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Scotland’s Global Impact Conference: Speaker Articles

23rd September 2009

By: Ferenc Morton Szasz, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Title: Robert Burns and Abraham Lincoln: Connected Lives and Legends

Scotland’s favourite poet, Robert Burns (25 January 1759), and America’s favourite president, Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809), were born almost exactly fifty years apart.  Scotland’s year-long Homecoming Celebration of 2009, commemorating Burns’ 250th birthday, is echoed by America’s year-long celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.  Fresh biographies, special-issue stamps and newly minted coins, academic and popular conferences, and a vast variety of speeches—both lengthy and brief—characterize the celebrations in both nations.

Yet few people—on either side of the Atlantic—are aware of the overlapping themes that link these two figures.  Robert Burns was Abraham Lincoln’s favourite poet, and some historians argue that echoes of Burns’ classic rhythms can be heard in Lincoln’s greatest state papers, especially his Second Inaugural Address of 1865.  The influence of Burns’ poetry upon Lincoln is rooted in the patterns of American literature in the early nineteenth century.

During the first years of the Young Republic, poetry was not America’s forté.  The victory of the thirteen colonies during their War for Independence might well have spurred a grand epic poem to celebrate the “Promise of America.”  But, alas, early American writers failed to create any memorable verse, a vacuum that led to a pronounced “poetry gap.”  Lacking verse of their own, Americans responded enthusiastically to the poetry of Robert Burns.  Quickly, his famous lines spread through a largely oral culture, especially along the frontier of the Ohio River Valley.  Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the Burns appeal, “The people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns . . . .  Every boy’s and girl’s head carries snatches of his songs, and they say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth.”

By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans’ enthusiasm for Burns expressed itself in celebrations of Burns’ birthday across the continent.  In 1859, over sixty American cities held gala dinners to commemorate the Bard’s 100th birthday.  From Albany, New York, to Boston, Massachusetts, to Springfield, Illinois (a gathering that Lincoln himself attended), Burns’ supporters raised a glass to honour the Scots’ poet.  Celebrants attending the gathering in San Francisco telegraphed this enigmatic message to the East: “We in distant California glory in Burns.  Let us do as he did.”

Abraham Lincoln retained his fascination for Burns throughout his life.  As a youth growing up in the backwoods of Kentucky and Illinois, he would surely have listened to Burns’ songs.  After Lincoln moved to the tiny hamlet of New Salem, Illinois, he furthered his interest in the Bard through the counsel of a New Salem neighbour, Jack Kelso.  Since Lincoln was gifted with almost perfect recall, he memorized all or parts of a number of Burns’ classic poems, including “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” “Tam O’Shanter,” “Address to the Deil,” and “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” among others.  Early in April 1865, Lincoln recited a complete Burns poem to his secretary; a few days later, the president was assassinated.

From the perspective of 2009, it has become clear that Burns and Lincoln shared much in common.  Both men were born to marginal farming families that often struggled to keep the wolf from the door.  Given the relatively mild climates of Ayrshire and the Ohio River Valley, each must have spent much of his youth out of doors.  Both men felt “called” to better their position in society, and each retained an abiding sense that, within his nation, the ultimate goal must be an enduring social equality.  The parallel was drawn further by a mid-nineteenth century New York cleric, who observed, “’A man’s a man for a’ that’ is the Declaration of Independence set to music.”

Ferenc Morton Szasz will address the intersection of the lives of Robert Burns and Abraham Lincoln in his presentation at “Scotland’s Global Impact Conference”, part of the Homecoming Scotland commemoration, scheduled for 22-24 October at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.

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