John Brown’s Body (episode 166)

The most popular song of the Union Army during the Civil War was inspired by the most hated man in America, it borrowed the tune from an old church hymn, and it was first sung right here in the Boston Harbor Islands.  In this week’s episode, learn about the double meaning behind the title of the song, its holy and profane lyrics, and the tragic history of the “Hallelujah Regiment” who made it famous.  The 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched out of Boston in 1861 with 1040 men and a song in their hearts, but when they returned three years later, they numbered just 85, and they had vowed never to sing their famous song again. 


John Brown’s Body

Boston Book Club

When it was published in 1994, David Hackett Fischer’s epic Paul Revere’s Ride was the first scholarly treatment of the events of April 19, 1775. Too many people were too familiar with the legend of Paul Revere’s ride, and serious historians more or less ignored the reality of the event. That changed with Fischer’s book. It uses primary sources to not only reconstruct the events of that fateful night in exacting detail, but also to reconstruct the world that Paul Revere lived in, both before and after his ride. We used Fischer’s book as a source for episode 76, about Paul Revere’s other rides around Massachusetts and New England.  

Here’s how the publisher describes it:

In Paul Revere’s Ride, David Hackett Fischer fashions an exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of revolution and the emergence of the American republic. Beginning in the years before the eruption of war, Fischer illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition. Revere ranged widely through the complex world of Boston’s revolutionary movement–from organizing local mechanics to mingling with the likes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When the fateful night arrived, more than sixty men and women joined him on his task of alarm–an operation Revere himself helped to organize and set in motion. Fischer recreates Revere’s capture that night, showing how it had an important impact on the events that followed. He had an uncanny gift for being at the center of events, and the author follows him to Lexington Green–setting the stage for a fresh interpretation of the battle that began the war. Drawing on intensive new research, Fischer reveals a clash very different from both patriotic and iconoclastic myths. The local militia were elaborately organized and intelligently led, in a manner that had deep roots in New England. On the morning of April 19, they fought in fixed positions and close formation, twice breaking the British regulars. In the afternoon, the American officers switched tactics, forging a ring of fire around the retreating enemy which they maintained for several hours–an extraordinary feat of combat leadership. In the days that followed, Paul Revere led a new battle– for public opinion–which proved even more decisive than the fighting itself.

Upcoming Event

On January 14, the Lexington Historical Society will be hosting one of their periodic Book Group meetings, and the topic will be “Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement” by future podcast guest Barbara Berenson.  

Here’s what the Lexington Historical Society says:

This month’s book will help you get up to speed on the history behind the 2020 centennial of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote! “Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement” removes the story of the suffrage from the singular mythology of Seneca Falls, deepening the movement to Worcester, greater New England, and the far reaches of the West. Her untold histories touch upon the complicated nature of the movement made even messier by aspects of politics, class, and race.

It’s a discussion group, so it would probably be helpful to read the book in advance.  The event will be held at the Lexington Historical Society’s depot building at 13 Depot Square in downtown Lexington, and it will begin at 6pm on Tuesday, January 14.  Bring your book, your notes, and an appetite. Admission is $35 for non-members, but that includes a catered dinner from Neillio’s in Lexington.  

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome Toe Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is Episode 1 66 John Brown’s Body Hi, I’m Jake.
This week I’m gonna be talking about the song that motivated the Union Army to march during the Civil War.
It was inspired by the most hated man in America. It borrowed the tune from an old church him, and it was first sung right here in the Boston Harbor Islands.
This week I’m going to dig into the double meaning behind the title of the song It’s Holy and Profane lyrics and the tragic history of the Hallelujah Regiment who made it famous.
The 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched out of Boston in 18 61 with 1040 men and a song in their hearts,
but when they returned three years later, they numbered just 85 they had vowed never to sing their famous song again.
But before we talk about the song John Brown’s Body, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

[1:14] For upcoming event this week we actually have a sneak peek at an author interview will be releasing in a few weeks.
On January 14th the Lexington Historical Society will host one of their periodic book group meetings, and the topic will be Massachusetts and the Woman’s Suffrage Movement. By Barbara Berenson.

[1:34] Parents will be joining us on the podcast for an interview in a few weeks, so this might be a good way to jump in and get your feet wet with their book.
The Lexington Historical Society says this month’s book will help you get up to speed on the history behind the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote,
Massachusetts in the woman’s suffrage movement removes the story of suffrage from the singular mythology of Seneca Falls, deepening the movement toe, Wooster, Greater New England and the far reaches of the West.
Her untold histories touch upon the complicated nature of the movement, made even messier by aspects of politics, class and race.
It is a discussion group, so it’s probably a good idea to read the book in advance.
The event will be held at the Lexington Historical Societies Depot Building at 13 Depot Square in downtown Lexington, and it will begin at 6 p.m.
On Tuesday, January 14th.
Bring your book your notes and an appetite.
Admission is $35 for non members, but that does include a catered dinner from Neil, Eos in Lexington.

[2:40] Our pick for the bust in Book Club this week is a classic title. David Hackett Fisher’s 1994 epic Paul Revere’s Ride At the time it was published. It was basically the first scholarly treatment of the events of April 19th 17 75.
Well, basically, ever too many people were too familiar with the legend of Paul Revere’s ride, and serious historians more or less ignored the reality of the event that changed with Fisher’s book.
It uses primary sources to not only reconstruct the events of that fateful night in exacting detail, but also to reconstruct the world that Paul Revere lived in both before and after his ride.

[3:19] Here’s how the publisher describes it and Paul Revere’s Ride David Hackett Fischer fashions and exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of the Revolution and the emergence of the American Republic.
Beginning in the years before the eruption of war, Fisher illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition.
Revere ranged widely through the complex world of Boston’s revolutionary movement, from organizing local mechanics to mingling with the likes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
When the fateful night arrived, more than 60 men and women joined him on his task of alarm, an operation Revere himself helped organize and set in motion.
Fisher recreates Reveres captured that night, showing how it had an important impact on the events that followed.
He had an uncanny gift for being at the center of events, and the author follows him to Lexington Green, setting the stage for a fresh interpretation of the battle that began the war.

[4:22] Drawing on intensive new research, Fisher reveals a clash very different from both patriotic and iconoclastic myths.
The local militia were elaborately organized and intelligently lead in a manner that had deep roots in New England.

[4:37] On the morning of April 19th they fought in fixed positions in close formation, twice breaking the British regulars.
In the afternoon, the American officers switched tactics, forging a ring of fire around the retreating enemy, which they maintained for several hours, an extraordinary feat of combat leadership.
In the days that followed, Paul Revere led a new battle for public opinion, which proved even more decisive than the fighting itself we used.
Fisher’s book is a source for Episode 66 about Paul Revere’s other rides around Massachusetts in New England.
We’ll have a link for you to purchase the book, as well as a link to more information on the discussion of Massachusetts and the woman’s suffrage movement in Lexington in this week’s show.
Notes at Hub history dot com slash 166 Before I move on with the show, I just want to take a second and thank everyone who sponsors Hub history on patriotic.
Over the past year, you’ve allowed us to start breaking even on the cost of making the show, as well as enabling us to start providing transcripts with each episode.
Plus, we finally got the show listed on Spotify, which is the fastest growing podcast up.
With your help, we hope to keep making growing and improving the podcast well into the future.
If you’re not supporting the show yet and you’d like to just go to patriot dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support lank.

[6:05] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[6:09] In 18 79 a Mr in Lincoln of Cambridge Port wrote a letter to the editors of the National Journal of Education, describing a scene he had witnessed in the spring of 18 61,
when soldiers from the 12th Webster Regiment prepared to parade across Boston Common.
I happen to be in trim on street towards sunset of a mild and pleasant evening when these soldiers awaiting orders to embark for the fort. We’re standing under the elms in the Park Street mall, leaning upon their muskets.

Music

Jake:
[6:43] As I passed along the line, someone struck up the song John Brown’s body.
It was taken up in chorus by the whole truth and the drums and trumpets fraud, I know with a crowd of lookers on Swelled the Refrain, Glory, Hallelujah.

[7:03] Ahh, Thrill passed through me. Nor was I alone in that respect, such as I had never felt before, in which, in the light of subsequent events, I cannot.
But regard is prophetic of that consummation so devoutly to be wished, which came, at least in the fullness of time.
The influence of that song in molding public sentiment and directing men’s minds to the real pointed issue in the matter who can measure and here, with some variations from the original, may be repeated.
The words of old Andrew Fletcher let me be permitted to write all the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws, though it’s since been eclipsed by the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Unpopular memory.
That song John Brown’s body was by far the most popular of the Union Army and the loyal states during the Civil War.
Years in battle hymns the power and popularity of music in the Civil War, Christian McWhorter describes its wide influence.

[8:02] During the Civil War, John Brown’s body was the union’s national hymn.
It enjoyed incredible popularity, especially among soldiers.
In June of 18 62 the Continental Monthly remarked that the song was among the most striking of those produced by the war and was extensively sung in the Army.
It was unquestionably the most beloved song in the Army of the Potomac, and it’s only competitor in the Western armies.
Was George Frederick Roots The Battle Cry of Freedom?
One union veteran recalled how it seized upon every blue coded organization throughout the land with fascinating power in the army of the Potomac, it was heard almost constantly.

[8:43] When the armies and blue began singing about his body. And it only been about 16 months since radical abolitionist John Brown was hanged in Virginia on the morning of his execution, he wrote,
I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never have purged away, but with blood now that bloody civil worried for scene was beginning.
But Brown had been a lifelong radical.
Even as early as the 18 twenties, he’d operated to stop on the underground railroad out of the tannery. His family ran in northwestern Pennsylvania, personally helping as many as 2500 enslaved African Americans make their way to freedom in Canada.
In the 18 forties, he lived in Springfield, Mass. And rub shoulders with abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, and he became even more radicalized.
It was his actions in the 18 fifties, however, they would make John Brown famous and make his name one of the most reviled in the American south.

[9:44] The 18 54 Kansas Nebraska Act created two new U. S territories, and it mandated that a majority vote in each would determine whether they would be admitted to the union as slave or free states.
Soon, a guerrilla war broke out in Kansas, with settlers from both sides rushing into the territory, claiming land and using violence to try to drive the other side out.
In early 18 56 John Brown moved to Kansas, joining five of his sons on a homestead there.
After slavers sack the town of Lawrence of May 21st Brown led a loosely organized militia to a pro slavery settlement on Pottawatomie Creek.
Late at night. On May 24th Brown’s company forced its way into three farmhouses, dragging all the adult men they found out into the night.
A total of five men were killed, hacked to death with broad swords, with John Brown shooting at least one man in the head to make sure he was dead.

[10:43] With the massacre, violence in Kansas spiraled out of control with revenge killings and raids escalating into a bloody undeclared war.
In the coming months, John Brown would be involved in to pitch battles in defense of free state settlements, killing at least 20 more slavers.
After a new governor negotiated the temporary peace, John Brown left Kansas, now famous but a pariah and polite abolitionist circles, Brown would make his way to New England to plan what would be the final chapter in his life.
In 18 57 John Brown came to Boston, where he met many influential abolitionists and wealthy merchants.
Over the course of the next year or two, he started to raise funds and gather supplies.
When he began putting in orders for things like 200 Sharps rifles and 1000 pikes, people began to realize that John Brown was up to something.

[11:40] In Boston, a group that would become known as the Secret six used their money and influence to help move the plan forward.
They were Thomas Wentworth, Higginson, Theodore Parker, George Luther Stearns, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Garret Smith and Julia Ward. House husband Samuel Gridley Howe.
Finally, it was time for the main event, the famous October 18 59 raid on Harper’s Ferry and what’s now West Virginia.
With only 21 men, John Brown plan to take over a federal armory and use the weapons they liberated to start a slave rebellion in the surrounding plantations in Virginia and Maryland, which Brown then hoped would spread across the south.
Everything went wrong right from the start, despite cutting the telegraph lines where the raid quickly spread.
Before long, local militia had the armory surrounded and browns meager force was taking casualties.
By the end of the second day, 10 of his men were dead, including two of his sons.
Seven more were captured by U. S Marines led by Robert E. Lee.

[12:50] John Brown would be charged with treason, murder and conspiring to cause a slave rebellion.
On November 2nd, he was found guilty on all charges and On December 2nd, he was hanged.
Among the crowd of onlookers were Walt Whitman, Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth.

[13:10] How did the horrifying, tragic, scandalous story of the zealot John Brown become an Army marching song and the unofficial anthem of the United States?
In their book, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a biography of the song that marches on John Staffer and Benjamin so scarce introduces to the military unit that could boast of originating a song that would sweep the nation within just a few months.

[13:35] In the heady days after the fall of Fort Sumpter in April 18 61 Boston men rushed to join the handful of existing military units, and one of the more popular was the second Battalion, Light Infantry.
The Tigers, as the unit was popularly known, could trace its lineage back to a company established in 17 84 and have been maintained since then, largely for social and ceremonial purposes.
Recruits from the city’s upper tier students, clerks, merchants and professional men quickly flooded its ranks, giving it an early reputation for attracting kid gloved soldiers.
On April 29th 18 61 Governor John Andrew ordered the battalion under the command of Major Ralph W. Newton to Garrison Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
Construction of the four had begun in the 18 thirties but had been left uncompleted.

[14:30] Today, Fort Warren is a popular weekend destination, just a short ferry ride away from Long War for the hanging shipyard in the summer and fall months,
later in the war, Fort Warren would be an important prison camp where Confederate politicians and officers were held alongside pro secession politicians from border states.
You can hear more about that. Episode 51 Whoever in 18 61 Fort Warren was 1/2 finished heap,
in 18 89 edition of the New England magazine Tiger Battalion, veteran George Kimball describes the condition of the fort.
When the second Battalion arrived on George’s Island in the spring of 18 61.

[15:10] We found the Great Fortress in a wretched state, very much as its builders had left it with huge piles of earth, brick and stone, and covering its broad parade ground and filling many of its case mates.
Immediately upon our arrival, we went to work with the will to place it in proper condition for military occupation.
This involved a great deal of hard labor, which the young men of the battalion, being mainly of good social standing, was in strange contrast to former employments with so much heavy labor required to get the fort looking ship shape.
The Tiger Battalion relied on music to help the long, hard days pass a little quicker.
Kimble described the company’s musicality.
We had many good singers among us, and nothing so effectually drives away weariness, particularly among soldiers and sailors.
As a cheerful spirit and a joyous song, we constantly worked under the inspiration of these blessed agencies.
We lustily sang all the popular songs of the day, whether wielding the shovel, swinging the pick, troubling the wheelbarrow or rolling the heavy stones away during our long evenings and quarters to we sang almost constantly.

[16:19] In battle. Hymns. Christian McWhorter Rights. On April 29th 18 61 the second Massachusetts Infantry Battalion was assigned to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
A few days after arriving, four of its members formed a quartet, a glee club.
In the parlance of the day, one of the singers was a Scottish sergeant named John Brown, a favorite among the men for a strongly accident rendering of the sentimental ballad Annie Laurie.

[16:47] As an aside, it seems incredibly innocent in retrospect. For a unit that would soon see heavy action, legendary battles like Bull Run and Antietam to have invested time and effort into something as frivolous as a glee club,
it shows both the power of music and how quickly the peacetime military had to transform itself.
After the attack on Fort Sumpter, George Kimball would serve in Company A of the 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry alongside Sergeant Brown, and he wrote this description of his friend and the teasing his friend endured. Thanks to his famous name.

[17:20] We had a jovial Scotch man at the battalion named John Brown.
He was among the leading spirits, foremost, always in fun making, and as he happened to bear the identical name of the old hero of Harper’s Ferry.
He became at once the butt of his comrades.
A great deal of pleasantry was indulgent at his expense, and he was often guide unmercifully.
If he made his appearance a few minutes late among the working squad or it was a little tardy and falling into the company line, he was sure to be greeted with such an expression as Come, old fellow, you ought to be at it if you’re gonna help us free the slaves.
Or this can’t be John Brown.
Why John Brown’s dead and then some wag would add in a solemn, drawling tone, as if it were his purpose, to give particular emphasis to the fact that John Brown was really actually dead.
Yes, yes, Poor old John Brown is dead.
His body lies moldering in the grave, Kimble continues.
This nonsense was kept up from day to day, and these expressions particularly the ones referring to the defunct condition of Brown, where so often heard that they became bywords among us,
and were repeated at all times and in all places, whether our Scotch friend with suggestive name was within hearing or not,
they were usually followed by exclamations of feigned surprise.
Such a cz. Oh, is that so?

[18:44] It’s lucky that Brown was a good sport about this teasing because he’d soon contribute his name and reputation to a new musical craze.
Sergeant Brown and the rest of the Tiger Battalion Glee Club sang old marching songs.
They sang the popular music of the day, and they sang hymns.

Music

Jake:
[19:02] Among the hems that was popular in 18 61 was a song called Say Brothers Will You Meet Us on Canaan’s Happy Shore.

[19:19] It had a familiar tune versus each made up of a single line repeated three times. And a chorus of.

[19:35] That was Stephen Griffiths version of Say, Brothers William Etess, which is kind enough to make available under a Creative Commons license in the Battle Hymn of the Republic biography of the song that marches on Stop France.
Oscar’s discuss how the battalion Glee Club ended up adopting and then adapting the old tent revival him.

[19:56] Years later, when members of the singing group recalled the origins of John Brown’s body, they offered various explanations for how the Methodist hymn came to their attention.
Some claimed it appeared on a popular hymnal, the melody in numerous copies of which were either peddled by the book’s publisher or donated by a local Young Men’s Christian association.
Other veterans of the second Battalion claimed that members of the singing group, including Brown himself, had heard the him years before. It can’t meetings.
One contemporary Bostonian dismissed these accounts. Anyone who lived in the city during the war, he wrote, would have heard the him at least once a day.
It was a favorite of students who were much given to street singing especially at night.
The men of the Tiger Battalion took a strong liking to say, Brothers, Will you meet us?
It had a good cadence for marching. It was easy to remember the words.
And perhaps best of all, it seemed to be endlessly malleable.
Anyone could think up a new repeated line that fit the rhythm of the tune, allowing the old tent revival him to be transformed into new versions that were humorous, sentimental or downright profane stuffer.
And so SKUs described how the regiment zoned Sergeant John Brown ended up inspiring three verses to the marching song that would soon take the union Army by storm and by the end of the war would be considered an unofficial national anthem of the United States.

[21:20] Eventually, the good natured taunting of Brown made its way into the group’s coral program, one particularly frolicsome night when soldiers began marching around the parade grounds after dinner.
James E. Greenleaf, an occasional member of the choral group as well as the organist in the nearby church, grafted one of the more popular lives, and it emerged from the ribbing of the Scotsman.
John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave his soul is marching on onto the say brothers, too.
The line’s stuck, in part because it reiterated the jokes basic premise, the incongruity between the two, Brown’s the Dead Abolitionist and The Living Soldier.

[21:58] Over the next few weeks, the song expanded with improvisations after each stanza, which ended with some variation of his soul, is marching on.
The singer’s added the glory, glory hallelujah chorus taken from, say, brothers in one verse, they continued to work the theme of the merging of the two John Brown’s He’s Going to Be a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.
In another, they continue their teasing of the living brown, based on a humorous incident from their first weeks of the Ford.
On the day knapsacks were issued in, the men were given their first lessons in packing them.
Brown, squat determined, appeared before his fellow soldiers with his pack of looming over him.
Someone called out, Say, knapsack, Where you going with that man?
Another caution. Brown that he wouldn’t make it very far south with such a load, Brown, somewhat exasperated, shouted back.
John Brown’s knapsack is trapped upon his back in his soul and march on his flowers any of you lot.

[22:57] That retort was incorporated into the song is the line. John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back.

[23:06] Kimble recalls how the new marching song John Brown’s Body was first heard by someone other than the Tiger Battalion.
Less than a month after his unit arrived at Fort Warren, they learned that another larger unit would be replacing them.
The 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, known at first as the Webster Regiment, was commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster, son of the late Senator Daniel Webster.
Later in the war, Webster would be killed in the second battle of Bull Run, and the regiment would suffer losses of 2/3 or more at Antietam.
But in May of 18 61 they were still learning how to be soldiers.
From mid May to late July of 18 61 the 12th Regiment trained and drilled nonstop at Fort Warren, practicing the close order drills that would earn them a reputation as a top unit.

[23:58] On May 25th the Tiger Battalion was dismissed, with its members either joining up the 12th or returning to Boston for other duties.
But first there was a famous flag raising ceremony on May 12th welcoming the new unit to George’s Island and Fort Warren, Kimble said.
One Sunday evening, the regiment in Battalion form for a joint dress parade.
Quite a number of guests were present. No effort was spared to make the affair notable.
The Brigade Band came to play for us that day, and when the musicians wheeled out the left of the long line and started toward the right in quick time, they struck up the John Brown song.
We were very much surprised as well as pleased, for we did not know that the musicians were learning it.
This was the first time that the music of the song was played by a military band.

[24:47] Stuffer. And so SKUs expand on the role played by these outside bands.
The song cut the ears of members of two professional bands that regularly played at the fort for The Soldiers Entertainment, Gilmore’s Band and the Brockton Brigade Band.
James Greenleaf whistle the tune to a member of the Brockton Band, which gave the first public performance of the song in a flag raising ceremony on May 12.
After hearing the men singing this song, the leader of Gilmore’s band, Patrick’s Ours Field. Gilmore, who would go on to become the nation’s preeminent bandmaster, ask the choral group Quartet to teach it to him so we could incorporate it into his band’s repertory.
One night, the members of the singing group retired with Gilmore to a corner of the fort, performed the song while Gilmore tooted along on a Cornett and scribbled notes until he had enough to write out a proper score.
He then began playing John Brown’s body at Boston events.

[25:41] Patrick Gilmore, I should mention, has been featured on the podcast before.
Back in Episode 102 we discussed the grand piece Jubilees held in Boston in 18 69 and 18 72 Heldon, especially built Coliseum that was one of the largest buildings in the world at the time.
Thes musical extravaganzas were truly spectacular to give you a sense of the scale.
The climax of the 18 69 show came with a rendition of Verdi’s Anvil chorus that was sung by a chorus of 10,000 vocalists who are backed by 1000 instrumentalists, AA battery of cannons.
Ah, convocation of church bells. Ah, custom made bass drum eight feet in diameter, the world’s largest pipe organ and a company of 100 Boston firefighters carrying sledgehammers and pounding anvils in unison.
One account says that an audience member was so overwhelmed by the experience that he ran to the lobby and send a telegram to his wife saying, Come immediately will sacrifice anything to have you here.
Nothing like it in a lifetime.

[26:48] The Grand Peace Jubilee end the vast Coliseum that housed it, where the brainchild of Patrick Gilmore Gilmore was a native of Ireland who started playing Cornette Inn, a brass band.
As a teenager, he moved first to Canada and then to the U.
S. Serving a military bands in both during the Civil War. He served with the 24th Massachusetts Infantry and developed a taste for extravagant musical performances after party one together during the union occupation of New Orleans.

[27:18] After the war, he’d put this taste for large scale performances, toe work, orchestrating Boston’s annual July 4th celebration and later the Jubilee’s.
Today. Patrick Gilmore is probably best known for writing the song when Johnny Comes, Marching Home again in 18 63.
But two years before that, he was instrumental in getting the new song John Brown’s Body published.
Gilmore’s transcription of the song that the marching soldiers have learned by ear into musical notation meant that before long, many different publishers were selling sheet music of John Brown’s body.
Whether they gave credit or not, all these variations were musically similar and owed a debt to Gilmore.

[28:01] Lyrically, however, they were all over the place, with New versus Invented All the time.
I’ve seen his pet lambs will meet him on the way, and they’ll go marching on now for the union. Let’s give three rousing cheers and we go marching on.
John Brown died on a scaffold for the Slave and freedom reigns today, and many more variants.
There are also N S F W versions like this reference to Jefferson Davis, the so called president of the Confederacy will feed him sour apples till he has the diary.
Because so many people found the scatological reference objectionable. Some other wag created a version where the Jeff Davis reference was merely a lynching singing.

Music

Jake:
[29:01] Ironic, the diarrhea was considered more offensive than a lynching.
Still, that last version would prove to be the most popular among the rank and file who were eager for a quick victory over the South.
Even as the song’s popularity crew within the ranks of the military with every newly improvised verse sheet, music publishers and busted and beyond realized that they were sitting on a gold mine,
stuffer and sew skins described the rush to copyright and publish versions of John Brown’s body in the weeks and months after the public got winded, this new hit single.

[29:36] The song quickly overran for Warren’s Walls. In July, an advertisement from a Boston music publishing firm for a Printing of Glory, Hallelujah announced at this time, one can hardly walk on the streets for five minutes. Well, hearing it whistled or homed.
In the first months of the war, a lack of major military operations meant that most units set up for considerable stretches of a time near major cities and towns,
integrating the civilian and military populations and allowing popular songs to make their way back and forth between the parlour rooms and military camps.
Greenleaf had earlier facilitated this exchange. He requested that CS Hall, a Boston associate with strong abolitionist fuse a system and printing a version of the Song,
Hall, sifted through the dozens of verses that have been improvised in selected five, adding one of his own composition.
Sometime in late May, early June Hall published The John Brown Song is a Penny ballot on thin paper with a filigreed black border and the six verses interspersed with the glory Halle Hallelujah chorus.
In future versions of the song The Middle Hallie transformed into another glory.
The sheet quickly sold out in mid July Hall published a start here full sheet version of the song, complete with words and music arranged by CB Marshal, well known local musician, which announced Fort Warren was the song’s origins.

[31:02] Music publishers in the city smelled a hit just over a week after Hall copyrighted the music.
On July 16th the same Boston court clerk issued three other publisher’s copyrights on the same song within a year, numerous other Boston music publishers.
It issued their own versions of the song, as did publishers in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, Rochester, Cleveland and San Francisco.
Boyd Stutler collectors conducted the most exhaustive research into the song’s origins.
Counted 65 separate pieces of sheet music based on the John Brown’s body tune published during the war, as well as innumerable penny song sheets.

[31:43] The prompt publication of so many versions of Gilmore Sheet music was one factor.
But the main thing that turned a marching song into a viral earworm was the direct exposure of the public, too enthusiastic performances by the 12th Massachusetts Regiment.
They would sing it on the march 1st in Boston, then in other major cities, Kimble recalls.
On the 18th of July, the Webster Regiment visited the city for a grand field day and review upon Boston Common, the second Battalion, Medicine, the WARF, headed by Gilmore’s band.
And while marching up State Street musicians struck up the John Brown song and every man in the long line joined heartily and singing it.
The scene was granted, enlivening in the extreme. This was the first time it was sung upon the street by an organized body of soldiers.
July 23rd the Webster Regiment left for the front, and we sang the song on our way to the railroad station, accompanied by our own regimental band, creating great popular furor,
in New York City on the following day, we sang it again, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the thousands of people who lined Broadway were fairly electrified by stirring strains hurt by them.
Then, for the first time, the New York Herald of the next morning described it as a peculiar but inspiring saw and said that it was poured forth in a grand volume of melody that was almost startling, taking the thousands of charm listeners by storm.

[33:12] Once the 12th Massachusetts was on the road, their songs spread like wildfire.
One of the places it spread to was Washington, D. C, where vast union forces transformed the city into a fortified, capital walled entrenched against the Confederate threat right across the Potomac.
Because so many troops were stationed in and around easily accessible, City D.
C was a popular destination for dignitaries who wanted to get a taste of the military life in November 18 61 1 of those visitors was Julia Ward Howe, a prominent New England abolitionist poet and writer.

[33:48] During her visit to Washington, how had an audience with President Lincoln? And she attended a review of the troops in the outskirts of the city.
As she watched soldiers of the sixth Wisconsin volunteers paraded by singing John Brown’s body How in her companions as devout Unitarians would have likely recognized the tune is an old revival saw.
However, they must have been scandalized by the body lyrics. James Freeman, Clarke theologian, and her group suggested that how the poet come up with new, more dignified and appropriate lyrics for the tune.
On November 18 6 months after the first public performance of John Brown’s body, Julia Ward Howe woke up suddenly in a D. C. Hotel and grabbed a pencil.
She would later say, I went to bed that night as usual and slept according to my want. Quite soundly.
I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight, and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves.
In my mind, having thought out all the stands is, I said to myself, I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them with a sudden effort.
I sprang out of bed and found in the dimness and old stump of a pencil, which I remember to have used the day before.

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Jake:
[35:03] I scroll the versus almost without looking at the paper.

[35:28] Those versus would become the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
They were first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly and February 18 62.
For religiously inspired abolitionists, they were preferable to the soldiers marching song of John Brown.
The him had become a march, and now it become a him again with overtly Christian lyrics, drawing parallels between the current civil war in the second coming.

[35:56] Julia Ward House version would become popular late in the war and in the decade after the war.
But in the first months of the conflict, the original John Brown’s body reigns supreme.
While many listeners were charmed, many more were offended.
Critics around the country were triggered by the lionization of John Brown.
He was still seen as a dangerous radical, possibly a bad man and a divisive, controversial figure.
What’s more, the political and military leadership of the United States were still maintaining that the war was being fought to preserve the union, and they denied that abolition had anything to do with it.
Then the columns and blue would go marching through town, singing about the scariest abolitionist of them all, and it was tough to maintain plausible deniability.

[36:45] A newspaper called the Springfield Republican published a story about witnessing a unit singing John Brown’s body that was reprinted throughout the North and even as far afield as Honolulu.

[36:57] There’s probably no great significance in the fact, but it is at least a curious one that the favorite song of the new Volunteers is a Negro doggerel in which John Brown is glorified as living in spirit. In this campaign.
Even the Webster Regiment, the pet core of Boston conservatism, sung it in their march through State Street the other day.
It is a queer medley, but the soldiers like it and sing it with great energy to an old camp meeting Melody.
The Virginians will think John Brown is worshipped as the Northern hero in spite of all denials.
If our Boston troops sing such a song, is this so in all hands, Providence seems to be involving slavery with the war, notwithstanding the most sincere efforts of patriotism and statesmanship to keep the constitutional lines to stay.

[37:42] Another critical article originated with the Boston Courier a few weeks after that 1st March in Boston.
This one wasn’t as widely published, is the one in the Springfield Republican but it was at least is critical along both religious and anti abolitionists lines.
There have been several illusions in the papers to a certain hallelujah chorus sung by soldiers and others among patriotic songs with mortification, which we trust has also some shade of patriotism about it.
We have just seen a copy of this dreary composition.
One reads it with much the same sort of feeling that would overtake him if he found himself quartered in a mess that ate their dinner with dirty fingers and went drunk to prayers.
This wicked nonsense has been put forth with eager and unqualified praise by that religious journal, the New York Independent, which professes to be put in trust with the pure and lofty gospel of Christ.
Not only so, it has been published with music to match on a small card and is extensively circulated in our army by men of Christian professions.
It goes along with Bibles and attracts among councils and warnings and consolations meant to confirm the faith, to arouse the conscience, to chase in the spirit of tempted men exposed to peril on immediate death.

[39:00] Eventually, the unit would take its favorite song to the South, they would march through Harper’s Ferry, where John Brown’s insurrection sputtered and failed, singing about his soul marching on.
In an astonishing display, the 12th Massachusetts passed through Charlestown, Virginia, now West Virginia, on March 1st, 18 62.
They paused and formed up in square ranks around the Jefferson County gallows world. John Brown had been hanged three years before and gave a rousing chorus of their trademark saw.

[39:32] Massive public performances is that the 12th Massachusetts was on the march in Boston, New York and Baltimore helped popularize John Brown’s body, and it earned the 12th Massachusetts Volunteers the nickname The Hallelujah Regimen.
But it was a battle a year into the war that cemented the songs place as the unofficial anthem of the United States McWhorter rights.
By the beginning of 18 62 the song was not yet the most popular among soldiers.
One veteran recall that it was the siege of Yorktown. The cemented its status on April 5th, 18 62. Several regiments were facing the Confederate entrench mints exhausted after marching in the rain and under heavy artillery fire.
The men soon found their spirits lifted. When the 13th New York struck up John Brown’s body, and the songs spread through the whole army by singing.
The wearied forms grew erect and beneath the bursting shells and to the accompaniment of the deep double bass of cannon, the ranks cadence ing their steps to the inspiring melody.
Debauched upon the plain Deployed were a raid to face the foe.
Inspired to battle by John Brown’s body, it became the marching song of the Army almost from that day and now wedded to the army of the Potomac, it remained the leading soldier anthem until the end of the war.

[40:53] Even as the Union Army was adopting John Brown’s body. Is it Standard?
The unit that had popularized the tune suffered a series of tragedies, and they vowed never to sing it again.
Stoffer, and so SKUs relate the first of these misfortunes. It is a sad irony that Justice John Brown’s body reached the peak of its popularity among the troops.
The men of the Hallelujah Regiment lost their zeal for singing it.
On June 6th, 18 62 outside Fort Royal, Virginia, Sergeant John Brown and some other soldiers crossed the Shenandoah River to serve on picket duty.
When the braves did, the men had used washed away. They boarded a hastily constructed raft to return to camp and avoid capture.
But the flimsy craft disintegrated and brown drown.

[41:40] The stout, goodhearted Scottish sergeant with the oversized knapsack was no more.
With Sergeant Brown’s death, his fellow soldiers may have felt a cooling toward the song inspired, but after the unit’s misfortune over the next few months, their affection for the song was gone.
First, they’re popular. Commander was killed in August of 18 62 which their regimental history calls a loss that was never for gotten.
In his 18 99 stories of great national songs, Nicholas Smith describes that the 12th Massachusetts commanded by Colonel Webster and made this song of John Brown popular in the Army.
They always sang it with mighty Unction.
The colonel was killed in the Second Battle of Bull Run, August 30th 18 62.
And there’s pathos in the story that after the tragedy of that day, the regiment never again sang of old John Brown.

[42:36] Then, after the battle of Antietam Creek in Maryland on September 17th the regimen itself would never be the same.
The regimental history says the zip, with rifle balls grown more frequent, a terrible musket tree fire opens on us, and the air seems full of leaden missiles.
Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of the soldiers, canteens and haver sacks are riddled with bullets.
The dead and wounded go down in scores, the smoke and fog lift and almost at our feet, concealed in a hollow. Behind a demolished fence lies a rebel brigade pouring into our ranks, the most deadly fire of the war.
For three hours we stood this terrible fire, and when we were relieved, our color guard were all killed or wounded.
The 12th entered the battle with 340 men. It came out with 32 under its colors.

[43:28] When the 12th Sturm of enlistment expired in July of 18 64 the regiment returned to Boston.
When they left for the front in 18 61 the regiment marched to the Boston waterfront, singing John Brown’s body with a chorus of 1040 soldierly voices,
on their return to Boston in 18 64 85 battered survivors formed up in front of the State House.
The men of the 12th were remembered as the originators of the John Brown saw, but no matter how much the cheering crowds urge them on, they refused to saying.
Smith says the waste of disease and the shot and shell of many battles made frightful mortality among the men.
And the sad remnant of the once famous regiment made the homeward march through the streets of Boston.
With only 85 minutes, the colors were tattered.
The boy stood in mournful evidence of hard service.
And while they received a royal welcome by a vast patriotic multitude and shot after shot went up for John Brown’s body.
These brave heroes silently But with a soldierly tread march to the barracks and the Webster’s having finished their work passed into history.

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Jake:
[44:45] Toe, learn more about John Brown’s body. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 166 We’ll have links to George Kimble’s account of the songs Origin in Lincoln’s experience of a public performance in Boston,
a song book that includes 1/2 dozen versions of the lyrics and newspaper articles critical of lionizing John Brown.
We’ll also linked to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a biography of the song that marches on by John Stauffer and Benjamin Associates.
Battle Hymns. The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War, by Christian McWhorter and Stories of Great National Songs by Nicholas Smith.
And just for good measure, we’ll throw in regimental histories of the Second Tiger Battalion and the 12th Hallelujah Regiment,
and, of course, love links to information about our upcoming event and Paul Revere’s Ride, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast in hub history dot com.
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We’ll be back next week to interview Russ Lopez about the LGBT Q history of Boston.

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