Fort Stevens Myth Essay

Some skeptical people are uncertain whether the incident actually happened or is simply a legend; or, if it happened, whether Holmes was indeed the soldier who yelled at the president. No matter. Local newspapers reported it at the time. Holmes spoke of it to several people, and even said much later how embarrassed he was to have talked that way, so disrespectfully, to the president. During the thirty-odd years Holmes lived in Washington, he visited the site of Fort Stevens a number of times. And some of our best Civil War historians, including James McPherson in his the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, record the Fort Stevens incident as fact. Today a marker identifies the spot where the incident occurred, with a photograph of a hundredth anniversary reenactment.
In any event, even legends and myths have their purpose. As Joseph Campbell has taught us, myths define us and inspire us, they inhabit us deeply and explain to us who we are. They tell us something important about their subject and about ourselves. When we are children, and also when we are adults, we learn our deepest truths through myth. More than mere lies, myths
We want it to be true, we yearn for Holmes to have spoken roughly to Lincoln (not recognizing whom he was talking to) and perhaps saved his life. At their best, myths can inspire us to do better, can, as Lincoln put it in his First Inaugural, help us seek “the better angels of our nature.” Informal, unplanned, unrehearsed, the Fort Stevens incident is both symbolic and emblematic of two of the most extraordinary individuals in United States history. It links them memorably and reveals, under unexpected, stressful conditions, telling aspects of their true personalities as well as hints at the reasons for their lasting importance. It makes Holmes as a young man a genuine hero of the great American