Editing Gettysburg Address (section)

=== Usage of "under God" ===
The exact phrase "under God" does not appear in the Nicolay and Hay drafts. But it does appear in the three later copies held by Everett, Bancroft, and Bliss. This has led some skeptics to question whether the words "under God" were included in the remarks Lincoln gave that day.<ref>{{cite web|editor-last=Walker|editor-first=Cliff|publisher=Positive Atheism|date=September 2002|title=Lincoln's Gettysburg 'Under God': Another case of 'retrofitting'? (reply)|url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8448.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021108025927/http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8448.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 8, 2002|access-date=December 3, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Randi, James |publisher=James Randi Educational Foundation |date=October 10, 2003 |url=http://archive.randi.org/site/jr/101003.html |title=Lincoln Embellished |access-date=December 3, 2007 |author-link=James Randi |archive-date=December 14, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141214202556/http://archive.randi.org/site/jr/101003.html |url-status=live }}: "The Gettysburg address&nbsp;... is often given as the source of the addition to the Pledge of Allegiance that we often hear, that phrase, 'under God.' Wrong."</ref> However, at least three reporters [[telegraph]]ed the text of Lincoln's speech on the day the Address was given with the words "under God" included. Historian William E. Barton argues that:<ref>Barton, pp. 138–139.</ref>

{{blockquote|Every stenographic report, good, bad and indifferent, says 'that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom.' There was no common source from which all the reporters could have obtained those words but from Lincoln's own lips at the time of delivery. It will not do to say that [Secretary of War] Stanton suggested those words after Lincoln's return to Washington, for the words were telegraphed by at least three reporters on the afternoon of the delivery.}}

Reporters present for Lincoln's Gettysburg Address included Joseph Gilbert with the [[Associated Press]], [[Charles Hale]] with the ''[[Boston Daily Advertiser]]'',<ref>Prochnow, p. 14.</ref> [[John Russell Young|John R. Young]] with the ''[[Philadelphia Press]]'', and reporters from the ''Cincinnati Commercial''<ref>Prochnow, p. 13.</ref> ''New York Tribune'',<ref name=Prochnow15>Prochnow, p. 15.</ref> and ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref name=Prochnow15/> Hale, according to later reports, arrived at the event, and "had notebook and pencil in hand, [and] took down the slow-spoken words of the President".<ref>Sandburg, Carl (1939). "Lincoln Speaks at Gettysburg". In: ''Abraham Lincoln: The War Years''. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company. II, 452–457; cited by Prochnow, p. 14.</ref> "He took down what he declared was the exact language of Lincoln's address, and his declaration was as good as the oath of a court stenographer. His associates confirmed his testimony, which was received, as it deserved to be, at its face value."<ref>Barton, p. 81.</ref> One explanation is that Lincoln deviated from his prepared text and inserted the phrase when he spoke. Ronald C. White, visiting professor of history at the [[University of California, Los Angeles]] and professor of American religious history emeritus at [[San Francisco Theological Seminary]], wrote:

<blockquote>It was an uncharacteristically spontaneous revision for a speaker who did not trust extemporaneous speech. Lincoln had added impromptu words in several earlier speeches, but always offered a subsequent apology for the change. In this instance, he did not. And Lincoln included "under God" in all three copies of the address he prepared at later dates. "Under God" pointed backward and forward: back to "this nation", which drew its breath from both political and religious sources, but also forward to a "new birth". Lincoln had come to see the Civil War as a ritual of purification. The old Union had to die. The old man had to die. Death became a transition to a new Union and a new humanity.<ref name="america58"/></blockquote>

Prior to 1860, the phrase "under God" was used frequently, usually meaning "with God's help".<ref>{{cite web |author=Geoff Nunberg |title='(Next) Under God,' Phrasal Idiom |date=June 20, 2004 |work=Language Log |url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001090.html |access-date=November 24, 2013}}</ref>