Description
Civil War! Rebellion! The Union was torn apart. In May 1861, the federal government authorized volunteer infantry regiments to field 24-piece brass bands and thousands of town bandsmen enlisted. A year later, the government determined the cost to be prohibitive, and bands mustered out in August and September 1862, per Public Law 165 and General Order 091. Music was no more. Well, “steady boys!”
As the author documented in his first two books on Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, at least as many musket-carrying privates were detailed to the regimental band after the official bands mustered out, as before.
Author John F. Bieniarz retired in 1995 as Captain of Police after 20 years of service with the Laconia, N.H., Police Department. In 1999, John formed the 12th New Hampshire Regiment Serenade Band, a Civil War renactment brass band, and in 2002, he and his wife Rebecca, an E-flat cornet player, became charter members of the Federal City Brass Band, in Baltimore, Maryland. After moving to the Washington, D.C., area in 2004, John researched the existence of regimental brass bands full time at the National Archives and Library of Congress. After five years, John gathered enough evidence to write three volumes, wherever Rebecca’s career in the Army National Guard took them, from Monterey, California, to Utah.
While in Utah, John finished his third and final volume on New England, “Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine,” which is presented here.
Proposed future works include, “Buglers of the US Army, 1861-1890,” “Bands of the U.S. Colored Troops, 1863-1866,” and “Bands of the U.S. Army in the Indian Wars.”
978-1-943022-31-1, 744 pages, multiple indexes.
