Origin of "TAPS"

We in the United States have all heard the haunting song "TAPS".
It's the song that gives us a lump in the throat and usually tears in our eyes.
But do you know the story behind the the song?
If not, I think you will be interested to find out it's origins.


Taps came out of the Civil War. Union Gen. Daniel Butterfield, camped with his brigade at Harrison's Landing, Va., in the summer of 1862, asked his bugler to try a new tune. The bugler, Oliver Wilcox Norton, did not know so at the time but the simple call Butterfield scratched on an envelope and asked him to sound came from an early version of "Tattoo," a bugle call used to alert troops to prepare for bedtime roll call. This particular "Tattoo" had gone out of use by the time of the Civil War.

"Butterfield knew the tune, however, from his days before the war as a colonel in the New York militia," . "It's the `Tattoo' by Winfield Scott, composed in 1835, also known as the `Scott Tattoo.' The last five-and-a-half measures are distinctly taps."
Norton worked out the call with Butterfield, then sounded it in camp. "The music was beautiful on that still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our brigade," Norton later wrote. "The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring brigades, asking for copies of the music, which I gladly furnished. I think no general order was issued from army headquarters authorizing the substitution of this for the regulation call, but as each brigade commander exercised his own discretion in such minor matters, the call was gradually taken up through the Army of the Potomac."
Of the call, Norton wrote: "Its strains are melancholy, yet full of rest and peace. Its echoes linger in the heart long after its tones have ceased to vibrate in the air."



Though its use at military funerals became mandatory with the publication of the U.S. Army Infantry Drill Regulations for 1891, taps might have been heard graveside for the first time shortly after the Butterfield-Norton collaboration.
The first use of Taps at a funeral during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia. Captain John C. Tidball of Battery A, 2nd Artillery ordered it played for the burial of a cannoneer killed in action. Since the enemy was close, he worried that the traditional 3 volleys would renew fighting.
During the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, a soldier of Tidball's Battery - A of the 2nd Artillery - was buried at a time when the battery occupied an advanced position, concealed in the woods. It was unsafe to fire the customary three volleys over the grave on account of the proximity of the enemy, and it occurred to Captain Tidball that the sounding of Taps would be the most ceremony that would be substituted. The custom, thus originated, was taken up throughout the Army of the Potomac, and finally confirmed by orders. Colonel James A. Moss Officer's Manual Pub. George Banta Publishing Co. Menasha Wisconsin 1913 Elbridge Coby in Army Talk (Princeton, 1942), p.208 states that it was B Battery of the Third Artillery that first used Taps at a military funeral.


"A popular myth is that of a Northern boy who was killed fighting for the South," writes Villanueva, in notes for the exhibit. "His father, Robert Ellicombe, a captain in the Union Army, came upon his son's body on the battlefield and found the notes to taps in a pocket of the dead boy's Confederate uniform. When Union General Daniel Sickles heard the story, he had the notes sounded at the boy's funeral. But there is no evidence to back up the story or the existence of a Capt. Ellicombe."
Butterfield gets the credit for taps. A few years after the Civil War, he resigned from the Army and spent his retirement at a country home in Cold Spring, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River, within earshot of West Point. He could hear a bugler at the military academy sound taps each evening.

While there are no official lyrics for Taps, the following unofficial verse (author unknown) is often used:

Fading light dims the sight, And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar drawing nigh -- Falls the night.
Day is done, gone the sun, From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Then good night, peaceful night, Till the light of the dawn shineth bright;
God is near, do not fear -- Friend, good night.