Hold the Fort!/In the Athens of America

by Paul J. Scheips

In the Athens of America

Bliss no doubt sang "Hold the Fort" countless times as he went up and down the land in his last years, although Sankey recalled that his friend "hoped that he would not be known to posterity only as the author of 'Hold the Fort,' for he believed that he had written many better songs."^[72] As fate would have it, of course, when Bliss's commemorative monument was erected in 1877 in Rome, Pennsylvania—with contributions from thirty-six states and territories, and from England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, India, and the West Indies—there was inscribed on its front, facing the road, these words: "Erected by the Sunday Schools of the United States and Great Britain in response to the invitation of D. L. Moody as a memorial to Philip P. Bliss, author of Hold the Fort and other gospel songs." When Sankey sang "Hold the Fort" at the unveiling ceremony, the choir and congregation joined in the chorus.^[73]

Letter from Major General William T. Sherman to William E. Dodge commenting on "Hold the Fort." (Photo courtesy of Fred E. Brown, Houston, Texas.)

Ira Sankey continued to sing "Hold the Fort," although his friend Fanny Crosby, the famous blind singer, thought that "The Ninety and Nine," for which Elizabeth C. Clephane wrote the words and Sankey composed the music, was the most popular of the songs he sang.^[74] As the leading gospel singer of his day he undoubtedly did more than any of his contemporaries to popularize Bliss's songs, as well as those of other writers. At the same time, according to Richard Ellsworth Day, Bliss's music "was the very foundation of Sankey's great career."^[75] It is not surprising, in any case, that the songs he sang in Moody's services should have become known as "the Moody and Sankey hymns,"^[76] and so it was by that name that William Tecumseh Sherman knew them.

Sherman did not hear about "Hold the Fort" until June 1875, when the song was already five years old. He learned about it from William E. Dodge, who probably was a friend of Moody's and was a member of a committee that administered the income from the various editions of Gospel Hymns, as later editions of Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs were known.^[77] Writing Dodge, Sherman remarked that he "was glad to know for the first time that one of [the] hymns of Messrs Moody & Sankey was founded on the defence of Alatoona [sic] Ga." In signaling "the fact of our coming," he added, "I do not think I used the words—'Hold the Fort'; that however was the duty of the garrison and they did it nobly—Manfully." French, the Confederate commander at Allatoona, also came to know "Hold the Fort," observing it was sung "wherever the cross is seen and Christianity prevails." As Fred Brown points out, it evidently escaped French that he could be taken for the prototype of Satan in Bliss's second verse: "See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on."^[78]

In 1876 Moody and Sankey held revival meetings in the Hippodrome in New York City.^[79] Early in 1877, shortly after the death of Bliss, the revivalists, refusing to be intimidated by Bostonian culture, carried their evangelism to the Athens of America. Actually, they had been invited by representatives of a number of Boston churches, and a brick tabernacle—said to be "much the smallest, though one of the pleasantest, of the series of great buildings erected for the Moody and Sankey revival meetings"—was built to receive them.^[80] Frances E. Willard, the temperance advocate, conducted women's meetings, which were a feature of the Moody services.^[81] During one tabernacle meeting at which Sankey sang "Hold the Fort," Phillips Brooks came over from Trinity Church and "pronounced the benediction."^[82]

Moody preaching at the Hippodrome in New York City, 1876. Sankey is behind the organ at right; Dodge is second from left. (Library of Congress photo of illustration by C. S. Reinhart in Harper's Weekly, vol. 20, 11 March 1876.)

The meetings in Boston, which went on for weeks, were a great success. There was, however, a somewhat profane Boston journalist—I. A. M. Cumming, as he styled himself—who covered the revival meetings for "the spiciest paper in New England," the Boston Sunday Times (circulation 60,000), and then published a collection of his revival pieces under the title Tabernacle Sketches, with illustrations by an equally irreverent artist named Haskell.^[83] Cumming claimed that Sankey had first realized his powers of song one night on the western prairies when he frightened off a band of Apaches, who were about to attack his party, by striking up "What Shall the Harvest Be?" According to Cumming, the braves "thought they had been surprised by at least five thousand Sioux warriors."^[84]

"Hold the Fort," of course, was more than Cumming and Haskell could resist. Early in the meetings, commenting upon the choir's rendition of "Hold the Fort," Cumming thought he ought not speak of Bliss's earthly melodies since the author was now departed, but Haskell nevertheless sketched some of the choir members in the front row, mouths open,

A page from Tabernacle Sketches, which satirized the Moody and Sankey revival meetings in Boston, 1877. (Library of Congress photo.)

singing Bliss's song. He also contributed several rather unflattering drawings of Moody and Sankey themselves.^[85] In one piece Cumming claimed that he heard "the enterprising gamins of the gutter" sing a new version of "Hold the Fort" around the tabernacle every night, and Haskell sketched a gamin so engaged. This latest version, according to Cumming, was:

Hold the forks, the knives are coming,
The plates are on the way,
Shout the chorus to your neighbor,
Sling the hash this way.^[86]

As the reporter entered the tabernacle one Sunday, according to a Haskell sketch, Dr. Eben Tourjée, the choirmaster,^[87] requested "the entire audience to sing 'Hold the Fort for I.A.M. Cumming.'"^[88]

A page from Tabernacle Sketches, which satirized the Moody and Sankey revival meetings in Boston, 1877. (Library of Congress photo.)

Some there were, of course, who were unamused by Cumming and Haskell. One writer, referring to "Hold the Forks," declared that Cumming was "a particularly vicious writer," some of whose "columns were as bitter as a man could write." Another referred to "the sensational and even impious attacks of the enemies of evangelical truth, who treat the revivalists and their labors as objects for caricature and derision." A recent writer finds that Cumming's satires "are funny," although "somewhat unfair."^[89]

In 1877 a gift edition of Bliss's song came out as a small book under the title Hold the Fort and inscribed to General W. T. Sherman. On the cover is a gilt angel carrying in one hand a waving banner bearing the title and in the other a crown; the background shows a branch from the tree of life with a serpent intertwined. The book itself consists of the words and music of the song, embellished with many illustrations.^[90] The same year a Swedish version, a free translation of "Hold the Fort," came out in Chicago under the title "Hållen Fästet." It begins, "Upp! kamrater, se banaret Fladdrande framgår!" and the chorus runs: "'Hållen fästet, tills jag kommer,' Jesus manar än: 'Herre, med din nåd wi wilja,' Swarom Frälsaren."^[91]

"Hållen Fästet" should not be confused with the song "Hold Fast Till I Come," whose chorus runs:

Hold fast till I come,
Hold fast till I come;
A bright crown awaits thee;
Hold fast till I come.^[92]

Drawing by Haskell in Tabernacle Sketches depicting boy singing a parody of "Hold the Fort!" outside the Boston Tabernacle. (Library of Congress photo.)

Bliss wrote the music for this song, but the words were by a Chicago woman named Griswold, whose nom de plume, Paulina, sometimes caused her to be mistaken for Mrs. Bliss. Whittle thought that this song "probably" was the last one that Bliss sang on earth.^[93] It is interesting that one of the Kennesaw-Allatoona messages of 4 October 1864 read: "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming." The language of this message is reminiscent of Revelations 2:25 ("But that which ye have already hold fast till I come"), which sometimes appears as a text for "Hold the Fort."

Chorus of "Hold the Fort" in an ornate hardcover edition of the sheet music, 1877. (Library of Congress photo.)

William R. Moody, son of the great evangelist and Whittle's son-in-law, observed in 1930 that many of the old gospel songs "were of little permanent value" and that "many Moody himself outgrew." Indeed, he recalled that his father would say: "We have been singing 'Hold the Fort'

Chorus of "Hold the Fort" in an ornate hardcover edition of the sheet music, 1877. (Library of Congress photo.)

too long," for "it is not a question of keeping a stronghold, but of aggressive warfare."^[94] Although the elder Moody may have tired of it, others certainly did not. When Billy Sunday, Moody's famous successor,^[95] planned a day for old soldiers in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1908, he did not forget Bliss's song. It was reported that he wanted "a choir of 500 cultured voices to sing that revival song, 'Hold the Fort,' which was based on the battle of Allatoona," as well as somebody "to explain the salient points of that battle of all battles . . . the inspiration of that song."^[96] Probably he was told to expect some Allatoona veterans in his audience, since men from several Illinois regiments had fought at Allatoona Pass.

In 1931 Homer A. Rodeheaver, a longtime colleague of Sunday's, published a little book containing historical notes on and suggestions for using gospel songs, one of which was "Hold the Fort" or, as he (and others) called it, "Ho! My Comrades." "Because of its appeal to the bravery of the human race," he said, "men love to sing this song. It is very effective as a challenge song, but in regular congregational singing it is good for men." It would make "for a bit of unusual use of this song," he thought, if a soloist or a choir sang the first part of the chorus and the congregation, while "waving their hands or their handkerchiefs," sang in response: "Wave the answer back to heaven. 'By Thy grace we will.'"^[97]

One of the most memorable events of the author's school days was a chapel program presented by Sunday and Rodeheaver at Central High School, Evansville, Indiana, sometime between the fall of 1927 and the spring of 1931. Billy Sunday, his natty attire accented by spats, drove home an evangelical point by leaping onto a table while Rodeheaver made the rafters ring with his sliding trombone.

The 1940 edition of The Broadman Hymnal, widely used in Southern Baptist churches, carries "Hold the Fort."^[98] In a biographical sketch of Bliss, Charles A. Kent calls it a "deathless song," although he does not list it among his Fifty Great Songs of the Church.^[99] As recently as 1956 one or more copies of the last edition of Gospel Hymns—this being Gospel Hymns 1–6—could still be purchased from the Theodore Presser Company of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, successor to the old John Church Company. By the spring of 1959, however, that grand old book had gone "permanently out of print" and no copy was to be had.^[100]

A representative of the Billy Graham Crusade remarked in 1960 that despite The Broadman Hymnal the Southern Baptist churches no longer sang "Hold the Fort" very often. He thought it was not a good song to use today, anyhow, because people outside the United States might misunderstand the reference in the first line to "comrades."^[101] Yet, the old gospel song remained alive and refused to disappear from the scene. The very next year, speaking on the morning radio program "Look to this Day," the Reverend Mr. Robert Sutty, pastor of the Temple Baptist Church, Washington, D.C, took as part of his text a quotation from the chorus.^[102] Indeed, as recently as 1966 the Gospel Publishing House of Springfield, Missouri, published Ramona Crabtree's choral arrangement of "Hold the Fort" in the "Melody Choral Series." It was not a best seller, "just an old time song . . . loved by a lot of people"; even so, its sales were "average for choral arrangements."^[103]

Such is the history of the 100-year-old gospel song as sacred music. But "Hold the Fort" attained such popularity that it inevitably achieved a secular life as well.