According to some Republicans, Abraham Lincoln allegedly said

“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged,” that’s what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States.

FactCheck.org dug around in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln only to find that Lincoln did not say it nor does it fit with any of his policies.

As it turns out, the quote comes an article published in 2003 by right-leaning writer, J. Michael Waller. FactCheck asked him about the qute, and he admitted that he never intended for it to be attributed to Lincoln. He claims he wrote it as his lead in and an editor added the quotations around the text.

What’s even more interesting is that FactCheck couldn’t come up with any evidence that Lincoln might have endorsed any such policies.

While we find little support for the idea that Lincoln favored arresting members of Congress (or even former members) for merely saying things that dispirit the troops, we find none for the notion that he favored hanging…

Waller concedes that the quote is bogus. We judge that it’s a bad paraphrase also, and based - at best - on poor scholarship.

A google search for “are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged” yields 11,600 results - and all because of poor historical research and an editorial mistake. It just goes to show how quickly things spread through word of mouth - and how few are willing to double check sources before passing the info along.