To yield the point in question. Mr. de Vere attributes the invention of the phrase to Hon. A. Stewart, when Mr. Wickliffe of Kentucky, in a Congressional debate (1828), acknowledged the corn: the point being that one of the States, which was said to export corn, in fact fed corn to its hogs, and exported it in that shape. The quotations show that the N.E.D., which is very seldom wrong, has erroneously classed the word “corn,” as thus used, under “a horny induration.” (See 1853, 1857.)

1

1840.  David Johnson acknowledged the corn, and said that he was drunk.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, July 14.

2

1842.  Your honor, I confesses the corn. I was royally drunk.—Spirit of the Times, Philadelphia, March 16.

3

1846.  N.Y. Herald (N.E.D.).

4

1846.  I hope he will give up the argument, or, to use a familiar phrase, “acknowledge the corn.”—Mr. Speight of Mississippi in the U.S. Senate, Jan. 28: Congressional Globe, p. 275.

5

1846.  Western farmers send their corn, hay, and oats, every year, to the Eastern market, not in its rude and original form, but in the form of hogs and horses; they give their hay-stacks life and legs, and make them trot to market with the farmer on their back.—Mr. Stewart of Pennsylvania, in the House of Representatives, May 27: id., p. 941, Appendix.

6

1848.  Reader—do you snore in your sleep? You don’t?—Well, I suppose not! I never yet met the individual who would acknowledge the corn.—Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects, A Live Yankee “Snored” Out!’ p. 124.

7

1850.  Has he not “confessed the corn,” as the saying is, that he did preach disunion?—Mr. Stanly of North Carolina, House of Representatives, March 7: Congressional Globe, p. 488.

8

1852.  I ’knowledge the corn that I wer’ done for by the yaller rascal.—James Weir, ‘Simon Kenton,’ p. 114 (Phila.).

9

1853.  He might as well have confessed the cob.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ iv. 127.

10

1855.  I have gotten one anti-slavery gentleman here to acknowledge the corn.—Mr. Letcher of Virginia, House of Repr., Feb. 27: Cong. Globe, p. 320, Appendix.

11

1856.  I had ‘treated’ all round in acknowledgment of ‘the corn.’—Knickerbocker Mag., xlviii. 539 (Nov.).

12

1857.  Amos acknowledged the malt by a cheerful guffaw.—Id., xlix. 526 (May).

13

1857.  ‘I confess to the maize,’ cried he.—Id., l. 530 (Nov.).

14

1862.  

        ’T wuz the day our new nation gut kin’ o’ stillborn,
So ’t wuz my pleasant dooty t’ acknowledge the corn.
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd Series, No. 4.    

15

1888.  “Isn’t that Dan Linahan?” said he. I acknowledged the corn.—Mo. Republican, Jan. 25.

16