The New York Tribune of December 3d said, and I can believe that Greeley himself wrote the words: "John Brown, dead, will live in millions of hearts, will be discussed around the homely hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty.... Yes, John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drum head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The New York Herald of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as "Old John Brown, the culprit, hanged for murder," etc., and states that the South was correct. The Boston Courier wishes Governor Banks to ask the Legislature to make an appropriation of $40,000 to assist Virginia in paying the bills incident to the Trial. If I am not mistaken, it was this same Courier's editor, one Homer by name, who, some years before, had placarded the city to excite a riot against Thompson, the English Emancipationist, and who had been largely instrumental in fostering trouble for Garrison and Phillips.
If we only knew that we were prophesying at the time! Little did the Tribune writer think that his allusion to Ziska would prove almost literally true. In two years from the death of John Brown the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the Fletcher Webster Regiment, marched down the streets of Boston to the words:
"John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave,"
and like magic the whole Union Army took it up, nay more, those who stood behind the army, young and old. Men and women sung it from Maine to California. No one knows who wrote it—it was unwritten. It was the popular idea, inspired by God, given vocal expression. There was nothing to learn about it. Everybody knew it before he heard it. Once raised the tune was chanted till the war was over, and its mission accomplished. It closed not then; for to-day, after our lapse of a quarter of a century, it is the tune of all others that fires the Nation's heart. Ziska's drum head is immortal. Early in the War a large prize was offered for competition, to those who would try to write a National Hymn. True, we had "America," but it was sung to the tune of "God save the King or Queen." "The Star Spangled Banner," but it ran so high that few attempted it. "Red, White and Blue," and "Hail Columbia"; but they were not adapted to the popular demands. A National Hymn was demanded, and a committee of meritorious gentlemen gravely sat down to decide on the merits of more than five bushels of poems. Twelve hundred poetasters had sent in their lucubrations, over three hundred of these sending music also, and what came of it? Nothing, of course. Lowell can write an ode that will make our cheeks tingle. Bayard Taylor has written them that exalted us with pride; but neither of these men, nor any other, could sit down and in repose—in cold blood as it were—write a National Hymn. What was wanted was another Marseillaise, something which all could readily grasp and hold, something that no man or woman could help singing, no matter whether they had ever sung before or not. Roget de Lisle, amid the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, and stung almost to madness by the terrible events about him, in a single night gave expression to a hymn that, in power, has been approached by only one other, that of "John Brown's Body." Are there not points of resemblance? Both stir the soul in the chorus. The "Aux armes, Aux armes," of the Frenchman's song is reproduced in our "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" No man will take either hymn off by himself to learn it. They are in his mind already; but he is never conscious of them till the proper moment draws them forth. Our National Hymn has no parentage. I have heard men thrillingly relate the fever of patriotism into which the singing of its words threw them, as regiment would file along the streets of our great cities during the war. There is not much to it in point of words. Such hymns need few words.
"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave."
"He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord."
"We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree."
There they are, the three stanzas; but they have been sung more times, especially the first one, than any equal number of words ever put to music in America. Put in one sum the times the name of Lincoln, the Martyred President, and Grant, the Peerless General have been uttered, and it would not make a hundredth part the number that represents the utterance of John Brown's name in this song. Some one will say it cannot be a National Hymn unless sung by all parts of our people. Millions of people in the South, true of dusky faces, sung it, and how they sung it. It is more than sentiment, it is life to them; and I am sanguine enough to believe that the time will come when those who wore the gray on our Great Contest will so far have seen the error of their position as to join with us of the other side in singing
"Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,"
over the fact that the soul of John Brown is marching on.