Newspaper Retracts Criticism of Gettysburg Address - East Idaho News
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Newspaper Retracts Criticism of Gettysburg Address

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GETTY 111513 Newspaper?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1384508441453Brian Jackson/Thinkstock(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — Just a few days short of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a Harrisburg, Pa., newspaper is now saying it was wrong to have slammed the president’s speech.

Paraphrasing one of the most famous openings of one of the most famous speeches in world history, the editors of the Patriot News wrote Thursday, “Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives.”

What the paper said 150 years ago was, “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.”

On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered a tribute at Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg to the fallen soldiers from the bloody battle four months earlier that was a turning point in the Civil War.

In two minutes, Lincoln mentioned the importance of the Declaration of Independence and the reasons why preserving the union was a costly battle worth fighting to bring equality to all citizens.

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