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Summary of the Speech:

Lord Mackay of Clashfern’s address blends personal gratitude with a deeply reflective and scholarly meditation on the legacy of Sir Walter Scott, particularly his influence on the American South before and during the Civil War.

Key Points:

1. Personal Reflections and Club Tribute:

• Mackay expresses surprise and honour at being elected President in the Club’s centenary year, highlighting the prestigious lineage of Lord Chancellors who preceded him.
• He singles out the Earl of Selkirk among the guests and pays tribute to Allan Frazer and the Club’s enduring efforts to keep Scott’s legacy alive.

2. Thematic Focus – "Scott and the Old South":

• Drawing on Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy and Eugene Genovese’s essays, Mackay explores how the antebellum South saw Scott as embodying ideals of chivalry, feudalism, and honour.
• He discusses the anecdote of Jefferson Davis invoking Scott and Byron even as he fled the crumbling Confederacy in 1865.

3. Central Questions Explored:

• Did Scott’s ideals weaken the South by promoting a morally outdated and impractical code of honour?
• What precisely did the Old South see in Scott’s works?
• Why blame Scott for the South’s defeat, ignoring material, military, and political causes?

4. Historical and Socioeconomic Context:

• The South was less industrial, more agrarian, and heavily reliant on slavery, lacking the North’s manpower and resources.
• Despite this, Southern morale and cultural cohesion helped sustain a surprisingly tenacious war effort.

5. Literary Parallels and Interpretations:

• Mackay compares Southern plantation aristocracy to Highland clan leaders in Waverley and feudal lords in Ivanhoe, showing how these figures in Scott’s fiction often misjudge social change and suffer defeat.
• He reads Ivanhoe as a critique of chivalric excess, with Rebecca serving as a moral voice exposing its cruelty and futility.
• Waverley is portrayed as a Bildungsroman in which the protagonist matures through balancing romantic idealism with civic responsibility—something the South, Mackay argues, failed to do.

6. Reassessment of Blame:

• He questions whether Scott’s influence can really be held responsible for the South’s defeat, noting that Scott was equally popular in the North.
• Scott’s psychological realism, rather than romantic glorification, is emphasised.
• He delivers a verdict of "not guilty", suggesting the South misread Scott’s moral nuance.

7. Conclusion and Tribute:

• Lord Mackay finishes by quoting Jefferson Davis’s haunting last words to a journalist: “Tell the world that I only loved America.”
• He adds a personal tribute to Principal Elect Stewart Sutherland of the University of Edinburgh, likening him favourably to Principal Irvine of St Andrews.

Interesting Points:

• The speech offers a rare transatlantic cultural critique, treating literature as an active agent in shaping historical consciousness.
• It draws on Waverley, Ivanhoe, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and historical memoirs with thoughtful intertextuality.
• The address shows how Scott's nuanced portrayals of honour, failure, and moral ambiguity were flattened into idealised myths by Southern readers.
• The verdict of “not guilty” serves both as a defence of Scott and a critique of misappropriation of literature for ideological purposes.

Download the [transcript] or read the [bulletin]