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The Five Copies
The Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C. holds the two earliest copies of the manuscript. Lincoln
may have written out one of these before he gave the address, and he probably
wrote the second shortly after his return to Washington from Gettysburg
on November 19, 1863. President Lincoln gave one of these copies to each
of his two private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. After Nicolay’s
death in 1901, his copy passed to his friend and colleague, John Hay.
Descendants of John Hay donated both copies to the Library of Congress
in 1916.
Scholars disagree over whether the Nicolay copy, referred
to as the "first draft," was actually the reading copy Lincoln
held at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. Some believe that the delivery
text has been lost, because some of the words and phrases of the Nicolay
copy do not match contemporary transcriptions of Lincoln’s original
speech. The words "under God," for example, are missing from
the phrase "that this nation [under God] shall have a new birth of
freedom...." Other word and punctuation variations also appear.
Chicago Historical Society. Admission Voucher for the
Chicago Historical Society's exhibition of five manuscript copies of the
Gettysburg Address. 1950.
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