The Gettysburg Address… What did he actually say?
November 19, 2013 by GuyHeilenman
Email This Post
| Print This Post
“Four score and seven years ago…”
150 years ago this month, President Abraham Lincoln delivered what we now consider to be one of the greatest speeches of all time. Interestingly enough, since 5 different manuscripts exist, there is some disagreement amongst historians concerning what he actually said. Might original newspapers of the day with eye witness accounts provide the answer? If the speech had been long we probably wouldn’t have a high degree of confidence in the newspaper reporters’ accounts, but the brevity of the speech certainly increases the probability of an accurate transcription. Original reports may not have the definitive answer to this question, but they certainly provide reasonable evidence regarding what was actually spoken. Once again, “History is never more fascinating than when it is read from the day it was first reported.“
View Authentic Newspapers with Gettysburg Address Coverage
If you liked this post, you may also enjoy...
- Einstein… Smarter than a 5th grader?
- Gettysburg revisted… 150 years ago…
- 19th century newspapers… revisited…
- 10 Most Shocking Deaths in Sports History…
- They put it in print… Cheating in baseball predates the “Black Sox” scandal of 1919…
Comments
One Response to “The Gettysburg Address… What did he actually say?”
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
It may be possible to come up with a written draft of the speech without “under God” in it, but there is no doubt in my mind that the two word were in the speech as delivered by Lincoln at Gettysburg.
The contemporary newspaper reports that I have seen from the speech all have “under God” in the text. The speech was transcribed by reporters from competing newspapers who wrote it down by shorthand as they heard it from the mouth of Lincoln. All heard and wrote down “under God.”