Words & Music: , 1870. Bliss wrote this song af­ter hear­ing re­late the fol­low­ing in­ci­dent from the Amer­i­can ci­vil war:

Just before [Will­iam Te­cum­seh] Sher­man be­gan his fa­mous march to the sea in 1864, and while his ar­my lay camped in the neigh­bor­hood of Atlanta [Georgia] on the 5th of Oc­to­ber, the ar­my of Hood, in a care­ful­ly pre­pared move­ment, passed the right flank of Sher­man’s ar­my, gained his rear, and com­menced the de­struction of the rail­road lead­ing north, burn­ing block­houses and cap­tur­ing the small gar­ri­sons along the line. Sher­man’s ar­my was put in ra­pid mo­tion pur­su­ing Hood, to save the sup­plies and larg­er posts, the prin­ci­pal one of which was lo­cat­ed at Al­too­na Pass. Gen­er­al Corse, of Il­li­nois, was sta­tioned there with about fif­teen hun­dred men, Col­o­nel Tour­te­lotte be­ing se­cond in com­mand. A mil­lion and a half ra­tions were stored here and it was high­ly im­port­ant that the earth­works com­mand­ing the pass and pro­tect­ing the sup­plies be held. Six thou­sand men un­der com­mand of Gen­e­ral French were de­tailed by Hood to take the po­si­tion. The works were com­plete­ly sur­round­ed and sum­moned to sur­rend­er. Corse re­fused and a sharp fight com­menced. The de­fend­ers were slow­ly driv­en in­to a small fort on the crest of the hill. Ma­ny had fall­en, and the re­sult seemed to ren­der a pro­long­a­tion of the fight hop­eless. At this mo­ment an of­fi­cer caught sight of a white sig­nal flag far away across the val­ley, twen­ty miles dis­tant, up­on the top of Ken­e­saw Mount­ain. The sig­nal was an­swered, and soon the mes­sage was waved across from moun­tain to moun­tain:

“Hold the fort; I am coming. W. T. Sher­man.”

Cheers went up; every man was nerved to a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the po­si­tion; and un­der a mur­der­ous fire, which killed or wound­ed more than half the men in the fort—Corse him­self bei­ng shot three times through the head, and Tour­te­lotte tak­ing com­mand, though himself bad­ly wound­ed—they held the fort for three hours un­til the ad­vance guard of Sherman’s ar­my came up. French was obliged to re­treat.

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