Background:
"John Brown's Body" (originally known as "John Brown's Song") is a famous Union marching song of the American Civil War. It is often alleged to have been created as a tribute to the abolitionist acts of John Brown, a claim disputed by historians (see below). The song was found offensive by Major General George B. McClellan while he was in command of the Army of the Potomac, and he tried to ban it, to little effect. The tune, probably written by William Steffe in 1855–56, for a revivalist hymn Say, Brothers will you meet us, was later used for The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Solidarity Forever, and The Battle Hymn of Cooperation.

There is also revisionist evidence that this song was originally created by a group of Union soldiers (with only the first verse), mocking a comrade-in-arms who shared the name "John Brown".

As musicologist Irwin Silber states, " '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 Battalion, Boston Light Infantry Volunteer Militia."

Columnist Mark Steyn elaborates: "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. They called it 'The John Brown Song'. On July 18th 1861, at a regimental march past the Old State House in Boston, the boys sang the song and the crowd assumed, reasonably enough, that it was inspired by the life of John Brown the Kansas abolitionist, not John Brown the Scots tenor. [...] Later on, various other verses were written about the famous John Brown and the original John Brown found his comrades’ musical tribute to him gradually annexed by the other guy."