The "flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence"[1]: 374  led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest "John Brown" lyrics.

The most famous of these is Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic", which was written when a friend suggested, "Why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?"

[2] These meetings were usually held in frontier areas, when people who lacked regular access to church services would gather together to worship before traveling preachers.

[4] In that atmosphere, where hymns were taught and learned by rote and a spontaneous and improvisational element was prized, both tunes and words changed and adapted in true folk music fashion: Specialists in nineteenth-century American religious history describe camp meeting music as the creative product of participants who, when seized by the spirit of a particular sermon or prayer, would take lines from a preacher's text as a point of departure for a short, simple melody.

The line would be sung repeatedly, changing slightly each time, and shaped gradually into a stanza that could be learned easily by others and memorized quickly.

[5] It has been suggested that "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us", popular among Southern blacks, already had an anti-slavery sub-text, with its reference to "Canaan's happy shore" alluding to the idea of crossing the river to a happier place.

[17][18] If so, that subtext was considerably enhanced and expanded as the various "John Brown" lyrics took on themes related to the famous abolitionist and the American Civil War.

But out of that sweltering, fetid prison-pen into the silent night came the excellent chorus of hundreds who stood in the very presence of a lingering and terrible death.

'[21]On May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, recently freed African-Americans and some white missionaries held a parade of 10,000 people, led by 3,000 Black children singing "John Brown's Body".

The march honored 257 dead Union soldiers whose remains the organizers had reburied from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.

[23] At a flag-raising ceremony at Fort Warren, near Boston, on Sunday May 12, 1861, the "John Brown" song was publicly played "perhaps for the first time".

"[25]According to Kimball, these sayings became bywords among the soldiers and, in a communal effort—similar in many ways to the spontaneous composition of camp meeting songs described above—were gradually put to the tune of "Say, Brothers": Finally ditties composed of the most nonsensical, doggerel rhymes, setting for the fact that John Brown was dead and that his body was undergoing the process of dissolution, began to be sung to the music of the hymn above given.

These ditties underwent various ramifications, until eventually the lines were reached,— John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul's marching on.

These lines seemed to give general satisfaction, the idea that Brown's soul was "marching on" receiving recognition at once as having a germ of inspiration in it.

Maine songwriter, musician, band leader, and Union soldier Thomas Brigham Bishop (1835–1905) has also been credited as the originator of the John Brown Song, notably by promoter James MacIntyre in a 1916 book and 1935 interview.

[30][31] (Bishop also claimed to have written "Kitty Wells", "Shoo, Fly Don't Bother Me", and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", and to have played a role in the composition of "Swanee River".

[11] As Annie J. Randall wrote, "Multiple authors, most of them anonymous, borrowed the tune from 'Say, Brothers', gave it new texts, and used it to hail Brown's war to abolish the centuries-old practice of slavery in America.

[36] For example, William Weston Patton wrote his influential version in October 1861, which was published in the Chicago Tribune, 16 December of that year.

Lindley Miller in 1864,[37] although (typical of the confusion of authorship among the variants and versions) a similar text with the title "The Valiant Soldiers" is also attributed to Sojourner Truth.

[39] The tune was later also used for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (written in November 1861, published in February 1862; this song was directly inspired by "John Brown's Body"), "Marching Song of the First Arkansas", "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation", "Bummers, Come and Meet Us" (see facsimile), and many other related texts and parodies during and immediately after the American Civil War period.

The same tune is also used for a children's song that begins "Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose", inspired by Beatrix Potter's fictional animal character.

[43] Similarly, a fight song at the University of Pennsylvania set to the same melody begins, "Hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree".

In Sri Lanka it was adapted into a bilingual (English and Sinhala) song sung at cricket matches—notably at the Royal-Thomian, with the lyrics "We'll hang all the Thomians on the cadju-puhulang tree".

Another adaptation sung at the annual match between the Colombo Law and Medical colleges went "Liquor arsenalis and the cannabis indica".

Len Chandler sang a song called "Move on over" to the tune on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest TV show.

William Weston Patton, an influential abolitionist and pastor, composed his "The New John Brown Song" in the fall of 1861 and published it in the Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1861:[47][36] Old John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave, While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save; But though he sleeps his life was lost while struggling for the slave, His soul is marching on.

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave, And Kansas knew his valor when he fought her rights to save; And now, though the grass grows green above his grave, His soul is marching on.

(Chorus) Pete Seeger, an American folk musician, recorded a version of John Brown's Body in 1959 that is widely circulated today.

The lyrics differ significantly from earlier versions, and include a stanza from Battle Hymn Of The Republic, itself an 1862 adaptation of John Brown's Body written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe.

Mine eyes hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath is stored He'th loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword His truth is marching on!