“John Brown’s soul through the world is marching on;
Hail to the hour when oppression shall be gone;
All men will sing in the better day’s dawn,
Freedom reigns to-day!
“John Brown dwells where the battle’s strife is o’er;
Hate cannot harm him, nor sorrow stir him more;
Earth will remember the martyrdom he bore,
Freedom reigns to-day!
“John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave;
John Brown lives in the triumph of the brave;
John Brown’s soul not a higher joy can crave,
Freedom reigns to-day!”
The more popular, if not more worthy, song of John Brown’s Body seems to have been of Massachusetts origin at the commencement of the Civil War. It was first sung in 1861. When the Massachusetts Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster, a son of the famous Daniel Webster, were camped on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, some of the soldiers amused themselves by adapting the words,—
“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah,
His soul is marching on,”
to a certain air. Mr. Charles Sprague Hall, who is the author of the lines as finally sung, says that when the soldiers first began to sing it the first verse was the only one known. He wrote the other verses, but did not know where the first one came from.
The way was opened for this song through a campaign song heard from the lips of the Douglas, and the Bell, and the Everett Campaign Clubs, who, in order to spite Governor John A. Andrew, the famous war governor of Massachusetts, sang the following lines as they were marching through the streets of Boston, with their torches in hand,—
“Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew
John Brown’s dead.
Salt won’t save him,
John Brown’s dead.”
These lines are supposed to have been an imitation of the doggerel,—
“Tell Aunt Rhody,
Tell Aunt Rhody,
Tell Aunt Rhody
The old goose is dead.
Salt won’t save him,
The old goose is dead.”