Page:Hold the Fort! (Scheips 1971) low resolution.pdf/12

6 "In the railroad cut there's a lonely grave," runs the first line of another poem, "The Soldier's Grave," by Joseph M. Brown, an official of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Paul Dresser—presumably the famous songsmith who was Theodore Dreiser's brother and who wrote, among other songs, "On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away" and "My Gal Sal"—wrote a poem or song about "The Lone Grave." Its words bear an interesting comparison with "The Blue and the Gray," a popular Dresser song written during the Spanish-American War.

Inevitably, Allatoona was the subject of at least two "dramas." One of these, Allatoona, an Historical and Military Drama in Five Acts (the omission of the first act of which would in "no way interfere with the plot"), was written by Brevet Major General Judson Kilpatrick, who had commanded one of Sherman's cavalry divisions at the time of the Battle of Allatoona, and J. Owen Moore. Samuel French & Company, better known for its Ten Nights in a Bar Room, published the play in 1875. As the battle is about to begin—three pages before the final curtain—Corse (to whom the work is dedicated) asks Miss Helen Dunbar, the heroine, to retire at once. She does so and the battle is on. When Corse is wounded, the hero asks if the general is dead, to which Corse responds: "No. I am worth a hundred dead men yet, and I'll defend this post." At this juncture, Corse's signal officer reads a signal on Kennesaw Mountain by which Sherman tells Allatoona to "hold on" and "not give up, [for] we are coming to your aid." To this Corse replies: "We have repulsed them twice. Half my head is gone, but we will hold this place or die." In 1930 Christopher Morley "revised and edified" an adaptation of Allatoona under the title The Blue and the Gray, or, War Is Hell.

In Allatoona, a Play in Four Acts, by Samuel H. M. Byers, the heroine, Miss Laura Gillford, who has learned signaling with her "berry girls," substitutes for Sherman's signal officer, who is "dead at his post." Calling Allatoona for Sherman, Laura receives the message that "Corse—is—here!" The battle rages fiercely with the enemy's 5,000 men (there were actually only somewhat more than three-fifths of this number) pressing Corse from all sides. The situation being critical, Sherman commands Laura to send a message to Allatoona that the fort must be held, that reinforcements—"ten thousand under Howard"—are coming. As a consequence of this message Corse holds out, and the first half of the play comes to an end. In its last half, Laura's dear love, Private Eldred Marshall, performs such great feats of bravery that just before the curtain falls (to the tune of "Marching through Georgia") Sherman kisses