The Seventh New Hampshire continues its siege operations and prepares to invade Morris Island for the coming assaults on Fort Wagner:
July 7, the regimental cooks were ordered to cook three
days' rations, and from this order the boys drew their
own conclusions; on the evening of the 8th, we were
ordered to the front on Little Folly Island, at the batteries
as a support, in very light marching order, with only
equipments and canteens, and we were ordered to stop
there on the 9th, as there were no troops with which to
relieve us. A blockade-runner, the "Ruby," had, previous to the arrival of the Seventh on Folly Island, been
wrecked off Lighthouse Inlet, and very near the northeast
end of Little Folly Island, on which the rebels had a look-out: this wreck was visited nearly every day by parties of the rebel soldiers, and was within easy rifle range
of our pickets, who were not allowed to tire a shot, and
were obliged to keep concealed from view.
[106]
So secretly had our forces constructed their works that in an official report of Brigadier-General Ripley, commanding the Confederate forces around Charleston, about this time he states, " that up to the 8th or 9th of July, the enemy, so far as ascertained, had constructed no works on Little Folly except to shelter his pickets from our shells." This was a day or two only before the attack, and those thoroughly well-built batteries for forty-seven guns and mortars had been under construction since the 14th of June, without any discovery. With lookout stations on the ruins of the old lighthouse, Morris Island, on a mast- head of the wrecked blockade-runner "Ruby," off Lighthouse Inlet, and at Secessionville, on James Island, there had as yet been no discovery of our works.
In his book entitled "The Defense of Charleston Harbor," Maj. John Johnson (Confederate), speaking of the
opening of the tire from the rebel batteries on the south
end of Morris Island, on June 12, says: " It may well be
asked. Why was not the tire of the Confederates more
vigorously maintained ? Only their confidence that nothing
serious was meant by the Federals can account for the
oversight, while it cannot excuse it." While the dense
wood and underbrush and the sand-hills afforded good
concealment to the working parties, Major Johnson says:
" But it was chiefly to a ruse practiced on the artillerists of
Morris Island that the concealment was due. A blockade-running steamer grounded and became a wreck off
the inlet. When General Vodges advanced a few field-
guns on the beach to shell the wreck, the Confederate
batteries drove them off and thenceforward, their men
being unmolested in plundering the cargo, the impression
was conveyed to the Confederates that only a picket force
was opposed to them."
Selected versions of Alban Berg's opera Lulu, with comments by Berg's student, Theodor Adorno.
Selected performances (videos below):
Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2008.
Paris Opera, 24 February, 1979.
Zurich Opera, c.2012.
Royal Opera, 2009.
Theodor Adorno on Berg's Lulu:
The opera Lulu is one of those works that reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it. Berg's original concept of development itself underwent development. No longer is the process one of moving from one sonority to another, from one phrase to the next, as was appropriate for the held breath, the intensified moment of Expressionism, but rather one of unfolding over long stretches.... During a lesson Berg once praised a chamber work because it development section took on real momentum. This praise, whether deserved or not, can be interpreted as the expression of a compositional interest that dominated all others in the mature Berg and in Lulu came into its own.
- Adorno. Alban Berg (1968:125).
In Lulu the self - from whose point of view events are seen, from whose perspective the music is heard - steps visibly onto the stage; Berg intimates as much with one of those quotations he loved to smuggle in, the way a medieval master included his self-portrait as a minor figure in a religious painting. Truly a corporeal-incorporeal suitor: united in Alwa's rondo themes is the exuberance of Schumannesque youth and Baudelairian fascination with fatal beauty. What became known as the first movement of the Lulu Suite, the enraptured praise of the loved one, glows in an ecstasy words can not equal; as if the music wanted to become one of those fairy-tale gowns Wedekind envisaged for Lulu. This music, as a radiant, multi-hued jewel for the beloved body, seeks to restore human dignity to a banished, heretical yearning. Every bar of music intends salvation for the banished, for the symbol of sexual being, for a soul that in the hereafter rubs the sleep from its eyes, to quote from the most irresistible bars of the opera. In using and setting these words Berg paid his respects to the sixty-year-old [Karl] Krause, author of Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitat. Berg's Lulu music thanks him in the name of that utopia which at heart motivates Kraus's critique of the bourgeois taboos that degrade love. Berg's music strikes a nerve where civilized man does not joke, and precisely this point becomes for him a refuge of the humane.
- Adorno. Alban Berg (1968:7).
"The twelve-tone chord at the moment of Lulu's death in Berg's opera produces an effect very much like that of a motion picture."
- Adorno and Eisler. Composing for the Films (1947:.24).
Lyric Opera's film interlude.
Composed in 1927, Alban Berg’s Lulu was the first opera to
include
specific directions for a FILM to be projected as a part
of the staging.
In this 2008
Lyric Opera of Chicago production digital
video was used
to carefully emulate period film and advance the
narrative."
Alban Berg died of a blood infection before he could complete Lulu. The first two acts were complete, but the third act was not, though in the opinion of many, including Adorno, the work was all but complete. Though the narrative's concerning the motivations vary, Berg's widow asked both Schoenberg and Webern to complete the work and both refused. Adorno believed that Schoenberg's refusal had more to do with jealousy, as Berg's masterpiece surpassed Schoenberg's own achievements. Webern, Adorno thought, was moving in his own direction and it differed enough from Berg's that Webern did not want to risk compromising either vision. [--- Berg died at the time of Webern's working on three of his important works: Op. 24, Concerto for Nine Instruments [Glenn Gould] (1934), Op. 27, Variations for Piano (1936) and the Op. 28, String Quartet (1937–38) ---] The work of both composers, along with Schoenberg's, were complemented by the fascist ban on degenerate music and art. Without the participation of Schoenberg in particular, Helene Berg refused to allow the work to be completed and thus only a two act version with excerpts from Act III (known as the Lulu Suite [performed by Kathleen Battle, 1981]) was performed.
Adorno pleaded with Helene Berg to allow the work to be completed "while there were still students" like himself and others close to Berg who would have first hand knowledge of Berg's methods and vision for the work. In it's two act form, Adorno wrote, the work would be forever obscure and rarely if ever performed. Adorno's efforts were unsuccessful and he died in 1969 having, like Berg, never heard the completed work.
After the war, Adorno wrote to Helene Berg:
Today I am now also writing to you for a particular reason, one that seems to me the most important for both of us: the orchestration of the missing parts of Lulu. I know that Schoenberg refused to do it. Webern was also against it when I last saw him in England (probably 1936) and I have been told that you are not generally in favor of the plan.
If I now strive to change your mind with all due seriousness and responsibility, you must believe that I am guided by nothing other than concern for the work an for Alban's intentions. I myself, to clarify the matter in advance, neither wish nor am I able to take on the task.
As far as Schoenberg's rejection is concerned, first of all, I am convinced that his motives - despite the one serious argument he advances - are not of the purest sort. We often spoke of his jealousy, you, Alban and I; I had occasion to observe it in its basest manifestations, and I have no reservations about claiming that the thought of cutting off Alban's deciding work from posterity through his refusal is a tempting one to him. And in conversation with Webern, I also encountered a form of coldness that was able only with some effort to mask itself as respect before the fate one must accept. He said, with his air of native cunning, that a work such as Schubert's B minor Symphony is also incomplete, yet lives. But this is sophistic analogy. There is a fundamental difference between a symphonic work and an opera. Anyone with even the slightest understanding of theatre, which is by its very nature dependent on an audience, knows that an unfinished opera, outside of memorial or festival performances, could not live.
God knows that I honour the idea of the fragment [e.g., Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment was subtitled Philosophical Fragments], but in an art form whose aesthetic substance cannot be separated from a certain drastic materiality, a fragmentary reproduction would be an impossibility, even if it survived the worldly demands of the theatrical world. And I would stake my life on the fact that Alban would have approved of my intention....
And if Webern claimed in the end that the composition was not really complete, but in some sections only sketched in the principle parts, then I refuse to believe this before I have seen, nay: studied it with my own eyes. Berg told me unequivocally of the compositions completion; in a letter to me.... One should not believe anything to the contrary.
Now, I am all too aware of the incredible difficulty, arduousness and responsibility of such a task. No one person can carry it out. The orchestration of Lulu is only possible collectively....
My Paris friend Rene Leibowitz... a musician of the highest order... versed in the style... bound to the cause by the most passionate love. He has gathered around him a group of musicians fanatically devoted to Alban.
It could finally be argued that there is plenty of time yet for such a matter, and that one could see to it one day, much, much later, when Alban has 'become entirely historical' (itself a ghastly notion). I also consider this argument false. There is never enough time for the things that matter. The world we live in has taken on the tempo of catastrophe; it would be naive to simply trust its course - it can all fall to ruin. And, to speak of more concrete matters: the tradition of our music lies in the hands of very few people, among whom Leibowitz is the most important. If it is interrupted, the instrumentation of Lulu will no longer be possible, as no one will understand the sense and language of such an instrumentation any more. But if those few people still directly familiar with it succeed in completing the instrumentation, then this can itself save the tradition. The extreme importance of which calls for no further words.
-- Theodor Adorno to Helene Berg
November 23, 1949 238-241
Lonitz, Henri, ed. (Wieland Hoban, trans.). 2005. Theodor Adorno and Alban Berg.: Correspondence 1925-1935. Cambridge: Polity Press.
In his Dream Notes, Adorno’s final entry before his death was a dream about Lulu.
Baden-Baden,11 April 1969
I was walking across a street in a very large town in the middle of the night, perhaps the Kurfürstendamm. Above the entrance to a cabaret the word LULU was written in large letters. I thought it must refer to a possibly shortened version of the opera and went in. I then noticed that there was nothing but a somewhat charmless, down-at-the-heel striptease dancer, who was trying after a fashion to represent Lulu through her dancing. Repelled, I left the place and woke up with a feeling of shock (Adorno. Dream Notes, p.77).
As the editors of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory wrote:
Its fragmentariness is the intrusion of death into a work before it had entirely realized its law of form. Essential to Adorno's philosophy as a whole is that no meaning be extracted from the ravages of death that would permit collusion with them. Two biographical fragments of comparable rank held eminent importance for Adorno: Right up to the end of his life he refused to acquiesce that Benjamin' s Arcades Project was beyond saving or that the instrumentation of Berg's Lulu had to remain incomplete. As little as an edition of Aesthetic Theory can disguise the fragmentary character of the work, or should even attempt to do so, it is just as impossible to be reconciled with it. There is no acquiescing in something that is incomplete merely because of contingency, and yet true fidelity, which Adorno himself practiced incomparably, prohibits that hands be laid on the fragmentary to complete it” (Editors afterword, Aesthetic Theory, p. 362).
In 1976 Helene Berg died and almost immediately the work on a new completed version of the opera was begun by Friedrich Cerha -- Rene Leibowitz having died in 1972, a fact that sadly testifies to Adorno's obvious urgency in his letter. Cerha was known for his interpretations of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. Conducted by Pierre Boulez, one the students of Rene Leibowitz referred to by Adorno, the Berg/Cerha Three Act version premiered on February 24, 1979 with Teresa Stratas as Lulu and the stage production by Patrice Chéreau.
Lulu Theatre National de l'Opera de Paris, February 24, 1979
Pierre Boulez: Musical Director
Lulu: Teresa Strata
Stage Direction: Patrice Chereau
Lulu Chorus and Orchestra of the Zurich Opera House
Direttore: Franz Welser-Möst
Lulu: Laura Aikin
Countess Geschwitz: Cornelia Kallisch
Medical Specialist: Peter Keller
Painter: Steve Davislim
Dr. Schön: Alfred Muff
Alwa: Peter Straka
Schigolch: Guido Götzen
Schoolboy: Andrea Bönig
Dresser: Katharina Peetz
Animal Trainer/Acrobat: Rolf Haunstein
Prince/Manservant: Martin Zysset
Theatre Director: Werner Gröschel
Child: Lynn Lange
LECTURE NOTES on Adorno, Berg, and Lulu, c. 2020/21
*
“...Lulu embodies all of the raging contradictions of Central
European culture on the eve of the Hitler Catastrophe” (Ross 225).
What are we to think of the character of Lulu?
What are we to think of the objectification: only the Beggar and
the Countess call her by her real name. Lulu, Act 2: c. 38:00 mins.
Berg’s (Adorno’s and Petersen’s) sympathetic reading: “She
is a victim of what men desire of her” Petersen says. They destroy
themselves notes Jarman, too. How different Peterson’s
interpretation [Introduction] is from the guy that follows, who
“interpreting the music” actually says that she is a femme
fatale. A view which Adorno and Patersen reject.
Double and Triple roles of the performers (and in the music, too)
respectable men become slavers and murders, or perhaps what they were
all along? The hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. Reversals, such as
in the Film Music interlude.
*
The opera as a marker of the coming catastrophe:
“...Lulu embodies all of the raging contradictions of Central
European culture on the eve of the Hitler Catastrophe” (Ross 225).
Tragedy or Farce? (“Sordid and absurd” according to Jarman
p.91-92 and p.93).
What it seems to mean for Adorno: His letters to Helene Berg and his final dream.
As a form of popular culture?
Ross: Lulu contains a jazz band, vaudeville, and light opera. It
also has sections without music and it features a film between Acts 1
and 2. All the things we have seen Adorno disliked!
The Domination of Nature and the Domination of women.
Original titles of the Wedikind plays were Earth Spirit and
Pandora’s Box.
The domination of nature and the domination of women go hand in
hand not because women are somehow closer to Nature, but because they
are socially constructed as such. The drive to dominate each is an
essential aspect of Enlightenment rationality,
technological/scientific advances, and control of populations and
resources. Given that Critical Theory equates the domination of
Nature with the Domination of women, one could also see the character
and demise of Lulu as a personification of this process of
domination. Lulu was “the Earth spirit” in a non-metaphysical
sense:
“Absolute Isolation and the consumer world, irreconcilably
breaking apart, are correlates…. Opposed to this is Lulu, around
who everything turns. She represents repressed nature, its
incommensurability with civilization, both the sin therein and
retribution for it. But Berg would not have been a true artist if he
had copied the eternally bourgeois-sanctioned antithesis:
nature/anti-nature. In fact it is not Lulu who is the self out of
whose perspective the music comes, but rather Alwa, who loves her….
The imago of Lulu draws its shining arc over the abyss, only to
disappear into it.” Adorno, Alban Berg, p.130.
This and the fact that it is told through a new form of popular
culture are certainly key ideas. (Pabst. 1929. Pandora’s Box
starring Louise Brooks. Youtube).
Perhaps mention the Lou Reed/Robert Wilson/Metallica
collaborations based off the plays and decidedly not from Berg’s
opera. The misogynist is restored by returning to Wedikind.
*
Adorno (Sociologist, Philosopher, Composer, associated with “The
Frankfurt School of Critical Theory”)
Music is not expressive of something outside of structures of
social relations, which are relations of authority. If music
expresses anything, it is that it, along with taste, style, fashion,
and popular culture, the everyday experience of the mechanisms of
domination and authority that run through contemporary social
relations.
Adorno: Proposes that the critical social analysis of music is
place to work out these questions about social theory, domination,
consumerism/culture. He gives this rationale in his only recently
published essay “The Problem of a New Type of Human Being”:
The fact that music
is still unexplored territory… means that one finds far fewer rigid
views here than in other fields, and that there are far fewer
obstacles in the form of cliches to impede the posing of questions….
Music is especially qualified [as ‘an especially good point of
entry’] to do this because it shares fundamental characteristics
with language and, like language, is clearly dominated by
monopolistic centres, while, at the same time, [unlike language] it
is not directly connected to the world of objects. At the same time,
however, the influence of this object-world is palpable in all
elements of musical language and its reception. Music truly is, to
cite Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, ‘the world once again’, but a
model that one can use to study the defining characteristics of
reality without having to discuss directly the content of that
reality. (The
Current of Music)
Adorno: Music as we know it is not “Natural” or expressive of
“Nature”
However, although it does connect Humans to natural aspects of
themselves, it does so only to exploit those natural/biological
aspects of ourselves or to provide our minds and bodies with
relaxation/recreation/reproduction so as to return to work the next
day.
Music can not be expressive of Nature because that Nature no
longer exists. For Adorno, Nature has been transformed and
appropriated by humans.
You may know the phrase: “Like Second Nature” and Adorno takes
that seriously.
“Nature” is now really “Second Nature, indistinguishable and
unimaginable apart from its domination by human social production.
Any aspects of ourselves that are “Natural”, the very aspects
that Bernstein appeals to, are no less dominated than the Nature we
still think of as “Out There”.
If Music expresses a relation to Nature, it is in fact expressing
our relation to this Second Nature that is characterized by Authority
and Domination, and not Freedom and choice.
Marx’s “vast accumulation of commodities” is the other image
of this Second Nature, and Adorno draws heavily on Marx’s Fetish of
Commodities to argue that music is no less commodified, and there for
no more expressive, than any other consumer good produced by “The
Culture Industry”.
Adorno on Music and Popular Protest:
https://archive.org/details/RicBrownTheordorAdornoonPopularMusicandProtest
Therefore the idea that music expresses something other than
social relations, that some music is “Authentic” and others not,
is absurd.
Authenticity is a means by which conformity is regulated and
imposed from within and without.
One hears echos of this view in John Schaffer’s remarks on WNYC
and his show New Sounds:
“Marginalization of the arts, with the big depressing news we’re
facing, is the exact opposite of what this culture needs.... When
what we listen to is all based on algorithms, you’re fed things
that will already fit your taste”
*
The domination and intensification of consumer society (the
Culture Industry) until it pervades every aspect of life means for
Adorno even Schoenberg’s atonality could not escape the process of
commodification. It even becomes, as “a degraded form of pure
dissonance,” the norm in horror film soundtracks:
“The modern motion picture... requires musical means that do not
represent a stylized picture of pain, but rather its tonal record.
This particular dimension of the new musical resources was made
apparent by Stravinsky in his Sacre du Prentemps” (Adorno and
Eisler Composing for the Films, pgs. 24-25).
Here Bernstein and Adorno converge: Stravinsky’s nod to popular
music, especially Jazz, was understandable, but Stravinsky embraced
this relationship to the Culture industry, he did not try to resist
it as Adorno thinks Schoenberg did… at least until his later works
when “Schoenberg wanted to be heard” by a wider public, such Kurt
Weil, Hans Eisler, and of course, Stravinsky himself commanded.
They also converge in another important way: they both believe
that music is expressive of social life, but here they diverge
immediately.
If Bernstein is right about Ives – that he was asking a question
about not only the direction of music, but also of a civilization on
the brink of a catastrophic World War – then it holds equally true
that Stravinsky’s Sacre expresses the coming crisis, with its
industrialization of killing that only civilized people, and
certainly not “primitives” can dream of.
Adorno on Stravinsky, especially La Sacre du printemps “Le Sacre
du printemps… makes the subject of the work a human sacrifice, that
of the principal dancer – a sacrifice which the music not so much
interprets as ritualistically accompanies. (“On Jazz” from Essays
on Music, p.289)
Sacre consists of rigid and “convulsive blows and shocks” that
reproduce the machines and technocratic domination that we can see in
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis:
“His percussive effects are no less than assassination attempts,
echoes of archaic war drums, blows of the sort that sacrificial
victims and slaves have to endure” (Stravinsky: A Dialectical
Portrait, 1962-63).
“….the anti-humanistic sacrifice to the collective –
sacrifice without tragedy, made not in the name of a renewed image of
man, but only in the blind affirmation of a situation recognized by
the victim. This insight can find expression either through
self-mockery or through self-annihilation…. Speaking of the
prehistoric youthful generation of Sacre, Cocteau stated in somewhat
condescending but well-intentioned tones of enlightenment: ‘These
credulous men imagine that the sacrifice of a young girl, chosen
above all others, is absolutely essential to the rebirth of Spring’”
(Adorno. The Philosophy of Modern Music, p.145-146).
So for Adorno Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) and its primitivism show, like the paintings of Emil Nolde, that
this naive primitivism is not so naive and harmless as might pretend
it to be, nor is it a threat to the bourgeois social order. Like
Nolde’s paintings, Stravinsky presents Nature in terms of the
primitive and the savage. For Adorno, it does not express the Freedom
or the so-called “Back-to-Nature” ideology that it claims. Adorno
argues that this is not “nature” but really the expression of a
“Second Nature” with the pleasures and desires, brutality and
domination, that Sade’s Justine and Blake’s “Dark Satanic
Mills” announced.
Stravinsky, therefore, has more in common with Emile Nolde than he
does with Schoenberg. Not all expressionism is the same. Nolde was a
member of the Nazi Party from its first days and remained a committed
Nazi until the end. His work was still banned because its’
primitivism and expressionism was, the authorities said, degenerate.
There is a significant contrast to be drawn between Stravinsky's
Sacre and Berg’s Lulu. Stravinsky naturalizes the violence and
terror of the present by connecting it to a mythological/ritualistic
past, whereas Berg’s Lulu makes it clear that the violence and
objectification found in the work of art are those found in the
production of everyday life. Lulu describes social life without
naturalizing it. Even if we were to look at the past, the murder of
Iphigenia at Aulis is not an annual ritual sacrificed to bring the
cycle of seasons, but because Agamemnon, her father, recently killed
a deer in Artemis’ sacred grove and she sends the winds to prevent
the Greek fleet from embarking for the war at Troy. Unlike the
murders in the Sacre, when Agamemnon returns to Mycenae from Troy, he
is almost immediately killed by Clytemnestra in revenge for the
sacrifice of Iphigenia. There is no eternal return of Spring and
ritual sacrifice and libations (see also the story of the “King of
the Wood” in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough
https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.6095/page/n19 ). In fact,
the future holds is only ruin for the houses of Atreus. In the midst
of their great success at Troy, Mycenaean Greece was obvious to its
own impending social and economic collapse. Likewise, the Roman
Empire – much like the British Empire at the end of WWI – did not
fall in a day.
To discuss Sacre and Lulu would take at least another 20 pages or
so, but if you find these notes helpful, I can try to add a
discussion of Lulu to them at some point before the end of the
semester.
I will let Adorno have the last word on what he sees as the
contrast to be drawn between the two:
To intellectual reflection, to taste
that considers itself able to judge the matter from above,
Stravinsky’s Renard may well seem a more suitable treatment of
Wedekind's Lulu than does Berg’s music. The musician knows,
however, how far superior Berg's work is to Stravinsky’s and in its
favor it willingly sacrifices the sovereignty of the aesthetic
standpoint; artistic experience is born out of just such conflicts….
(Adorno. Aesthetic Theory, p. 269).
Sensual satisfaction, punished at
various times by an ascetic authoritarianism, has historically become
directly antagonistic to art; mellifluous sounds, harmonious colors,
and suaveness have become kitsch and trademarks of the culture
industry. The sensual appeal of art continues to be legitimate only
when, as in Berg’s Lulu or in the work of Andre Masson, it is the
bearer or a function of the content rather than an end in itself
(Adorno. Aesthetic Theory, p. 276).
To intellectual reflection, to taste
that considers itself able to judge the matter from above,
Stravinsky’s Renard may well seem a more suitable treatment
of Wedekind’s Lulu than does Berg’s music. The musician
knows, however, how far superior Berg’s work is to Stravinsky’s
and in its favor it willingly sacrifices the sovereignty of the
aesthetic standpoint; artistic experience is born out of just such
conflicts (Adorno.
Aesthetic Theory 269).
Sensual satisfaction, punished at
various times by an ascetic authoritarianism, has historically become
directly antagonistic to art; mellifluous sounds, harmonious colors,
and suaveness have become kitsch and trademarks of the culture
industry. The sensual appeal of art continues to be legitimate only
when, as in Berg's Lulu or in the work of Andre Masson, it is the
bearer or a function of the content rather than an end in itself. One
of the difficulties of new art is how to combine the desideratum of
internal coherence, which always imports a certain degree of evident
polish into the work, with opposition to the culinary element.
Sometimes the work requires the culinary, while paradoxically the
sensorium balks at it (Adorno.
Aesthetic Theory, 276).
In preparation for the coming assaults on Fort Wagner, the Seventh New Hampshire engaged in siege operations on Morris and Folly Islands. The following is from Henry F. W. Little. The Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion. Seventh New Hampshire Veterans Association, Concord, N. H., 1896, pages 102-105.
USS Delaware
The regiment
disembarked from the transport "Delaware," and by the
light of lanterns and aid of flat scows, landed upon the
south end of Folly Island, which was one of the most
dreary and worthless collections of sand-hills to be found
on the coast. For the remainder of the night the regiment
bivouacked on the beach, and at 10 o'clock on the morning of the 17th were ordered into line and were marched
about five miles, to a camp-ground towards the north end
of the island, where was quite a belt of woodland. The
ocean beach of this island was of beautiful, clean, white,
quartz sand, was very wide, and at low tide was as
hard as a floor. The island was composed of a series of
sand-hills, and a large portion of the island was covered
with a growth of pine and palmetto, which afforded the [103]
troops fuel and shade. We arrived at our camp-ground
about noon, and at once details were made from each company to clear up the bushes from our camping-ground
before we could pitch our tents. Wells were dug from
three to twelve feet deep - water being found at a level
with the sea, which at first tasted fairly well, but after a
few days it would turn dark colored, smell strong, and
taste so badly that it was almost impossible to use it for
drinking purposes. This was the poorest drinking-water
we found while in the service.
We found quite a collection of troops camped in the
woods in this section of the island, and we were led to believe at once that the new department commander intended
to assume the offensive at once. The duties now assigned
us were to assist in building heavy fortifications and planting batteries on the extreme north end of the island, and
immediately fronting Morris Island, which the Confederates had to a considerable extent already fortified. Our
intervals of rest from these duties were occupied by the
severest drill of five hours each day, and strict discipline
was observed in preparation for the coming service. The
north end of the island being covered with a dense growth
of underbrush and belts of heavy timber favored our work,
the heavy sand-hills that here skirted the beach on
Lighthouse Inlet favored the secrecy of our operations,
and we soon had a series of batteries securely erected and
ready for action when the orders should be given to dig
the embrasures through the top of the sand-hill in their
immediate front. The greatest secrecy had to be observed
in order that the enemy might not in the least be at all
suspicious of our work. Fresh troops kept arriving, and
nearly every day brought some new regiment or battery,
until the time for final action came, when about seven
thousand men were encamped upon the island; of this
force some four thousand men under Brig. Gen. Israel [104]
Vodges had remained upon the island since the attack on
Fort Sumter on the 7th of April, and had been busily engaged in erecting strong works at the south end of the
island and other works about two miles south of the north
end of the island, and a military- road had been constructed
about ten miles long, which communicated with all parts
of the island. The northern extremity of Folly Island
was subject to being cut off occasionally by tidal overflows
and was known as Little Folly Island. It was on this
extreme point well covered by the brush and woods that
masked batteries were commenced on the 14th of June, to
mount, when completed, forty-seven guns and mortars-
Colonel Putnam was on June 20 put in command of a
brigade, and Adjt. Henry G. Webber was detailed as acting assistant adjutant-general on his staff. The troops
upon the island were kept constantly at work until the
completion of the batteries.
The Confederates had commenced as early as the 10th
of March to fortify the southern extremity of Morris Island,
and had eleven guns mounted in readiness for an attack,
of which four commanded the crossing at Lighthouse
Inlet, and the Confederate captain, John C. Mitchell, of the
First S. C. Artillery, who was in charge of the south end
of Morris Island, opened fire in a desultory way as early
as June 12, and for a week or ten days continued this fire,
principally from mortars, which killed and wounded several men; our forces made no reply, but kept on working like beavers in the construction of those masked
batteries, which were less than a thousand yards from the
rebel fortifications.
On the Fourth of July, the routine of duty was the same,
and the national salute usually fired in commemoration of
our National Independence, had to be dispensed with as a
military necessity, except the one fired by the blockading
squadron at the mouth of Charleston harbor, for we could [105]
not inform the enemy that we had artillery present,
although it was generally supposed that the rebels well
knew that a picket force was kept on Little Folly Island.
Hence we were compelled to enter in our diary on that
intensely hot day, and in explanation of the silence imposed upon us under the circumstances, as we sat astride
the muzzle of a thirty-pounder Parrott, pointing toward
the enemy, whose entrenchments we could plainly see,
only a few hundred yards away, by pushing aside the
dense undergrowth of bushes in our immediate front:
Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion*
From Fernandia to "Hilton Head, S.C.; thence to Folly Island, S.C., June 15-19" 1863.
The 7th New Hampshire arrives in Hilton Head and deploys to Folly Island in preparation for the attack on Fort Wagner. Little's comment from his Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion is followed by an article from the Boston Herald dated June 19, 1863.
"....Fernandina was the home of the rebel general, Finnegan, so we were informed, and we were shown
his residence, which was a fine one : the buildings and
their surroundings were evidence that previous to hostilities he had been in affluent circumstances, but at the commencement of the war he had accepted a commission in
the Confederate service and was in command of the rebel
forces in Florida.
We were now settled down in good shape and were
getting comfortably situated when, on the 5th of June, the
steamer "Boston" came in at 7 o'clock in the morning,
with orders for Colonel Putnam to report at once with his
regiment at Hilton Head, S. C. The steamer brought
on board the Eleventh Me. Volunteers, or what was left of
that regiment, for it only mustered three hundred men ;
orders were at once issued and the 6th was consumed
in making preparations for leaving, and on the 7th, the
Seventh went aboard the "Boston," and at 3 o'clock p. m.
we steamed out of the harbor. As we fondly looked upon
the receding shore we scarcely realized that many of us-
were taking our last farewell of Florida, where we had
passed so many pleasant and happy days, and as the out-
lines of her coast faded gradually from view there was a
sadness noticed among the men who had taken kindly to
the beautiful climate and had almost begun to consider
that state as the next place to home.
On the night of the 7th, we anchored off Stono Inlet,
near a light-ship, and on the morning of the 8th proceeded
to Hilton Head, arriving there at 8 o'clock a. m., and
anchored in the stream. Colonel Putnam at once went
ashore to find out whether we were to go into camp at
Hilton Head or at St. Helena Island, and in the afternoon
we received orders to go ashore at Hilton Head ; therefore
we steamed up to the wharf', disembarked, formed line,
and eight companies marched to a camp-ground about
two miles out in a southeasterly direction, while companies A and D were detailed to go to Jenkins Island, on
picket duty." Henry F. W. Little. The Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion. Seventh New Hampshire Veterans Association, Concord, N. H., 1896.
“From the Department of the South”
The Boston Herald, June 19, 1863, pg.4.
Fernandia, Fla. June 7.
‘Your correspondent arrived here on Friday last, having accompanied the 11th Maine Volunteers to this place from Beaufort, S.C., in the fine steamer Boston, Capt. Norris.... They were sent down to relieve the 7th N. H., a larger regiment, which, it is anticipated, may take part in active operations before long.... The 7th New Hampshire is, in many respects, the finest regiment I have seen in the department. It is composed of a superior class of men, well offered, well drilled, and well taken care of. The discipline is noticeable as being just the mean between the two extremes of laxity and severity. Col. H. S. Putnam, of Cornish, is a graduate of West point, a strict disciplinarian, but not a martinet, with a rare reputation among both officers and privates for impartiality, and those other qualities which make a commander beloved by his men. He commanded a brigade in the Charleston expedition. Lieut. Col. Jos. C. Abbott, of Manchester, was formally Adjt. General of his State, and has distinguished himself in the editorial profession. Major Thomas A. Henderson, of Dover, is a graduate of Bowdoin College and Harvard Law School. The following is a list of the staff officers:
Adjutant, H.G. Webber of Manchester; Quartermaster, Geo. S. Hanson of Dover; Chaplain, Rev. W. W. Brown, of Manchester; Assistant Surgeon, Dr. H. Boynton.
The Seventh have done much important service for the Government, as credible to them as if their ranks had been decimated in battles and their banners inscribed with the names of a hundred bloody conflicts, which they would have been glad to participate in. They were sent first to Tortugas, where they put Fort Jefferson in excellent condition. Then they were ordered to Beaufort, where their duties were arduous , and, in spite of all precautions, their numbers were diminished by sickness. They they went to St. Augustine, which post Col. Putnam commanded til about five weeks since, when the regiment was sent to Fernandina. Where ever they have been they have been praised, and it is to be hoped they will now have their quality tested on the battles-fields, which the most reliable sort of rumors assure us they will soon find, wither in front of Charleston or on the Potomac.
Lieut. Frank G. Wentworth, of Co. F., as resigned, and his resignation has been accepted. The vacancy caused by this resignation is the only one in the regiment.
I regret to state that Quartermaster Hudson was thrown from a vicious horse ten days ago, and striking on the wheel of an army wagon, has one of his ribs broken, and was otherwise injured. His friends, however, will be glad to learn that he is rapidly recovering, and is already beginning to re-assume charge of his department.
Capt. W.E.F. Brown has been acting as Provost Marshall since the 7th has been here. He is now relieved by Capt. F.W. Sabine, of the Maine Regiment.
I witnessed the final dress parade of the 7th, last evening, and they appeared to great advantage. Lieut. Col Abbott was in command, and all the exercises were performed with precision and skill. A large number of the inhabitants of the post, and nearly all of the Maine regiment were present, and applauded the New Hampshire for their performance.
The Regiment embarked on the Boston for Hilton Head, early in the afternoon, presenting a very fine appearance as they marched through the streets to the wharf. They are now well on the way to Hilton Head, where they will remain until the final disposition of the troops there is settled on.....”
One year later, the Boston was scuttled after running aground near a Confederate battery. The New York Times article can be found here:
Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion*
September 15, 1862 - May 10, 1863
Duty in St. Augustine, Fla.
A letter signed "H.W. Baker Lt. 7th New Hampshire Infantry." Baker would be killed later that year during the assault on Fort Wagner.
It reads in part:
St. Augustine, Florida, February 18, 1863...
"....I, too, glory in being a Yankee, and glory in proclaiming it here, where the very word is detested...I see them here, eating the bread of charity and that charity coming from government that they have disowned, a government that their husbands, sons, brothers, and lovers are now in arms against - do it unblushingly and clamor about their rights!! Every mouthful ought to choke them.
Yankee though I be, I would grow my finger nails for a dinner, sooner than accept it of a man that I hated as they profess to hate us....We only garrison this old town, hel 'Old Abe' reposses Fort Marion and prevent this post being a use to Secession....More than 100 of our men have died since the Regt. was organized. The climate works noiselessly but its victims are as sure as those claimed by the bullet...We have built entrenchments to prevent a rebel dash from that direction as there are prowling bands of guerillas between us and the St. Johns. They sometimes show themselves on the otherside of the river, or on the Jacksonville wall, but they are sneaking scoundrels, used more to keep up the reign of terror in the country back of us, than with any design to operate against us. The country is very favorable for their operations...Occasionally there are patches of tolerably fertile soil on these are settled a race of people calling themselves white - a race peculiar to the South and called by the cotton lords 'Crackers' - by the negroes 'poor white trash.' They are poor, ignorant and chiefly vicious. They work but little some own a few negroes, they raise corn, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, cattle, horses and hogs. The livestock (excepting the negroes) runs at large in the woods...Since we have been here, there has been three companies of these guerillas in this region, sometimes between us and the St. Johns, at others hovering about the vicinity of Jacksonville. Once a week, a gunboat goes up the river, to prevent batteries being built along its shores. These fellows have a wholesome respect for the Gunboats, when they show themselves these valiant horseman 'skeddadle' for the back country to come back when the boat is gone..."
The letter was sold at auction in 2006.
Baker's entry from Henry Little's Roster of the Seventh:
"Baker, Henry W. Co. E: b. Loudon; age 37; res. Boscawell; enl Nov. 7, '61, as Pri.; app. 2 Lt. nov. 12, '61 must. in Nov. 12, '61, as 2 Lt.; killed July 18, '63, Ft. Wagner, S.C."
Of the Battle of Fort Wagner, Little mentions Baker here:
"Five officers fell before reaching the moat which surrounded the work. Of the line, Captain Brown and Lieutenants Cate, Baker, Bennett, and Bryant, fell dead on or near the works. Captain Leavitt lived until he reached Charleston. Captain House died of his wounds in October, and Lieutenants Davis and Worcester died on board transports, after they were exchanged. All other wounded officers recovered. It is an historical fact that in this assault the Seventh New Hampshire lost more officers than any other regiment in any one engagement during the war" (Little, pg. 126).
"An
inquiry has been very general among the troupe of this command for the
famous General order No. 11, current series of this Department. We
reprint it for the gratification of all concerned, merely adding that it
is in full force and effect. True, the Northern newspapers published
what purported to be a disavowal of the President of the United States
of Gen. Hunter's action in this particular matter, but we learn that no
official notification of that disavowal has been received.
GENERAL ORDERS.—NO. 11.
HEAD-QUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, HILTON HEAD, S. C. May 9, 1862.
The
three States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, comprising the
Military Department of the South, having deliberately declared
themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of
America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it
becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This
was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and
martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The
persons in these three States—Georgia, South Carolina, and
Florida—heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever
free.
DAVID
HUNTER, Major-General Commanding. ED. W. SMITH, Acting Assistant
Adjutant-General."
From the New South newspaper, 1862, August 23, Saturday, Page 4
The response from Lincoln via Secretary of State Seward according to Harper's Weekly:
THE
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.
The
following proclamation by the President of the United States is
published:
Whereas,
there appears in the public prints what purports to be a proclamation
of Major-General Hunter, in the words and figures following, to wit:
GENERAL
ORDERS.—NO. 11.
HEAD-QUARTERS,
DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, HILTON HEAD, S. C. May 9, 1862.
The
three States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, comprising the
Military Department of the South, having deliberately declared
themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of
America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it
becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This
was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and
martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The
persons in these three States—Georgia, South Carolina, and
Florida—heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever
free.
DAVID
HUNTER, Major-General Commanding. ED. W. SMITH, Acting Assistant
Adjutant-General.
And
whereas, the same is producing some excitement and misunderstanding,
Therefore
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and
declare that the Government of the United States had no knowledge or
belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a
proclamation, nor has it yet any authentic information that the
document is genuine; and, further, that neither General Hunter nor
any other commander or person has been authorized by the Government
of the United States to make proclamation declaring the slaves of any
State free, and that the supposed proclamation now in question,
whether genuine or false, is altogether void so far as respects such
declaration.
I
further make known, that whether it be competent for me, as
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any
State or States free, and whether at any time, or in any case, it
shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the
Government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which,
under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not
feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field.
These are totally different questions from those of police
regulations in armies and camps.
On
the 6th day of March last, by a special message, I recommended to
Congress the adoption of a joint resolution, to be substantially as
follows:
Resolved,
That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may
adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State, in its
discretion, compensation for the inconveniences, public and private,
produced by such change of system.
The
resolution, in the language above quoted, was adopted by large
majorities in both branches of Congress, and now stands an authentic,
definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people
most immediately interested in the subject-matter. To the people of
these States I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue. I beseech you to
make the arguments for yourselves. You can not, if you would, be
blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged
consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and
partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common
object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The
change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not
rending or wrecking any thing. Will you not embrace it? So much good
has not been done by one effort in all past times as in the
Providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast
future not have to lament that you have neglected it.
In
witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this
19th day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the
eighty-sixth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President—
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