nation conceived
in liberty … under God
all created equal

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do.

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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

Abraham Lincoln’s remarks were made at the dedication of the National Cemetery on the Battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, 160 years ago today.

This text, known as the Nicolay Copy is named for John G. Nicolay, President Lincoln’s personal secretary, this is considered the “first draft” of the speech, begun in Washington on White house stationery. The second page is writen on different paper stock, indicating it was finished in Gettysburg before the cemetery dedication began. Lincoln gave this draft to Nicolay, who went to Gettysburg with Lincoln and witnessed the speech. The Library of Congress owns this manuscript.

There are five handwritten copies of the text of the speech.

Two are noted as drafts and are named after Mr. Lincoln’s secretaries, the Nicolay Draft Copy and John Hay Draft Copy.

There is a great scene in history when then Secretary of State John Hay handed his copy to President Theodore Roosevelt who took the paper and forgot what he was holding and went to make several strong points, punctuating the air with the paper in his fist as he made his points, all the while his Secretary of State was trying to retrieve it.

Also interesting to note that when Mr. Roosevelt was sworn in as President, having had three years filling out the term of murdered William McKinley, he wore a ring that was lent by Mr. Hay.

The ring was fashioned to hold a lock of Mr. Lincoln’s hair.

But I digress.

Neither draft has the words ‘under God‘ after the words, that the Nation … in the last line.

Tradition has it that the night before the speech, Secretary of State William Seward talked Mr. Lincoln into adding the words at that spot.

The night before the big day, it was Secretary Seward who said,  “… We shall therefore be united, only one country, having one hope, one ambition, and one destiny … this government of ours – the freest, the best, the wisest and the happiest in the world – must be, and so far as we are concerned practically will be, immortal.”

There are three more copies of the text, all in Lincoln’s handwriting, all written later in response for a copy of his remarks and all three have the sentence as, that the nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Interesting to be able to say that in the newspaper coverage of the day, the New York Times gave front page coverage to the events in Gettysburg that November afternoon and gave the full text of Mr. Lincoln’s short short remarks.

And in that text, are the words, Under God.

nothing but the truth
the whole truth, truer, more true
can’t handle the truth?

I was writing up a report for work that discussed the google’s analytics and web site performance data.

I had just written the statement that recent changes by the Google to their tracking codes and tags, called GA4, that reports on web traffic would be truer than before.

I stopped and rewrote the line to say ‘more true’.

And that didn’t sound right either.

But it got me thinking.

You start with true.

You start with truth.

That’s kind of ground zero.

Down to the nub.

The basic.

Truth.

As defined, the quality or state of being true, that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality, or a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

Can there really be degrees of being true?

More true?

Truer?

Truest?

Mr. Aristotle is credited with saying, “To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.”

Boy Howdy but that helps a whole lot don’t it?

I guess it comes down to, what do you choose to believe?

Back to my web stats report.

BTW I usually start to work on these web stats reports by asking my boss, “What do you want the web stats to be?|

The Moth and the Star

A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”

The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.