This article challenges as improbable one of American journalism's best-kno
wn 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 exce
edingly unlikely the exchange ever took place, including: The supposed repl
y is at odds with the editorial stance of Hearst's New York Journal in earl
y 1897, and the account is not supported by the contemporaneous record of R
emington's assignment to Cuba, from where he is said to have initiated the
often-quoted exchange with Hearst.