John Brown's Body, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Solidarity Forever

The Last Moments of John Brown

Welcome back to Folk Infusion! Today's song is "John Brown's Body", an old Civil War marching tune, as well as some major anthems that have spring up from the same tune. The song is written in honor of the abolitionist John Brown, most famous for his attacks on members of pro-slavery militias in Kansas, his attempted taking of Harper's Ferry in Virginia, and his subsequent execution.

The tune of the song was taken was from "Say Brothers Will You Meet Us", a simple and repetitive three-verse hymn from the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s (though some folk music historians claim it goes back further, to an African American wedding song, a British sea shanty, or a Swedish tune). This Second Great Awakening, which began in the 1790s and had passed its peak around the 1840s, was a Protestant revival movement in response to the rise of skepticism, deism, and rationalism.  During the Awakening, itinerant preachers would roam the frontier, organizing large meetings where families would travel and camp to listen to preachers and sing hymns. In typical Camp Revival style, "Say Brothers Will You Meet Us" has no set lyrics. Improvisation, driven by religious fervor and passion, was important to revivalist music.While I cannot find a recording of the hymn and have neither the time nor inclination to make one, a person listening at a camp revival may have heard lyrics something like this:

Say, Brother, will you meet us down by Canaan's happy shore? (x3)
as we go marching on

Chorus:
Glory, glory, alleluiah! (x3)




as we go marching on

Say, Sister, will you meet us down by Canaan's happy shore? (x3)
as we go marching on


By the grace of God we'll meet you,...

That will be a happy meeting,.....

Jesus lives and reigns forever,....

his Judgement Day is coming...

It was from this basic mold that John Brown's Body arose. The new lyrics seem to have come, according to an 1890 account, from a group of soldiers in the Massachussetts Second Infantry Batallion, or the "Tiger Batallion". Apparently, these soldiers were not only singing about John Brown the abolitionist, but also getting some degree of mirth from the fact that a Sergeant John Brown was enlisted with them. According to the veteran George Kimball's account in 1890,

 "We had a jovial Scotchman in the battalion, named John Brown. . . . 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. If he made his appearance a few minutes late among the working squad, or was a little tardy in falling into the company line, he was sure to be greeted with such expressions as "Come, old fellow, you ought to be at it if you are going to help us free the slaves"; or, "This can't be John Brown--why, John Brown is 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 mouldering in the grave."

These phrases eventually became a mantra, according to Kimball's account, until they were adapted into words and put to the tune of the hymn. By May 12, 1861, the song was used as a flag-raising anthem at Fort Warren. On July 18th, Boston newspapers reported the Tiger Battalion singing the song while marching through the city's streets, and a rash of broadsides appeared, spreading the tune.

The song varied, as marching songs are wont to do, from place to place much like the hymn that inspired it. The basic model, however, was:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave; (3X)

His soul's marching on!

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! his soul's marching on!

He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! (3X)

His soul's marching on!

(Chorus)

John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back! (3X)

His soul's marching on!

(Chorus)

His pet lambs will meet him on the way; (3X)

They go marching on!

(Chorus)

They will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree! (3X)

As they march along!

(Chorus)

Now, three rousing cheers for the Union; (3X)

As we are marching on!

From the beginning, the song's somewhat irreverent lyrics caused discomfort to some listeners.
It may have been these concerns that caused William Weston Patton to write and publish his more lyrical version of the song, in December 1861 in the Chicago Tribune. These lyrics are follows:

Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,

While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;

But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,

His soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,

And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;

Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,

His soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,

And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;

They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,

But his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,

Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,

And soon thruout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,

For his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

The conflict that he heralded he looks from heaven to view,

On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.

And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,

For his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,

The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,

For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,

And his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

The following rendition features the lyrics of the re-write. 

Pete Seeger sings a hodge-podge of the original song, the more lyrical re-write, and the later Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Various adaptations were made of the new song. These included The Marching Song of the First of Arkansas and the very similar song, "The Valiant Soldiers", both celebrating black Union soldiers during the war and Reconstruction. The most famous, however, is the one written by the poet and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, entitled "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Howe, who later in her life would be a pacifist and a suffragette, wrote the song after viewing a public review of the war-bound troops in Upton Hill Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. She was in the area with her husband to visit the White House and meet President Lincoln. The couple's friend, the Unitarian abolitionist minister James Freeman Clarke, suggested that she write new and improved lyrics to the rough song.

"I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, 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 stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper."

The lyrics that she wrote are as follows, with the video showing the folk singer Odetta's powerful, reverential rendition.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

(Chorus)

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on.

(Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

As with previous iterations of the tune, this version spawned new songs of its own. The US paratroopers adapted the song with the characteristic gallows humor of the military, in their song, Blood on the Risers.

Ralph Chaplin designed the IWW "Sabot Cat"

Finally, it bears mentioning the adaptation that turned the song from an anthem for the Union army to an anthem for labor unions. Solidarity Forever was written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, inspired in part by his years of organizing in the coal country of West Virginia. The song was adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World (or "Wobblies"), which Chaplin joined and spent the rest of his life in, including being imprisoned under the Espionage Act for IWW opposition to the First World War. Solidarity Forever spread beyond the IWW to other unions, including the AFL-CIO, and now one of the foremost union anthems in the United States.

A somewhat less inspiring attempt to adapt the song into a message on economic justice is the Battle Hymn of Cooperation. Somehow, "consumers marching on" fails to rouse the spirit. As a personal anecdote, I once witnessed yet another 'rendition' arise in St. Cloud, MN in the early 2000s, when my incessant singing of "Solidarity Forever" and touting the merits of the IWW lead several members of a local punk band to sing "Union, union union uuuuunion"to the song's tune. This, of course, vexed my own union-talk-weary bandmates greatly.

The following is Pete Seeger's rendition of Solidarity Forever. 

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

CHORUS:

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,

Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?

For the union makes us strong.

Chorus

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;

Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;

But the union makes us strong.

Chorus

All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.

We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.

It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.

While the union makes us strong.

Chorus

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.

We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn

That the union makes us strong.

Chorus

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

For the union makes us strong.