Great Quotes: Abraham Lincoln
This post was written by VoiceOfReason on March 26, 2009
Posted Under: Congress, Great Quotes, Military
Posted Under: Congress, Great Quotes, Military
Abraham Lincoln's view on Congress supporting the troops
Update: Please research the validity of this yourself. There are multiple varying opinions on the authenticity of this quote on the Internet. As with all information found on the Internet, heard on the television / radio, or overheard in the break room at work you should not take anything as fact on blind faith, but rather research the validity and come up with your own opinion as to what the facts are.
Reader Comments
Great quote or not, it wasn’t Abe who said it. The statement originated with a commentator named J. Michael Waller, writing in the conservative Insight magazine(which is now defunct)in 2003. Waller has acknowledged that the quote is his and says the misattribution to Lincoln resulted from an error when the story was edited. There’s an extensive article on the resulting confusion at this link:
http://www.factcheck.org/article415.html
This wouldn’t have been that tough to check — the factcheck.org citation was the FIRST hit that appeared when I googled the quotation. I recommend you do that in the future whenever you’re tempted to quote Abe. The vast, vast majority of Lincoln quotes circulating on the Web are either outright bogus or, at minimum, unsourced and highly suspect.
Mike Kienzler
The Abraham Lincoln Observer (blogs.sj-r.com/alo/)
Your correction is duly noted. I too found this during my personal checking, however the preponderance of sites quoting it as fact vastly outweighed the few calling it a hoax.
In the future please do not just assume people are posting random garbage. We here feel there is enough of this going on already, and emphasize due diligence before posting.
While researching I use multiple search engines instead of relying on the most popular one. This keeps my research free from the threat of ranking manipulation, which many people are unaware of. It is sad that people look at only the first few sites returned by a search as being the definitive source and absolute truth. The simple fact is that in many cases these sites are just the ones that know how to manipulate their way to the top better than the other guys. This is not to say the top hits are not factual, rather than most people take it on blind faith that this is the absolute truth. That is why I utilize multiple sources during research.
As for the use of just one source of research try going out to your favorite search engine, I promise this works with all of them, and use the search term:
factcheck.org incorrect