Chris Plante, a WMAL radio host, noticed something odd about this video of President Obama reciting the Gettysburg Address in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the speech:
As you can see, the president omits the words “under God.”
Why did he do that? We don’t know for sure. Some secularists have tried to pretend that Lincoln didn’t say those words, but Princeton professor Robert P. George has pointed out that there is no doubt that Lincoln did in fact say the words “under God” in his Gettysburg Address:
The Bliss copy is generally regarded as the authoritative one, mainly because it is the last—and the only one to which Lincoln actually attached his signature. The Nicolay draft is thought to be the earliest. It gets its name from the custodian of Lincoln’s papers. The Hay draft was found among John Hay’s papers about forty years after Lincoln’s death. It seems to have the greatest number of deviations from the other drafts and from what Lincoln is known to have said at Gettysburg. The Everett copy was sent to Edward Everett by Lincoln at Everett’s request in 1864. (Everett was the famed orator who was actually the main speaker at the ceremony at Gettysburg the day Lincoln spoke.) The Bancroft copy got its name because Lincoln produced it for George Bancroft, a historian and secretary of the Navy. The Bliss copy is named for the publisher Alexander Bliss—Bancroft’s stepson.
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.
Whether intentional or not, President Obama’s omission of these words from the most important speech in American history is quite embarrassing. Can you imagine the ridicule that President Bush would have rightfully faced if he added the words “under God” to a famous historical text (say, the preamble of the Constitution) in which they weren’t included?
