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#42540 09/23/01 05:38 PM
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Sweet musick, that's a cute site! I was unable to help going to the curiously-named link of Later Billy, who, it turns out, has a vocabulary of 57 words, 29 of which are cuss words...


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No.



TEd
#42542 09/25/01 09:19 AM
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A letter in yesterday's UK Times attributed the following quote to Abe Lincoln:
"If we were born where they were born; taught what they were taught; we would believe what they believe."

I can't find this via Google - anyone have any better luck?


#42543 09/25/01 11:25 AM
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A house divided against itself cannot stand.
This, probably Lincoln's best-known pre-pesidential utterance, may be particularly apt for us now.

There is much of further interest in that speech, but it may be unduly provocative for us now.


#42544 09/25/01 03:22 PM
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Bingley
#42545 09/25/01 04:26 PM
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Correct, B. When the speech is given in print, that sentence is in interior quotes.


#42546 09/25/01 08:30 PM
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Hmmm, a question. In the days of Abe Lincoln, were the speeches written by the president himself or did he have ghost writers like all heads of state do now?

I feel some sympathy towards these writers. Their boss says something they wrote and it is the boss that goes down in history. The creative genius is not even a footnote in history.


#42547 09/25/01 11:49 PM
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See http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/gadrft.html
regarding the Gettysburg address, which pictures two of the five surviving drafts and gives cites to the other three.

I'm no handwriting expert, but it appears to be Lincoln's handwriting, thus suggesting "no speechwriters".


#42548 09/26/01 12:11 AM
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The story that I've heard (I don't know if it's true or not) is that Lincoln scribed the Gettysburg Address on an envelope on his train to the site where he was going to make the speech. That seems like it would be a rather short time to write a speech, but it would mean that he didn't have a speech writer.


#42549 09/27/01 07:57 PM
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I'm pretty sure that he didn't write it on an envelope, but he did write it himself. Presidential speechwriters didn't come around until the middle of the twentieth century, or therabouts. I'll check on that, though. Definitely not before 1900.


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