THE TUNE.
The music of the old camp-meeting refrain,—
Say, brothers will you meet us?
—or,—
O brother, will you meet me,
(No. 173 in the Revivalist,) was written in 1855, by John William Steffe, of Richmond, Va., for a fire company, and was afterwards arranged by Franklin H. Lummis. The air of the “John Brown Song” was caught from this religious melody. The old hymn-tune had the “Glory, Hallelujah” coda, cadenced off with, “For ever, ever more.”
In 1860–61 the garrison of soldiers at work on the half-dismantled defenses of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, were fain to lighten labor and mock fatigue with any species of fun suggested by circumstances or accident, and, as for music, they sang everything they could remember or make up. John Brown's memory and fate were fresh in the Northern mind, and the jollity of the not very reverent army men did not exclude frequent allusions to the rash old Harper's Ferry hero.
A wag conjured his spirit into the camp with a witticism as to what he was doing, and a comrade retorted,
“Marchin' on, of course.”
A third cried, “Pooh, John Brown's underground.”
A serio-comic debate added more words, and in the midst of the banter, a musical fellow strung a rhythmic sentence and trolled it to the Methodist tune. “John Brown's body lies a mould'rin' in the ground” was taken up by others who knew the air, the following line was improvised almost instantly, and soon, to the accompaniment of pick, shovel and crowbar,—
His soul goes marching on,
—rounded the couplet with full lung power through all the repetitions, till the inevitable “glory, glory hallelujah” had the voice of every soldier in the fort. The song “took,” and the marching chorus of the Federal armies of the Civil War was started on its way. Mrs. Howe gave it a poem that made its rusticity sublime, and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” began a career that promises to run till battle hymns cease to be sung.
Julia Ward was born in New York city, May 27, 1819. In 1843 she became the wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, the far-famed philanthropist and champion of liberty, and with him edited an anti-slavery paper, the Boston Commonwealth, until the Civil War closed its mission. During the war she was active and influential—and has never ceased to be so—in the cause of peace and justice, and in every philanthropic movement. Her great hymn first brought her prominently before the public, but her many other writings would have made a literary reputation. Her four surviving children are all eminent in the scientific and literary world.