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87 ) HXdii^h]wb^\g‚hVcYHXdii^h]>YZVh^cA^cXdacÉhLdgaY The poetry of Robert Burns did not mark the sole Scottish impact on the life of Abraham Lincoln. Scottish immigrants and Scottish ideas were intertwined with his entire career. From his birth to his assassination, Lincoln never moved far from the long reach of Scots/Scotch-Irish cultural influences. To paraphrase the writer Saki (A. A. Munro), Scotland produced far more history than could ever be consumed locally. Thus, migration emerged as a central pivot of the national experience, and by 1860 about a hundred thousand Scottish émigrés resided in the United States.1 The truism that “Dukes don’t emigrate” meant that the vast majority of “Scoto-Americans ,” as they were often termed, consisted of ordinary people. The immigrants carried with them a variety of Scottish traditions: a culture of hard drinking, a heritage of proud military service, faith in widespread education, respect for Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches, belief in individual achievement, pragmatism, versatility, and more than a little clannishness. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Scots (as well as the even more numerous Scotch Irish) generally melded to become America’s “invisible immigrants.”2 Scottish and Scotch-Irish names came to be seen as typically “American” names. Simultaneously, more than any other group, the Scotch-Irish settlers from Ulster “created” the first American frontier. In essence, they forged the social world that surrounded the lives of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln and their family. The name “Hanks” is probably a corruption of the Scottish name “Henry.” Native-born Scots and their descendants fought on both sides of the American Civil War. Clyde-built blockade-runners regularly brought illegal goods to the Confederacy, and at least twenty-six Scottish lithographers spent the war in Richmond helping to manufacture Confederate currency. One of the most famous Confederate nurses was Leith-born émigré Kate Cumming. On the other side, the most striking photographs of Lincoln were taken by Scottish émigré Alexander Gardner of the Mathew B. Brady scottish émigrés and scottish ideas 88 studio, and the most powerful editor of Lincoln’s era was Keith, Scotland –born James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. The list could be extended. Taken in the broadest sense, popular poetry mostly likely enjoyed a much larger role in late-eighteenth- to early-nineteenth-century AngloAmerican life than it does today. For example, the British scientist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) wrote his Botanic Garden (1791) in rhyming couplets, and it became a best-selling scientific work. Early-nineteenth -century American newspapers often inserted poems to fill in their columns, and lovers courted by slipping each other snippets of romantic verse. Political poetry remained commonplace as well, as poets extolled the exploits of various generals and politicians. Educator Alexander Williamson wrote a poem in honor of General Ulysses S. Grant’s leadership. When the London Times finally acknowledged Lincoln’s greatness after his death, the newspaper’s apology was in the form of a lengthy poem. The British magazine Punch similarly apologized in May of 1865 in the same form. Almost every American mother crooned Mother Goose lullabies to her children, and there were few people who could not recite a verse or two of “Barby Allen.” Because Lincoln grew to maturity in this environment, his well-known love of poetry was not that unusual. From the snippets he met in his four early school readers to the songs he heard at various frontier gatherings, Lincoln found himself surrounded by verse and rhythm. Moreover, from his earliest days, Lincoln exhibited the key element that characterizes all poets—a deep feeling for the sound, rhythm, and aura of words.3 As an old friend W. M. Butler once recalled, whenever he was asked a question, the young Lincoln “gave an answer, it was characteristic, brief, pointed, a propos, out of the common way and manner, and yet exactly suited to the time place and thing.”4 The copybook doggerel he wrote (probably around age 10) in his arithmetic book in Spencer County, Indiana, reflects this emerging talent. Abraham Lincoln His hand and pen He will be good but God knows when.5 As a teenager, in 1825 or 1826, Lincoln wrote a lengthy satirical rhyme on his friend Josiah Crawford’s prominent nose that had his neighbors (excluding Crawford) in stitches. Two decades later, after a visit to Southern Indiana, scottish émigr...

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