On Sunday I played a concert devoted to the works of Civil War pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a fascinating fellow who toured the United States throughout the war, and wrote about it in twelve notebooks he kept with him which were eventually published. At the concert I read from them between numbers. They were often very funny, as in his takes on his audiences and his frustrations with Sabbath prohibitions. But in the middle of June 1863, as the Battle of Gettysburg neared, Gottschalk became a sort of embedded reporter, and produced a very curious bit of source material for historians. It was an eyewitness account of the evacuation of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and preparations to meet the Rebel army by those called to fight. After reading a greatly condensed account, reproduced here, I concluded the concert with "Union," a piece which Gottschalk wrote in 1862, which recalls "Yankee Doodle," "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star Spangled Banner." This last is marked "Melancholy" and is played slowly and quietly. It was a great question at the time whether the Union would survive--Gottschalk gives voice to that thought in his journal in 1862. A year later, Abraham Lincoln would enshrine that question in the opening of his Gettysburg Address. Even Yankee Doodle shows up at first in a minor key. It is only at the end, after the marching soldiers, the trumpets, the drums, the dramatic silence, that Yankee Doodle and Hail Columbia are heard together in what sounds a bit like the 1812 Overture composed for the piano. To our modern sensibilities it may be a bit over the top, but imagine hearing it in 1863!
I'm going to post the portions of Gottschalk's account that I read at the concert, and then invite you to listen to "Union" at the end. My audience found it riveting; certainly this is a man who can give you a good sense of the chaos unfolding around him, the fear, the drama--even a few humorous asides. Here it is:
Williamsport, Pa., Monday, June 15, 1863
4 P.M. The town is all in commotion. A dispatch has been received announcing the invasion of the state by three columns of Rebels marching on the capital. The dispatch is placarded on all the street corners. You can easily imagine the agitation caused by the news.
5 P.M. Another dispatch from the Governor of Pennsylvania,
calling all able-bodied citizens to arms.
The Confederates, says the dispatch, have seized Martinsburg and are
making forced marches on Hagerstown. This last town is only forty-five miles
from the state capital.
I go out into the streets.
The crowds multiply and increase every moment. I pass again before the shop of the fruit
milliner: her hats full of strawberries and her beribboned baskets still are
there, but the poor woman appears terribly frightened.
[I love how, even in the midst of the panic unfolding around him and surely in his own heart, Gottschalk is able to stop for a moment and make fun of a pick-up band:]
A voluntary military band (the only one in Williamsport)
draws up in battle array on the principal square; is it necessary for me to say
that it is composed of Germans (all the musicians in the United States are
Germans)? There are five of them. A
cornet a piston with a broken-down constitution (I speak of the instrument), a
cavernous trombone, an ophicleide too low, a clarinet too high, a sour-looking
fifer—all of an independent and irascible temper, but united for the moment by
their hatred of keeping time and their vigorous desire to cast off its yoke. I must confess that they succeeded to such an
extent that I am doubtful whether they played in a major or minor key.
[but he digresses:]
Fresh dispatches received excite the greatest consternation.
The confederates are marching on Harrisburg. The crowd is stirred up; patriotic
meetings are organized. An old gentleman in black clothes, with a large
officer’s scarf around his waist, harangues many of his friends from the porch
of the hotel. The band strikes up and
marches through the streets, filling the people with military spirit, thanks to
the strains, more noisy than harmonious, of this performing cohort.
With all this, the chances for the concert this evening are
rather dubious. The receipts, which
promised famously this morning, suddenly are paralyzed.
11 P.M. I played this evening, after all, and before a very
respectable audience, which listened with marked interest and a more sustained
attention than I always meet with in the audiences of small towns. My little
piece entitled The Union, was much
applauded; it suited the moment.
Williamsport, Midnight, June 15, 1863
I suggested to Strakosch that the concert announced for
tomorrow at Harrisburg had better be given up. It is evident that people who
expect every moment to be bombarded are not in the state of mind to hear Cradle
Songs, Aelian Murmurs, etc., to say nothing of the risk we might run by rushing
into the lion’s den. But the prospect of a good house and the possibility that
the rumors of invasion were exaggerated made him turn a deaf ear to me.
[that man is an agent!]
I leave tomorrow morning for Harrisburg.
Making all allowance for exaggeration, there is no longer
any doubt that the Rebels are advancing on the capital, and I begin to think
that, unless it be part of the plan of Strakosch to make me play before General
Jenkins and his staff, our concert tomorrow will hardly come off.
[Don't forget, Gottshalk is a Southerner who has taken a loyalty oath to the North. If the Rebels captured him, I don't think they'd give him four-star treatment, exactly.]
In the [train] cars on the road to Harrisburg.
Hagerstown is definitely in possession of the Confederates.
The governor asked the people to put before their doors all empty barrels that
they may have to dispose of; they will use them on the fortifications to be
thrown up at Harrisburg. All along the
road we see farmers under arms, in battle array and doing military drill. They
all seem to want to obey the command of the governor, who orders all able-bodied
men to the field to meet the enemy, and to take the Susquehanna as the line for
battle.
A traveler we picked up at the last station assures us that
the Confederate army is not more than thirty miles from Harrisburg. Everybody is frightened. Strakosch begins to
see his mistake.
It is ten o’clock in the morning. The train continues to
advance at full speed toward Harrisburg—that is to say, toward Jenkins, for the
city must be attacked tonight, if it is not taken already. What shall we do? As
for the concert, it is out of the question; but ourselves, our trunks—my
pianos—what is to become of us in all this confusion?
1 P.M. A mile this side of Harrisburg the road is completely
obstructed by freight trains, wagons of all sorts, and in fine by all the immense
mass of merchandise, etc., which for the last twelve hours has been
concentrated near the town to avoid its capture or burning by the rebels. The
train stops at the middle of the bridge over the Susquehanna—why? The anxiety
increases. Can you conceive of anything more terrible than the expectation of
some vague, unknown danger? Some passengers have sat upon the floor so as to be
sheltered from bullets in case the train should be fired upon.
One hour of anxiety, during which all the women, while
pretending to be dead with fright, do not cease talking and making the most
absurd conjectures. I myself am only
slightly comforted, and the idea of a journey to the South at this time is not
at all attractive. But the train standing in the middle of the bridge, the
silence, the unknown, the solitude that surrounds us, the river whose deep and
tremulous waves murmur beneath our feet, and, above all, our ignorance of what
is taking place in front and what awaits us at the station—is not all this
enough to worry us?
Tired of this suspense, I decide to get out of the car.
Strakosch, Madame Amalia Patti, and I go toward the station, which we are
assured is only a walk of twenty minutes.
We find at the entrance to the depot piles, no mountains, of trunks
blocking the way. One of the mountains has been tunneled by a frightened
locomotive. Disemboweled trunks disgorge their contents, which charitable souls
gather up with a zeal more or less disinterested. The conductor points out to me a pickpocket,
an elegantly dressed young man moving quietly around with his hands behind his
back.
What luck! I have just caught a glimpse of my two pianos—the
cowardly mastodons—(Chickering forgive me!) snugly lying in a corner and in
perfect health. These two mastodons, which Chickering made expressly for me,
follow me in all my peregrinations. The
tails of these monster pianos measure three feet in width. Their length is ten
feet; they have seven and a half octaves, and despite all this formidable appearance
possess a charming and obedient docility to the least movement of my fingers.
I acknowledge that my heart beat at the idea of leaving
these two brave companions of my life exposed to the chances of a bombardment
or an attack by assault. Poor pianos! Perhaps tomorrow you will have lived! You
will probably serve to feed the fine bivouac fire of some obscure Confederate
soldier, who will see your harmonious bowels consumed with an indifferent eye,
having no regard for the three hundred concerts that you have survived and the
fidelity with which you have followed me in my Western campaigns.
[I moved to the piano as I spoke the last two paragraphs. Only a pianist can understand the angst in Gottschalk's "voice"--on the other hand, it is a bit funny, particular when the other possibilities include getting killed or captured.]
2 P.M. A battery of artillery passes at full gallop. We are
crushed in the midst of the crowd…. The rebels, the dispatches announce, are 18
miles away. All the shops are closed, and most of the houses from garret to
cellar.
“Decidedly our concert is done for!” exclaims in a piteous
voice my poor Strakosch, who has just returned from a voyage of discovery. The reflection is a rather late one and
proves that my excellent friend and agent is a hopeful youth and trusts to the
last… that something will “turn up.”
Old men, women, and children are leaving the city. A train left this morning carrying off many
thousand refugees. In a few hours our position has become very critical. We
cannot advance, and I fear that our retreat will be cut off. A militia regiment passes at quickstep; it is
going to the front. They are, for the most part, young men from 14 to 18 years
old. They murmur greatly against
Philadelphia, which, being the principal city in the state (numbering six
hundred thousand inhabitants) has not yet sent one regiment of its National
Guard to defend the seat of government, while the distant states of New Jersey,
New York, and even Rhode Island already have fifteen or twenty thousand men on
the road to Harrisburg and the valley of the Cumberland.
A train being announced to leave for Philadelphia in an
hour, we run to the station. Strakosch will remain behind to search for our
trunks, which have been missing these two hours. My tuner has lost his head;
the two mastodons of Chickering’s have disappeared, and the express company
declines to be responsible for them. Too obstinate Strakosch, why in the world
did he make us come to Harrisburg?
Gottschalk spent the next two weeks touring New England, and fortunately managed to sit out the actual Battle of Gettysburg!
