Music: Hymn from Maine

Three-quarters of a century ago in Portland. Maine, a fierce form of religious fervor overtook a hardshelled Yankee named Andrew J. Johnson. Seeking out his young brother-in-law, Johnson accused him of writing songs in league with the Devil and, thrusting out his self-righteous chest, shouted: “I am bound to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! Glory! glory, Hallelujah!” Thomas Brigham Bishop, a farm-boy from the village of Wayne, jokingly set his brother-in-law’s tirade to music. As popular as any popular song, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah was sung a few evenings later by Andrew Johnson, soon became the big camp-meeting hymn throughout the State of Maine.

When John Brown was hanged at Charles Town in 1859 for his Harper’s Ferry raid, Thomas Brigham Bishop happened to be in nearby Martinsburg. Taking paper & pencil he dashed off the crude verses of John Brown’s Body Lies a-Mould’ ring in the Grave, set them to the music of his Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. The song was published by John Church of Cincinnati in 1861. Union soldiers, at the outbreak of the Civil War, picked it up as a marching song, added the “Jeff Davis” verse, carried it to Washington. There in 1862 after a great review across the Potomac Julia Ward Howe heard the Federal troopers singing it. Early the next morning, with John Brown’s Body running through her mind, she wrote the words of The Battle Hymn of the Republic to Bishop’s tune.

Despite the fact that he provided the music for one of the patriotic anthems of all time, the name of Thomas Brigham Bishop has been practically forgotten in the annals of U. S. music. To see that he gets his just due from history is the purpose of an elderly New Yorker named John James MacIntyre, now a publicity man for the Cunard White Star Line, once a struggling songwriter and publisher whom Bishop befriended. This week marks the 100th anniversary of Thomas Bishop’s birth. Loyal John MacIntyre refused to let the occasion pass without telling his friend’s life-story:

“Down East” in the 1850’s the budding songwriter was regarded as a rapscallion. When he might have been brooding over crops, he was strumming a mandolin, playing at country dances, barnstorming in minstrel shows. During the Civil War he commanded a Negro detachment called Company G. One day he heard a dusky private muttering, “Shoo, fly, don’t bother me.” Thereupon Bishop wrote another song which every soldier sang:

Shoo, fly, don’t bother me

I belong to Company G. . . .

After the war the songwriter from Maine plugged on at music. He wrote When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Sweet Evalina, If Your Foot Is Pretty, Show It. He toured for a time as cornetist in Pat Gilmore’s Band. Then, when middleaged, his Yankee blood asserted itself and he turned to banking. But with all his fine clothes and his fashionable mustachios, he continued to hobnob with musicians, hover around publishing offices. On one such occasion he encountered Stephen Foster who whistled the melody of Old Folks at Home (“Suwannee River”) while Bishop set down the notes and scored the simple harmony.

Bishop died a respectable citizen in the early 1900’s, surviving such friends as Foster, Dan Emmett (Dixie). Nelson Kneass (Ben Bolt). The Battle Hymn of the Republic has always been regarded as Julia Ward Howe’s song, written to the tune of John Brown’s Body whose authorship seemed to be unknown. At MacIntyre’s request Thomas Brigham Bishop wrote out the tune’s true history. Said he: “It was really done as a joke upon my sanctimonious brother-in-law.”