I posted this link over in the bonnet removal thread, but removed it because it is "off" that topic.
Here's the link to Walt Whitman's prose piece, "Robert Burns as Poet and Person," over at bartleby.com:
http://www.bartleby.com/229/5007.html

So, "America's poet" did read Burns, and had a lot of favorable things to say about him. I even think it could be said Burns influenced and possibly inspired Whitman.

Andrew Carnegie also liked the poetry of Whitman according to several of my literary books on Whitman.
More Scottish influence on the U.S. ...