The Presbyterian hymn by Philip Bliss inspired the labor union song, which in my Newspaper Guild days I heard Joe Glazer sing at the former AFL-CIO campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, and myself sang to my children at home.
Bliss was inspired by a garbled version of a message dispatched from the not notably religious or labor-friendly William Tecumseh Sherman to Brigadier General John Corse in Allatoona, Georgia.
On today's date 154 years ago, Sherman dispatched Corse to defend Allatoona and Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood sent Major General Samuel French to attack and capture the same place. The fighting commenced the next morning, Oct. 5, after Corse declined to surrender.
Allatoona was a supply depot on the rail line from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Sherman's army in Atlanta.
Corse's outnumbered Union men won a defensive battle, which may have encouraged Grant to let Sherman march to the sea. And Hood eventually continued on his way to Tennessee, where his army was crushed by Union victories south of Nashville in November and December.
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