Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks': Editorial

[Valin]

Patriot-News

Patriot-News Editorial Board

November 14, 2013

 

 

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.

 

The Patriot & Union devoted all of one paragraph to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "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."

 

We write today in reconsideration of The Gettysburg Address, delivered by then-President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the greatest conflict seen on American soil. Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincolns words silly remarks, deserving a veil of oblivion, apparently believing it an indifferent and altogether ordinary message, unremarkable in eloquence and uninspiring in its brevity.

 

(Snip)

[clearvision]

@Valin

About damn time! So many have been fretting over this ill-considered editorial for years.

[Valin]

@Valin

About damn time! So many have been fretting over this ill-considered editorial for years.

Fox News

 

 

But the Patriot & Union, a Copperhead newspaper in the 1860s, vigorously supported the Democratic Party and, the newspaper says, was still seething after several top editors were arrested and jailed a year earlier by Union troops for suspicion of sedition.

 

Add in a looming election the following year, and you have an editorial board that wasnt eager to sing the presidents praises.