Lincoln's Exploding Dog Story

 A Grotesque Tale of Ineptitude

Soldiers graves near Richmond, VA. April 1865. 
(Library of Congress)

In late 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood led a disastrous campaign through Tennessee, culminating in brutal defeats at Franklin and Nashville. His decisions cost the Army of Tennessee nearly 23,500 men—a force shattered beyond repair. As Union General George “Pap” Thomas pursued Hood’s remnants into the Deep South, the once-formidable army ceased to function as a fighting force.

When President Lincoln was informed of the magnitude of Hood’s defeat, he didn’t reach for a map or a military dispatch. He reached for a story.

“I think Hood’s army is about in the fix of Bill Sykes’s dog, down in Sangamon County…”

What followed was a tale Lincoln had likely retold before—a frontier yarn involving a mischievous yellow dog, a powder-filled coon bladder, and a biscuit booby trap. The dog swallows the explosive treat, and the resulting blast scatters its body.

The head of the dog lit on the porch, the fore-legs caught astraddle the fence, the hind-legs fell in the ditch, and the rest of the dog lay around loose. 

As the owner surveys the carnage, the neighbor remarks: "Bill I guess there ain’t much of that dog of your’n left.”

Says Bill: “Well, no. I see plenty of pieces, but I guess that dog, as a dog, ain’t of much more account.” [1]

Lincoln’s punchline? Hood’s army might still have pieces left—but as an army, it wasn’t of much more account either.

Why It Works

Lincoln wasn’t merely mocking Hood—he was illustrating, with brutal clarity, the complete disintegration of a fighting force and the staggering human cost of one man’s military ineptitude. The image of limbs strewn across porches, fences, and ditches was grotesque, absurd…and unforgettable. Lincoln’s humor softened the edges—but what remained was the anatomy of ruin, laid bare in metaphor

This was Lincoln the rhetorician, the satirist, the storyteller. He didn’t need charts—he had metaphors that exploded like the biscuit in that dog’s belly.

This is another story from Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.

Mac

Works Cited

[1] Leidner, Gordon with an afterword by Michael Burlingame (2015), Lincoln’s Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln’s Life & Legacy. Naperville, IL: Cumberland House.