A Young Man and His War Legacy

The Civil War was a terrible and devastating division in our country's history. Brothers often fought brothers, and sons fought fathers. Families were split, and some never healed.

A young man with musical talent was sent to a music school in the South just before the war started. His family thought he would be safe, as he was from the North and only studying in the South.

His father was Captain Ellicombe in the Union Army.

One day his troops came to a field called Harrison's Landing, in Virginia, after a battle had been fought. The captain ordered his men to bury the Confederate soldiers.

The captain looked at the young faces and saw his son's. Why his son left school and joined the Confederacy, the captain didn't know. With love, he searched his son's pockets and found a scrap of paper with music notes on it. After the captain asked for and received permission to give his son a special burial, he gave his bugler the music, and it was played at the funeral.

The music drifted over the countryside, giving everyone the chills.

The division commander, General Daniel Butterfield, heard the haunting tune and inquired who wrote it. Captain Ellicombe gave the scrap to the general, who had it copied and gave it to his bugler, Oliver Morton, and ordered him to use it as a new bugle call. Before the Civil War was over, both sides of the conflict were playing the piece at the gravesites.

It is still played today for military funerals. It is called "Taps." "...it signals the end of a soldier's struggle as he is laid to rest."

At all military funerals, we are reminded of the heartbreak of war by the music of one young man.

From the book Shocking Secrets of American History by Bill Coate

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