Daily Story
Litter and the Yazoo River Expedition
There was a man in Illinois a good many years since that was troubled with an old sow and her pigs–again and again the old man & his sons drove her out and repeatedly found her in the lot. One day he & his boys searched about & found that she got into the lot through a certain hollow log that had been placed in the fence; they took out this log & built up the fence by placing the log a little differently than before, & the next day, what was the astonishment of the Old Lady to find that she & her litter came out of the log outside of the field instead of inside. “It is just so with the Yazoo River expedition,” said Mr. Lincoln. “It comes out of the same side of the log.”
Letter from J.H. Littlefield, December 11, 1866, to William H. Herndon concerning President reaction to planning a military expedition down the Yazoo River.
Emanuel Hertz, Anecdotes By & About Abraham Lincoln, p. 59-60.