President Obama Omits God From Gettysburg Address-Truth! But Not Intentionally!
Summary of eRumor:
News of President Obama reading the Gettysburg Address 150 years after President Abraham Lincoln delivered it on November 19, 1863 has gone viral on the World Wide Web. People are aghast that President Obama skipped the part that said, “under God.”
The Truth:
President Obama did read the Gettysburg address for a documentary by film maker Ken Burns. The President did leave out the “under God” because those words did not appear in the copy of the text that was given to him. This according to a November 20, 2013 article by the Washington Times.
The article said that Burns gave President Obama the first version of the famous speech, which did not contain the phrase “under God.”
Burns recorded the five living U.S. Presidents along with other elected officials and celebrities who recited Lincoln’s speech. The videos were posted on the LearnTheAddress.Org website.
Below is the text of the Gettysburg Address that was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. If you play the video of President Obama’s reading you will see some differences from the famous speech.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The previous drafts of President Lincoln’s famous speech, including the one read by President Obama, can be found on the Abraham Lincoln Online website.
Posted 11/20/13