The more popular, if not more worthy, song of John Brown's Body seems to have been of Massachusetts origin at the commencement of the Civil War. It was first sung in 1861. When the Massachusetts Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster, a son of the famous Daniel Webster, were camped on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, some of the soldiers amused themselves by adapting the words,-- "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on. Glory, glory hallelujah, His soul is marching on," to a certain air. Mr. Charles Sprague Hall, who is the author of the lines as finally sung, says that when the soldiers first began to sing it the first verse was the only one known. He wrote the other verses, but did not know where the first one came from. The way was opened for this song through a campaign song heard from the lips of the Douglas, and the Bell, and the Everett Campaign Clubs, who, in order to spite Governor John A. Andrew, the famous war governor of Massachusetts, sang the following lines as they were marching through the streets of Boston, with their torches in hand,-- "Tell John Andrew, Tell John Andrew, Tell John Andrew John Brown's dead. Salt won't save him, John Brown's dead." These lines are supposed to have been an imitation of the doggerel,-- "Tell Aunt Rhody, Tell Aunt Rhody, Tell Aunt Rhody The old goose is dead. Salt won't save him, The old goose is dead." Great stress having been laid by the opponents of Governor Andrew upon the fact that John Brown was dead, the authors of the song spoken of took good care to assert that, while "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on." [Illustration: _HARPER'S FERRY_] This was the answer of those that sympathized with John Brown, a song which they flung at those who seemed to take delight in the fact that he was dead. Thane Miller, of Cincinnati, heard the melody, which is perhaps the most popular martial melody in America, in a colored Presbyterian church in Charleston, South Carolina, about 1859, and soon after introduced it at a convention of the Young Men's Christian Association in Albany, New York, with the words,-- "Say, brothers will you meet us, Say, brothers will you meet us, Say, brothers will you meet us, On Canaan's happy shore? By the grace of God we'll meet you, By the grace of God we'll meet you, By the grace of God we'll meet you, Where parting is no more." Professor James E. Greenleaf, organist of the Harvard Church in Charlestown, found the music in the archives of that church, and fitted it to the first stanza of the present song. It has since been claimed that the Millerites, in 1843, used the same tune to a hymn, one verse of which is as follows,--