Monday, November 19, 2018

At Gettysburg, November 19, 1863 (plus some newspaper coverage)

This is a repost of our 150th-anniversary-of-the-speech post. 
The Gettysburg PowerPoint presentation with technical support from Peter Norvig:

Author: Abraham Lincoln
Email: president@whitehouse.gov
Home Page: http://www.whitehouse.gov
 
Download presentation: Gettysburg.ppt
And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln.
Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute.

Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job.

Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go: 
 
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Speaker Notes

[Transcribed from voice recording by A. Lincoln, 11/19/63]
These are some notes on the Gettysburg meeting. I'll whip them into better shape when I can get on to my computer.
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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.
From Politico's Mark Caputo:
Finally, November 14, 2013:
Newspaper Retracts Editorial on Gettysburg Address
From Poynter:

In 1863, the Harrisburg, Pa. paper then known as the Patriot & Union published an editorial about Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
They panned it:
We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of....
Here's today's Patriot-News [Nov. 14, 2013]:
"...In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln’s speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, the Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance, timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error."
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Hey, at least they used the proper "regrets the error".
While that is one of the longer delayed retractions it is far from unique. From 2009's "Corrections (belated)":
From today's New York Times:
An article on April 30, 1906, about a New York watch repairer, Jonathan Dillon, who recalled secretly inscribing Abraham Lincoln’s watch while working on it in a Washington jewelry store in 1861, misstated part of the inscription, using information from Mr. Dillon (who the article noted had, at 84, “a remarkable memory.”) The inscription reads:...MORE
HT: the Columbia Journalism Review
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