Read Online On Hallowed Ground by Robert M Poole - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert M Poole
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conflict. After a year of watching from the sidelines, Lee plunged
into the fray.
Restyling his force as the Army of Northern Virginia, he took the fight to McClellan, chasing him across the swamps and rivers
of the peninsula as spring turned to summer. He stripped Richmond’s defenses to beef up his own lines, divided his forces
in the face of McClellan’s superior numbers, and attacked against the odds.
In a week of engagements around Richmond known as the Seven Days, which commenced on June 25 and ended on July 1, Union and
Confederate forces remained in almost uninterrupted contact, often fighting at close quarters, with the result that 35,984
men were killed, wounded, or captured in a single week. The Federals lost 15,849, the Confederates 20,135. The Rebels had
the worst of it, to be sure, but Lee had made Richmond secure, shattered Union confidence, and driven McClellan from the peninsula. 13
One of the lasting legacies of that muddy summer was the soldier’s lullaby we know today as Taps. Though details of its origins
differ, the song is usually credited to Brig. Gen. Daniel A. Butterfield, a New Yorker commanding the 3rd Brigade of the Union’s
5th Army Corps. As McClellan retreated and Butterfield gathered his men in camp on the James River, he grew irritated at
the army’s standard lights-out tune known as “Scott’s Tattoo,” named for the former army chief Winfield Scott and in use since
1835. It signaled soldiers to prepare for the day’s final roll call. Butterfield found the tune too harsh, “not as smooth,
melodious and musical as it should be.” So in July of 1862, he summoned Oliver W. Norton, his twenty-three-year-old bugler,
and asked him to make changes in the song as the brigadier listened. Freely admitting that he could neither read nor write
music, Butterfield made his alterations by ear, putting his bugler through the paces until the tune sounded right. Norton
took up the story:
After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for Taps thereafter in place of the regulation call.
The music was beautiful on that still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our Brigade. The next day I was
visited by several buglers from neighboring Brigades, asking for copies of the music which I gladly furnished.
Thus was born the famous twenty-four-note call, known as “Butterfield’s Lullaby” or Taps, which spread throughout the Union
Army, crossed enemy lines, and was entered in the Confederate Mounted Artillery Drill manual by 1863. The new tune was first
adapted as a funeral song in the summer of the Peninsula Campaign. As opposing armies exchanged artillery fire near Harrison’s
Landing, an unknown Union cannoneer was killed that July. Comrades prepared to bury him and fire the customary three-volley
salute at graveside. But with enemies in such close proximity, Capt. John C. Tidball of Battery A, 2nd Union Artillery, feared
that an outburst of musketry at close quarters might trigger more bloodshed. So he called for his bugler and asked him to
sound a soothing new lights-out tune known as Taps, which seemed a fitting farewell gesture—and the first recorded instance
of the melody being played over a soldier’s grave. The practice caught on at funerals and spread informally through the Army,
but it took decades for the song to become official—it appears in the U.S. Army Infantry Drill Regulations for the first time
in 1891. 14
With deaths mounting on the peninsula, hope for an easy war faded in Washington. “We have had a terrible reverse on the Peninsula,” Montgomery Meigs confided to his father as McClellan hurried his army
out of Lee’s reach. 15 The season’s events made it clear that the nation was, to borrow Edwin Stanton’s phrase, “playing war” no longer. This reality
was attested by a Confederate colonel’s description of the scene from the Peninsula Campaign, as the fog lifted following
the Battle of
into the fray.
Restyling his force as the Army of Northern Virginia, he took the fight to McClellan, chasing him across the swamps and rivers
of the peninsula as spring turned to summer. He stripped Richmond’s defenses to beef up his own lines, divided his forces
in the face of McClellan’s superior numbers, and attacked against the odds.
In a week of engagements around Richmond known as the Seven Days, which commenced on June 25 and ended on July 1, Union and
Confederate forces remained in almost uninterrupted contact, often fighting at close quarters, with the result that 35,984
men were killed, wounded, or captured in a single week. The Federals lost 15,849, the Confederates 20,135. The Rebels had
the worst of it, to be sure, but Lee had made Richmond secure, shattered Union confidence, and driven McClellan from the peninsula. 13
One of the lasting legacies of that muddy summer was the soldier’s lullaby we know today as Taps. Though details of its origins
differ, the song is usually credited to Brig. Gen. Daniel A. Butterfield, a New Yorker commanding the 3rd Brigade of the Union’s
5th Army Corps. As McClellan retreated and Butterfield gathered his men in camp on the James River, he grew irritated at
the army’s standard lights-out tune known as “Scott’s Tattoo,” named for the former army chief Winfield Scott and in use since
1835. It signaled soldiers to prepare for the day’s final roll call. Butterfield found the tune too harsh, “not as smooth,
melodious and musical as it should be.” So in July of 1862, he summoned Oliver W. Norton, his twenty-three-year-old bugler,
and asked him to make changes in the song as the brigadier listened. Freely admitting that he could neither read nor write
music, Butterfield made his alterations by ear, putting his bugler through the paces until the tune sounded right. Norton
took up the story:
After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for Taps thereafter in place of the regulation call.
The music was beautiful on that still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our Brigade. The next day I was
visited by several buglers from neighboring Brigades, asking for copies of the music which I gladly furnished.
Thus was born the famous twenty-four-note call, known as “Butterfield’s Lullaby” or Taps, which spread throughout the Union
Army, crossed enemy lines, and was entered in the Confederate Mounted Artillery Drill manual by 1863. The new tune was first
adapted as a funeral song in the summer of the Peninsula Campaign. As opposing armies exchanged artillery fire near Harrison’s
Landing, an unknown Union cannoneer was killed that July. Comrades prepared to bury him and fire the customary three-volley
salute at graveside. But with enemies in such close proximity, Capt. John C. Tidball of Battery A, 2nd Union Artillery, feared
that an outburst of musketry at close quarters might trigger more bloodshed. So he called for his bugler and asked him to
sound a soothing new lights-out tune known as Taps, which seemed a fitting farewell gesture—and the first recorded instance
of the melody being played over a soldier’s grave. The practice caught on at funerals and spread informally through the Army,
but it took decades for the song to become official—it appears in the U.S. Army Infantry Drill Regulations for the first time
in 1891. 14
With deaths mounting on the peninsula, hope for an easy war faded in Washington. “We have had a terrible reverse on the Peninsula,” Montgomery Meigs confided to his father as McClellan hurried his army
out of Lee’s reach. 15 The season’s events made it clear that the nation was, to borrow Edwin Stanton’s phrase, “playing war” no longer. This reality
was attested by a Confederate colonel’s description of the scene from the Peninsula Campaign, as the fog lifted following
the Battle of
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