Originally aired on January 02, 1998 - In part 175 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses how the tune of Taps became part of the American military.
#175 – Taps
One of the most moving and lasting contributions of the Civil War to American life is a simple melody that will always be our most famous bugle call. The time was July, 1862, the place the Virginia peninsula in the aftermath of General George McClellan’s failed offensive against the Confederate capital in Richmond.
Two little known Union soldiers were the only actors in this drama. The first was General Daniel Butterfield, a thirty-year-old brigade commander. The heavily mustached Butterfield was a New York attorney and when civil war began an executive with the American Express company.
Despite a lack of military training, Butterfield entered service as a colonel of a militia regiment. Promotion to brigadier came in the autumn of 1861. Gallant action at the June, 1862, Battle of Gaines’ Mill brought Butterfield a wound, elevation to major general, and later, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The other participant in our mini-drama was Butterfield’s brigade bugler. Private Oliver Norton was from northwestern Pennsylvania. He too was a valiant soldier who had been wounded at Gaines’ Mill. Ultimately, Norton would gain an officer’s commission.
At the time of the Civil War two bugle calls ended a day’s activity. The first known as Tattoo summoned the men for roll call. A half hour or so later came the second tune from the bugle. It was a signal to extinguish all lights in the encampment and to cease all loud conversation and other noise that would interfere with the sleep of the men.
General Butterfield, a connoisseur of music, disliked the second melody. “It did not seem,” said Butterfield, “to be as smooth, melodious, and musical as it should be.” He wanted a call that would suggest quietly lying down for rest at the end of the day.
One afternoon in the war’s second summer the recuperating General summoned his recuperating bugler. Butterfield told Norton of a tune he had in mind. Then he whistled it. Private Norton was somewhat struck by it all for generals ordinarily did not behave about music that way.
Neither man was satisfied with the initial effort. When after repeated trials and changing the time of some of the notes general and bugler were mutually satisfied with their composition. Butterfield then scribbled the melody on the back of an envelope. He ordered it substituted at once.
That night the haunting strains of the bugle call drifted across an army camp for the first time. The following day buglers from nearby brigades came to inquire about the new song. They copied the music, returned to their camps and began using it to signal lights out.
Soon the tune was official throughout the Army of the Potomac. When the 11th and 12th Corps of that army went west the next year they took the melody with them. By 1864, the new bugle call was in place, and there it remains.
The song, simple and short, is called Taps. It still sounds the end of a military day. More than that, a custom developed, whenever a man or woman is buried with military honors the bugle notes of Taps form the climax of the service. Occasionally, some will sing the words:
Put out the lights
Go to sleep
Go the sleep
Among the first soldiers whose funerals included the playing of Taps were General Sheridan at Arlington, General Sherman in Saint Louis, and General Grant in New York. There is something singularly beautiful and appropriate in the music of this bugle call. Its strains are melancholy, yet filled with overtones of rest and peace. Its echoes linger long after its notes have ceased to float through the air. Taps is as immortal as the soldiers it honors.
