Bugle Resounding

In the mid-nineteenth century the United States was musically vibrant. Rising industrialization, a growing middle class, and increasing concern for the founding of American centers of art created a culture that was rich in musical capital. Beyond its importance to the people who created and played it is the fact that this music still influences our culture today. Although numerous academic resources examine the music and musicians of the Civil War era, the research is spread across a variety of disciplines and is found in a wide array of scholarly journals, books, and papers. It is difficult to assimilate this diverse body of research, and few sources are dedicated solely to a rigorous and comprehensive investigation of the music and the musicians of this era. This anthology, which grew out of the first two National Conferences on Music of the Civil War Era, is an initial attempt to address that need. Those conferences established the first academic setting solely devoted to exploring the effects of the Civil War on music and musicians. Bridging musicology and history, these essays represent the forefront of scholarship in music of the Civil War era. Each one makes a significant contribution to research in the music of this era and will ultimately encourage more interdisciplinary research on a subject that has relevance both for its own time and for ours. The result is a readable, understandable volume on one of the few understudied—yet fascinating—aspects of the Civil War era.

Battle Hymns

The creation of the Confederate States of America and the subsequent Civil War inspired composers, lyricists, and music publishers in Southern and border states, and even in foreign countries, to support the new nation. Confederate-imprint sheet music articulated and encouraged Confederate nationalism, honored soldiers and military leaders, comforted family and friends, and provided diversion from the hardships of war. This is the first comprehensive history of the sheet music of the Confederacy. It covers works published before the war in Southern states that seceded from the Union, and those published during the war in Union occupied capitals, border and Northern states, and foreign countries. It is also the first work to examine the contribution of postwar Confederate-themed sheet music to the South's response to its defeat, to the creation and fostering of Lost Cause themes, and to the promotion of national reunion and reconciliation.

In the mid-nineteenth century the United States was musically vibrant. Rising industrialization, a growing middle class, and increasing concern for the founding of American centers of art created a culture that was rich in musical capital. Beyond its importance to the people who created and played it is the fact that this music still influences our culture today. Although numerous academic resources examine the music and musicians of the Civil War era, the research is spread across a variety of disciplines and is found in a wide array of scholarly journals, books, and papers. It is difficult to assimilate this diverse body of research, and few sources are dedicated solely to a rigorous and comprehensive investigation of the music and the musicians of this era. This anthology, which grew out of the first two National Conferences on Music of the Civil War Era, is an initial attempt to address that need. Those conferences established the first academic setting solely devoted to exploring the effects of the Civil War on music and musicians. Bridging musicology and history, these essays represent the forefront of scholarship in music of the Civil War era. Each one makes a significant contribution to research in the music of this era and will ultimately encourage more interdisciplinary research on a subject that has relevance both for its own time and for ours. The result is a readable, understandable volume on one of the few understudied—yet fascinating—aspects of the Civil War era.

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory

In December 1863, Civil War soldiers took refuge from the dismal conditions of war and weather. They made their winter quarters in the Piedmont region of central Virginia: the Union’s Army of the Potomac in Culpeper County and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia in neighboring Orange County. For the next six months the opposing soldiers eyed each other warily across the Rapidan River. In Music Along the Rapidan James A. Davis examines the role of music in defining the social communities that emerged during this winter encampment. Music was an essential part of each soldier’s personal identity, and Davis considers how music became a means of controlling the acoustic and social cacophony of war that surrounded every soldier nearby. Music also became a touchstone for colliding communities during the encampment—the communities of enlisted men and officers or Northerners and Southerners on the one hand and the shared communities occupied by both soldier and civilian on the other. The music enabled them to define their relationships and their environment, emotionally, socially, and audibly.

Stemming from the tradition of rallying troops and frightening enemies, mounted bands played a unique and distinctive role in American military history. Their fascinating story within the U.S. Army unfolds in this latest book from noted music historian and former army musician Bruce P. Gleason. Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums follows American horse-mounted bands from the nation's military infancy through its emergence as a world power during World War II and the corresponding shift from horse-powered to mechanized cavalry. Gleason traces these bands to their origins, including the horn-blowing Celtic and Roman cavalries of antiquity and the mounted Middle Eastern musicians whom European Crusaders encountered in the Holy Land. He describes the performance, musical selections, composition, and duties of American mounted bands that have served regular, militia, volunteer, and National Guard regiments in military and civil parades and concerts, in ceremonies, and on the battlefield. Over time the composition of the bands has changed—beginning with trumpets and drums and expanding to full-fledged concert bands on horseback. Woven throughout the book are often-surprising strands of American military history from the War of 1812 through the Civil War, action on the western frontier, and the two world wars. Touching on anthropology, musicology, and the history of the United States and its military, Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums is an unparalleled account of mounted military bands and their cultural significance.

When the South bombarded Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Ellithorpe family in rural New York answered President Lincoln’s call to defend the Union. For the next four years, the two Ellithorpe brothers and two of their brothers-in-law fought in some of the Civil War’s most storied regiments, on nearly every major battlefield in the East. In this utterly unique Civil War history/biography, John A. Simpson reconstructs the intertwined lives and wars of four Union soldiers, from Bull Run to Gettysburg and beyond. When the Civil War broke out, Phillip Ellithorpe, Philander Ellithorpe, Asa Burleson, and Oliver Moore did not hesitate to volunteer to fight for the Union. Their service would encompass virtually every branch of the Northern army: infantry (including sharpshooters), cavalry (mounted and dismounted), and artillery as well as commissary, engineering, and ambulance duty. They would serve in six different regiments: the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves (the legendary Bucktails); the 27th New York Infantry (the Union Regiment); the 2nd New York Mounted Rifles; the 5th Vermont Infantry; the 1st New York Dragoons; and the 1st Minnesota, which gained immortality at Gettysburg. They would participate in the major battles of the war’s Eastern theater: First Bull Run, the Peninsula, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Grant’s Overland campaign through Petersburg. Phillip would die at Gettysburg, and the other three would return home and live under the shadow of the Civil War for the rest of their lives. All for the Union tells the dramatic story of these four soldiers, weaving their lives and wars into a tapestry of how one family navigated home front and battle front during the Civil War. Based on 180 family letters, voluminous primary and second sources, and visits to homes and battlefields from Allegany County, New York, to Richmond, Virginia, All for the Union is a remarkable contribution to Civil War history.