The Gettysburg Address turns 150

From the Google Cultural Institute, an engaging account of how Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address, which was delivered 150 years ago today. There are actually five surviving copies of the text of the speech written in Lincoln’s hand; they’re all different and we don’t know for sure which one he read from. You can easily compare the different versions or see the handwritten versions. Here’s the Bliss Copy of the Gettysburg Address, which Lincoln wrote down in 1864, a few months after the speech:

The Bliss Copy hangs in The White House and is the canonical version of the speech that you learned in school, hear in movies, read on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, etc.

• Abraham Lincoln
• Civil War
• war