk Courier Dover, , p. 132.
Some researchers have maintained that the tune's roots go back to a "Negro folk song",C. A. Browne, The Story of Our National Ballads (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960), p. 174 an African-American wedding song from Georgia,Music of the Civil War Era 2004, by Steven Cornelius, Greenwood Publishing Group, , page 26 or to a British sea shanty that originated as a Swedish drinking song.Boyd Stutler, "John Brown's Body", Civil War History 4 (1958): 260. Anecdotes indicate that versions of "Say, Brothers" were sung as part of African American ring shouts;Stauffer & Soskis, p. 24. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014 appearance of the hymn in this call-and-response setting with singing, clapping, stomping, dancing, and extended ecstatic choruses may have given impetus to the development of the well known "Glory hallelujah" chorus. Given that the tune was developed in an oral tradition, it is impossible to say for certain which of these influences may have played a specific role in the creation of this tune, but it is certain that numerous folk influences from different cultures such as these were prominent in the musical culture of the camp meeting, and that such influences were freely combined in the music-making that took place in the revival movement.
It has been suggested that "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us", popular among Southern blacks, already had an anti-slavery sub-text, with its reference to "Canaan's happy shore" alluding to the idea of crossing the river to a happier place.Randall, n45.Stauffer & Soskis, p. 25. Accessed via Google Books June 1, 2014 If so, that subtext was considerably enhanced and expanded as the various "John Brown" lyrics took on themes related to the famous abolitionist and the American Civil War.
Use of the song during the Civil War
In 1861, the new 29th New York Infantry Regiment was stationed in Charles Town, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia), where John Brown was executed. The contemporary abolitionist newspaper The Liberator wrote that hundreds of soldiers from the unit would visit the site of John Brown's hanging daily, and sing a refrain that went:
Brown's friend and admirer Frederick Douglass wrote in an 1874 newspaper piece:
At Andersonville Prison, which held Union prisoners of war, a visiting Confederate soldier describes it thus:
Use elsewhere On May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, recently freed African-Americans and some white missionaries held a parade of 10,000 people, led by 3,000 Black children singing "John Brown's Body". The march honored 257 dead Union soldiers whose remains the organizers had re-buried from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. This is considered the first observation of Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day.
The American consul in Vladivostok, Russia, Richard T. Greener, reported in 1906 that Russian soldiers were singing the song. The context was the 1905 Russian Revolution.
"John Brown's Body" was sung by British socialists in the mid-20th century. It was, for example, a familiar tune to the citizens of Crewe at Labour Party rallies during the 1945 General Election, the lyrics being better known than those of The Red Flag, the Labour Party's own official anthem. Elements of the tune were integrated into the Königgrätz March 1866 by Johann Gottfried Piefke.
History of the text of "John Brown's Body"
First public performance At a flag-raising ceremony at Fort Warren, near Boston, on Sunday May 12, 1861, the "John Brown" song was publicly played "perhaps for the first time". The American Civil War had begun the previous month.
Newspapers reported troops singing the song as they marched in the streets of Boston on July 18, 1861, and there was a "rash" of broadside printings of the song with substantially the same words as the undated "John Brown Song!" broadside, stated by Kimball to be the first published edition, and the broadside with music by C. S. Marsh copyrighted on July 16, 1861, also published by C.S. Hall (see images displayed on this page). Other publishers also came out with versions of the "John Brown Song" and claimed copyright.James Fuld, 2000 The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk Courier Dover, , p. 133,
"Tiger" Battalion writes the lyrics; Kimball's account In 1890, George Kimball wrote his account of how the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Massachusetts militia, known as the "Tiger" Battalion, collectively worked out the lyrics to "John Brown's Body". Kimball wrote:
According to Kimball, these sayings became bywords among the soldiers and, in a communal effort—similar in many ways to the spontaneous composition of camp meeting songs described above—were gradually put to the tune of "Say, Brothers":
Some leaders of the battalion, feeling the words were coarse and irreverent, tried to urge the adoption of more fitting lyrics, but to no avail. The lyrics were soon prepared for publication by members of the battalion, together with publisher C. S. Hall. They selected and polished verses they felt appropriate, and may even have enlisted the services of a local poet to help polish and create verses.George Kimball, "Origin of the John Brown Song", New England Magazine, new series 1 (1890):373–374. (online via Cornell University)
The official histories of the old First Artillery and of the 55th Artillery (1918) also record the Tiger Battalion's role in creating the John Brown Song, confirming the general thrust of Kimball's version with a few additional details.Frederick Morse Cutler, The old First Massachusetts coast artillery in war and peace, Pilgrim Press, Boston, 1917, p. 105–106 ( online via Internet Archive)Frederick Morse Cutler, The 55th artillery (C.A.C.) in the American expeditionary forces, France, 1918, Commonwealth Press, Worcester, Mass, 1920, pp. 261ff ( online via Internet Archive)
Other claims of authorship
William Steffe In hymnals and folks song collections, the hymn tune for "Say, Brothers" is often attributed to William Steffe. Robert W. Allen summarizes Steffe's own story of composing the tune:
Steffe finally told the whole story of the writing of the song. He was asked to write it in 1855 or 56 for the Good Will Engine Company of Philadelphia. They used it as a song of welcome for the visiting Liberty Fire Company of Baltimore. The original verse for the song was "Say, Bummers, Will You Meet Us?" Someone else converted the "Say, Bummers" verse into the hymn "Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us". He thought he might be able to identify that person, but was never able to do so.
Though Steffe may have played a role in creating the "Say, Bummers" version of the song, which seems to be a variant of and owe a debt to both "Say, Brothers" and "John Brown", Steffe could not have written the "Glory Hallelujah" tune or the "Say, Brothers" text, both of which had been circulating for decades before his birth.
Thomas Brigham Bishop