Newspaper regrets calling Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks'

It took 150 years, but a Pennsylvania newspaper said it should have recognised the greatness of president Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at the time it was delivered.

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, about 35 miles northeast of Gettysburg, retracted a dismissive editorial penned by its Civil War-era predecessor, the Harrisburg Patriot & Union for the president’s speech, which is now considered a triumph of American oratory.

The retraction, which echoes Lincoln’s now-familiar language, said the newspaper’s November 1863 coverage was wrong when it described the speech as “silly remarks” that deserved a “veil of oblivion.”

The paper now says it regrets the error of not seeing its “momentous importance, timeless eloquence and lasting significance”.