The Gettysburg Address by Abe Lincoln and a small problem

Background of Gettysburg

From July 1–3, 1863, 172,000 American soldiers clashed in the Battle of Gettysburg, in what would prove to be a turning point of the Civil War.The battlefield was left with the bodies of more than 7,500 soldiers and 5,000 horses of the Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia, and the stench of rotting bodies in the humid July air was overpowering. The people of Gettysburg decided to honor the dead and give them a decent burial and arranged for land, buried them all and called upon the President of United States. The speech he delivered on that day(less than 3 minutes) is the foundation of America today and there is the problem

The Gettysburg Address

This is the speech. I really admire this guy. What powerful words.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Problem

This speech is the taught widely across the U.S and it is inscribed in a memorial in Washington. The problem is that nobody knows if Lincoln spoke these exact words as there are 5 different manuscripts of this speech and some of them are drastically different. So there is a good chance that the foundation which US has built itself upon might be words that were never spoken and not exactly as Lincoln intended it to be and like the famous "American Dream" , the foundation might also be built upon a bit of dreams. But hell, dreams are good and the words above are some of the most powerful that I have ever seen and I respect that country for bringing out stalwarts like Lincoln