Deadlines Timelines to 2018 Congress

Deadlines† for Congress – 2018 (Llandudno, Wales)

†dead-line (noun)

dead.line [‘ded,lain] (dead.lines)

Time limit – the time by which something must be done or completed

Most etymologists agree that the word “deadline” first appeared during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

According to author Christine Ammer, deadline was coined at the hellish Andersonville, GA prison camp, and first appeared in writing in the report of Confederate Inspector-General, Colonel D.T. Chandler, on July 5, 1864.  In describing the horrific conditions, he famously wrote:

The Federal prisoners of war are confined within a stockade 15 feet high, of roughly hewn pine logs, about 8 inches in diameter, inserted 5 feet into the ground, enclosing, including the recent extension, an area of 540 by 260 yards. A railing around the inside of the stockade, and about 20 feet from it, constitutes the “deadline,” beyond which the prisoners are not allowed to pass . . . [as a large portion is] at present unfit for occupation . . . [this] gives somewhat less than 6 square feet to each prisoner . . .

An even earlier writing of the term in an inspection report on Andersonville from Confederate Captain Walter Bowie on May 10, 1864:

On the inside of the stockade and twenty feet from it there is a dead-line established, over which no prisoner is allowed to go, day or night, under penalty of being shot.

An October 31, 1865 Report of the Secretary of War that was introduced in the Trial of Henry Wirz (the prison keeper at Andersonville):

And he, the said Wirz, still wickedly pursuing his evil purpose, did establish and cause to be designated within the prison enclosures containing said prisoners a “dead line,” being a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison and about twenty feet distant from and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he, the said Wirz, instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under [or] across said “dead line” . . .