Whatever gifts President Obama may be bringing to his hosts
in Cuba this week, it’s pretty certain that he’s not giving them one of the
handwritten copies of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. And yet, in a roundabout way,
America has Cuba to thank for it.
Lincoln wrote five copies of the Gettysburg Address that we
know of, and not all of them before the dedication ceremony at Gettysburg on
November 19, 1863. In fact, the last one that Lincoln wrote was a kind of
do-over, in March 1864. A Colonel Alexander Bliss was collecting manuscripts
for a facsimile volume of Autograph
Leaves of Our Country’s Authors and wanted the Gettysburg Address to be
among them. But alas, the first version Lincoln sent was missing a signature
and a heading, among other elements, so would he mind penning another?
The ever-patient president obliged (proceeds from the book
were going to a charitable organization to help the Union soldiers). Not only
did he sign it but dated it, as well. This one made the cut for Bliss’s book.
Bliss’s descendants sold Lincoln’s original at auction in
New York City, in 1949. A former Ambassador to the United States purchased it.
His name was Oscar B. Cintas, and he was a businessman from Havana, Cuba.
When
he died, he willed that the copy become the property of the people of the
United States. The aptly named Bliss Copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address now
resides in the Lincoln Room of the White House.
