{"id":3408,"date":"2010-12-03T12:30:55","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=3408"},"modified":"2010-12-03T17:02:40","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T22:02:40","slug":"lincoln%e2%80%99s-first-inaugural-address-%e2%80%93-a-scurvy-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2010\/12\/03\/lincoln%e2%80%99s-first-inaugural-address-%e2%80%93-a-scurvy-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Lincoln\u2019s First Inaugural Address \u2013 \u201cA Scurvy Trick\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Newspapers across the country published President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s<\/a> first Inaugural Address<\/a> in March 1861, but not all included the correct version. Editors in New Orleans<\/a> had, as the Chicago (IL) Tribune<\/em> explained<\/a>, \u201chorribly botched\u201d the speech. Not only had \u201cwords [been] altered,\u201d but sentences [were] cut in two in the middle and other sentences [were] run together.\u201d As a result, Lincoln\u2019s speech had been turned \u201cinto a ridiculous jumble and mass of nonsense.\u201d While Tribune<\/em> editor Joseph Medill<\/a> knew from experience that \u201ca long document [rarely] is transmitted over the wires without undergoing more or less transformation,\u201d he believed in this case that New Orleans editors deliberately included errors in order to further their disunion agenda. \u201cEvidently the conductors of the secession press are unwilling that the people whom they have hurried into rebellion without a cause, shall have the opportunity of learning the truth or of listening to exhortations of loyalty,\u201d as Medill concluded<\/a>. The only \u201cparallel instance of meanness\u201d that Medill could recall had occurred during the Lincoln-Douglas debates<\/a> in 1858. As the Tribune<\/em> noted<\/a> in September 1858, Democratic editors told their reporters \u201cto report [Lincoln\u2019s speeches] incorrectly, to leave out words and sentences, and otherwise to mutilate his arguments so as to destroy their force and effect on the minds of those who read the Douglas <\/a>papers.\u201d You can read more about the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Michael Burlingame\u2019s “Mucilating Douglas and Mutilating Lincoln: How Shorthand Reporters Covered the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858,” Lincoln Herald<\/em> (1994) and Allen C. Guelzo\u2019s Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America<\/a><\/em> (2008). As for President Lincoln\u2019s First Inaugural Address, see chapter 3 of Douglas L. Wilson\u2019s Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words<\/a><\/em> (2006).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newspapers across the country published President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s first Inaugural Address in March 1861, but not all included the correct version. Editors in New Orleans had, as the Chicago (IL) Tribune explained, \u201chorribly botched\u201d the speech. Not only had \u201cwords [been] altered,\u201d but sentences [were] cut in two in the middle and other sentences [were] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,171,174],"tags":[4756],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antebellum-1840-1861","category-historic-periodicals","category-recent-scholarship","tag-contests-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3410,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions\/3410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}