Les Jones

A&E > The Remainder of the Narrative: "John Brown's Body"

Mark Steyn writes this week on the song "John Brown's Body":

Ah, yes. The famous song about the famous abolitionist hanged in 1859 in Charlestown, Virginia before a crowd including Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth.

Well, no, not exactly. “By a strange quirk of history,” wrote Irwin Silber, the great musicologist of Civil War folk songs, “‘John Brown’s Body’ was not composed originally about the fiery Abolitionist at all. The namesake for the song, it turns out, was Sergeant John Brown, a Scotsman, a member of the Second Batallion, Boston Light Infantry Volunteer Militia.” This group enlisted with the Twelfth Massachusetts Regiment and formed a glee club at Fort Warren in Boston. Brown was second tenor, and the subject of a lot of good-natured joshing, including a song about him mould’ring in his grave, which at that time had just one verse, plus chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah…

And that song transmogrified into "Battle Hymn of the Republic." And now you know... the remainder... of... the narrative.*

* The lawyers for Paul Harvey - whom I've never heard of - asked me to state that there's no connection between his "The Rest... of... the Story" and my "The Remainder... of... the Narrative."