LINCOLN scholar and author Professor Michael Burlingame will be in Jamaica from tomorrow until April 1 for a number of speaking engagements on such topics as “Legacy of Freedom, a Promise of Change: Lincoln and Obama”.

The professor’s visit comes on the heels of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial commemoration in the United States. Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and a man to whom the current president, Barack Obama, has long looked to for inspiration.

Obama has also often been compared to Lincoln, and travelled along the same train route he took to Washington DC in January, days before his inauguration as the 44th president. He also took his oath of office using Lincoln’s bible, and repeatedly invoked Lincoln during his election campaign, praising his wisdom and humility, and then followed his fellow Illinoisan’s example by picking a “team of rivals” for his Cabinet. Recently, Obama said that when he sits down to write a speech, “I’m hearing certain voices in my head… Lincoln’s one of them”.

Burlingame, who will also speak on “Lincoln and Obama: From Emancipation Proclamation to the First African American President”, will conduct a lecture at the University of the West Indies, Mona, as well as a public forum at the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Library tomorrow at 10:00 am. On April 1, he will travel to western Jamaica, where he will speak at the Hanover Public Library in Lucea at 3:00 pm and at the Montego Bay Community College at 5:30 pm. Both events are free and open to the public.

Burlingame, an emeritus professor of History at Connecticut College, devotes his scholarly energies to investigating the life and times of the United State’s 16th president, about whom he has published 12 books. His latest biography of Lincoln has been called The essential title for the Bicentennial by Publishers Weekly. He has also been referred to as “the reigning king of Lincoln scholarship”.

Lincoln, meanwhile, is the subject of 16,000 books in English, which earns him the recognition of the most written about person outside of Shakespeare and Jesus Christ.