Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Is it okay to censor the Gettysburg Address?

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy seems to think so.

I am quite far behind in my reading of First Things, and so didn't notice Robert George's article late last year on "God and Gettysburg," in which he recounts his surprise when, sitting at a conference and reading a pamphlet put out by the American Censorshi ... er, I mean the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS), he noticed that two words had been dropped from the Gettysburg Address printed in the pamphlet: "under God."

George first noted that the pamphlet contained a page saying "The printing of this copy of the U.S. Constitution and of the nation’s two other founding texts, the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, was made possible through the generosity of Laurence and Carolyn Tribe"--despite the fact that the Gettysburg Address was not one of the "founding documents" of this nation, being written some 89 years after the nation's founding.

But George's most telling remarks concerned the missing words: under God.

After George made the criticism, Caroline Fredrickson, propaganda minister of the ACS, fired back on their blog that George's criticism was a "distraction." A distraction, apparently is worse than a distortion in the ACS's eyes:
The truth is, five drafts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address exist, and historians are uncertain about which one Lincoln actually read on the battlefield. Three included references to God and two did not. Which one was the most accurate is not and cannot be known for certain.
The ACS uses the "Hay draft" of the speech, a fact that was only made clear on their website after George made the criticism. George explains each of the five drafts and a bit of their history, and then observes:
Of course, none of these copies is actually the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg Address is the set of words actually spoken by Lincoln at Gettysburg. And, as it happens, we know what those words are. (The Bliss copy nearly perfectly reproduces them.) Three entirely independent reporters, including a reporter for the Associated Press, telegraphed their transcriptions of Lincoln’s remarks to their editors immediately after the president spoke. All three transcriptions include the words “under God,” and no contemporaneous report omits them. There isn’t really room for equivocation or evasion: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—one of the founding texts of the American republic—expressly characterizes the United States as a nation under God.
Fredrickson's answer?
George cites the recollections of several reporters of the time who stated that the president included the words "under God" in his remarks. Did President Lincoln improvise and add those words as he spoke? Perhaps! I wasn't at Gettysburg, so I can't be sure that George wasn't. As for the journalists' accounts, it would be interesting to read a history of the Civil War based solely on contemporaneous reports of journalists of the time, which would include countless conflicts, distortions, and inaccuracies. At the very least, honest scholars must acknowledge that wise people have differing views based on the available facts.
Oh, brother.

So you've got a document which has traditionally include the missing two words, three of the five documents contain them, and all of the independent contemporary accounts contain them and you choose the one that doesn't contain them?

No telling what these people are doing to the Constitution and Declaration.

10 comments:

Singring said...

Where was your outrage when the Republicans omitted several sections of the consitution (including the one about blacks counting as 3/5 of a person in the census) when reading it in congress?

Oh, right - Republicans are allowed to censor all they want, even thought they pretend to be the party that is defending the constitution from those evil liberals.

I get it.

KyCobb said...

Martin,

Glad to have you on board against distorting history to promote a political agenda. Hope you get around to denouncing the hack job the Texas State B.O.E. did on their American history standards.

Hannah Lashbrook said...

Wow. I read this post, and immediately thought of a man who is a historian who came to speak at our church this past Sunday. He does mission work down in Gettysburg, and was addressing a lecture on the little-known history of the U. S. Christian Commission, which did much to evangelize among the Union troops during the war. This man brought up this VERY ISSUE of these two words which are historically included in the Gettysburg Address: “Under God”.
I did not take notes (I wish I had!) on his lecture, but as I remember it, here is what he thinks happened there at Gettysburg:
When Lincoln wrote the draft of the Gettysburg Address, before arriving there at Gettysburg, he HAD NOT included the words ‘under God’ in it. It was a purely nationalistic birth of freedom that he was referring to. But then, when Lincoln got off that train, and strode onto that scarred battlefield, and saw the thousands of graves, something happened inside of him. This historian quoted these words of Lincoln’s to us:
“When I left Springfield, I was not a Christian. When I went through the most severest trial of my life—my son Willie dying – I was not a Christian….. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the thousands of soldiers graves… I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus.”
He pointed out that Lincoln must have then at that time, and there at Gettysburg, right as he was going to give the speech, inserted those words, “Under God”, into the speech. Whatever you may believe about Lincoln and the Civil War, surely it means something significant that Lincoln should add those two words into a speech on a battlefield where thousands of men had died, speeding their souls on into eternity. Perhaps Lincoln himself saw, after he had added those two words, the double significance then of the phrase following right after them: “shall have a new birth of freedom”. Perhaps he realized that until we repent before Christ, the nation couldn’t heal, and be one again.
Let’s not be too hasty to rewrite our history.

Singring said...

Hannah,I'm so glad we agree. The history of the US must never be rewritten. I hope the next time the republicans censor the constitution in Congress you will stand up in protest, just as when fundamentalists claim that the founding fathers were devout Christians who thought of the US as a Christian nation.

Lee said...

> just as when fundamentalists claim that the founding fathers were devout Christians who thought of the US as a Christian nation.

As a matter of fact, mostly, they were Christians. Even the most deistic of the bunch, Benjamin Franklin, suggested to the other authors of the Constitution that they pray earnestly over what they were writing.

But somehow, liberals imagine the Constitution was written by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that God doesn't get mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. It sure doesn't read like the charter for a christian theocracy.

Lee said...

> Maybe it has something to do with the fact that God doesn't get mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. It sure doesn't read like the charter for a christian theocracy.

The ideas John Locke basically secularized came from earlier writers with a Reformed Christian perspective, namely, that human beings are fallen, depraved creatures and cannot be trusted with power. This distrust of humans wielding power manifested itself in the separation of powers we see in the Constitution. The idea was to pit the power holders against each other, or they'll be pitted against the citizenry.

Singring said...

'The ideas John Locke basically secularized came from earlier writers with a Reformed Christian perspective, namely, that human beings are fallen, depraved creatures and cannot be trusted with power.'

Interesting...I wonder what Martin would say to such a position, seeing as he is an ardent follower of an utterly autocratic, human institution that refers everything up to one human being - the Pope.

But aside from that, let me just say how emblematic it is that someone who holds to a supposedly 'pro-life' position can say such things as 'all humans are depraved creatures'. It figures.

Lee said...

> But aside from that, let me just say how emblematic it is that someone who holds to a supposedly 'pro-life' position can say such things as 'all humans are depraved creatures'. It figures.

I'm not pro-life. I'm anti-abortion. Maybe that helps. There are some lives that desperately need to be taken.

There are times and places for taking life, according to the Bible's specifications. I'm not aware of any specifications that permit us to take an unborn child's life. But if you know of any fetuses who have committed a capital crime or an atrocity of some sort that would warrant the death penalty, I think it is within the law's rights to terminate the pregnancy.

One Brow said...

I'm not aware of any specifications that permit us to take an unborn child's life.

Numbers 5:11-31