In an event held by the Abraham Lincoln Association this afternoon, experts revealed that President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was in fact penned by his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Incredibly, this fact remained undiscovered until a week ago, when the original draft of her work was found in Chicago. 

“After her husband’s death, Mary moved into a hotel room and rigged it into a humble recording studio,” reported association president Bethany Garfield. “She stowed a rather substantial collection of her work beneath a floorboard, including a musical which was called The Gettysburg Revue. We’ve subsequently learned that when the President began to sing the song, he messed up the first line. ‘Four score and seven years ago,’ was written by Mary Todd as ‘four score and seven years before,’ and was necessary for establishing the hook later in the song.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Lincoln immediately forgot the rest of the melody and chose to read the remaining lyrics in prose. This then threw off the band who abandoned the tune altogether, so the public never heard the soaring trumpet build up to of the people, by the people, for the people, or the resulting bass drop and hi-hats that take it home.” 

When Mary Todd heard the news she was devastated. “She learned that the song had been cancelled just as she was getting ready to be lowered by harness to deliver the final aria about all men being created equal. People think the death of Tad broke her, but it was literally this one singular moment that drove her to madness. We can only marvel at how her debut would have changed music forever had it been delivered properly.”