Hold the Fort! Or Not.

Recently a U.S. State Department diversity official, writing in a State Department magazine, warned against the phrase “hold the fort,” which he surmised might offend native people. “How many times have you or a colleague asked if someone could ‘hold down the fort?,” he asked ominously. “For example, ‘Could you hold down the fort while I go to…’ You were likely asking someone to watch the office while you go and do something else, but the phrase’s his- torical connotation to some is negative and racially offensive. To ‘hold down the fort’ originally meant to watch and protect against the vicious Native American intruders. In the territories of the West, Army soldiers or settlers saw the ‘fort’ as their refuge from their perceived ‘enemy,’ the stereotypical ‘savage’ Native American tribes.”

I’m not sure this official is right about the etymology of “hold down the fort.” Probably it was more used in mid 20th century Hollywood Westerns than in the 19th century West. Just as likely English speakers in the British Isles a thousand years ago were speaking the phrase or some version of it as they relied on their forts against invading Vikings or whomever. So maybe today’s Scandinavian descendants of the Vikings should be offended.

As I write I’m sitting as a docent/volunteer at the visitor center of Fort Edwards in Capon Bridge, West Virginia. It’s the site of a French and Indian War “fort,” as the State Department official would darkly describe it. After British General Edward Braddock’s army was destroyed in 1755, the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers were wide open to attacking French and Indians. Young Colonel George Washington, as commander of the Virginia Regiment, organized a phalanx of forts in what is now mostly West Virginia.  These forts usually were log homes with stockades, manned by a few dozen or so Virginians, and to which local settlers who hadn’t already escaped east fled during times of attack.

Most of the settlers on the frontier of the 1750s were scrappy Scots-Irish families who couldn’t afford land in more settled and safer regions in the east. During the French and Indian War, some fled back to relative protection over the Blue Ridge. Others defiantly remained on their primitive farms. The land in Virginia’s Shenandoah region was empty when they settled it, the original native peoples having earlier been exterminated by other tribes to the north, who preserved it as their periodic hunting ground. These northern tribes, sometimes led by French officers, conducted fierce raids on the Virginia settlers in the 1750’s, slaughtering men, women and children. Sometimes they took captured women and children back to Ohio, as occurred to my own Scots-Irish ancestors.

In April 1756, several dozen members of the Virginia Regiment moving north of Fort Edwards, possibly responding to the killing of a local miller, were ambushed by native raiders and a French officer. The encounter was called “Mercer’s Massacre” and ended badly for the Virginians. It’s quite certain that the local people who found refuge in Fort Edwards never put quotation marks around “fort” or “enemies,” per the fretting State Department magazine. Every year in Capon Bridge there is a Colonial Feast commemorating the April 1756 Battle of the Great Cacapehon, which sounds better than “massacre.” Native people sometimes had their own forts, against the Puritans in early Massachusetts, and in early 19th century Florida and Alabama against General Andrew Jackson. So maybe some tribesmen sometimes told each other: “Hold the fort!”

The best remembered instance of “hold the fort” comes from Civil War Union General William Sherman. At least in the popular imagination, in 1864 he signaled to a besieged Union outpost in Georgia: “Hold the fort! I am coming!” Actually the signals said: “Sherman is coming. Hold out,” and “General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming.” So maybe the phrase should prompt apologies to southerners and Georgians. Northern newspapers popularized the legend. And a popular hymn by Philip Paul Bliss was penned called “Hold the Fort.” The hymn was widely used by the great late 19th century evangelist Dwight Moody, himself a Civil War YMCA chaplain and later the Billy Graham of his day. His musical accompanist was Civil War veteran Ira Sankey, the “Sweet Singer of Methodism,” who was sort of his George Beverley Shea. Moody mostly preached in the north, plus Great Britain, and I doubt he and Sankey ever sang “Hold the Fort” for a southern audience. The hymn replaces General Sherman with Jesus Christ, rescuing His besieged saints. Doubtless many Union veterans in Moody’s audience responded to the evangelistic call after hearing “Hold the Fort.”

I’ve never heard “Hold the Fort” sung. And presumably it will never be a featured hymn at any State Department function. But here’re the lyrics:

Ho, my comrades, see the signal,
Waving in the sky!
Reinforcements now appearing,
Victory is nigh.

“Hold the fort, for I am coming,”
Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By thy grace we will.”

See the mighty host advancing,
Satan leading on,
Mighty men around us falling,
Courage almost gone!

“Hold the fort, for I am coming,”
Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By thy grace we will.”

See the glorious banner waving,
Hear the trumpet blow!
In our Leader’s name we’ll triumph,
Over every foe.

“Hold the fort, for I am coming,”
Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By thy grace we will.”

Fierce and long the battle rages,
But our help is near,
Onward comes our great Commander,
Cheer, my comrades, cheer.

“Hold the fort, for I am coming,”
Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By thy grace we will.”