In December 1863, Civil War soldiers took refuge from the dismal
conditions of war and weather. They made their winter quarters in
the Piedmont region of central Virginia: the Union’s Army of the
Potomac in Culpeper County and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern
Virginia in neighboring Orange County. For the next six months the
opposing soldiers eyed each other warily across the Rapidan River.
In Music Along the Rapidan James A. Davis examines the role of
music in defining the social communities that emerged during this
winter encampment. Music was an essential part of each soldier’s
personal identity, and Davis considers how music became a means of
controlling the acoustic and social cacophony of war that
surrounded every soldier nearby. Music also became a touchstone for
colliding communities during the encampment—the communities of
enlisted men and officers or Northerners and Southerners on the one
hand and the shared communities occupied by both soldier and
civilian on the other. The music enabled them to define their
relationships and their environment, emotionally, socially, and
audibly.