Tough Tarbell Trivia

[Rob Wick]

Guess I will go ahead and call this one.

The correct answer is that Tarbell was commenting on a story in the New York Times where a man named William P. Broome claimed that when Lincoln was visiting Fort Stevens, he was actually hit by a Confederate bullet. The bullet was fired at long range and didn't have enough force to penetrate the skin, but it ricocheted off of Lincoln's pants leg, according to Broome. Lincoln supposedly brushed it aside and never said anything about it. The story, with Tarbell's comments, appeared in the January 13, 1907 edition of the paper.

Tarbell said she had never heard of that before, but didn't immediately reject it. However, the paper printed another story on February 10 in which it quoted numerous people who were at the fort when Lincoln was who said they never heard of it.

I did find a letter in Tarbell's papers that came from someone who, in the 1930s, said they knew Broome, and that they thought the story should be investigated by Tarbell. There was no response in her papers to the letter.

Best
Rob