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What are the origins of Taps and who wrote it? It's hard to feel surprised when a melody as hauntingly beautiful as this one picks up a legend about how it came to be written — it's too mournfully direct a piece for the mere truth to suffice. The old and false rumor mentioned that Taps originated from the pocket of a dead soldier during the American Civil War in 1862. One version of the Taps origins rumor was posted on Facebook in 2014. We took notice and updated this article when the post surged with hundreds of thousands of new shares in April 2022: It read as follows: At this point in the purported Taps origins rumor Facebook post, the Captain realizes he has come upon his own deceased son who was fighting on the other side. The tale also mentions that his son had been studying music. It continues: This version of the Taps origins rumor that appeared in the social media post then mentions the following lyrics: The post then adds some commentary and finishes up the supposed Taps origin story by asking users to share the misleading post: An older version of the same purported Taps origins rumor went around with the following alterations: Here's the truth. The melody was composed in July 1862 at Harrison's Landing in Virginia. Aside from that basic fact, the fanciful piece quoted above in no way reflects the reality of the true origins of Taps. There was no dead son, Confederate or otherwise; no lone bugler sounding out the dead boy's last composition. How the call came into being was never anything more than one influential soldier's deciding his unit could use a bugle call for particular occasions and setting about to come up with one. If anyone can be said to have composed Taps, it was Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, V Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, during the American Civil War. Dissatisfied with the customary firing of three rifle volleys at the conclusion of burials during battle and also wanting a less harsh bugle call for ceremonially signaling the end of a soldier's day, he likely altered an older piece known as Tattoo, a French bugle call used to signal lights out, into the call we now know as Taps. Summoning his brigade's bugler, Private Oliver Willcox Norton, to his tent one evening in July 1862, Butterfield (whether he wrote Taps straight from the cuff or improvised something new by rearranging an older work) worked with the bugler to transform the melody into its present form. As Private Norton later wrote of that occasion: Taps was quickly taken up by both sides of the conflict, and within months was being sounded by buglers in both Union and Confederate forces. Then as now, Taps serves as a vital component in ceremonies honoring military dead. It is also understood by American servicemen as an end-of-day lights out signal. When Taps is played at a military funeral, protocol calls for military members to salute if in uniform, or place one's hand over one's heart if not. In sum, if readers were curious about the origins of Taps and who wrote it, the truth might not be found in viral posts shared on social media.
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