Rock Me To Sleep, Mother for Cornet and Piano by Jari A. Villanueva Cornet - Digital Sheet Music

“Rock Me to Sleep, Mother”

“Rock Me to Sleep, Mother” for Cornet and Piano, was one of the most popular American ballads of the Civil War era. John Hill Hewitt composed the music in 1861, setting a poem by Elizabeth Akers Allen, who wrote under the pen name Florence Percy. Hewitt, sometimes called the “Bard of the Confederacy,” helped bring the song into wide circulation. Popular with soldiers on both sides of the conflict, the song offers a layered meditation on motherhood, memory, and longing for home. Its opening lines—“Backward, turn backward, Oh! time in your flight / Make me a child again just for tonight”—express the nostalgia and emotional vulnerability that made it especially resonant during wartime. Like many widely loved songs of the Civil War period, “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother” emphasized home, family, memory, and consolation rather than military victory. It circulated broadly in sheet music, songsters, camp singing, and instrumental arrangements, giving both soldiers and civilians a way to voice homesickness and grief. The tune also survives in the books of the 26th North Carolina Regimental Band. This particular arrangement derives from one prepared by William Hartwell of the 16th Mississippi Regimental Band for the 26th North Carolina Band. Hartwell served as a music teacher and supplied arrangements for the ensemble.