Allatoona Pass: Hold On, We Are Coming

By October of eighteen sixty-four, Atlanta had fallen, but the war in Georgia was not over. Confederate General John Bell Hood had taken his Army of Tennessee north, aiming to sever Sherman's supply line along the Western and Atlantic Railroad and draw the Union army out of Atlanta. The most vulnerable point was a narrow railroad cut through solid rock here at Allatoona Pass, where Sherman had stockpiled vast amounts of rations.

Hood dispatched Major General Samuel French with three thousand two hundred seventy-six men to destroy the railroad bridge over the Etowah River and capture the Union supply depot at Allatoona. Standing in their way: Brigadier General John Corse and about two thousand twenty-five Union defenders, dug into fortifications on both sides of the pass.

From a hilltop miles away, Sherman spotted the Confederate approach and sent a signal-flag message across the mountains: hold on, we are coming. Whether Corse received it before the assault began is uncertain. What is certain is that he held.

The fighting on October fifth was among the most savage of the entire war. Four hours of close combat, much of it hand-to-hand, in a space barely wider than a country road. Of roughly five thousand three hundred total men engaged, more than sixteen hundred were killed or wounded, a casualty rate that would have been notable even at Gettysburg. Corse himself was wounded in the face. He later wired Sherman that he was, quote, 'short a cheek bone and one ear, but able to whip all hell yet.'

French withdrew without capturing the pass. The railroad remained open. Hood's campaign would end in catastrophe two months later at Nashville.

Allatoona became famous as proof that a small, determined garrison in good ground could stop a force more than half again as large. Gospel songwriter Philip Bliss later wrote a hymn inspired by Sherman's signal-flag message: 'Hold the Fort, for I am coming,' which spread through revival meetings across America for a generation.