Wanting neither to kill or be killed, Julius Leinbach of Salem enlists with his fellow Moravian musicians as a “Band Boy” for the 26th North Carolina. The small brass ensemble quickly gains fame as the most stirring band in the army and performs not just for parade and marching but also concerts-including for Gov. Vance’s inaugural. Like other bandsmen in both armies, they not only play music but also help carry off the battlefield wounded and assist the surgeons as orderlies. Music is a crucial aid to morale and order. Leinbach is captured but survives, the last of his bandmates to be liberated at war’s end. He brings home the band’s coveted, original, sheet music arrangements-the only band in the Confederate Army to do so.
