When Ken Burns was promoting his series The Civil War some years ago he spoke of the Gettysburg Address. Burns had always imagined Lincoln's voice saying, "government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE..."
This is in contrast to the emphasis I have always heard when people recite it - an emphasis that I learned in grade school. The more common scansion seems to be: "government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people." That is even the emphasis you will hear most people use on Burns new video collection of readers.
The difference in emphasis reflects a profound difference in meaning.
The traditional emphasis seems to be saying: "government is composed of the people - not of some outside regents. Government acts with the power and authority of those people - not with power and authority from some outside force. And government acts on behalf of those people, not to serve some other purpose." I assumed that this emphasis was intended to contrast the American experiment with governments OF kings, BY divine right, FOR the majesty of the state.
In this reading the Gettysburg Address echoes the Declaration of Independence - that foundational act fourscore and seven years earlier. Garry Wills has concluded that the Gettysburg Address "rescued" the Declaration: before Lincoln it had been eclipsed by the Constitution. The Address places the birth of the nation in 1776, not 1789.
In Burns version, Lincoln would have meant something entirely crisp and clear and immediate to his audience. He would have been saying "government of the PEOPLE [not the separate states], by the PEOPLE [not the separate states], for the PEOPLE [not the separate states]." Indeed, there is no mention of the separate states in the Address at all. In his few words he was proclaiming that the central question that the Civil War asked and answered was: are we a confederation of states or a nation of people?
Some years after I heard Burns reimagining of Lincoln's delivery, PBS came across a 1938 recording of an interview with a man, William Rathvon, who had been a nine-year-old schoolkid listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. The interviewer had asked Rathvon to recite the address. You can hear him on the old, scratchy 78 rpm recording - the only recording of an attendee. Mr. Rathvon, recalling Lincoln's words and voice that day, says strongly and clearly: government of the PEOPLE.