MUSIC IN THE RANKS:

THE FUNCTION AND SYMBOLIC ROLES OF UNION ARMY FIELD MUSICIANS

Edward G. FitzGerald

Prof. Schmidt
HIST 491
May 10, 2006
INTRODUCTION
 Since the end of one of America’s most defining struggles, the Civil War, historians have

produced a great deal of literature concerned with the life of the common soldier.

However, this vast narrative has neglected a small yet significant group of men and boy

soldiers, the drummers, fifers, and buglers. Writing his memoirs in 1915, Enos B. Vail of

the Twentieth New York pointed out, “I never read any work on the Civil War which

mentioned anything about the Fife and Drum Corps. . . [they] constitute[ed] an important

part of the army.” It is only through the personal accounts of these musicians and a few

less-than-scholarly works that we can begin to produce any sort of picture of the life they

led. The lack of true historical research in this area has left a void which has been filled

with romantic myths. The majority of those who served as musicians were not children as

much of the fictional literature on this topic would imply. Rather, a small sampling shows

that most field musicians were men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-nine. This

is not to say that boys below this age group did not serve in the ranks. Indeed, the story of

the fifers, drummers, and buglers is in part a story of childhood warped by the ardor of a

society mobilized for war. This brief history of Civil War field musicians will attempt to

discern both the social background of the average musician and his experience during his

time in the military.1

Even though boys under the age of thirteen were not often incorporated into military

service, the celebration of boy heroes and the romantic culture of the “drummer boy” was a

significant part of Northern society. The notions that surround this character, real or fantasy,

speak both to the nature nineteenth century childhood and to that society’s conceptions of

morality. They represent the currents of both fervid patriotism and Christian idealism that flowed

beneath a society eager to ignore the reality of the war.

1
Enos B. Vail, Reminiscences of a Boy in the Civil War (privately printed, 1915), 4. For the
purposes of understanding type of men who participated in the war as drummers, fifers, and
buglers, a study of Illinois field musicians is offered.

2
 While the lives of these non-combatants did not differ greatly from that of ordinary

soldiers, their role in the army, was as an instrument that played literally to the psychology of the

men. Developed from traditions rooted in Europe, their role was important in the theory of

nineteenth century warfare. The drum was the heart and the sole of the unit. It was the first sound

heard in the morning and the last at night. Its cadence kept weary men marching. It both called

them into battle and sounded the retreat. Its tone could lead a parade or drive a dishonorable man

from the ranks.2

THE FUNCTION OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY MILITARY MUSIC

Since ancient times when raucous bands of Turks used the sound of bells, horns, and

drums to strike fear into their enemies, music has played an integral role in the military. Over

time, this tradition spread into Europe where it was adapted and employed in the western style of

warfare. By the dawn of the eighteenth-century, the loosely organized, hand-to-hand armies of

earlier times had developed into formally structured units and methods of waging war. The

soldier was now required to perform as a part of a team, almost as an automaton, strictly obedient

and entirely reliant upon the commands of his superiors. In these new armies military music

became an important part of the training of soldiers in the tactics and carefully choreographed

maneuvers necessary to achieve the efficient, machine-like movement of men on the field of

2
Unfortunately this paper, already restricted by the limited availability of writings from white musicians,
will not address the lives of black field musicians. Although historians have addressed portions of the story
of black children in the antebellum era and of the black men who served in the U.S. Colored Troops during
the war, virtually nothing has been written on the young men of color who served as musicians. One other
group left out of this paper are the musicians who served in brass bands. Though this may seem like an odd
omission for a paper concerned with the lives of Civil War field musicians, the author felt that this was
necessary in order to limit the scope and manageability of his research and to allow adequate space to
address the primary subject. The role of the bandsman, though admittedly similar to that of the field
musician, did not include performing the camp duties or calls. These men, generally older or more
accomplished musicians, acted primarily behind the lines and were not subjected to the same degree of
hardship experienced by a young man on campaign in the field. For more information on Civil War brass
bands consult Kenneth E. Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsman of the Civil War (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1981).

3
battle. Music also served a ceremonial function and was recognized for its value in developing

esprit de corps and morale.

Military commanders have long understood the important role served by music in

stimulating a soldier’s psyche. Marshal Maurice Comte de Saxe was one of the earliest

commanders to understand this relationship as military historian Alfred Vagts noted in his History

of Militarism: Saxe “possessed a flair for military psychology. He knew that the drilling of men . .

. could not alone guarantee the quality of the troops, that rather the imbécilité du cour was among

all things in war the most important, that to which the greatest attention should be paid. . . . Music

would make [men] forget the exertion [of long marches] as it inspires people to dance all night

who cannot continue two hours without it.” One South Carolina private who heard several bands

play “Pop Goes the Weasel” at a public function in 1861 noted the inspiring qualities of music, “I

never heard or seen such a time before. The noise of the men was deafening. I felt at the time that

I could whip a whole brigade of the enemy myself.”3

Along with preserving the esprit de corps, military musicians acted as the conveyors of

signals. With the development of gunpowder, it became increasingly difficult for commanders to

give oral commands. The formalization of warfare in the early eighteenth-century also led to a

need to move large bodies of men in a systematic and orderly fashion. To fill these requirements,

military commanders adopted the drum, which had been brought back to Europe by returning

crusaders, for the infantry and the bugle for the cavalry. The signals given by these instruments

gradually assumed definite forms, such as reveille, retreat, and tattoo, in the ranks of European

armies and became an integral part of the soldier’s daily routine. To provide some melodic

interest fifes and later, bagpipes or bugles, were added and the first unit of field music was born.

In every major army of the continent these musicians, often paid more and ornately uniformed

because of their important function, were attached in varying numbers to each unit. Specific

3
Alfred Vagts, History of Militarism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1937), 29; Bell I. Wiley, The Common
Soldier in the Civil War (New York: Grossest & Dunlap, 1951), 157.

4
cadences and tunes, seen as a point of pride for some soldiers, became customary for particular

units and armies. The musicologist Henry G. Farmer noted, “The drum march, pure and simple,

was one of the main features of martial discipline, and every nation had its own particular

national type. Gordon Rothiemay records of 1637—1635 how Scottish drummers were teaching

their soldiery to distinguish between “the marches of severall nationes . . . the Scottish Marche . .

. the Irish Marche . . . the English Marche.” 4

In addition to facilitating movement and routine, military music served a ceremonial role.

To this day, traditions of music can be seen, virtually unchanged, in almost every military

ceremony. The most obvious ceremonial spectacle is the parade. As noted by music historian

Raoul F. Camus, “The addition of music to accompany marching serves the triple purpose of

keeping the cadence, of encouraging the spirit of the men while marching, and of attracting and

entertaining spectators. Whether it be the arrival of government dignitaries or of the circus, bands

have always attracted crowds to the locale of the sound and have normally maintained spectator

interest during otherwise irksome activities.”5

The traditions of the American military and its music were shaped by those of Europe.

The European concepts of military organization and the role of the field music were brought to

the New World with the first colonists. In 1633, Virginia colony’s drummers were paid six barrels

of corn and one thousand pounds of tobacco per year for their services. The colonists were

required to provide their own defense and every able bodied man was to serve in the militia. In

1739, the Virginia legislature enacted a statute that required all “free mulattos, negros, or Indians”

to serve though only as drummers, trumpeters, or pioneers as they were forbidden to carry

firearms. By the time of the American Revolution, colonial militia units, trained by British Army

officers, had become firmly engrained with the European military model. As early as 1766, the

primary British drill manual, The Manual Exercise as Ordered by His Majesty in 1764, was being
4
Henry G. Farmer, “16th—17th Century Military Marches,” Journal for the Society of Army Historical
Research 28 (1959): 4.
5
Raoul F. Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Univresity of North Carolina
Press, 1976) 5.

5
reprinted in the colonies. Baron Fredrich von Steuben, the Prussian officer who trained the

Continental Army at Valley Forge, used drum signals which were nearly identical to those

employed by the British.6

In keeping with its British heritage, soldiers’ lives were regulated by various drum calls.

These indicated the passage of time as well as the duties expected of him throughout the day. The

calls, known as the camp duties, standardized and prescribed in von Steuben’s Manual remained

in service without great alteration until the end of the nineteenth-century when they were replaced

by the bugle. Each soldier was expected to “acquaint himself with the usual beats and signal of

the drum, and instantly obey them”. In this system of logistical control, no orders were to be

called out; all signals were to be given by the drum. Not only would the drummer would have to

be capable of properly executing these signals, he would also have been expected to help the

privates in his company become familiar with them.7

Each company of the U.S. Army was authorized to have one drummer and one fifer while

some state militias allowed for more. These musicians would act together when attached to their

company or, when the entire regiment was assembled, would be attached to a larger composite

unit known as the field music.

Certain members of the field music were assigned special responsibilities in the

performance of the camp duty. At guard mount, an “orderly” or “police” fifer and drummer were

selected from the regiment by the drum major. They accompanied the guard to the guard house

(or tent), where the drummer remained, giving signals to alert the regiment in case of enemy

attack or to assemble the remaining musicians for the performance of certain calls. After he

escorted the guard, the orderly fifer was to attend to the marquee (the quarters of the regimental

adjutant or the officer of the day) and serve as a messenger for the adjutant. The orderly drummer

6
William W. Henning, The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First
Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (Philidelphia: Thomas DeSilver, 1808-23), 1:222; Ibid.., 5:17;
Camus, Military Music, 83; Fredrich von Steuben, Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops
of the United States (Philidelphia: Styner & Cyst, 1779), reprinted by Ray Riling Arms Book Co., 1966.
7
von Steuben, Regulations. Camus, Military Music, 83.

6
was cautioned not to leave his post under any circumstances, his duty being essential for the

smooth performance of the entire corps and, in turn, the regiment. Before the eighteen-sixties, he

would also have served as the disciplinarian for the day, carrying out sentences of corporal

punishment for the entire regiment.8

In each corps, the most accomplished musicians were selected to serve as the principle

drummer and fifer. Stationed on the right of the massed field music, they gave the necessary

signals for the commencement of music (in the absence of a drum major) and established the

tempi. From these two men was selected a principle musician (this term was often used

interchangeably with “drum major” in military rolls so it is sometimes difficult to tell which of

the principle musicians was senior). His role was akin to that of a first sergeant. He would act as

the disciplinarian for the corps and was responsible for the maintenance of instruments and

compliance with uniform regulations.

The immediate superior of the principle musician was the drum major. His was a position

of overall authority and substantial responsibility. Not only was he responsible for the musical

and military training of all the field musicians in his regiment, he was expected to see to the

necessary requisitions and needs of the corps and, after consulting with the adjutant, would

organize and assign calls for the next day. He was doubtlessly the first man of the regiment up in

the morning and the last one to bed at night. The first and last calls of the day were performed by

the massed musicians under his direction.

The drum major, in addition to mastering music, had to master the baton or, mace. Baton

signals were divided into three basic categories. There were seven signals for various drum

cadences, seven signals used to maneuver the field music, and another group of baton signals

used for special occasions. These signals together with hundreds of years of tradition culminated

in the performance of the camp duty.

8
George B. Bruce and Daniel D. Emmett, The Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide (New York: William A. Pond
& Co., 1861), 14; Elias Howe, Howe’s United States Regulation Drum and Fife Instructor (Boston:
Cornhill, 1862) 3-7.

7
 The day began at six when the orderly drummer sounded the “drummer’s call”, signaling

the other musicians to assemble. This would, in turn, be followed a sequence of traditional tunes,

Three Camps, the Slow Scotch, the Austrian, the Hessian, the Prussian, and the Quick Scotch,

known as the reveille. As one soldier remembered,

There are no more exhilarating bounds from the rest of the night into the duties
of day, no finer inspiration thrilling the entire nervous system of a vigorous man,
than the first burst, crash, and roll of reveille when a crack drum-corps with
melodious shrill fife rallies upon the color line, and rouses an entire regiment as
by an electric shock. On a bright morning, or in the midst of storm and bluster,
nothing so fittingly ushers in the day and stirs to activity as the reveille in a
military camp.9

The day continued with the playing of Peas Upon a Trencher, the signal for breakfast.

Then followed Sick Call and Drill Call and the assembly of the guard. Throughout the day, there

were calls for each activity, from eating to cleaning to collecting wood. In the evening, as with

Reveille, another elaborate set of tunes would be played, then, finally, the signal to extinguish

lights. A variety of special calls also existed. The Parley could be used to signal either a truce with

the enemy or notify the men to gather for church. The Long Roll was used to alert the camp of an

enemy attack and assemble troops hastily for battle. In a letter to his cousin written in October,

1861, seventeen-year-old Thomas Reese Lightfoot described the feelings brought on by this

signal: “Yesterday morning at one o'clock I heard the "long roll" beat for the first time. You can’t

imagine the thrill that it sends through one. It arouses all the better feeling of ones nature and

makes him ready to go any-where in pursuit of the enemy. It is a call for ‘help’ – ‘help.’ Well our

boys were out of bed and into line in a moment.”10

On more than one occasion, the alarm was falsely sounded. For William Thompson Lusk,

a lieutenant from New York, false alarms could be a humorous affair: We were all awakened by

the long roll of the drum, which is the signal of an advance. We heard then what seemed to us all
9
Francis H. Buffum, et al., A Memorial of the Great Rebellion . . .the Fourteenth Regiment New Hampshire
Volunteers (Boston: Franklin Press; Rand, Avery & Co., 1882), 300-301.
10
Thomas Reese Lightfoot, “Letter from Thomas Reese Lightfoot to Henrietta Sarah Cody, October 10,
1861,” in Letters of Three Lightfoot Brothers, 1861-1864, Burnett, Edmund Cody, ed. (Savannah, GA:
Privately published, 1942) 55.

8
in our half sleepy state, the tramp of cavalry upon us. Our toilettes were hastily made you can

imagine, and soon we stood in silence not knowing whence the attack would come, but after an

hour's anticipation all became still, so the ‘chivalry’ must have changed their minds and returned

back to their posts. I cannot enumerate all the alarms we have had, for there is only paper enough

to tell of our part in yesterday's fight.”11

One of the most ceremonious moments of the musicians day was has during the dress

parade. All the soldiers of the regiment turned out in their best uniforms and assembled on the

parade field. After they had been inspected by their officers, a spectacle of military grandeur

would ensue. The adjutant would give the command, “Field Music, Beat-off” and the corps would

begin to march and play, passing in front of each of the companies, then returning to their post at

the right of the regiment. As one unit commander noted, “There is nothing of the imposing

grandeur of an army-corps in review. . . . there is a rounded completeness in the spectacle as a

whole, a charm and beauty in every tributary movement and motion which is surprisingly

attractive.”12

These calls and the martial duties of field musicians were taught upon entering service.

The army maintained a number of training facilities for riflemen which would have also trained

newly recruited young men for service as musicians. The oldest “School of Practice” for field

musicians, having been operated for this purpose for some years prior to 1860, was based at

Governor’s Island in the harbor outside of New York City. On March 31, 1854, twelve-year-old

Augustus Meyers joined the United States Army as a drummer boy in the general service. After

his enlistment, he was rowed over to Governor’s Island in an eight-oared barge and thrown in

with a company of fifty or more boy musicians ranging in age from fourteen to nineteen years-

old. All were quartered in the old south battery on the east side of the island opposite Brooklyn.

11
William Thompson Lusk, “Letter from William Thompson Lusk to Elizabeth Freeman Adams Lusk, July
19, 1861,” in War Letters of William Thompson Lusk: Captain, Assistant Adjutant-general, United States
Volunteers, 1861-1863 (New York: W.C. Lusk, 1911) 304.
12
Abner Ralph Small, The Sixteenth Main Regiment in the War of the Rebellion (Portland, ME: B. Thurston
& Co., 1866), 130-32.

9
They were crowded into double deck bunks with insufficient space for comfort or convenience.

There they slept on large sacks of straw where, on cold nights, they shivered under two blankets

in an unheated building. Knapsacks and other accoutrements were in confused disarray on shelves

above each bunk. Only the corporal-in-charge was given the luxury of a pillow, a modest item

that Meyers one day hoped to be able to afford. The School of Practice at Governor’s Island

continued to train field musicians to the end of the war. As late as February 17, 1865 a board of

officers convened on the island to investigate the system of training employed at the school. This

board approved Strube’s Drum and Fife Instructor as the sanctioned text.13

Although the school trained musicians for service in the regular army, those of volunteer

or militia regiments were often expected to learn their art and the duties of soldiering “on the

job.” For this purpose, several hours each afternoon were preserved for practice. While the

riflemen were at drill, the principle musicians or drum major would instruct the musicians in

playing technique and rehearse tunes. Several self tutors and instructional manuals existed for this

purpose including Colonel H.C. Hart’s New and Improved Instructor for the Drum (1862), Elias

Howe’s United States Regulation Drum and Fife Instructor (1862), and George B. Bruce and

Daniel D. Emmet’s The Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide (1861), which is believed to be the most

commonly used. More experienced musicians in their company might also have provided

mentorship. Such was the case with Robert Henry Hendershot, and eleven-year-old who served as

a drummer with the Ninth Michigan. Hendershot reported being “looked after” by George

Newell, an older, more experienced soldier and a fifer. Newell taught his young protégé who

would later become famed as the “Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock” to drum and provided a

“fatherly figure” to the lad away from home for the first time.14
13
Augustus Meyers, Ten Years in the Ranks,U.S. Army (New York: Stirling Press, 1914), 1-12; New York
Times (February 1869), 7; After the Civil War, no school of musical instruction convened on the island until
1911, when scholarships for study at the Institute of Musical Arts in New York City were made available to
the secretary of war for the training of officers to serve as bandmasters. New York Times (October 17,
1911), 3; Ibid. (Oct 25, 1911), 12.
14
Hart, H.C., New and Improved Instructor for the Drum (New Haven, CT: W.C. Baldwin, 1862); Howe,
Drum and Fife Instructor; Bruce and Emmett, Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide; William Sumner Dodge, The
Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock (Chicago: Church & Goodman, 1867).

10
 Because of their important roles--signaling orders for the troops, fulfilling ceremonial

duties, and preserving the morale of the army—field musicians were afforded extra pay and

status. According to 1863 Regulations, Section 1484, musicians were to be visibly distinguishable

from the common soldiery by their uniforms which were “the same as for other enlisted men of

their respective corps, with the addition of lace three-eights of an inch wide on the front of the

coat or jacket. . . .” Though, wartime shortages seldom allowed for frill decoration. The pay of a

common musician was to be the equivalent of that received by a corporal while principle

musicians would receive a sergeant’s salary. The drum major received the highest pay, twenty-one

dollars per month (a lieutenant’s pay during the Civil War was fifty dollar per month).

This status was duly given, the importance of field music and their inspiring aires having been

recognized by military commanders throughout the war. In 1865, at the battle of Five Forks,

General Philip H. Sheridan: “Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning the

war.”15

ENLISTING FOR THE FIGHT

On April 2, 1861, the social and political tensions which had been building in the nation

reached their boiling point when General P.T. Beauregard ordered his batteries to open fire on a

fort in the harbor outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The New York Times recorded the

reaction in the North to this event: “Fort Sumter Fallen. . . . Call for Seventy-Five Thousand

Militia. . . . No event which has occurred within the reconciliation of the present generation, it is

safe to assume, ever occasioned such profound and wide-spread excitement as that which has

pervaded all classes since the attack on Fort Sumter was announced. . . . Judging from the plainest

and most outspoken expressions from men of, nominally, all parties, there is but one sentiment in

this City touching the duty of the citizen at this hour to sustain the Government.” The patriotic

15
Revised U.S. Army Regulations of 1863 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863), Sec. 1484;
Olson, Music and Musket, 73; William Carter White, A History of Military Music in America (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1944), 74.

11
sentiment evoked throughout the Northern states inspired many to enlist in the fight to preserve

the Union. Among those moved to action were boys like thirteen year-old Charles W. Bardeen

who later recorded his reaction in his memoirs: “I remember walking up and down in the sitting

room, puffing out my breast as though the responsibility rested on my poor little shoulders,

shaking my fist at the south, and threatening her with dire calamities which I though some of

inflicting on her myself.” 16

Young Charles soon found an outlet for his anger: “I joined a military company with the

Orange country grammar school and took fencing lessons. As men began to enlist I wished I were

older.” He was not the only one to join a boy company in lieu of the real thing. As Delevan S.

Miller, 12 at the time of the Sumter attack, noted in his post-war autobiography, “The shot

electrified the north, and the martial current that went from man to man was imparted to the boys.

Favorite sports and pastimes lost their zest. Juvenile military companies paraded the streets every

evening and mimic battles were fought every Saturday afternoon.” Even the president’s children,

Tad and Willie Lincoln, indulged in youthful military fantasy play. The company organized by the

two boys, “Mrs. Lincoln’s Zouaves”, was reviewed by the commander-in-chief himself. They

even went so far as to mount a log cannon on the White House roof.17

For Miller and Bardeen, however, mock battles in the school yard were not enough to

quell their desire to partake in the “glory” of war. Both boys enlisted musicians after much

pleading with the recruiting officers. Like other men who answered their country’s call during the

war most field musicians came from humble backgrounds. The North in the mid-nineteenth-

century was an area of growing urban and industrial might. A recent study by the University of

Chicago’s Center for Population Economics (CPE) shows that the Eastern North Central urban

areas of the United States provided well over sixty percent of army recruits a year before the war.

16
New York Times (15 April 1861), 1-2; Charles William Bardeen, A Little Fifer’s War Diary (Syracuse,
NY: Printed by the author, 1910), 18.
17
Delevan S. Miller, Drum Taps in Dixie (Watertown, NY: Hungerford-Holbrook Co., 1905), 9; Ruth
Painter Randall, Lincoln’s Sons (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 108-114.

12
This is truly remarkable if one considers that among the country’s working population of 7.7

million, 4.9 million were farmers. More than likely the results obtained by the CPE’s study, which

is derived from the 1860 U.S. Census, would not have accurately defined the military’s

composition during the war. America was a largely agricultural country and, following the Sumter

attack and Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand troops, it is probable that the percentage of

recruits from rural areas and the western states would have been larger than forty percent. This

seems to hold true for the field musicians of one western state, Illinois.18

From a small sampling of musicians taken randomly by the author from the rolls of

Illinois volunteer regiments, it can be noted that well over half of them resided in predominately

rural counties. Thirty-three percent were farmers or came from families where the head of the

household was engaged in an agricultural occupation. (see fig. 1) While nineteenth-century

Illinois was mostly a rurally populated state dominated by farming—200, 862 men were reported

to be engaged in agricultural labor—many of the men who enlisted as musicians during the war

were not from agricultural backgrounds. Forty-five percent of the fifers, drummers, and buglers

were either themselves employed or supported by skilled laborers (e.g. carpenter, blacksmith,

printer, etc.); thirteen percent hailed from families supported by a professional (e.g. merchant,

teacher, clerk, preacher, etc.). These numbers are probably indicative of the necessities of rural

life. With large numbers of fathers and older brothers off fighting to preserve the Union, the

chores of the farmstead would be left to the women and children who stayed at home. In

households where the primary wage earner was what the author has termed a professional, the

family would likely have had more resources (i.e. income) and would not have been as reliant on

the labor of young men.19

18
Tayatat Kanjanapipatkul, “Distribution of Union Army Recruits” (working paper, Union Army Study,
Center for Population Economics, University of Chicago, 2000),
http://www.cpe.uchicago.edu/publication/lib/rec.pdf; Carl Bode, The American Impression (Carbondale;
Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 6.
19
Wiley notes that for all soldier in the Union Army, “The most numerous group were the farmers, who
comprised nearly half the total….”, Wiley, Billy Yank, 304; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the
United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eight Census, Under the Direction of the
Secretary of the Interior (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864), 104-105; Name, residence, and

13
 Data collected from the survey of Illinois field musicians also shows that a high number

of musicians, by nineteenth-century standards, were actively pursuing an education. From

information obtained from the 1860 census, twenty-three percent of the sample group had

attended school within the last year—this number is in keeping with education rate of the entire

state where, from the total population of 1, 711, 951, twenty-four percent had reported attending

school during the year 1860. These numbers cannot however tell us the level of schooling

obtained, or provide information about the education of those who had not recently attended

school (the majority of the sample group is older than the typical student—maximum age sixteen

—in this time period). Since there is no way to measure the overall degree of educational

experience of soldiers of the Civil War, no scholarly work has been able to adequately address the

subject. Still, the eminent historian of the boys in blue, Bell I. Wiley notes that, “Educational

backgrounds ranged from no schooling at all to the highest level of specialized training, and

intellectual qualities extended from imbecility to genius.” The large percentage of active students

in the author’s study would seem to imply that military musicians were typically among the more

literate, educated portion of the soldiery.20

date of enlistment of musicians were first taken at random from the Report of the Adjutant General of the
State of Illinois (Springfield: Phillips Bros., State Printers, 1900), vol. 1, 2, 4, 6, then compared with the
township records from the 1860 U.S. Census (from 384 names taken from the AG’s report, only 115 could
be accurately identified in the census records); James Marten indicates that a sort of revolution had taken
place by this point in the nineteenth century wherein a substantial increase in the amount of white-collar
labor had released many women and children from their traditional farm and household chores, also, the
mechanization of agriculture had reduced the number of children needed to operate a farm, James Marten,
Children for the Union (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 29-30.
20
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns
and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census, Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866), 507; Wiley, Billy Yank, 304.

14
 As with education, Wiley observes diversity in the nativity of Northern soldiers,

“Descriptive rolls show that every state in the Union and virtually every nation and province on

the globe were represented in the Union ranks.” Natives of England, Ireland, Scotland, France,

Hanover, Hesse, Demark, Newfoundland, and Canada were all represented in the author’s small

study. Regiments formed in the East would likely have had an even greater mixture of

nationalities. The diverse background of the Northern soldiery was manifested in the ranks by a

wide variation in languages. In one regiment, the colonel was obliged to give commands in seven

different tongues. In camp, these foreign-born Yanks contributed their native foods, songs, and

traditions to what would certainly have been a peculiar blend of cultures. 21

While nativity, education and occupation may suggest the nature and social status of the

men who filled the ranks as field musicians, these statistical genres mattered little at recruiting

stations. Health and age were the ultimate factors deciding who could avenge the fall of Fort

Sumter. Of 375, 026 men of military age (18-45) in Illinois in 1860, 259, 092 enlisted and fought

in the army and navy during the war. Assuming that these men were at least of decent health, the

burgeoning prairie state, which had only been admitted to the Union in 1818, supplied more than

its share to the war effort. As dictated by the principles of warfare established European form by

von Steuben for the American army, each of the companies in the state’s volunteer infantry

regiments would have been complimented by at least one fifer and one drummer (some had more,

some less). Common perception, as the very term, “drummer-boy”, seems to insist, is that the

majority of these musicians were mere children.22

Federal regulations required that a boy be at least eighteen before enlisting in the army,

but even younger boys were allowed to enlist as musicians. The minimum age for enlistment was

not formalized until 1863 when Army regulations permitted the superintendent of recruiting

depots to allow “such of the recruits who are found to posses a natural talent for music, to be

21
Wiley, Billy Yank, 306, 311.
22
Census, Population, xvii; Victor Hicken, Illinois in the Civil War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1991), ix.

15
instructed on the fife, bugle, and drum and other military instruments; the boys of twelve years of

age and upward, may under his discretion be enlisted for this purpose. But as recruits under

eighteen years of age must be discharged, if they are not capable of learning music, care should

be taken to enlist those only who have a natural talent for music.” This directive could, however,

be ignored with a parent’s permission or, if the boy looked old enough, circumvented with a

simple lie to an undiscerning recruiting sergeant. Really, there was not much to stop a young boy

determined to get in. 23

When Charles Bardeen, the thirteen year-old who had been incensed by the news of Fort

Sumter, first tried to enlist, the officer looked him over and declared, “Take the damned little snip

away, we’ve got babies enough in this brigade already.” Undaunted by his initial failure, and with

the help of a cousin who happened to be a recruiting sergeant, Bardeen managed to get into the

First Massachusetts as a musician a few months later. Robert Henry Hendershot, the famed

“Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock”, was so eager to enlist he stole a fife from a local music

store just so that he could develop enough skill to convince the authorities at a recruiting station

to overlook his young age.24

Some boys were not as successful in their attempts to join. As soon as the president made

his plea for troops, a group of under-ten-year-olds from Cambridge, Massachusetts marched to a

recruiting station where the officer in charge “received the lads with gravity . . .” After the officer

“examined their eyes, noses, teeth, made them strip to the skin and thumped them,” they boys

were sent to another office where the mock examination was repeated and the boys were finally

rejected.25

Other underage boys were so anxious to join the military circus that they ran away from

home. One of the most well known drummers of the war was also the youngest, John L. Clem.
23
U.S. Department of War, General Orders, p. 387, National Archives, Washington, D.C., quoted in Olson,
Music and Musket, 84.
24
Bardeen, War Diary, 18; H.E. Gerry, Robert Henry Hendershot: the Drummer-Boy of the Rappahannock
(Chicago: Hack & Anderson, 1895).
25
Otis Skinner, Footlights and Spotlights: Recollections from my Life on the Stage (New York: Blue Ribbon
Books, 1923), 17-18.

16
Johnny had run away from home in May 1861 at the age of nine. According to Clem, when he

attempted to enlist as a drummer in the Third Ohio Volunteer Regiment, the captain looked him

over, laughed and “said he wasn’t enlisting infants.” Johnny then tried to join the Twenty-second

Michigan and, again, was refused. In spite of this he “went along with the regiment just the same

as a drummer boy, and though not on the muster roll, drew a soldiers pay of thirteen dollars a

month,” which the officers of the regiment contributed out of their own pockets.26

At the battle of Shiloh in 1862, a shell smashed Clem’s drum earning him the moniker,

“Johnny Shiloh”. Shortly after, he was enlisted as a drummer though he had exchanged his drum

for a musket because, as he said, “I did not like to stand and be shot at without shooting back.”

One year later, at Chickamauga, Johnny reportedly went into battle riding an artillery caisson and

carrying a musket that had been cut down to size. When a Confederate colonel rode up and

demanded, “Surrender you damned little Yankee!”, Johnny fired and knocked the man from his

horse. For this feat, the twelve year-old Clem was made a sergeant. For the remainder of the war,

Johnny served as a messenger for General Thomas. In 1916, Clem retired for the army as a major

general.27

IMAGINARY DRUMMER BOYS AND THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICAN YOUTH

Despite the surplus of romanticized stories of “little Johnny the drummer boy”, child

soldiers below age sixteen were the exception not the rule. In a report compiled for the United

States Sanitary Commission, Benjamin A. Gould found that of the 1, 012, 273 volunteers in the

Union Army, only 1.02 percent were under eighteen years of age. (see fig. 2) For field musicians,

this number was certainly higher. Still, within the ranks of Illinois regiments, less than twelve

percent were under sixteen years-old, while only three of the musicians studied were under

thirteen. (see fig. 3) The majority of the men in the survey were actually in their mid to late-

26
John L. Clem, “From Nursery to Battlefield,” Outlook, CVII (1914), 546-547.
27
Ibid.

17
twenties with a staggering fifteen percent in their thirties. A similar finding was made in a study

conducted using the musicians who served during the Revolutionary War by historian John U.

Rees. In an article published in the journal of the Percussive Arts Society, Rees asserts that “most

of the army’s musician were, in fact, quite mature”, averaging 18.5 years of age.28

The myth of the child musician was rooted in the very culture of the war. Stories of boy

heroes, like that of Johnny Clem, were popular among children as well as adults. In February

1863, a poem published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine entitled, “The Dead Drummer Boy”,

was accompanied by a depiction of a drummer boy whose face seems peacefully illuminated,

somehow content in death. (see fig. 4) His demise in the service of his country would be

acceptable if, so the poem implies, “on the page of War and Glory, Some hand has writ his name.”

Morbid imagery of martyred boys who had done their duty were common during the war.

Another poem in Harper’s depicted the burial of a drummer boy: “[His] broken drum beside him

all his life’s short story told: How he did his duty bravely till death-tide o’er him rolled.” These

poems, primarily intended for a mature audience, played upon notions of morbidity and loss to

inspire readers to do their part for the war effort. Both included images of women playing their

symbolic role in warfare, burying the dead and mourning their loss. The poems and other

romanticized drummer boy stories of the war justified the death these small soldiers and served as

a model for readers of all ages; if young boys could demonstrate patriotism and courage, so could

they.29

As noted by historian James Marten, “wartime demanded that other qualities emerge

from the American character—fighting skills, the willingness to die for a cause, leadership” and

the “characters of wartime novels “owned those qualities in spades.” Yet another quality,

Christian moral purity, was present in ballads like the popular “Drummer Boy of Shiloh” who
28
Benjamin A. Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers,
Published for the U.S. Sanitary Commission (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1869), 39; John U. Rees, “The
Music of the Army: an Abbreviated Study of the Ages of Musicians in the Continental Army,” Percussive
Notes 43:4 (August 2005): 70-72.
29
“The Dead Drummer Boy,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (February 1863), 430; “The Drummer-
Boy’s Burial,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (July 1864), 145.

18
“Who prayed before he died” and in The Little Drummer Boy. This religious publication lingered

over one of the most “heart-stirring events of the war”, the accidental killing of twelve-year-old

Clarence McKenzie by one of his comrades cleaning a musket. He was hailed as a “triumph of

grace” before his Brooklyn Sunday school which presented him with a copy of the Bible when he

left for war. His enlistment served as an example of the value, both secular and spiritual, that

American children were supposed to have. The most admirable qualities were evident in young

Clarence who was described as a pious child who read the Bible daily even through the

distractions of camp-life and war. Because of his “pure and innocent character,” Clarence not

only “won the affection of his commanders,” but through “his simple faith and correct

deportment, was exerting an influence for good among them.” The story of Clarence McKenzie

circulated widely through Northern newspapers and juvenile and adult literature in the summer of

1861. His biographer estimated that three thousand people attended his Brooklyn funeral.30

Though it seems the idea of there being a sizeable number of teenage and pre-teenage

musicians in the Union Army is based somewhat in the realm of fiction, the legend has some

basis in fact. The wartime public’s appetite for drummer boy stories was fed by valorous accounts

like that of Orion P. Howe of the Fifty-fifth Illinois. During the Vicksburg Campaign, Howe

overcame a serious leg wound to deliver an urgent request for ammunition to General William T.

Sherman. Impressed by the boy’s actions, Sherman wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, Edwin

M. Stanton, recommending Howe be appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy (he was not yet old

enough for West Point). Howe was later recognized for his bravery with the Medal of Honor. At

least seventeen drummer boys were awarded the nation’s highest military honor during the war.

Among them was W.H.Horsfall, a fourteen year-old drummer in the First Kentucky Infantry. At

the Battle of Corinth, Mississippi in 1862, Horsfall “voluntarily advance between two fires and

30
Marten, Children, 120; William S. Hays, “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” (Chicago: D.P. Faulds, 1863?);
Luther G. Bingham, The Little Drummer Boy: Child of the Thirteenth Regiment, N.Y.S.M., and the Child of
the Mission Sunday School (Boston: M.A. Hoyt, 1862), 98-124.

19
saved the life of an officer who was wounded and lying between the lines.” His deeds were later

published in the New York Times.31

Some of these stories were published in children’s magazines. The Youth’s Companion,

for instance, picked up an account of Robert Henry Hendershot, the boy who stole a fife to gain

practice, from the Detroit Free Press. At Fredericksburg, Hendershot had captured a Confederate

soldier and had his drum (he decided that he would be better suited as a drummer) “blown to

atoms” by a shell, reported the Free Press. He was a fatherless boy of twelve who dropped out of

school to pursue his youthful military fantasy. By 1863, Hendershot had dined with President

Lincoln and, supposedly, was given the honor of playing his drum in the “House of

Representatives and Senate chamber by special request.” The New York Tribune Association even

saw fit as to award him with a custom drum made of silver. The “Drummer Boy of the

Rappahannock’s” fame was so far reaching that F.E. Spinner, the Treasurer of the United States,

Generals Grant, Meade, and Burnside, two colonels, the Vice President of the Chicago &

Northwestern Railroad, and the General Superintendent of the Michigan Central Railroad all

submitted letters to the president recommending Hendershot be appointed a cadet in the U.S.

Military Academy at West Point. The boy was Lincoln’s last such appointment.32

Perhaps the reason Northerner’s were so enticed by the image of the drummer boy, that

bastion of innocence and purity, has to do with the sheer brutality of the conflict. With men dying

by the tens of thousands at battles like Shiloh, Antietam, and Chickamauga, stories of youthful

exploits appealed for the positive spin they put on the unthinkable destruction caused by the war.

Even poems about dead drummer boys managed to bring a justification of glory to the dire truth.

Evoking cute pictures of child musicians who embodied ideal characteristics like patriotism and

loyalty could, in a small way, redeem some standard of morality. If a child, intrinsically free from

the morally corrupt nature of the adult world, could stand next to a man—per haps the husband or
31
“The Little Drummer Boy of the 55th Illinois,” Chicago Tribune (March 25, 1864), 2; “Medal for a
Drummer Boy Hero,” New York Times (August 11, 1895), 1.
32
“The Michigan Drummer Boy,” Youth’s Companion (26 February 1863), 34-35; Gerry, Robert Henry
Hendershot; Dodge, Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock.

20
son of a reader—on the battlefield, then one could believe that war might not be that horrible. The

idea that this imagery was embraced within the domestic realm and deemed acceptable for

children further illustrates that it could be used to insulate the home-front from authentic combat.

This frill depiction of the war was made particularly attractive to children. By the middle of the

war, depictions of heroic drummer boys were widespread in Northern children’s culture.

Children were specifically targeted for support of the war through various types of

juvenile literature. Although prewar children’s literature seems to have avoided the topic of war,

once hostilities began, writers seemed to rally to the cause. Dime novels of the era included such

titles as Hero Boy, The Soldier Boy, The Little Corporal, and The Starry Flag. Portrayals of boy

soldiers and drummer boys in children’s literature moved away from the emotive depictions of

juvenile death like those seen in Harper’s to stress instead, the adventure of war. In The Soldier

Boy by the popular children’s novelist, Oliver Optic, the main character, a seventeen-year-old,

was taken prisoner at the battle of Bull Run but managed to escape after tricking his Confederate

guards into believing he was a superior officer. Following his escape, the boy hid in barn where

he single-handedly captured a rebel soldier while armed only with a rock. The adventure

continued when Optic’s character, disguised as a Confederate soldier, floated down the

Shenandoah past enemy troops, celebrating his “strategic victory” with a triumphal

demonstration: “It consisted of placing the thumb of his right hand upon the end of his nose,

while he wiggled the four remaining digital appendages of the same member in the most

aggravating manner, whistling Yankee Doodle as an accompaniment to the movement.”33

Even the simplest genre of children’s publications, the alphabet books used to teach

toddler’s to read, were enlisted on behalf of the war effort. Published in patriotic red, white, and

blue, in 1864, The Union ABC portrayed in catchy rhymes the war for the youngest of readers: “A

is America, land of the free. B is a Battle our soldiers did see. C is a Captain, who led on his men.

33
Marten, Children, 116; Oliver Optic [William Taylor Adams], The Soldier Boy; or Tom Somers in the
Army (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1863), 159-225.

21
D is a Drummer Boy, called little Ben. . .” (see fig. 5) This sort of subtle characterization coupled

with fictional and actual accounts printed in children’s magazines and novels, the poems, songs,

photographs, and other media, anchored the image of the drummer boy in minds of the folks at

home. This icon was both nationalist and individualist, patriotic and entertaining, mainstream and

adventurous. He combined the contradictory currents prevalent during the Civil War: fervid

patriotism and a strong sense of moral obligation, a denial of the realities of war on the other.34

ARMY LIFE

34
The Union ABC (Boston: Degen, Estes, 1864).

22
 For the actual musicians who filled the ranks of the field music corps, life proved more

complicated and slightly less adventurous than one of Oliver Optic’s characters might lead the

public to believe. Fifer William Bardeen asked a telling question, “Where was the romance of the

drummer boy's life?” Young or old, musicians were not spared the harsh realities of life in the

field. Thy experienced the very same poor conditions that made the infantryman’s life miserable

at times: disease, death, poor nutrition, exposure to the elements, etc. For the boys and young men

attending the School of Practice at Governor’s Island, conditions could be worse than those

experienced by other soldiers. Augustus Meyer’s reported that the musician’s daily ration, which

should have included eighteen ounces of bread, was never fully supplied to the boy’s mess. 35

It is doubtful that sufficient nutrition was supplied sustain a growing young body. The

boys on Governor’s Island supplemented their meager supplies with small cakes purchased from

the post’s sutler. On the march, foraging became a necessity as Bardeen noted in one amusing

anecdote,

Most of the foraging done by our other armies was apparently surreptitious. A
drummer captured a couple of geese and hid them inside his drum. Presently the
colonel observed that the drummer was not playing, and called out, “Why don't
you beat that drum?” “Colonel, I want to speak to you,” the man said. The
colonel drew close and asked, “Well, what have you to say?” “Colonel,” he
whispered, “I have two geese in here.” “Of course if you are sick you need not
play,” said the colonel in a loud voice: and he had roast goose for supper. 36

Other difficulties of life in the military were more unique to musicians. Army issued

clothing was not intended for small bodied. Meyers noted, “As the soldiers’ clothing was made up

in men’s sizes only, there were none to fit the boys. I believe there were about six different sizes

in shoes and three or four in clothing. The smallest size in clothing, No. 1, was issued to me and I

was sent to the post tailor.” In the winter, musicians faced unique impediments, “When we began

to have severe frosts, the bandsman did not appear at guard mounting on the plea that their

instruments would freeze. The fifes and drums furnished the only music. Often our fingers were

35
Bardeen, War Diary, 128; Meyers, Ten Years, 20.
36
Bardeen, War Diary, 329.

23
so numb with the cold that we could hardly play a note. The drummers could manage to beat a

march with gloves on their hands and managed to suffer less.”37

Field musicians were not immune to disease which caused more death than bullets during

the war. During Meyers’ time on the island, he lost a friend in an outbreak of cholera. Conditions,

observed, were deplorable:

The island, even when free from epidemics, was not a healthy place. There were
no sewers, the water was supplied from cisterns and a few wells. . . . As the
island had no sea wall and was directly in line of the tide currents of the East
River . . . much of the floating filth from the city was deposited on its shore.
Dead cats, dogs and other small animals were washed on to the beach.
Sometimes a horse and, on a few occasions, a human body.

Cholera followed Meyers to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where four of the men in his

company fell ill and died. As a fifer, it was part of his duty to bury them.38

One of the more grim services of the music were the funeral duties. For the

occasion, drums would be muffled and draped in black crape. The field music would

accompany the coffin to the cemetery playing a somber funeral march. Being the only

musicians stationed at Leavenworth at the time, Meyers and his drummer were forced to

repeat the “Dead March” for each of the men who died during the cholera epidemic:

“During our stay of about three weeks, I cannot recall more than two or three days

without a funeral, held usually in the morning, but often followed by another in the

afternoon or evening. I frequently saw two or three coffins carried at one time in the two

horse, covered delivery wagon which did duty as a hearse.” Bugler Henry Campbell,

often assigned to burial duty, wrote in his diary: I shall never forget how mournful and

sad the strains from the band sounded in that lonesome dreary woods.” While it is

obvious that children like Meyers and Campbell would be exposed to mortality while

serving in the military, it is an issue that should not be casually overlooked.39

37
Meyers, Ten Years, 28.
38
Ibid., 23-24, 58.
39
Ibid.; Henry Campbell, “The War in Kentucky as Seen by a Teen-Aged Bugler,” Civil War Times
Illustrated 3: 6 (October 1964), 46.

24
 Field musicians, some only boys at the time, came face to face with the carnage

of war both as they risked their live on the battlefield ad as they served behind the lines.

In addition to sounding calls and acting as messengers, musicians served on ambulance

crews and as surgical assistants. One Joseph Whitney wrote home in December 1862:

The ambulances are running till eleven o’clock in the night. In the morning there
was only about 20 in the hospitals and by ten at night there were 170 there. It was
rather mournful a sound to hear the rumble of the ambulances, but a funeral is
getting to be rather common to me now. . . . There is a good many dying. . . .
There was two buried yesterday from our regiment—the drum major, James
Freeman and Leroy Demmons. It is very sickly here but I am first rate now. . . .40

Whitney’s experience was shared by George T. Ulmer, a drummer with the Seventeenth

Indiana Infantry. Frequently assigned to hospital duty, Ulmer somehow managed to the grave

scene but found “it was a horrible task at first.” As a surgical assistant, his duty was to “hold a

sponge or ‘cone’ of ether to the face of the soldier who was operated on, and to stand there and

see the surgeons cut and saw legs and arms as if they were cutting up swine or sheep. . . .” He

confided that it was “an ordeal I never wish to go through again. At intervals, when the pile

became large, I was obliged to take a load of legs and arms and place them in a trench for burial.”

There moral ramifications of exposing children to the carnage of the war were evident. While

Ulmer’s peers were at home playing at war in their boy companies and indulging in the

romanticized tales printed in the Youth’s Companion, he was watching men being dismantled and

disposing of their limbs.41

The war posed other threats to the moral psyche of Northern youth serving in the military.

One of a recruit’s earliest experiences was sometimes hazing as Meyers experienced when he

arrived at Governor’s Island: “I was obliged to submit to the customary ‘hazing,’ inflicted on new

arrivals.” In one instance, he was given a “blanket court martial” by the boys in his barracks, then
40
Robert J. Snetsinger, ed., Kiss Clara for Me (State College, PA: Carnation Press, 1969), 59-60, quoted in
Olson, Musket, 118.
41
George T. Ulmer, Adventure & Reminiscences of a Volunteer, or a Drummer Boy from Maine (Chicago:
published by author, 1892), 59.

25
sentenced and dropped to the floor. He was also forced to fight other boys, though, he received

only minor injuries from these scuffles. Far worse was punishment at the hands of the non-

commissioned and commissioned officers. Depending on the offense, these could include

confinement, forced exercise, hard labor, or a beating from a rattan cane. Bardeen witnessed yet

another such punishment on the island. His diary entry for August 14, 1862 reads, “Very hot.

Drills as usual; five of the Drummers were made to stand out in the sun 4 hours for not turning

out.” 42

Desertion was among the most common punishable infractions committed at the school.

For two young musicians, the penalty was harsh. They were court marshaled and sentenced to

receive “twenty-five strokes with a rattan well applied to their ‘bare buttocks’,” and to be

confined to the guard house at hard labor for two months without pay.

We were turned out and formed in ranks to witness the punishment. . . . They
were marched to the place under guard. The adjutant read the sentence. . . . Then
one of the boys was laid face down on along bench and held by a member of the
guard at his head and another at his feet. His clothes were removed sufficiently to
expose his buttocks, and . . . a corporal commenced to apply the rattan, which . . .
made the boy squirm and groan and finally cry out with pain before the Adjutant
cried “Halt” at the twenty-fifth blow.
The unfortunate second victim was obliged to witness his comrades
punishment and then endure the same himself. . . . The trembling and sobering
boys were reconducted to the guardhouse, and we marched back to quarters after
this distressing scene.

Augustus Meyers was himself punished after refusing to whip another man who had been

convicted of desertion: “It had always been customary in the army for the floggings to be

administered by one of the musicians.” After Meyers refused to comply with this tradition, he was

charged with insubordination and sentenced to the guard house for “thirty days confinement, ten

of them solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water, the remainder at hard labor, and to

forfeit one months pay.”43

42
Bardeen, War Diary, 261.
43
Meyers, Ten Years, 26-27, 130-132.

26
 William Bircher, a musician who served four years in a Minnesota regiment, bore witness

to the ultimate in punishment. In March, 1865, his unit was forced to watch the execution of a

soldier who raped an old woman, “Nobody wished to see so sad a sight. Some men begged to be

excused from attending, and others could not be found when the drums beat ‘assembly’; for none

could well endure ‘to see a man shot down like a dog.’” At the end of the affair, the band struck

up a cheerful tune. “I As they marched off the field, I could not but help being sensible of the

harsh contrast between the lively music to which their feet were keeping time and the fearfully

solen scene I had just witnessed. . . . A deep solemnity pervaded the ranks.”44

Musicians also played a part in another, slightly less severe, punishment, “drumming out

of camp”. One observer, a second-lieutenant from Galena, Illinois recorded the scene:

We had one parade which afforded us more amusement than it did those for
whose benefit we turned out. Some cowards and deserters underwent the
sentence of being “drummed out of camp.” The division of five or six thousand
was drawn up in line; the drummers and fifers of all the regiments, amounting to
a hundred or more, were assembled in one corps at the right of the line; in front
of them were ranged a guard with bayonets fixed and pointed at the backs of the
sentenced, whose heads were shaved on one side exactly from the middle, from
forehead to nape, and who, bareheaded, bore upon their shoulders placards
labeled “coward” and “deserter,” etc.; and in this array they, the culprits,
preceding the guard and the drum corps, marched slowly down the front of the
division to the tune of the “Rogue's March” which rolled out from the drums and
fifes and echoed over the hills; and then returned again along the front to the
point of starting and away from the division.

Music was incorporated into gloomy ceremonies like whippings, executions and the

Rogue’s March, forcing the children who served as fifers and drummers to actively

participate in the humiliation of others. (see fig. 6) 45

At times, the musicians themselves bore the brunt of humiliation—though

considerably more light-hearted. Meyer’s recorded the antics at Governor’s Island:

44
William Bircher, A Drummer-Boy’s Diary: Comprising Four Years Service with the Second Regiment
Minnesota Veteran Volunteer’s, 1861-1865 (St. Paul, MN: St. Paul Book and Stationary Company, 1889),
177-180.
45
Thomas Leonard Livermore, Memoir of Thomas Leonard Livermore, in Days and Events, 1860-1866.
(Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1920) 186.

27
 Tricks were played upon us boys once and a while. We played our calls at the
flag staff in front of the commanding officer’s house, where, when commencing
to play, some fifer would nearly burst himself trying to blow his instrument.
Upon investigation he would find it stuffed with paper or rags. Sometimes a
drummer would find the drumhead greased or the snares loosened. The
bandsmen also had their troubles. Their brass instruments were filled with water
or stuffed with rags; these experiences soon taught us to examine our instruments
before going to the parade ground.46

Some boys proved just as mischievous. Susie King Taylor, a musician who served with the

Thirty-Third United States Colored Troops reported having kept a pet pig, “Piggie”:

That pig grew to be the pet of the camp, and was the special care of the drummer
boys, who taught him many tricks; and so well did they train him that every day
at practice and dress parade, his pigship would march out with them, keeping
perfect time with their music. The drummers would often disturb the devotions
by riding this pig into the midst of evening praise meeting, and many were the
complaints made to the colonel, but he was always very lenient towards the boys,
for he knew they only did this for mischief.47

Though accounts such as Taylor’s would seem to imply that these young men retained the

innocence of youth during the war, this however was not generally the case. More than one fell

victim to his surroundings. In a letter dated March 9, 1863, Private Alfred Davenport noted the

effects of military service on the boy musicians of his regiment: “The more vulgar a man is, the

better he is appreciated and as for morals . . . [the army] is a graveyard for them. . . . If you think

soldiering cures anyone of wild habits it is a great mistake, it is like sending a Boy in the Navy to

learn him good manners. We have Drummer Boys with us that when they came at first could

hardly look you in the face for diffidence but now could stare the Devil out of countenance and

can’t be beat at the cursing swearing and gambling.”48

The army, an institution not particularly well suited for the moral education of children,

was on the contrary a source of degeneracy. Loosed from parental control, youth were free to

46
Meyers, Ten Years, 43.
47
Susie Baker King Taylor, Memoir of Susie King Taylor, in Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the
33rd United States Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers. (Boston, MA: Susie King Taylor, 1902), 82.
48
A. Davenport, manuscript New York Historical Society, quoted in Wiley, Billy Yank, 247.

28
fight, smoke, drink, and gamble. Bardeen, only fourteen when he enlisted, became an

entrepreneurial shark in the army. He set up shop stenciling knapsacks and reselling postage

stamps them moved on to trading goods he pilfered from the commissary. While on a pass to “go

fishing,” the young swindler went “over-the-hill” to Harlem where he “played billiard and drank

rum . . . had a good dinner . . . . Spent a three dollar counterfeit bill . . . and had a pretty good time

altogether.” Bardeen was an exceptionally gifted gambler, frequently sending home up to two-

hundred dollars in winnings. By 1863, he had built a gambling racket that included his entire

division.49

Another degenerate musician was bugler with the Fourth Kentucky, Tom Hayden. The

regimental historian recorded one incident where he followed Hayden to a pack mule belonging

to the regimental surgeon one bitterly cold night: “Two canteens, dangling from the pommel of

the saddle, glistened in the pale moon-light. Hayden . . . inverted one of the canteens and let the

contents thereof flow in an uninterrupted stream down his throat. No words were spoken. No

words were necessary. All I had to do was imitate my comrade until those canteens were sucked

dry. . . . That fire-water had a wonderfully exhilarating effect upon us.”50

WHEN THE CANNONS CEASED

Clearly there were moral ramifications that extended beyond the scope of imagery

embodied by “little Johnny the drummer boy”. Mere boys were fallible. Exposed to the

gruesome encounters of the battlefield and the hospital and thrown in with adult men living away

from home, the imagery of moral fiber and Christian purity concocted in the memory of Clarence

McKenzie, was, more than anything else, fantasy. The role of field musicians, most of whom

were, in fact, not boys but men, was completely different by 1865. William Bardeen drove at the

heart of the matter:

49
Bardeen, War Diary, 160, 265, 275.
50
George Dallas Mosgrove, Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie: Reminiscenses of a Confederate Cavalryman, ed.
Bell I. Wiley (Jackson, TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1957), 182.

29
 Where was the romance of the drummer boy's life? Here is a picture drawn by
Thomas Nast [unavailable] that makes him a little hero. Now I don't say that no
drummer boy ever marched like that early in the war, or in some other regiment
later in the war: I am telling what I do know, not what I don't know. What I do
know is that no drummer in my regiment ever played a drum on the battlefield or
could see any sense in doing it. Fighting isn't done that way. I can imagine a
charge in which the drummers went along playing for encouragement and
comradeship, but in my experience, charges played a very small part in fighting.
We could seldom see the enemy, and learned more and more to protect ourselves
as we advanced, keeping behind trees and displaying ourselves as little as
possible. "Only recruits and fools neglected the smallest shelter," says
McCarthy.51

51
Bardeen, War Diary, 127.

30
 The fife and drum saw their last great service during the Civil War. By

the end of the conflict their use had been made obsolete by the evolution

of tactics and weaponry. (Their replacement was the bugle which would

remain in use well into the twentieth century, when it too would be

replaced by electronic communication systems.) As Bardeen noted, it

was simply illogical to go about playing a drum on the battlefield with

bullets flying and shells bursting all around. This notion was part of a

style of warfare, concocted by the gentlemanly aristocracy of Europe in

the seventeenth century, which was based more on the game of chess

than on reality. Further, it dose not seem likely that commanders would

deploy great numbers of their youngest soldiers to the frontlines. It is

more probable that children saw more action toting wood and carrying

the wounded off the field. At wars end, however there was no great

decline in the romantic image of the drummer boy.

The iconic figure of the Civil War “drummer boy” continued to be employed by

children’s authors after the war. Fictional accounts such as Frank Manly, the Drummer Boy, by

the widely read author, J. T. Trowbridge, were popular among young readers. The image saw yet

another reemergence during the eighteen-nineties when many veterans, inspired by their

membership in organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) published their own

accounts of the war.52 Picture books and pseudo -histories continue to perpetuate the myth today.

In 1998, the Millbrook Press published the colorful “Diary of a Drummer Boy” by Marlene T.

Hill. Still other works, such as Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War, offer up history in

coffee-book form. Today the image has come full circle the Drummer Boy Camping Resort in

52
Bircher’s work was published in 1889, Bardeeen’s in1910, and Meyers’ in 1914.

31
Gettysburg, where children play on waterslides and jungle gyms “Just 5 minutes from the historic

Civil War battlefields.”53

And what of the men and boys who served as field musicians? Boy musician, among the

first to sign up for the war, were the last to die. The final survivor of the Union Army, drummer

Albert Woolson of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery, passed away in 1956 at the age of one-

hundred and nine. Robert Henry Hendershot who, incidentally turned down his appointment,

Lincoln’s last, to West Point, became a major in the GAR posing at public events with the silver

drum he received from the tribune association. (see fig. 7). Men in the GAR formed fife and drum

corps and played in parades and at national encampments on former battlefields. J. Herbert

George, principle musician of the Tenth Vermont Infantry, found he loved music so much, he

made a career of it as a music teacher in the public schools. At least one musician who had been

assigned to assist the surgeons during pursued that profession after the war. Others may have

found themselves behind in the tight post-war job market. At the age when young men would

normally have been working the family fields, apprenticed to a tradesman , or enrolled in school,

the drummers, fifers, and buglers of the army were off playing their part to preserve the Union,

their adolescence swept away in the tide of war.54

53
Drummer Boy Camping Resort [web site] (2006), available from http://www.drummerboycamping.com/,
Internet, accessed 14 April 2006.
54
Stephen H. Conelius, Music of the Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 229.

32
 Familial Occupations
(according to the 1860 U.S. Census)

2%
(2)

Farmer/ Farm Laborer

13% Laborer
(14)
33% Craftsman/Skilled Laborer
(36)

Professional
45%
(50) Musician
7%
(8)

33
Figure 1

Age Number
13 127

14 330

15 773

16 2, 758

17 6, 425

Figure 2

Age Distribution of Illinois Field

Musicians (1861-1865)
2%
(2)

6%
(7)

24% <12
(28)
12-14
15-18
24%
(28)
19-21
22-24

11% 25-27
(13)
>28

21%
11% (24)
(13)

34
Figure 3

35
Figure 4

36
Figure 5

37
Figure 6 “The Rouge’s March” (Wise, Bands and Drummer Boys, 107).

Figure 7 R.H. Hendershot with his silver drum (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Library).

38