Page:Hold the Fort! (Scheips 1971) low resolution.pdf/13

NUMBER 9 Laura, joins her hands with those of Eldred, and tells the happy twain: "Two gold medals are being made—one for the soldier who spiked the guns at Gordon Pass, and one for the girl who saved Allatoona."

 

The scene now shifts from the footboards to real life, and from Georgia in the fall of 1864 to Illinois in April 1870. There, at the Winnebago County Sunday School Convention, in Rockford, on Thursday and Friday, 28–29 April, Major Daniel Webster Whittle, an official of the Elgin Watch Company and a guest speaker at the convention, related a version of the fateful events at Allatoona in October 1864. To Whittle, who recalled that Sherman had signaled "Hold the Fort; I am coming," the events at Allatoona were "an illustration of the inspiration derived by the Christian from the thoughts of Christ as our commander and of His coming to our relief."



