Groupon Mocks Civil War on Anniversary of Gettysburg Address

On the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the e-coupon website Groupon made light of the bloodiest war in American history.

Originally spotted by Twitter user Jeff Emanuel and reported by RedState, the ad butchers both the date of the American Civil War, fails to mention that the anniversary memorialized is the Gettysburg Address, and makes light of the event on a day that required the greatest solemnity.

The ad starts out saying, “On this, the 100th anniversary of the Civil War we look back at some of the most important facts about this nation-shaping event.”

In fact, on the “100th anniversary,” John F. Kennedy was president of the United States. Former President Dwight Eisenhower took Kennedy’s place and made a very solemn and moving speech at the  battlefield.

Eisehower said, “On this day of commemoration, Lincoln still asks of each of us, as clearly as he did of those who heard his words a century ago, to give that increased devotion to the cause for which soldiers in all our wars have given the last full measure of devotion.”

Civil War Historian Dr. Drew Gulpin Faust explained the incredible pain the American nation suffered from the war in her book The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War:

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I’s Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.

Instead of an appropriate nod to the significance of the Civil War and the Gettysburg Address in American history and recognition of the incredible sacrifices of that day, Groupon used a few unfunny cracks to make light of its events.

Here are some of Groupon’s jokes:

• “Over a hundred people died in the war. Way more in fact.”
• “The Civil War was so sad that it is referred to as the ‘Great Depression.'”
• “The Civil War was said to pit brother against brother, although the brother did not always have to fight each other in a pit.”
• “Some say the Civil War continues today, especially in educational video games.”