“Taps" “Taps,” As We Currently Know It, Came About in 1862. Composed
Newsletter 8 May 25 The History of “Taps" “Taps,” as we currently know it, came about in 1862. Composed right after the Seven Days Battles, a bloody battle that waged for a week in the summer of 1862, the song was intended to mourn the fallen. The two armies, led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union Major General George B. McClellan, suffered over 36,000 casualties combined. While the Union Army was driven back down the Virginia Peninsula with Lee’s army continuing on toward Maryland, those who survived would not call either side victorious. One woman who witnessed the aftermath wrote, “Death held a carnival in our city.” After the shock of that battle, the Army of the Potomac was camped at Harrison’s Landing on the James River in Virginia, resting and recuperating, when Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield summoned Private Oliver Willcox Gordon, the brigade bugler, to his tent. Butterfield expressed not liking the bugle call used for Lights Out, because he thought it was too formal. According to Private Gordon, “During the early part of the Civil War I was bugler at the Headquarters of Butterfield’s Brigade, Meroll’s Division, Fitz-John Porter’s Corp, Army of the Potomac. Up to July, 1862, the Infantry call for Taps was that set down in Casey’s Tactics, which Mr. Kobbe says was borrowed from the French. One day, soon after the seven days battles on the Peninsular, when the Army of the Potomac was lying in camp at Harrison’s Landing, General Daniel Butterfield, then commanding our Brigade, sent for me, and showing me some notes on a staff written in pencil on the back of an envelope, asked me to sound them on my bugle.
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