The New, New John Brown’s Body

As many of you know, the murderous lunatic, John Brown, was instantly martyred and as soon became an even greater hero throughout the northern states than he’d previously been the moment the floor dropped from beneath his feet and the hangman’s noose suddenly arrested his body’s fall, snapping his bloody neck. Afterward and during the early days of the WBTS, various versions of “John Brown’s Body” or “John Brown’s Song” began to crop up in Yankee army camps, among other hotbeds of unreasoning Yankee fanaticism. Only months before Julia Ward Howe wrote the lines we now know as “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a northern man then living in Chicago wrote what he would come to call, “The New John Brown’s Body.” It comes as no surprise to some of us that this particular (heretical) version of the poem was written by a Yankee “man of the cloth;” a true son of New England named William Weston Patton. Immediately below are Mr. Patton’s “inspired” verses, my parody to follow further down the page (as always, these verses must be sung to the familiar beat and rhythm of “Battle Hymn”):

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.

Glory Hallelujah!

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)

He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened “Old Virginny” till she trembled through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves a traitorous crew,
But his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see —
Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
And soon throughout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

The conflict that he heralded he looked from heaven to view,
On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.
And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
For his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)

Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
And his soul is marching on.

(Chorus)


There can be no question as to whether or not Mr. Patton’s verses were “inspired;” the question is, rather, of what fiendish entity then possessing his darkened soul was in fact responsible for inspiring them. I think you likely know the answer to that question as well as I do, albeit it must have been a lesser demon than the great Satan himself, given the clumsiness and rank heresy of the verses themselves. If ever Mr. Patton was a Christian, he certainly and obviously had aposticized before his deluded mind conceived those lines above-recorded.

Fully a year prior to the date on which our poet allegedly penned the memorable (memorable in part for their stunning mediocrity) lines you’re now stupider for having read (my sincere apologies for inflicting that inevitability on you, dear reader), the Southern Literary Messenger published an essay titled, Northern Mind and Character, a few short lines from whence, since particularly relevant to our subject and an apt summation of the sort of character possessed of men such as those above-named, I have excerpted and posted directly below for your edification, in lieu of your finding time to read the scathing essay in entirety.

No tenet of Christ’s holy religion escapes the slimy embrace of this fiendish trio, and a blasphemous application of it to the most reprehensible purposes. There are no principles in politics, or municipal policy, too well established to be exempt from their malignant attack.

The first marches hand in hand with the murderous demagogue, in his assasinous onslaughts upon the insitutions of the country; regardless alike of the dignity of his robes and the sacred duties of his office, as he hisses destruction upon the peace of his fellow-citizens and the welfare of his country.


Parody: The Newer John Brown’s Body, by T. Morris

The bones of John Brown’s body lie forever in his grave,
‘Twas the sons of old Virginny meted justice to the knave;
While the earth his flesh consumed, the fires of Hell his spirit craved,
Where now his soul is burning on.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
Glory, Glory hallelujah,
Glory, Glory hallelujah,
His soul goes burning on.

Old John Brown was a murderer, a raving lunatic was he,
Bloody Kansas was the canvas where his madness grew to be,
Then onto Harper’s Ferry to meet the gallant Colonel Lee,
Now his soul is burning on.

(Chorus)

By his fated expedition, nineteen men he led so few,
There he stoked the righteous anger of Virginians through and through,
So they hung him as a traitor, sent Beelzebub his due,
Now his soul is burning on.

(Chorus)

Upon the war he heralded he looked from Hell to view,
On the soldiers of the Union, half from countries no one knew,
From its depths rung hissing anthems o’er the deed they meant to do,
Where his soul is burning on.

(Chorus)

John Brown was Satan’s man on earth, ‘tis truly plain to see,
His Yankee proselytes shall ever eat the fruit forbidden of the tree,
But soon throughout the sunny South the yoke of Yankee we’ll be free,
For his soul is burning on.

(Chorus)

Now ye soldiers of Christian Freedom let us strike while strike we may,
Give the blow to northern oppression, avenge our fathers clad in grey,
For the blight of John Brown’s folly is fin’lly bright’ning into day,
His tortured soul goes burning on.

(Chorus)

In the bosom of New England John Brown was born this side the sea,
Consuming hatred plagued his tortured soul so foreign to you and me,
As he died the death due traitors, let us march to victory,
While his soul goes burning on.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
His tortured soul’s forever burning on.

Stick that in your church hymnals and let the pious enemies of God’s Holy Truth currently occupying their unwelcome places in the pews choke on every line of it.

God bless Dixie!

17 comments

  1. Outstanding, Mr Morris! Brown got his due punishment, as did the tyrant and war criminal – Lincoln – thanks be to John Wilkes Booth.

    1. They probably will when electromagnetic pulse knocks out your Yankee high tech computer chip combine.

    2. Thank you, Mr. Powell. My personal perspective on the assassination of Lincoln is that it gave the victorious Yankees yet one more narrative with which to assault and condemn us as a people. This narrative of course persists to this day. I sometimes wonder whether Booth & his conspirators were not in fact Yankee implants and patsies. …

      1. I can’t believe Booth and his conspirators were Yankee implants. I believe they justifiably hated Lincoln with a white-hot passion.

    3. Read Luke 4: 25-29.

      “25But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; 26But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. 27And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. 28And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.”

      This is why many of His Hebrew hearers hated Him. As Luther wrote:

      “They alone want to have the Messiah and be masters of the world. The accursed Goyim must be servants, give their desire (that is, their gold and silver) to the Jews, and let themselves be slaughtered like wretched cattle. They would rather remain lost consciously and eternally than give up this view.”

      Martin Luther, ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’, (1543)

  2. I like the new version much better. What I find terrifying is how history gets created.
    I made it through my young adulthood without having to worship MLK. And Honest Abe was not a great President.

    Out in Seattle, there is the John Brown Gun Club. One of its members died while attacking an immigration facility.

    1. Thanks for the compliment, dogface. I like it better too. If there is one thing I am definitely not, it is a poet; albeit, I certainly believe my poetry, such that it is, far surpasses that of the “educated” Yankee who wrote The New John Brown’s Body mentioned above. One thing we must reluctantly give to Julia Ward Howe is that she was a good and effective poet for her cause. One would think that a man with the credentials of William Weston Patton could come up with better lines, but I guess the Yankees at that time were scraping the bottom of the barrel poetically as much as they were for decent soldiers to form their ranks.

  3. As a Christian I can’t understand how someone could be so apostate as to think of John Brown as being something like a saint. What’s worse is that northerners have further embraced this view of John Brown and think of him as a better Christian than men like Lee or Jackson, and have spread this view into some southern churches. One could go so far as to say that John Brown did as much damage to Christianity as Harry Emerson Fosdick.

    1. Mr. Tyler, you are my new hero, sir! Thank you for your wonderfully prescient comment on my article. You are right! I mean, John Brown compared to the likes of R.E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson, et al? A farthing candle and the sun!, to borrow from the Yankee, J.Q. Adams. …

  4. I have been following Identity Dixie for quite sometime, I am sad to say I will continue to follow this site, but with great trepidation. I understand the White race is being besieged, none know better. My family for 3 lines was hounded out of our home in England, Ireland and Scotland in the late 1880s just because we went to Canada, I am expected to believe I can not make common cause with my Southern brothers and sisters. This may be something you have over looked here. Most people like me understand many of the numerous crimes committed by the self proclaimed “Elite”. They are parasites who seek to suck the lifeblood out of anyone in reach. I say starve them, these ” elite”, they are less than an earthworm.

  5. They once called themselves Abolitionists and Free Soilers. Now they call themselves BLM and Anti-Fa. But they haven’t changed much, in two hundred years, except for becoming more ignorant, more illiterate, more arrogant, and more entitled.

    Even the so-called “nice people” of the Great Lakes States, the misnamed “Midwest,” will always vote in ways that are inimical to the Southern People, and to what remains of our Liberties and rights.

    All of this taken into consideration, the North, all sixteen of those states, is a hostile, foreign country. They don’t belong in the same political union as us. They’re nothing but political parasites, overgrown juvenile delinquents and malicious pests. There can be no real Liberty, as long as we’re shackled to those states and their illegal, unconstitutional and usurped mis-rule of what was once our country.

    They say that the Ukraine is not Iraq. I say that Dixie is not Massachusetts.

    End Reconstruction. End the War.

    1. Well said, Mr. Owen. You wrote:

      Even the so-called “nice people” of the Great Lakes States, the misnamed “Midwest,” will always vote in ways that are inimical to the Southern People, and to what remains of our Liberties and rights.

      Quite so. Reminds of what Pollard wrote about their ancestors so long ago:

      But what was most remarkable in this display of popular fury was its sudden and complete absorption of the entire Democratic party in the North, which had so long professed regard for the rights of the Southern States, and even sympathy with the first movements of their secession. This party now actually rivalled the Abolitionists in their expressions of fury and revenge. They not only followed the tide of public opinion, but sought to ride on its crest.

      -Pollard, The Lost Cause pg. 115

      Thanks for the comment, sir.

      1. Well, I see that I failed to set that quotation up with an earlier quotation from an earlier chapter of the same book (Pollard, pg. 62):

        But this Democratic alliance with the South was one only for party purposes. It was extravagant of professions, but it carefully avoided trials of its fidelity; it was selfish, cunning, and educated in perfidy. It was a deceitful combination for party purposes, and never withstood the test of a practical question. The Northern Democrat was always ready to contend against the Whig, but never against his own pocket, and the peculiar interests of his section. The moment economical questions arose in Congress, the Northern Democrat was on the side of Northern interests, and the Southern ranks, very imposing on party questions, broke into a scene of mutiny and desertion.

        Pollard is herein referring to the reaction of Northern Democrats to their Southern compatriots on the question of repealing the “protective tariff” on Southern exports when protection of Northern manufactures by way of the tariff in question had outlived its original and intended purpose and became an unnecessary burden on the South. And he isn’t just referring to Northern Democrat politicians, but also the rank and file “Northern Conservative,” who, when push came to shove, never strayed far away from the principle contained in the old negro song, to wit:

        My old cow is a good old cow,
        Blow boys, blow;
        She gives milk and butter too,
        Blow boys, blow.

  6. Since this article has generated a dozen comments, I’d recommend for further reading on John Brown Otto Scott’s book entitled ‘The Secret Six’. The man of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne said that “never was a man more justly hung” was backed by apostate preachers and financiers. How little has changed.

    I see it’s absurdly priced right now (usually the case when they don’t want you reading something that’s off their script), but look around a little to non-PC sources.

  7. Texas produced the Bush family. Let’s not act like the south has NO Globalist shills. I understand the anger at the north, it is of course justified.

    1. The Bush family is of Northern extraction; I beg differ with your assertion that Texas *produced* the Bush family. It did not. Did Texas *accommodate* the carpet bagging Yankee Bush’s. Yeah, I guess so. …

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