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An Oft-Repeated Myth

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19990806
Author:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, as a Union officer, simply did not shout, "Get down, you fool!" to Abraham Lincoln at the battle of Fort Stevens {"Weekend Honors Fallen, Forgotten in D.C. Battle," Metro, July 11}. On the hot afternoon of July 12, 1864, Gen. Horatio Wright of the VI Corps ordered Lincoln off the wall at Fort Stevens after a doctor standing near the president was shot in the leg. Lincoln hesitated but then descended.

No one who was there that long bloody day, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, ever reported the much-too-often-quoted but apocryphal tale about Holmes yelling at the ...

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