The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has removed “under God” from a recent publication of the Gettysburg Address

There’s a reason why history is important. History is about knowing the truth about our past and therefore about ourselves. Not surprisingly, those who meddle with it usually do so from less-than-noble motives.

In the latest edition of First Things, Princeton University’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Robert P. George suggests that the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has been the latest to attempt to re-write – or, more accurately, erase – history by reprinting Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and omitted the words “under God” in their reprinting.

Professor George observes:
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.

George goes on to ask why an organization such as the American Constitution Society which, presumably, values the American constitution and other important documents in America’s legal and political history would make such an omission.

Even diehard atheists, one might add, who purport to believe in truth should be asking what is going on here. It’s one thing to argue about the precise place of religion and religious-informed belief in the public square. It’s quite another, however, to try and ever-so-slightly distort the lens through which we examine the history of these matters.

Again, it’s not a question of whether one is a believer, an agnostic, or an atheist. It’s a matter of accurate historical memory. Nations that deceive themselves about their pasts build their present and future upon the shifting sands of lies and half-truths.

Editor’s Note: The version of the Gettysburg Address referred to in the article appears in a publication of the ACS entitled The ACS Pocket Constitution which includes the following documents: The Declaration of Independence; the Gettysburg Address; and the Constitution of the United States of America. The version is entitled the ‘Hay Draft’. The Library of Congress explains the source of this draft: The second draft, of the Gettysburg Address, probably made by Lincoln shortly after his return to Washington from Gettysburg, was given to his secretary John Hay, whose descendants donated both it and the Nicolay copy to the Library of Congress in 1916. There are numerous variations in words and punctuation between these two drafts

Dr. Samuel Gregg has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy from Oxford. He is Director of Research at the Acton Institute, and an Adjunct Professor at the Pontifical Lateran University. This article was originally published in the Action Institute Power Blog and is used with permission. http://www.acton.org/