Allatoona

On October 5, 1864, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Allatoona in Bartow County, Georgia, in what became known as the Battle of Allatoona Pass. This clash marked the opening major action of the Franklin-Nashville Campaign during the American Civil War. Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French led a Confederate division against Union defenders stationed there under Brig. Gen. John M. Corse, seeking to drive them from their fortified post guarding the rail line running through the pass. Despite the assault, French's men could not force Corse's garrison from its defenses.

Battle

In the predawn hours of October 5, French's division took up positions near Allatoona Gap, setting the stage for what would follow. At seven in the morning the fighting opened as eleven bronze 12 pounder Napoleon guns, all of Confederate manufacture, opened fire on the Union works. Manning these pieces were two batteries of Myrick's Artillery Battalion, specifically Capt. Alcide Bouanchaud's Louisiana battery and Capt. James J. Cowan's battery from Warren County, Mississippi, along with a battery drawn from Storr's Artillery Battalion within French's division, Capt. R. F. Kolb's Alabama battery. Separately, French dispatched a single gun to compel the surrender of a blockhouse standing a few miles off along Allatoona Creek. On the defending side, six guns belonging to the 12th Wisconsin Battery returned fire against the Confederate cannon.

Two hours of shelling passed before French sent word demanding that Corse yield the position, an offer Corse declined. French answered this refusal by sending his troops forward, with Sears' brigade striking from the north toward the rear of the Union defenses while Cockrell's Missouri brigade, backed by Young, pressed in from the west.

Corse's soldiers held on through this relentless two-hour assault on the Star Fort, the primary stronghold positioned west of the railroad cut, though they found themselves pinned in place and in need of help. Tourtellotte accordingly sent men from the fort on the eastern side to bolster the line. As the pressure mounted, a Federal surrender began to look like only a matter of time, yet around midday French learned from his cavalry scouts that a sizable Union force was moving in from Acworth. This news prompted him to pull his men back at two o'clock that afternoon. By the following morning, additional Union reinforcements arriving from Rome had reached Allatoona.

French's surrender request and Corse's reply

Under a flag of truce, Confederate commander French dispatched a note to his Union counterpart, Corse, demanding submission of his troops.

French declared that he had arranged his men so as to encircle the Union position entirely, and urged that further bloodshed served no purpose. He insisted on an unconditional surrender, giving Corse only five minutes to make up his mind. Compliance, French promised, would earn the defeated men honorable treatment as prisoners of war.

Corse wasted no time responding. He confirmed that he had received French's ultimatum, then turned the Confederate's own words back on him, remarking dryly that his forces stood ready for that "needless effusion of blood" at whatever moment French found convenient.

Aftermath

Though fought on a modest scale, Allatoona proved brutal, with casualty rates that shocked observers: the Union side lost 706 men, roughly 200 of them taken prisoner, while Confederate losses reached 897. General and President U.S. Grant later praised Corse's defense in his own autobiography. Corse himself had been wounded in the fighting, and the day afterward he wired Sherman a defiant line: he was missing a cheekbone and an ear, he said, but remained fit to whip all hell. For his part, French failed to capture either the railroad cut or the Federal garrison holding it, and he particularly lamented leaving behind roughly a million rations he could neither seize nor destroy before pulling his men back.

Sherman's flag signal urging the defenders to hold the fort, coupled with his promise that help was on the way, later inspired a beloved hymn. Chicago evangelist Philip P. Bliss wrote "Hold the Fort," whose refrain, "Hold the fort, for I am coming," eventually passed into everyday speech as a common phrase.

A stubborn legend has grown up claiming that Sherman's signal was empty bluster, that no troops were actually dispatched to Corse's aid, and that French, misled by false word of approaching Union reinforcements threatening to sever him from Hood's Army of Tennessee, called off his assault out of unfounded fear. Even a brief look at the record undercuts this story. Sherman himself remembered ordering the Twenty-Third Corps under Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox westward toward Allatoona, with instructions to torch houses and brush along the route so as to simulate an approaching relief force. He further recalled directing the remainder of the army toward Allatoona as well. Cox's men were meant to block French from rejoining the Confederate main force, and although they showed up too late either to help defend Allatoona or to trap French, Sherman noted afterward that his command still managed to pick up several ambulances and stragglers along that road.

Examining the actual orders issued that day tells a different story, however. By two in the afternoon, when French had already begun withdrawing and any relief effort would have come too late to matter, Sherman had merely instructed Cox and the Twenty-Third Corps to position themselves north and east of Kennesaw Mountain, guiding them there to guard the right flank of the Fourteenth Corps after a full day's march north from Atlanta. A signal officer noted that Cox had only passed through Marietta by three o'clock that afternoon. Not until October 6, a full day after the fighting ended, did Sherman instruct Cox to have a brigade prepared to move out the following morning. That brigade did not depart Big Shanty until dawn on the 7th and reached Allatoona only around eleven that morning, two full days after the battle had concluded. Sherman's recollection, in other words, was simply mistaken. He did direct Cox to scout the Dallas-Acworth Road on the 7th, but the fires lit along that route were meant to let Sherman track his progress from atop Kennesaw Mountain, not to fool French.

The nearest thing to an actual reinforcement order issued on the 5th consisted of a handful of undated dispatches sent to Sherman's cavalry, directing Brigadier General Kenner Garrard's division toward Allatoona, but these went out only after the fighting had already ended. That order was later scaled back to a single squadron once word arrived that the garrison had successfully held its ground.