Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1879 — The Responsive Chord. [ARTICLE]

The Responsive Chord.

In the early spring of 1863, when the Confederate and Federal armies were confronting each other on the opposite hills of Stafford and Spottsylvania, two bands chanced one evening, at the same hour, to begin to discourse sweet music upon either bank of the river. A large crowd of the soldiers of both armies gathered to listen to the music, the friendly pickets not interfering, and soon the bands began to answer each other. First the bond on the northern bank would play “Star Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” or some other national air, and at its conclusion the “boys in blue ” would cheer most lustily. And then the band on the southern bank would respond with “Dixie,” or “Bonnie Blue Flag,” or some other Southern melody, and the “boys in gray” would attest their appiobation with an “old Confederate yell.” But presently one of the bands struck up, in sweet and plaintive notes which were wafted across the Bappahanock and caught up at once by the other band and swelled into a grand anthem which touched every heart, “Home, Sweet Home ! ” At the conclusion of this piece there went up a simultaneous shout from both sides of the river. Cheer followed cheer, and those hills, which had so recently resounded with hostile guns, echoed and re-echoed the glad acclaim. A chord had been struck responsive to which the hearts of enemies—enemies then—could beat in unison; and, on both sides of the river, 8 mething down the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder.