The offense? The newspaper passed "over the silly remarks" of President Lincoln. The "silly remarks?" Well those were the 270-words Lincoln spoke on November 19, 1863, dedicating the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
Yup, the Gettysburg Address that the Patriot Union magnanimously vowed, "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."
"Whatever may be the President's virtues, he does not possess sense…"
Providing a contemporaneous glimpse into the past, the Patriot & Union wrote how:
The dead of Gettysburg will speak from their tombs; they will raise their voices against this great wickedness and implore our rulers to discard from their councils the folly which is destroying us, and return to the wise doctrines of the Fathers, to the pleadings of Christianity, to the compromises of the Constitution, which can alone save us. Let our rulers hearken to the dead, if they will not to the living - for from every tomb which covers a dead soldier, if they listen attentively they will hear a solemn sound invoking them to renounce partisanship for patriotism, and to save the country from the misery and desolation which, under their present policy, is inevitable.
There is so much in that paragraph to chew on...
In the fullness of time, we have come to a different conclusion. No mere utterance, then or now, could do justice to the soaring heights of language Mr. Lincoln reached that day. By today's words alone, we cannot exalt, we cannot hallow, we cannot venerate this sacred text, for a grateful nation long ago came to view those words with reverence, without guidance from this chagrined member of the mainstream media. The world will little note nor long remember our emendation of this institution"s record – but we must do as conscience demands.
