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.
I was rewatching Dear America and It made me curious about the difference between the US phrase "hold down the fort" vs the British "hold the fort". Is it just linguistic drift of the phrase "hold the fort" or is there some greater reason for it?
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The title comes from a famous incident of the American Civil War. In October, 1864, when Union troops were trapped in a fort at Allatoona Pass, near Atlanta, General Sherman sent a message which was signalled by flags from mountain to mountain: "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming." Despite heavy attacks, the men held the fort until Sherman's army rescued them.
Question: We so enjoy your column. Here's our question for you: Where does the expression "hold the fort" come from? Was it popularized by a Civil War general named Corse? My spouse and I have a bet awaiting your response.
In October 1864, having just captured Atlanta, Sherman prepared for his "March to the Sea." Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood of the Confederacy, Sherman's adversary in the battle for Atlanta, decided to cut off Sherman's supplies and communications coming in by rail. Sherman believed Hood was moving his army to Rome, Ga., and sent Corse there to defend the city.
Hood's plan to attack the railroad pass at Allatoona soon became apparent, however, and Sherman ordered Corse to move his army to defend the pass. Corse's men had established three lines of entrenchments, two on an outer ridge and one at a fort at the top of the mountain overlooking the pass, in time for the arrival of the Confederates. Confederate Gen. Samuel French demanded that Corse surrender "to avoid a needless effusion of blood," to which Corse responded, "We are prepared for the needless effusion of blood whenever it is agreeable to you."
The fighting was extraordinarily fierce. The Confederates forced Corse's division to move from the outer entrenchments up to the fort. Corse himself was shot in the face, and he lay unconscious for a time. Upon regaining consciousness, he sent a message, "I am short a cheekbone and one ear, but am able to whip all hell yet." During the course of the battle, Sherman had signaled his intention to send relief with the message, "Hold the fort, for we are coming." Corse sent Sherman the message, "We hold out. Corse here." In reality, Sherman sent no reinforcements. French, however, was unable to take the fort despite repeated attacks, and, having already suffered the loss of nearly 800 of his men, he withdrew and moved north. Despite his injury and over 700 Union casualties, Corse had repelled the Confederate attack.
A popular hymn, "Hold the Fort" by Philip P. Bliss, was inspired by the battle, and it was this hymn that established "hold the fort" as a common phrase. Today, Allatoona is a site on the Blue and Gray Trail in Georgia.
This was an old hymn sung in the church when I was a boy. When it was sung, all the men would go into their pockets and bring out a white handkerchiefs. They would hold it in their hands, and stretch their hands high up in the air, then wave their handkerchiefs, as they sung the song. Hold the fort, for I am a coming.
On the 5Th of October in 1864, During the American civil war, at Altoona Pass in Atlanta, Georgia . 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 the command of General French were detailed by Hood to take the position. They 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.
Robinson gives five examples of expressions that can give offense: "Black and Tan", "hold down the fort", "going Dutch", "rule of thumb", and "handicap". The first one is straightforward, as explained by Maura Judkis, "'Black and Tan' shoes force Nike apology", Washington Post 3/15/2012:
According to They Never Said It, this message was invented by reporters, no more trustworthy then than now, who combined two dispatches ("Hold out!" and "I am coming") into one ("Hold the fort! I am coming"). But in any case, it referred to holding the fort against Confederate soldiers, not against Native Americans.
As for the "hold down the fort" variant, I was not able to find any evidence of an origin related to Indian wars, or even of any significant amount of use in that connection. The earliest example that Google Books knows about seems to be in a 1948 edition of Billboard magazine, in the Coinmen You Know section:
[(myl) That's a reasonable position, though it's a form of the "crazies win" doctrine, which some people object to across the board, and others try to limit to cases where the crazies really have won. But Mr. Robinson's column doesn't say "some people falsely believe that hold the fort originates in racist stereotyping of Native Americans as savage attackers, and so you should be careful in using that expression". Instead, he says "To 'hold down the fort' originally meant to watch and protect against the vicious Native American intruders." This is joining the crazies, not just promoting "crazies win".
But I don't recall Robinson's supposed etymology being used much as an argument against it; what I remember being argued is that "handicapped" was too closely associated with oldfashioned attitudes towards disability, quite out of place in a modern Britain that was requiring public buildings to install access ramps and so forth. The argument, as I recall it, was basically about connotations, not etymology.
As J.W. Brewer says, you're down to empirical questions that have nothing to do with linguistics. "Dutch treat" is an expression that is designed to offend, even if it doesn't. "Hold the fort" is an expression not designed to offend, even though it might (but does not, other than in some people's imaginations).
Here's another early use of "handicap":
"After this we drank very smartly, but, I forgot not all this while my design on him. After that I had pitied him, and lamented his sad misfortune, I thought it high time to put my Plot in execution, in order thereunto I demanded what difference he would take between my Hat and his, his Cloak and mine, there being small matter of advantage in the exchange, we agreed to go to [H] handicap. In fine, There was not any thing about us of waring cloaths but we interchanged, scarce had I un-cased my self, and put on my Friends cloaths, but in came one that had dogged me, attended by the Consta|ble, with a Warrant to seize me, who they knew by no other token but my Boarding-Mistresses Sons garments, I had stolen for my escape."
Head, Richard, 1637?-1686?
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There are so many negative phrases using the word "Dutch" that when I learned to fly I assumed that the phrase "Dutch roll" began as a slur, too. (A Dutch roll involves rocking the wings back and forth with the nose held on a straight course and the tail swinging back and forth.) It turns out , though, that it derives from a rolling motion characteristic of Dutch sailing ships back in the day. I've also wondered about "Chinese pass" (flying straight in a crosswind with the wing on the side from which the wind is blowing held low).
Dave K.: I think that's largely true (the "popular perception" point) but there are two sides to it. A particular word/phrase may have come to be used in a derogatory fashion even if it started out as the polite/euphemistic word for the (socially-marginal) group in question (e.g. "retarded" may have started out as a polite/quasi-scientific word to describe developmental delays in children but by the time of my own childhood had morphed into a playground insult). Or (not that these are always mutually exclusive) some politically-salient fraction of members of the group in question may a) come to feel that the word/phrase has taken on the negative baggage of their problematic social situation even if outsiders continue to use it primarily in situations where they are being, by their own lights, polite and respectful (which of course could still be interpreted on the other side as patronizing/condescending); AND b) believe that getting everyone else in society to start using a new and different word/phrase would itself change things and improve the group's social situation. The second half seems to have a lot of magical thinking and perhaps pop-Whorfian assumptions built into it, and has always reminded me of an anecdote I heard in an undergraduate sociolinguistics class about an ethnolinguistic group (maybe somewhere in or near Indonesia?) where if a child got really sick you changed the child's name and everyone in the community made sure never to use the old name, which so confused the evil spirits which were causing the disease that they would leave the child alone. But this gets us back to the crazies-win problem, and the fact that many many people of political salience in our society have strongly held views on matters about language that are at odds with the scientific view of the same issue that the tiny minority with formal training in liguistics would be likely to hold. But then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so that e.g. it really is the case that "gay" and "homosexual" are not pure synonyms because they have different connotative overtones. Thus, "handicap[ed]" in a non-golf context may have as an empirical matter fallen into the same semi-taboo zone as e.g. "Negro," even if through no fault of its own. ff782bc1db
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