American Civil War Anecdotes

"GET DOWN, YOU DAMN FOOL, BEFORE YOU

GET SHOT!"

-A Union 6th Corps captain to an insouciant civilian who kept exposing his head to get a look at the action at Fort Stevens, July 12, 1864. The captain was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., later Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The unrecognized target of his injunction was Holmes' commander-in-chief, Abraham Lincoln. (James G. Randall and Richard N. Current, Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure, cited in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom.)