John Brown's Body

noun

1. a long narrative poem (1928) by Stephen Vincent Benét, about the U.S. Civil War.

“John Brown's Body”

1. A song of the Civil War that pays tribute to the abolitionist John Brown (see abolitionism). It begins, “John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave.”

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written to the tune of “John Brown's Body.”

Example Sentences

But his willingness to die to end slavery led to the first marching song of the United States Army in the Civil War: “John Brown’s Body.”

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John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on.

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Starting at 9 a.m., about 3,000 black schoolchildren paraded around the race track holding roses and singing the Union song "John Brown's Body," and were followed by adults representing aid societies for freed black men and women.

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In addition to Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, Brown’s admirers included the poet Julia Ward Howe, wife of the “Secret Six” member Samuel Gridley Howe, who took a popular folk song about Brown, “John Brown’s Body,” and turned it into “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

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In his 2005 edited collection of essays “The Afterlife of John Brown,” Eldrid Herrington, a professor of English, wrote, “John Brown’s body revives whenever the United States shames itself, when the body politic bears wounds, when it imprisons citizens without trial, or prosecutes an unjust war in an unjust manner.”

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