And The Bands Played On (Special Edition- New years 2019)

It was cold and cloudy, with scant moonlight. The soldiers in blue huddled by small campfires. Less than one hundred yards away, soldiers in gray, also struggled to keep warm. Nearly 100,000 American boys were about to engage in one of the great battles of the Civil War. They were just outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, it was the evening of December 30, 1862.

 Bands were a part of almost all Army regiments during the Civil War. The drum beats and martial music were intended to help drive the common soldier toward a rendezvous with destruction, pain and, possibly death, that he might otherwise have sought to avoid. The music was loud, stirring, gallant, and inspirational. It helped instill motivation and pride in duty and honor.

 But occasionally, the bands played other types of music; especially during lulls in battle. The night before New Year’s Eve, in the rolling hills of Tennessee, was one of those nights when the bands, from both sides, were the only forces in opposition. The two sides were so close that the men had been able to hear conversations from the other side. But now, for a while, the bands, and the soldiers singing, would be the dominate sounds.

 It is lost in history as to which band started the competition, but most accounts give the nod to the Union musicians. The band began to play a patriotic tune, in this case the popular Northern song, Hail Columbia. As the band finished that song, the Confederate band struck up Dixie and the competition was on. The Union side played and sang, Yankee Doodle Dandy, a song that predated the Revolutionary War and, until the Civil War, was sung by Northerner and Southerner alike. Then the Confederate band began to play My old Kentucky Home (a Stephen Foster tune) which had become a Southern Anthem. Of course, there were a few boisterous songs, which soldiers so often learn, interspersed with other genres.

 There was lull in the music about ten pm. Then the Union band began to play a sentimental song about home. The song was originally part of a short opera first performed in 1823, with lyrics by John Howard Payne and composition by Henry Bishop. It was quickly separated from the opera and became a sentimental favorite throughout the United States, North and South. (Some erroneously credit Stephen Foster, a prolific songwriter on the era, as the composer) As the Union band sounded out the introduction, the Confederate band instantly recognized the tune and joined in; and, the music began to transcend the differences war can bring, if only for a few minutes. The soldiers, who would again soon be enemies, began to sing the same song, at the same time.

 Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there

Which seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere

Home! Home!

Sweet, sweet home!

There’s no place like home

There’s no place like home!

An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain

Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again

The birds singing gaily that came to my call

And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all.

Home, home, sweet, sweet home.

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!

The boys started to sing the song again and the two bands played it again; however, the second time was a little softer than the first round. Then, even quieter for a third time as the music and the words wafted over the open ground between the two sides. When the song finally ended, all was silent for the rest of the evening. Letters have survived, written by those who participated, and, whether the soldier was Union or Confederate, young or older, enlisted or officer, they tell similar stories. One wrote, “It was the most lonely I had felt in the year since I left home.”  Another wrote, “For a short time, I thought of our house, and you, and the children, warmly, without intrusion of war.”

 General Braxton Bragg, who led the Confederate troops at Murfreesboro, told his staff to ban the song, fearing it would take the edge off the fighting men. 

 It didn’t!

 On December 31, 1862, New Year’s Eve, many of the boys who had been singing of home, in a strange mixed chorus, only a few hours before, began to die on that open ground which had separated the two sides.