Confederate General Jubal Early was a fan of Old Crow. Another famous politician who preferred Old Crow was Henry Clay, of Kentucky, who was even featured in Old Crow advertisements. World War II "triple ace" Bud Anderson named his P-51 Mustang Old Crow, after the whiskey. Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky has stated that Old Crow as his favorite bourbon. Lore suggests that American general and later 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant was a fan of Old Crow. This is mentioned in connection to a story written in the New York Herald where war managers went to President Abraham Lincoln and demanded General Grant's removal since he was "nothing but a common drunkard." In reply, Lincoln asked "can you tell me where he gets his whiskey?" They replied they could not and asked him why he wanted to know. "Because if you can only find out, I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army." However, Old Crow is never mentioned in the news story and the entire concept was put into question when a telegraph operator named Major Thomas Eckert related a story about Lincoln's denial of the quote. In popular culture Old Crow is said to have been the favorite bourbon of American writers Mark Twain and William Faulkner. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson liked it. Twain reportedly visited the distillery in the 1880s, and Old Crow advertised this heavily;<ref>For instance, in an ad in Look magazine, from 1953. See also this ad from Kiplinger's Personal Finance, 1981.</ref> John C. Gerber sees in this commercial exploitation a sign of Twain's continuing popularity. As for Thompson, the frequent occurrences of the drink in his writing, semi-autobiographical as well as fictional, have led to similar associations. The manufacturer actively pursued such publicity: in 1955, they took out an ad in College English, the journal of the National Council of Teachers of English, offering $250 for every literary reference to their product. In the 1955 film I Died a Thousand Times, the dying mob boss, Big Mac (Lon Chaney, Jr.), drinks Old Crow in violation of doctor's orders. Throughout Up a Road Slowly Irene Hunt's 1966 Newbery Award–winning novel, Uncle Haskell drinks copious quantities of Old Crow, taking the empty bottles in a golf bag to bury them at a creek. He claims the Old Crow is rare French wine, so the