If you Hold The Fort you maintain normality and keep things running in the absence of others. The phrase was immortalised by General Sherman during the battle of Allatoona in 1864 in the American Civil War (1861-65). When assembling his army on top of Mount Kennesaw, near Atlanta, Georgia, Sherman signalled down to General Corse that reinforcements were arriving and he must “hold the fort” until he had collected enough men to mount an attack on the siege soldiers. The phrase came to Britain via the poet Philip Bliss, who wrote: “Hold the fort for I am coming, Jesus signals still.” The popular American evangelists Moody and Sankey introduced the poem to the British people during their 1873 religious campaign.