Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Unfortunately, our command in chief did NOT recite this correctly today. :(
He left out two important words.
One thing that has always struck me as so powerful about this speech is there is so little actual "patriotism" in it... it is all rather general ethos that anyone would support. No gather 'round the flag, no crush the rebel scum, he doesn't even distinguish between those who died attempting to dissolve rather than preserve the Union.
I dunno, it just seems like even then he was preparing to make the country whole again. That the southern dead had just as selflessly sacrificed themselves for their nation as well, which would finally once again be the United States.
I dunno if I'm explaining myself correctly, just something I always think when I read it.
Well, there does seem to be a bit of a jab to the south in there and clearly meant more for a Union audience. (i.e. the south may not be too "keen" on the ethos at that time)
Even still, obviously a good job at doing a bit of healing to a great hurt that the country experienced.
Will
Dork
11/19/13 7:09 p.m.
Lincoln rightly gets a lot of credit as a leader, but he's overlooked as a writer. He understood how to say a lot without using a lot of words, and his inaugurals are just as good as the Gettysburg Address.
From the first inaugural:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
And from the second inaugural:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
The guy on the five dollar bill said:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
Lincoln changed his tune on abolition when he realized he was losing the war. Read a book, read a book, read a mothaberkeleyin book! (Not a government-issued text book.)
LainfordExpress wrote:
One thing that has always struck me as so powerful about this speech is there is so little actual "patriotism" in it... it is all rather general ethos that anyone would support. No gather 'round the flag, no crush the rebel scum, he doesn't even distinguish between those who died attempting to dissolve rather than preserve the Union.
I dunno, it just seems like even then he was preparing to make the country whole again. That the southern dead had just as selflessly sacrificed themselves for their nation as well, which would finally once again be the United States.
I dunno if I'm explaining myself correctly, just something I always think when I read it.
Abraham Lincoln never lost sight of the idea that everyone who lost their lives in battle during the Civil War were Americans. Every speech he gave, especially this one, was an attempt to remind people and to reconcile.
Grtechguy wrote:
ditchdigger wrote:
Grtechguy wrote:
Unfortunately, our command in chief did NOT recite this correctly today. :(
He left out two important words.
Which two?
"Under God"
I would argue that those two words are irrelevant and out of place in that speech, but... If you want to get butt hurt about it here is the reason
CBS News said:
"He read the version of the address that Ken Burns provided," he said, noting that Burns is a "noted Civil War scholar."
Specifically, Carney said that Burns gave Mr. Obama the "Nicolay copy" of the Gettysburg Address -- the first draft of the speech, named after John Nicolay, the White House staffer who preserved it.
ditchdigger wrote:
Grtechguy wrote:
ditchdigger wrote:
Grtechguy wrote:
Unfortunately, our command in chief did NOT recite this correctly today. :(
He left out two important words.
Which two?
"Under God"
I would argue that those two words are irrelevant and out of place in that speech, but... If you want to get butt hurt about it here is the reason
CBS News said:
"He read the version of the address that Ken Burns provided," he said, noting that Burns is a "noted Civil War scholar."
Specifically, Carney said that Burns gave Mr. Obama the "Nicolay copy" of the Gettysburg Address -- the first draft of the speech, named after John Nicolay, the White House staffer who preserved it.
Did Lincoln recite the 'first draft' at Gettysburg...or did he actually say "under God"? As far as I am concerned, the only draft that matters is the one that contains the actual words that were uttered by Lincoln.
Really? We're going to this? Way to kick the spirit of that address in its proverbial nuts. Sad day when we can't honor Lincoln by understanding the heart of his speech, which was that we must overcome our surface disagreements and embrace our legacy and promise as Americans dedicated to a government that is by and for US. There's no Them in that.
Oh, forget the big words. Pathetic.
Margie
"Under God" was an ad lib. It exists in no draft. Lincoln had a whole other speech ready to go but was gobsmacked at the sight of all that sacrifice by both sides. He sat down in his quarters and completely rewrote the speech because he realized there was nothing he could say that would elevate the occasion above the thousands that laid down their lives for what they believed in. It became a lot more of a memorial than originally intended in order to honor those men. So go ahead and argue semantics all you want. If I may be so bold, I would suggest reflecting on the senseless loss that war represented for everyone involved instead. Half a million perished in that conflict, more than any other US war. All the rest is demeaningly trivial semantics.
Scrawled on a napkin, no speechwriter, no entourage thinking for him. Put relevant words on paper today ? or bloggin your tool... ooops typo.
Will
Dork
11/19/13 9:15 p.m.
poopshovel wrote:
The guy on the five dollar bill said:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
Lincoln changed his tune on abolition when he realized he was losing the war. Read a book, read a book, read a mothaberkeleyin book! (Not a government-issued text book.)
His views on race are horribly outdated and bigoted by modern standards, yes. But it was clearly possible, at the time, to believe in the abolition of slavery, and not racial equality, without being a hypocrite.
Lincoln said what Lincon said. If we're going to honor it, and we should, it shouln't be added to nor deleted from. All I am saying is that if indeed the words "under God" were uttered in the actual presentaition of the speech, then that is the history...good, bad or indifferent. Anything more or anything less is an interpretation. We are certainly free to speculate what he meant, but there should be no latitude implied in what he said.
Jerry From LA wrote:
Lincoln had a whole other speech ready to go but was gobsmacked at the sight of all that sacrifice by both sides. He sat down in his quarters and completely rewrote the speech because he realized there was nothing he could say that would elevate the occasion above the thousands that laid down their lives for what they believed in.
TRoglodyte wrote:
Scrawled on a napkin, no speechwriter, no entourage thinking for him. Put relevant words on paper today ? or bloggin your tool... ooops typo.
Nope. Common myths.
Lincoln was a very careful and methodical speechwriter. Contrary to popular belief, it is generally more time and effort to write something short than to write something long. A speech as powerful, careful, and concise as the Gettysburg Address was not written haphazardly on short notice.
FSP_ZX2 wrote:
Lincoln said what Lincon said. If we're going to honor it, and we should, it shouln't be added to nor deleted from. All I am saying is that if indeed the words "under God" were uttered in the actual presentaition of the speech, then that is the history...good, bad or indifferent. Anything more or anything less is an interpretation. We are certainly free to speculate what he meant, but there should be no latitude implied in what he said.
But we do not know. There were no audio recorders. We base it on the wording of Lincoln's manuscripts. There are five. The two closest to the date of the address, which were given into the care of his secretaries, do not contain the words "under God". The other three, which were written for charity after the address, do contain "under God". The Bliss manuscript (with "under God") is most often quoted in no small part because Lincoln signed and dated it.
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
I say that since all five copies were penned by Lincoln, we do the man full honor by reading any version of the words written by his hand.
"While...it's impossible to say with certainty whether God really was included in the proclamation, numerous media outlets -- the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer -- reported on the Gettysburg Address at the time and indicated that "under God" was a part of the speech.
The Boston Advertiser reportedly also noted at the time that the line was used as the address concluded.
Joseph Ignatius Gilbert and Charles Hale, two reporters who were at the speech, both recounted hearing "under God" in the speech..." Quote taken from here
That said, you are right--there are no recordings. Only a best guess based on the notes and other evidence of the day...including at least three telegraphed reports of the speech, each of which had "under God" in the transcripts.
Beer Baron wrote:
Jerry From LA wrote:
Lincoln had a whole other speech ready to go but was gobsmacked at the sight of all that sacrifice by both sides. He sat down in his quarters and completely rewrote the speech because he realized there was nothing he could say that would elevate the occasion above the thousands that laid down their lives for what they believed in.
Nope. Common myths.
Lincoln was a very careful and methodical speechwriter. Contrary to popular belief, it is generally more time and effort to write something short than to write something long. A speech as powerful, careful, and concise as the Gettysburg Address was not written haphazardly on short notice.
Sorry but not a myth. Yes, he was a careful speechwriter, which is why he realized he could not deliver the speech he wrote. It took a long time for those 287 words to make it to the page. The "Under God" is an ad lib.
I googled this as confirmation. It's from an article written by Martin P. Johnson, a professor at Miami of Ohio and a Lincoln and Gettysburg expert, regarding the events surrounding 11/18/63:
Martin P. Johnson wrote:
"Upon returning to his quarters to review his manuscript after touring the battlefield on the morning of his speech and visiting the site where his “gallant and brave friend, Gen Reynolds,” had died, Lincoln initiated an unexpected revision. The changes to the text he had prepared the night before brought a new vision to his speech, including a wholly new second page incorporating a more assertive sense of dedication. He also underlined one key word on the first page that he had retained from the draft he had brought from Washington: “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.” Then, on the speaker’s platform, Lincoln’s commitment to the cause and to the sacrifices of soldiers like his friend Reynolds moved him to pronounce those words with such feeling that many listeners were brought to tears, difficult as that might be to believe in a post-heroic world.
The same powerful emotional impulse prompted him to add the words “under God” to his speech when they are not found in his written delivery text. (Because of him, “under God” is incorporated in the Pledge of Allegiance today.) Over the days of writing and revision, he had found the words and come to a text that proclaimed his own dedication to the survival of the democratic government with freedom and equal rights for all, the “new birth of freedom.” Here on the platform, to safeguard and assure the highest ideals he held, Lincoln reached for the highest authority he could envision. It was the culminating change to his written words while speaking, Lincoln’s final creative impulse of that moment of power and truth at Gettysburg, an act that both reaffirmed and radically redefined the work of the Founding Fathers."
So instead of noting that the speech is about:
1) a Union that was created as a different path.
2) that Union is in a battle for it's own survival
3) the men who died on that battle ground did so to save that Union.
And, for the most part, the Union is an idea.
Instead of that, we debate the version of speech the current President says, and the 5 versions of the wirtten speech, does it contain "under God" or not.
Yea, I'm with Margie on this one. This was one of the worst periods of the United States History, where about half of the Union tried to break away, and this struggle was to hold it all together. You think current politics are bad, they still don't approach a shooting battle over them.
But no, we need to debate which version of the written speech was spoken at the time (which there is no record of), and which one that is archived, where.
For a group that seems to pretend that military service is so very honored, missing the fact that THIS SPEECH is one of the best speeches honoring the military and it's effort to protect YOUR FREEDOM.
Now I regret posting the speech in the first place.
No regrets. With almost 20 people voicing an opinion, it has not degraded to the low seen on other forums. We seem to be above that until page 3 or so, although subject dependant.
I have huge respect for Mr. Lincoln; my opinion of the current leadership is not changed by one error, misquote or omission.
It was a terrible time in American history, but given the scenario of the 1860s it seemed inevidable.
Dan
SVreX
MegaDork
11/20/13 9:36 a.m.
No regrets, Alfa. Thanks for the reminder.
