Vogel Paula - A Civil War Christmas an American musical celebration

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow/Chorus and Company

Bugles and drums fade into a winter wind as the Company comes on singing.

(Women hum.)

MEN:

And their tents in the rays of the clear winter moon

And the light of the campfires are gleaming

ALL:

Theres only the sound of the lone sentrys tread

MEN:

As he tramps from the rock to the fountain.

(Women hum.)

CHORUS 1: Welcome to our story. The season is upon us, and whether its Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or New Yearsits a time when we feel our connection to a larger community.

CHORUS 2: Our story takes place in the bustling city of Washington, D.C., and along the Potomac River. The Potomac has as many twists and turns as our story tonight: but heres all you need to know. On the northern side of the riverEdwards Ferry, the District of Columbia and Point Lookout. On the southern side, anywhere you can rowa presidential assassin might find safe harbor.

CHORUS 3: Most winters, December is gentle on the land that borders the Potomac: you can smell the promise of tilled earth and the harvest to come.

CHORUS 4 (Singing):

Sleep in heavenly peace

CHORUS 5: But not that blustery December of 1864. Four years of the most brutal harvesting of men have raged across both banks of this river.

CHORUS 4 (Singing):

Sleep in heavenly peace.

CHORUS 5: As if in wrath, the heavens have blasted the swift Potomac with ice from Edwards Ferry all the way to Washington, so thick with ice you could almost step across.

CHORUS 6: On the northern side of the Potomac, nurses at the Armory Hospital pile blankets on the rows of Union soldiers in their beds.

(The wind howls.)

Its going to be a cold one tonight.

CHORUS 7: Five hundred miles to the north of Armory Hospital, the same blustery wind rattles a poets windows in Massachusetts. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow paces in his Cambridge study; all day hed had some strange feeling in his bones as he listened to the wind. And so Longfellow put another log on his fire, sat at his desk, put pen in hand and wrote:

LONGFELLOW/CHORUS (Spoken):

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

(Singing:)

I thought how, as the day had come

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

WILLY MACK/CHORUS: And across the banks of the Potomac, three wise men sit and stare into their fires. Our first wise man stares into the very future itself. And just as he has for the past thirty years of his life, Willy Mack serves his Master, General Robert E. Lee.

(Willy Mack presents a mug.)

LEE: What is that?

WILLY MACK: Liquid gold, Marse Bob: one hundred percent Yankee coffee.

LEE: No thank you. I still have the taste of that pisswater you brewed me last timebrewed twigs, barkhow did you get the water to turn brown? Second thoughtdo not tell me.

WILLY MACK: I gave you what the men are drinking during the siege. But nowsmell it.

LEE (Breathes it in): O Lordits actually coffee.

WILLY MACK: A gift from Colonel Mosby. One of his Raiders made it through the lines. Merry Christmas.

LEE (Inhales one more time): No. Thank you. If my men cant have coffee, I cant have coffee. Please present it to the officers with my compliments.

WILLY MACK: Yes, sir.

(Pause. We hear a halfhearted refrain by the men of O Come All Ye Faithful, which then dies out.)

Your men are too cold to sleep... Sir? You should turn in.

LEE: If my men cant sleep, I cant sleep. (Beat) Weve lost.

WILLY MACK: Yes sir... you have.

(Lee looks at Willy Mack.)

We have.

LEE: I would gladly spill every drop of my blood if it would save my country.

WILLY MACK: Itd be a waste of blood now, Marse Bob... Sir? I should deliver this coffee before it turns cold...

LEE: Yes, yes, go on...

(Willy Mack withdraws, lifts the mug in a toast.)

WILLY MACK/CHORUS: To the officers! (He drains the cup: Ahhhh. To us) Lee would stay up with his men tonight until dawn. How he longed to hear the bells of Christ Church in Alexandria once again! For the bells in every church in the South had fallen silent, melted into cannonballs.

LEE (Singing):

Then from each guns accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

PARKER/CHORUS: And less than a mile away, enter Ely Parker, Seneca Indian, and aide-de-camp. Parker waited on his friend, a down-on-his-luck harness salesman whom Parker had befriended in Illinois a few years before.

CHORUS 2: You know what the moral of this story is? Be kind to clerks, secretaries and harness salesmen because you never know when they will end up to be

PARKER: General Grant, sir. Merry Christmas.

CHORUS 2: Parker had his secret orders from the Secretary of War Stanton himself:

STANTON/CHORUS: For the sake of the Union! Keep General Grant on the wagon for the duration of the war.

PARKER: Fresh-brewed coffee, sir.

(Parker presents the mug.)

GRANT: Id rather drink my way into Christmas Oblivion.

PARKER: No sense in wasting good coffee...

(Grant reluctantly sips the coffee.)

GRANT: Its very good...

(Parker watches until Grant drains the cup.)

There! Satisfied?

PARKER: Is there anything else I may get for you?

GRANT: Oh, stop being my nursemaid and join me!

(The two men warm themselves by the fire. Suddenly a boisterous burst of music from Grants men, erupting into laughter.)

Our men are merry tonight... God forgive me, Parker. I have walked across a bridge made from the bodies of my fallen men, three men thick. But if I could, I would walk on that bridge of bodies all the way to Richmond tonight, and finish this bloody business off! But... its Christmas Eve.

(The two men relax; suddenly, in the silence, another clatter from the mess tent.)

Men in camp awaiting their Christmas dinner... its music.

(Beat) I will never feel more peaceful than this night.

PARKER (To us): For the hope of peace is sweeter than peace itself.

GRANT AND PARKER (Singing):

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Music under as lights rise on Abraham Lincoln.