Hold the Fort!/The Talking Flag of Kennesaw
The Talking Flag of Kennesaw
"Hold the Fort" grew out of the Civil War Battle of Allatoona on 5 October 1864, the last action in the vicinity of Atlanta.[1] More particularly, it grew out of a report of one or more messages wigwagged from Kennesaw Mountain, north of Atlanta, as Confederate forces of Lieutenant General John B. Hood moved to cut the communications of Major General William T. Sherman along the line of the Western & Atlantic Railroad at Allatoona Pass, a fortified railroad cut.[2] (See cover illustration.)
Actually, there were at least three Signal Corps wigwag messages to the Allatoona garrison that separately or together could have inspired "Hold the Fort." Brigadier General William Vandever, Sherman's subordinate, signed and dispatched two of these messages on 4 October. One of them read: "Sherman is moving in force. Hold out." The second one read: "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming."[3] The third message, unsigned in the official published version, bore the initial of the signal officer on Kennesaw Mountain, according to the recollection of John Q. Adams, who as a second lieutenant had been in charge of the signal station where it was received on 5 October "before it became too hot for signaling." As published, this third message read: "Tell Allatoona hold on. General Sherman says he is working hard for you."[4]
Later, Allen D. Frankenberry, who had been on Kennesaw in October 1864 as a second-class private of the Signal Corps, claimed that "Hold the Fort" was inspired by the message that Sherman sent to Brigadier General John N. Corse at Rome, Georgia, ordering him to reinforce Allatoona. According to Frankenberry, this message, which he may have flagged, read: "Move your command to Allatoona. Hold the place. I will help you. Sherman."[5] Actually, however, Sherman's message to Corse to reinforce Allatoona, which Vandever sent on 4 October, was quite different: "Sherman directs you to move forward and join Smith's division with your entire command, using cars, if to be had, and burn provisions rather than lose them."[6] Another message on the same date, signed by Sherman, advised Corse and other commanding officers that the enemy was "moving on Allatoona" and "thence to Rome." Corse evidently received this message in due time, although its transmission was delayed by fog. In any case, because of related instructions and his knowledge of troop dispositions, the Vandever message was perfectly clear to Corse.[7]
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Still later, on 13 September 1913, George Carr Round, who had been a signal officer during the Civil War and was then president of the United States Veteran Signal Corps Association, visited Kennesaw Mountain while on a Civil War jubilee campaign in Georgia and Tennessee. There, on the site of the old signal station, from whence went out, as he put it, "the most important signal message ever sent in the history of war," he evidently repeated the message and had one of his companions sound "the trumpet of the Jubilee." He used what may have been Frankenberry's old signal flag (after borrowing it from the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania), perhaps the very one that got Corse on the road to Allatoona or that encouraged the garrison to hang on. Round also had with him a small flag that he had used while standing on the dome of the state capitol at Raleigh, North Carolina, and sending what he believed was the last message of the Civil War: "Peace on earth, good will to men." When he transmitted some of the old messages with the Allatoona flag during the jubilee campaign in Chattanooga his audience rose and, led by a choir, "sang 'Hold the Fort' with great spirit."[9]
The Battle of Allatoona was a brief but desperate struggle. With the retreat of the Confederates on the afternoon of 5 October it was accounted a Union victory, and Corse, summoning what humility he could, signaled Sherman: "I am short a cheek bone and one ear, but am able to whip all hell yet."[10] It is said, however, that in after years "no one dared twit" Corse "because his famous cheekbone and one ear were not missing, as his immortal signals had indicated in more strenuous times."[11] Major General Samuel G. French, Corse's opposite number at Allatoona, gave vent in his memoirs to an abiding frustration by denouncing both General Hood, who was his superior, and his Union opponent with fine impartiality. He was so bitter, in fact, that his publishers made him tone down his manuscript before publication because they were "ashamed of the language used" and fearful of seventeen possibly libelous passages.[12]
Sherman held Allatoona up to his armies as a model defense of a fortified place,[13] and the signaling between Kennesaw Mountain and Allatoona went into Signal Corps annals as perhaps the most famous of all Civil War signaling. Subsequently, Albert James Myer, the Army's first signal officer, was made a brigadier general by brevet "for distinguished service in organizing, instructing and commanding the Signal Corps . . . and for its especial service on October 5, 1864," that is, for its service at Allatoona, even though by the time of the battle Myer's appointment as colonel and chief signal officer had been revoked because of a dispute with the Secretary of War.[14] Frank A. West, a signalman at Allatoona, was so impressed with what happened there that he is said to have named a son Allatoona Pass West.
"Hold the Fort" was not the first artistic by-product of the Battle of Allatoona, but it was the only one that was to attain anything approximating folk status. It was preceded in 1866 by Caroline Stickney's long narrative poem, "The Flag that Talks," of which the following are representative verses:
O Talking Flag, thy worth if ever proving,
We hailed the distant glass;
Atlanta heard: "The foe at Acworth, moving
On Allatoona Pass."
Quick came the answer—"Signal for assistance
To General Corse at Rome;
Let the Pass garrison show firm resistance
Till reinforcements come—"[15]
Inevitably, Allatoona was the subject of at least two "dramas." One of these, Allatoona, an Historical and Military Drama in Five Acts (the omission of the first act of which would in "no way interfere with the plot"), was written by Brevet Major General Judson Kilpatrick, who had commanded one of Sherman's cavalry divisions at the time of the Battle of Allatoona, and J. Owen Moore. Samuel French & Company, better known for its Ten Nights in a Bar Room, published the play in 1875. As the battle is about to begin—three pages before the final curtain—Corse (to whom the work is dedicated) asks Miss Helen Dunbar, the heroine, to retire at once. She does so and the battle is on. When Corse is wounded, the hero asks if the general is dead, to which Corse responds: "No. I am worth a hundred dead men yet, and I'll defend this post." At this juncture, Corse's signal officer reads a signal on Kennesaw Mountain by which Sherman tells Allatoona to "hold on" and "not give up, [for] we are coming to your aid." To this Corse replies: "We have repulsed them twice. Half my head is gone, but we will hold this place or die."[18] In 1930 Christopher Morley "revised and edified" an adaptation of Allatoona under the title The Blue and the Gray, or, War Is Hell.
In Allatoona, a Play in Four Acts, by Samuel H. M. Byers, the heroine, Miss Laura Gillford, who has learned signaling with her "berry girls," substitutes for Sherman's signal officer, who is "dead at his post." Calling Allatoona for Sherman, Laura receives the message that "Corse—is—here!" The battle rages fiercely with the enemy's 5,000 men (there were actually only somewhat more than three-fifths of this number) pressing Corse from all sides. The situation being critical, Sherman commands Laura to send a message to Allatoona that the fort must be held, that reinforcements—"ten thousand under Howard"—are coming. As a consequence of this message Corse holds out, and the first half of the play comes to an end. In its last half, Laura's dear love, Private Eldred Marshall, performs such great feats of bravery that just before the curtain falls (to the tune of "Marching through Georgia") Sherman kisses Laura, joins her hands with those of Eldred, and tells the happy twain: "Two gold medals are being made—one for the soldier who spiked the guns at Gordon Pass, and one for the girl who saved Allatoona."[19]