Update

A response from the Miller Centre received Monday 7 March says:

The missing material in the Lincoln speech was due to a technical glitch. We recently moved much of the content on our website from an old content management system to a new one. A programming error in the script used to migrate the content failed to anticipate certain HTML tags, so the software removed them and all content in between them. This caused entire paragraphs to be deleted in several speeches. We are in the process of reviewing all of the speeches on our website to ensure their accuracy. We have corrected Lincoln's speech, which your readers can find here. We also have a lot of information about Lincoln and the issue of slavery on our website, which can be found here. – Miller Centre of Public Affairs, University of Virginia

[Original article starts] I don't usually write here, as editor, but an incident occurred this past week that I'd like share with you. To me, it's an intrinsically interesting and suggestive episode, but it also raises questions about the reliability of sources: we all know the issues with Wikipedia information (a really handy resource, but not to be relied on, especially on contentious topics), but what assumptions should we allow ourselves to make about the dependability of seemingly copper-bottomed, "nonpartisan" academic institutions?

This occurred on Wednesday 2 March, as I was preparing for publication Eric Foner's article on the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration speech. Naturally enough, I went searching for a transcript of the speech to link to. The results of a Googlesearch took me to the site of the University of Virginia's Miller Centre of Public Affairs; reckoning this a prestigious institution at a public university (founded by Thomas Jefferson, no less), I assumed this would be a reliable link to use (this being the cached version of what I originally found on 2 March).

Then I reached the passage quoted by Eric's piece, where Lincoln flatly states:

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.

Doing due diligence to check Eric's accuracy of quotation, I searched the transcript on the Miller Centre site for this sentence but could not find it. This seemed very odd. I checked whether the rubric at the head of the transcript said whether it was an alternate or edited version; it did not. So I searched for another version of the transcript and linked to that instead.

But my suspicion was aroused, and I sent off an email to the Miller Centre staff, alerting them to the fact that they were publishing a misleading, redacted version of Lincoln's address; and outlining my interpretation that it looked as though the speech had been cut to remove references to slavery as the matter of dispute between the North and the South, presumably in order to emphasise the theme of "states' rights" instead.

I received an immediate reply; and within an hour, the webpage had been amended and the full text restored. Since then, I've done a full comparison of the cached version of the page and the amended one; at the foot of this article run all the passages that had been omitted from the original (I've italicised passages which seem to me especially noteworthy).

It's not an area I have any expertise in, but the sum of the redactions appeared to have two key effects: first, of toning down or removing entirely Lincoln's strong assertions of the legitimate authority of the Union before and above the Constitution; and second, as said, of shifting the emphasis away from slavery as the key point of dispute between North and South and towards differences over the precedence and prerogative of individual states v the Union in law-making and enforcement.

It is difficult not to see a neo-Confederate agenda in this editing.

It is possible that the erroneous version of Lincoln's address was published by accident or carelessness. But the alacrity with which a correction was made suggests that Miller Centre executives realised the potential damage to the institution's reputation of hosting what might appear to be a politically tendentious, "doctored" version of the address. Having had a polite note from them, thanking me for pointing out the error and confirming the correction, I wrote back saying I was considering writing about it and seeking their comment on several questions:

1. Do you have any idea of how the Miller Centre came to be publishing an incomplete version of the 1861 Lincoln speech? 2. Do you know who was responsible for editing/publishing the inaccurate version? 3. Are you conducting any inquiry or investigation into how this occurred, or will you be doing so? 4. Do you agree that the cuts from the full text had the effect of minimising slavery as the issue at dispute between the Union and southern (secessionist) states, and maximising the North-South conflict as one primarily of "states' rights"? 5. Do you have protocols or procedures in place to ensure that documents published online by the Miller Centre are accurate, reliable and secure from unauthorised tampering? 6. Is there any other statement you would like to add in this context?

In contrast to the almost instantaneous earlier response, as yet, I have received no reply to these questions. So the Miller Centre would seem to wish to make no further comment.

But given that its online database of the Scripps Library purports to be a vital resource for scholars of public policy, US government and presidential history, I certainly hope they are running some checks.

The passages restored, but not in the original (my italics):