G.Legman gives a little information at page 378 of his 'The Horn Book' Jonathan Cape 1970:

Most other such songs surviving, or even now being written, are entirely on political and military personages, as in the humorously scatological song - on the purported use of patriotic ladies' 'chamber-lye' to make gunpowder, and the erotic results resulting therefrom - known during the Civil War as 'John Haroldson', and revised during World War I with the change simply of the satirised general's name to 'Von Hindenburg' (printed in 'Immortalia' 1927, p 101, still entitled 'Chamber-Lye'). The original Civil War version had been printed earlier in a rare contemporary booklet under the title of 'The Lay of John Haroldson', probably in Philadelphia. (Copy New York Public, and others located by the Union Catalogue, Library of Congress).

Cheers, Stewie.