“I can’t spare this man. He fights.” Americans often quote this as Abraham Lincoln’s answer to critics of General Ulysses S. Grant. The story is usually set in 1862, after the bloody battle of Shiloh, when newspapers and politicians called for Grant’s removal. Grant was also accused of drinking.
The source is the Pennsylvania politician Alexander McClure, who told it in his 1892 book Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times. McClure was himself a critic of Grant. Some historians doubt that Lincoln said it. William Marvel and Brooks D. Simpson note that McClure did not mention the remark until years after the war.
A second story appeared in the New York Times in 1863. In it, Lincoln asks which whiskey Grant drinks, so that he can send a barrel to his other generals. Lincoln denied saying it.