A Bogus Quote
But in fact it isn’t “Lincoln’s remedy” at all. The sentence she attributed to Lincoln is the brainchild of J. Michael Waller, a conservative scholar who wrote an article for Insight magazine that appeared Dec. 23, 2003 under the headline, “Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason.” He started his article with the quote, adding, “that’s what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States.”
In fact there’s no evidence of Lincoln ever advocating hanging members of Congress at all. We searched The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, but the phrase “exiled or hanged” simply doesn’t appear there, let alone the entire quote. And according to Lincoln historian Thomas F. Schwartz, there is also no trace of this quote in The Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, a 1996 compilation of quotes later attributed to Lincoln by his contemporaries. Schwartz is the Illinois State Historian and secretary of The Abraham Lincoln Association, and also writes a column called “Lincoln Never Said That” in the association’s quarterly newsletter, For The People. In the issue for Autumn, 2005, he wrote, “The Internet is a great incubator of spurious Lincoln sayings and no clearer examples can be shown than several that have recently surfaced,” including the quote in question here
When we contacted Waller he said we were the first to ask him about it. He readily conceded that the quote is bogus and blamed the matter on editors at Insight magazine. Here is the pertinent portion of his reply, in full, to our emailed inquiry:
J. Michael Waller: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct this important issue. The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.
Additionally, I filed my story with the lead sentence ending in the words “Civil War,” which my southern editor switched to “War Between the States.”
Oddly, you are the first to question me about this. I’m surprised it has been repeated as often as you say. My editors at the time didn’t think it was necessary to run a correction in the following issue of the magazine, and to my knowledge we received no public comment. The magazine is no longer being published.
Again, thank you for asking about this and for providing the opportunity to correct it.
https://www.factcheck.org/2006/08/misquoting-lincoln/