Ambassador's Statements
Remarks by Ambassador John Beyrle at the Opening of the Conference
"Abraham Lincoln: Lessons of History and the Contemporary World"
Russian University for the Humanities
February 18, 2009
Distinguished scholars, ladies and gentlemen:
I am very honored to be asked to open this conference on the significance of Abraham Lincoln for the world today.
Lincoln has received much attention this year in the United States - and many people have drawn parallels and connections drawn between President Lincoln and our new President, Barack Obama. President Obama was sworn in with the same Bible on which Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office – though at Lincoln’s Inauguration, the Chief Justice correctly recited the oath of office. President Obama held the same seat in the Illinois State Legislature once occupied by Abraham Lincoln. And, more significantly, both Presidents entered office at the beginning of a serious crisis in the United States. How President Obama handles the economic crisis will surely determine his place in American history as much as his race and his remarkable personal story.
As a student of Russian history, I am interested in the parallels and connections between Lincoln and another great leader: Czar Alexander II. Few men have had such completely different backgrounds - Czar Alexander, the descendant of an ancient Russian dynasty, and Abraham Lincoln, born in the Kentucky Wilderness, with less than a year of formal education. Yet destiny brought the two men together. Alexander II liberated more than 20 million Russian serfs, an event which was welcomed by emancipationists in America, and two years later President Lincoln freed America’s slaves.
Alexanders’s Russia was the first European power to openly support Lincoln’s Union cause, and the United States returned the gesture. When Russia faced an international crisis about Poland in 1863, Czar Alexander ordered the Russian Atlantic and Pacific Fleets to safe havens in New York and San Francisco, where they were safe from attack by the British or French fleets, and Mrs. Lincoln paid a visit to the flagship of the Russian fleet in New York Harbor.
And, of course, both men were the victims of assassins, motivated by hatred, fear and revenge.
During the seventy-four years of the Cold War, Russia and America often confronted each other as rivals and ideological opponents; but we often forget that, from 1809, when Ambassador John Quincy Adams arrived in St. Petersburg, until 1917, our nations were on friendly terms, trading, exploring, growing, and settling our differences amicably. Perhaps we should look to the 19th century as the model for our relationship in the 21st century.
There are other interesting parallels between Obama and Lincoln.
In 2005, Barack Obama wrote an essay for Time Magazine about Abraham Lincoln. He said, “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat – in all this, he reminded me not just of my own struggles. He also reminded me of a larger, fundamental element of American life - the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.”
Lincoln’s great dream, expressed eloquently in his second inaugural address, was “to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.” This, I believe, is also Obama’s great dream – to achieve harmony at home, and a just and lasting peace with Russia and all our neighbors in the world community. I’m sure that Lincoln’s words and his example will be in Barak Obama’s mind as he leads the United States forward in the months ahead.
Thank you.
