Byline: 

Of all the military bugle calls, none is more easily recognized or more apt to render emotion that the call Taps.  The melody is both eloquent and haunting and the history of its origin is interesting and somewhat clouded in controversy. Taps is unique with the United States military, since the call is sounded at funerals, wreath laying and memorial services. 

Taps began as a revision to the signal Extinguish Lights (Lights Out) at the end of the day.  Union General Daniel Buttefield (1811-1901) adopted the music for Taps during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. The call spread throughout the Union and ultimately the Confederate Army. General Butterfield stated several years before his death that he revised a French bugle song because the French song did not seem as smooth, melodious and musical as he desired.  Butterfield called in a bugler, named Oliver Norton, and arranged the new composition of taps by listening and suggesting changes until it pleased his ear. Butterfield could not write music. 

It is hard to imagine that anyone could focus on music during that campaign. Both sides lost over twenty-six thousand men. Butterfield lost over 600 men on the day he composed Taps. Nevertheless, in the midst of heat, humidity, mud, mosquitoes, dysentery, typhoid and general wretchedness of camp life, Butterfield persisted.

During the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, General Tidball ordered the playing of Taps at funerals. Taps was substituted because it was unsafe to fire the customary three volleys over the grave on account of the proximity of the enemy. 

There are no official words to the music but here are some of the more popular verses:

Day is done, gone the sun

From the hills, from the lake

From the sky

All is well, safely rest

God is nigh

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep

May the soldier or sailor

God Keep

On the land or the deep

Safe is sleep

Love, good night. Must thou go,

When the day, And the night

Need thee so?

All is well. Speedeth all

To their rest.

Fades the light; And afar

Goeth day, And the stars

Shineth bright,

Fare thee well; Day has gone,

Night is on.

Thanks and praise. For our shops,

‘Neath the sun. Neath the stars,

‘Neath the sky,

And we go, This we know,

God is nigh.