Not Likely Sent: The Remington-Hearst “Telegrams”

Abstract

This article challenges as improbable one of American journalism's best-known anecdotes, the purported telegraphic exchange in 1897 between Frederic S. Remington and William Randolph Hearst in which Hearst supposedly vowed, “I'll furnish the war.” The article discusses several reasons why it is exceedingly unlikely the exchange ever took place, including: The supposed reply is at odds with the editorial stance of Hearst's New York Journal in early 1897, and the account is not supported by the contemporaneous record of Remington's assignment to Cuba, from where he is said to have initiated the often-quoted exchange with Hearst.