A 150-year-late Gettysburg Address retraction and 5 other ridiculously belated apologies

It's apparently never too late to say you're sorry

Lincoln
(Image credit: (Bettmann/CORBIS))

On Thursday, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., issued a correction. Now, newspapers do this all the time. Usually, though, they don't wait 150 years. This retraction took the form of an editorial, formally recanting an infamous editorial by the paper's Civil War predecessor, The Patriot & Union, belittling Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as forgettable flummery.

You can read the original editorial in The Patriot-News' retraction or the accompanying article explaining how the paper "earned itself an enduring place in history for having got Lincoln's Gettysburg Address utterly, jaw-droppingly wrong." (Short answer: Politics.) But here's the offending line:

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.