"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" 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".
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. 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.
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. 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."
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".
thumb|Cover of an 1861 sheet music score for "John Brown's Song"
Some researchers have maintained that the tune's roots go back to a "Negro folk song", an African-American wedding song from Georgia, or to a British sea shanty that originated as a Swedish drinking song. Anecdotes indicate that versions of "Say, Brothers" were sung as part of African American ring shouts; 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. 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
thumb|Black soldiers, led by white officers, singing "John Brown's Body" as they march into [[Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1865]]
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"
thumb|"Say, Brothers" from Hymn and Tune Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Round Note Edition, Nashville, TN (1889, reprinted 1903). N.B. The name Mary S. B. Dana refers to the author of Hymn No. 898, not shown, which was the previous hymn in this collection.
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".
"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":