Dr. Jonathan W. White is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), which was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and Jefferson Davis Prize, a “best book” in Civil War Monitor, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. He serves as vice-chair of The Lincoln Forum, and on the boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council.
His most recent books include Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017), which was selected as a “best book” by Civil War Monitor; and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), which he co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway. In October 2021 he published To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln with UNC Press and My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss with UVA Press. His most recent book is A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House just won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.
A Quote by Lincoln
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Dr. Jonathan W. White is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), which was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and Jefferson Davis Prize, a “best book” in Civil War Monitor, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. He serves as vice-chair of The Lincoln Forum, and on the boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council.
His most recent books include Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017), which was selected as a “best book” by Civil War Monitor; and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), which he co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway. In October 2021 he published To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln with UNC Press and My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss with UVA Press. His most recent book is A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House just won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.
A Quote by Lincoln
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Your Host, Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis Podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world today. I have a returning guest, and I am looking forward to this conversation. I loved our conversation last time. Today I have Jonathan White, and he is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), which was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and Jefferson Davis Prize, a “best book” in Civil War Monitor, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. He serves as vice-chair of The Lincoln Forum, and on the boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council. His most recent books include Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017), which was selected as a “best book” by Civil War Monitor; and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), which he co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway. In October 2021 he published To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln with UNC Press and My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss with UVA Press. His most recent book is A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House just won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. His most recent book, A House Built by Slaves, African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House, recently won an award! And Jonathan, maybe share a little bit about that experience. Congratulations, sir. This is very, very cool.
Jon White 1:34
Yeah. Well, thank you. And thanks again for having me back. I got word a couple of weeks ago that A House Built By Slaves was a joint recipient of a $50,000 book prize. So I get half of that. And then I also get a life-size bust of Abraham Lincoln. And it's a prize called the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. And so I don't think I have room for the bust at home; I'm gonna have to squeeze it into my office here somewhere. But it's, it's really exciting. The other winner is Jon Meacham, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Biden speech writer. I mean, he's a very prominent guy. So to win it with Jon Meacham is really an honor.
Scott Allen 2:12
Well, congratulations, I tell stories about you. Because in our last conversation, your command of this space is just incredible on the topic of Abraham Lincoln. And then, as I was just sharing with you, you had passed along a speech you'd given at Christopher Newport University recently. And you're just a great storyteller. As we were laying out what we would discuss today, something I'm looking forward to talking about, in some ways, is the complexity of decision-making, in many of these situations that any President, but in our case, we're going to discuss Abraham Lincoln, many of the situations that they find themselves in these leaders, they're just complex, it's incredibly difficult. And I know that you've done some work around some of the pardons that Lincoln had made during his presidency. Maybe we tell a couple of stories and see where the conversation takes us.
Jon White 3:07
You know, I think that thing, mentioning pardons, one of the things that I think we often forget, is just how busy Abraham Lincoln and other presidents are. It's so funny when I talk to my students, and they all say, "Oh, I'm so busy," you know, I didn't have time to write that paper because I'm so busy. And I always say to them, "Wait till you're an adult," like, I know, you're legally an adult, wait till you're out of college, then you will know what busyness is. And I think I'm busy. I've got two kids, which isn't even that many kids, but they keep me really busy. And my wife and I work full-time, and we're really busy. But then, as I research Abraham Lincoln, I am just astounded by the number of things that he was having to grapple with on a daily basis. So on the one hand, he is waging war, he's the Commander in Chief of the Union Army. He's the head of the executive branch of the federal government. He is fighting the Civil War. And so that is a huge thing. He's got 2 million soldiers throughout the course of the war, who are serving underneath him, and he is managing all the generals who are in the different theatres of that war and trying to bring the nation to victory. He is also the head of a political party. And so he has to manage politics, and he has to not only wage war, but do it in a way that keeps coalition's together so that the Republicans and the war Democrats and even some Democrats who aren't supportive of him are willing to pass legislation and do things that help him wage war effectively. So those two things alone are huge responsibilities that he has, and yet that only scratches the surface of the busyness of his day. When I was on last time, we talked about how Lincoln held office hours. Any citizen who wanted to could come and wait in line and go talk to him about anything they wanted to and for your, for your listeners who have seen the Spielberg Lincoln movie. This gets beautifully illustrated in a scene early in the film where these two people come from Missouri, and they come and complain to Lincoln about how you know something's wrong with this bridge they own, and their rights are being denied. And they want Lincoln to get involved in, in dealing with this bridge situation. And in the film, it's fictional, but it really captures the reality that people would come to him and say, Hey, did you know I gave a speech for you in this small town in Ohio, and that got you elected president so make me postmaster of my town like ridiculous things that he's dealing with. And then you have these really difficult decisions that he's dealing with in things like pardons where you got life and death situations; someone has been convicted of a federal crime or convicted of a military crime, they or their friends or their loved ones, or their congressmen are seeking pardon. And they go to Lincoln, and Lincoln has to review the case files and decide do I allow this person to be punished or executed. Or do I show them clemency? And when I try to get my mind around all of that, that he was dealing with on a day-in and day-out basis, it just, boggles my mind that he was able to survive and do and accomplish everything he did. And I haven't even mentioned things like suspension of habeas corpus and civil liberties or emancipation, like all these other huge issues that he was trying to figure out. How do I deal with these issues?
Scott Allen 6:36
Well, and even his personal life, right, I mean, there's a lot of challenge on that front as well, correct?
Jon White 6:44
His relationship with his wife could be rocky at times, depending on which historians you believe I mean, it was either really bad or just not great. He lost a son in 1862. And while you know, he's dealing with all the pressures of the war; He's grieving the loss, the second loss of a son, he had lost another one about nine years earlier. And so yeah, everything is just converging to make life so hard on Lincoln. And one of the things that are fascinating is, if you look at photographs of Lincoln, we always talk about how presidents age, and almost every president, you can see them, beginning of their term end of their term, they look a lot older. It's really true with Lincoln, you can see his aging in the photographs.
Scott Allen 7:27
Well, take us through a couple of stories that stand out for you. When it comes to some of these pardons some of these really complex decisions. You know, I grew up in Minnesota. So that story really resonated for me. Would you maybe start with that one?
Jon White 7:42
Sure. So in the fall of 1862, a second war broke out in the United States, and this one was between the Dakota Indians and white settlers in Minnesota. Throughout the 1850s, 10s of 1000s of white Americans moved from the eastern seaboard out to Minnesota, and the federal government signed a series of treaties with the Dakota that really hammered the Dakota Indians into very small portions of land along the Minnesota River. And part of the government's agreement with the Dakota was that they would get gold annuities sent every year, and this money would be theirs in exchange for the seizing of their land. Now, the problem that really there are several problems that arise during the war and even before the war, that one of the problems before the war was that the federal government had agents, they were known as Indian agents, who were working out in the Dakota territory and in Minnesota, who were supposed to be managing Indian Affairs. But these agents were generally very corrupt, and they were using their positions to line their own pockets at the expense of the Dakota. Wow. And then there were also traders or merchants who are out there, who would also build the Dakota, and they, you know, the Dakota didn't, in many cases, speak English or write and read. And so these merchants would keep records, and then anytime the gold annuities came in, they would say, Well, according to my records, you owe me this amount of money. And the Dakota had no way of knowing whether or not it was true. And so you had these merchants who in some cases were highly corrupt, and just enriching themselves at the expense of the Dakota. And then when the war comes, that slows down the payment of the annuities. And so not only are the Dakota the victims of this really corrupt system, but they're not getting the money they were promised, and the merchants won't pay them or won't give them what they need without the promise of payment, and so many of the Dakota are starving. At one point a Dakota goes to a merchant seeking assistance and the merchant basically says you know, I don't care if you eat grass or dumb like you can eat that. I'm not going to give you anything unless you can pay me, and this all came to a head. In August of 1862, there were four Dakota warriors who were starving; they had been out hunting, but they didn't catch any game, and they got to a settlement of a white family. And one of them sees some eggs. And he picks up the eggs. And then another one says, you know, don't take those; they belong to a white man. And they get into an argument over, you know, you're a coward for not wanting to eat the eggs or so forth. And one of the men then basically says, well, to prove I'm not a coward, I'll go in, and I'll kill the white family here. And then the other three say, well, we will go with you, and they go in. And they kill several white settlers, including a 15-year-old girl. And they then ride back to the other Indians, and they tell what happened and the Native Americans who are part of this Dakota tribe, they're in a tough spot, and they decide what they're going to do is go to war, like they've started a war, they know the whites are going to retaliate for this massacre, they might as well fight it out. And a war takes place for several weeks, and the Dakota kill somewhere between four and 500 white settlers in this war, but then the US Army comes in and suppresses the Dakota and ends up arresting several 100 of them. And then the question is, what do you do with these warriors who have been captured. And the military very quickly set up a military court, they're going to try them for what we would today call war crimes for massacres for outrages against white civilians. They tried about 369, but 303 get convicted and sentenced to be executed. And the thing about these trials is that they didn't have what we would consider due process. Many of the cases were 15 minutes. The Dakota, again, sometimes don't speak English. They don't know what they've been charged with. They have no idea what's going on in these courts, and then they're just being sentenced to be executed. And ultimately, as I said, 303 were sentenced to be hanged. But because they were tried in a military court, they could not be executed without Lincoln's approval. And so Lincoln finds out what's going on, and he slows things down. And he says to military authorities in Minnesota, "do not carry out any executions until I first have a chance to review the cases." Now, that infuriates white Minnesotans because they want it. They want retribution they want what they see as quick justice. But Lincoln knows that a lot of these warriors have not committed war crimes. They didn't attack women and children or unarmed white men. They were captured on battlefields. And from Lincoln's perspective, if they were captured on a battlefield, they should be treated as a prisoner of war. So he gets three trusted lawyers to go through all the case files, figure out who committed a war crime, who raped women, killed innocent children, or unarmed white men, and who was captured on the battlefield. And he ultimately winnowed it down so that 38 were executed. Now, this was a really controversial decision. And it still remains controversial today because on the one hand, it's the largest single-day mass execution in American history. And it was done on racial lines, and it was Dakota Souix who were executed. On the other hand, it's the largest mass commutation in American history, Lincoln commuted the sentence of the vast majority of the men who had been sentenced to be executed. And he did that because he believed that their rights had been denied and they should be treated as warriors and not as war criminals. And, you know, from some perspectives, Lincoln is highly criticized for these actions, and in others, he's praised for them. It kind of depends on what your perspective is. I think, though, it captures what we were talking about a minute ago, which is that Lincoln was facing so many issues. I mean, when Lincoln is dealing with this, the United States has just fought the Battle of Antietam, which is the bloodiest day in American history. And so, while Lincoln is grappling with that and what am I going to do about emancipation, he was also dealing with the situation in Minnesota. And it's pretty remarkable that he was able to be so thoughtful in how he handled this, and we might criticize him in some ways, but at the same time, I hope none of us ever have to deal with the gravity of issues that he was having to deal with.
Scott Allen 14:21
Jonathan, what were some of the different perspectives on on both sides, even today, as historians look back and say that was a great decision or that was a really poor decision?
Jon White 14:31
White Minnesotans were writing to Lincoln giving speeches on the floor of Congress publishing newspaper editorials, and saying Lincoln if you don't execute them, we're going to take matters into our own hands. We're going to basically vigilante groups and kill people. And sadly, after those several weeks of fighting were over, there were some instances where white settlers came upon Indians and massacred them and even killed children, which is just tragic. From their perspective, they had been wronged. They had been unjustly attacked and the entire Dakota population should basically be made to pay for it. Afterward, a Republican politician came to Lincoln and said, "You know, we would have won more votes, we would have won the elections by bigger margins if you'd only killed all 303 of them." And Lincoln responded with something that I think is really telling. He said, "I could not afford to execute men for votes." From Lincoln's perspective, this was not a political decision, it wasn't what was going to benefit me or my party. It was what is the morally right thing to do from the Dakota perspective. They justly saw themselves as being the victims of a corrupt system that had been wronged for years. And they believed that what they were doing was justified in attacking the settlers who were encroaching upon their land and ripping them off in deals. You know, one of the things I'm publishing this fall will be a book called final resting places reflections on the meaning of civil war graves. It's an edited volume where I found 29 historians and my co-editor, and I asked them each to pick a grave site that is meaningful to them. And that says something about what the civil war meant in the 1860s and what it means today, and I found a professor from the University of Minnesota at Mankato who wrote about the execution, and her essay explores how it was commemorated after the Civil War. And she really digs into the Dakota perspective. In the years after the Dakota War, white Minnesotans set up a lot of memorials commemorating the deaths of innocent civilians who were killed. They also put up a monument in Mankato that talked about the execution. And from the Dakota perspective, that monument, as they call that derogatory rock, was offensive to them, as this rock would commemorate the execution of their forebears. And it became a flashpoint, especially in the 1970s and 80s, as Indian rights movements began, and in the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War, the monument eventually disappeared, the mayor was taken down, and the mayor hit it, and no one today knows where this monument is. And it's only in the last ten years or so that the Dakota could put up a monument that offers their perspective; it has a buffalo that captures certain symbolism of Native American tradition. And then there's a scroll that has the names of the 38 who were executed. And it's in a park that my memory is it's something like Reconciliation Park. And what the people in Minnesota today are trying to bring the sides together, the white memory, the Native American Memory, and hopefully, you know, be willing to listen to one another and have some sort of reconciliation. But it's been 161 years, and it takes time for people, even this many years later, to come to terms with and grapple with these really difficult moments in our history.
Scott Allen 18:03
You just spoke of a grave. And I know that you have a story about a grave and a soldier who fell asleep.
Jon White 18:14
Sure, this is a guy named William Scott. He was a young man in his early 20s. He enlisted in a Vermont regiment, the third Vermont at the very beginning of the Civil War. And he was stationed outside of Washington DC, and he had a friend who had guard duty one night, and the friend was sick. And so Williams got covered for his friend. And then he had guard duty for himself the next night. And by this point, he's very tired. And the way they did guard duty was they would have three soldiers on a post. And they were all supposed to stay awake all night long. But they worked out a deal between the three of them where they said, you know, I'll stay awake for a couple of hours, then I'll wake you up, then you stay awake for a couple of hours, and you wake up the third guy, he'll stay awake. And that way, we still get a little bit of sleep. And so these three guys worked out this deal. But when it was William Scott's turn to stay awake, he fell asleep because he was so tired from the night before. And when an officer came by and saw these three men asleep, he woke them all up. And the officer knew that all three men should be awake. But he also knew that they worked out this informal deal. And so the officer said, well, whose job was it to be awake right now. And the two guys pointed at William Scott, and they said him. And so William Scott was court-martialed and sentenced to be executed for falling asleep at his post. Now military authorities justifiably knew that it was really important for soldiers to stay awake because if the guards falling asleep then the army camp is vulnerable at night. So they wanted people like William Scott to be executed, and there are officers writing about this saying, you know, we need an example to be made. But Lincoln again had to review this case before it could be carried before the execution could be carried out. And Lincoln decided to show mercy in this case and depart and William Scott because, from Lincoln's perspective, this was a young man who was new in the army, he was a volunteer, he was still learning the ropes; these are volunteer soldiers, they're not professional soldiers. And Lincoln believed that you know, there was going to be enough bloodshed. He didn't want to have guys like this being executed, just, you know, for falling asleep. And again, this was a really tough decision because the Union high command wanted to see executions; they wanted to see examples made, but Lincoln did the thing that was popular among the troops but unpopular among the leadership. And he makes this bold decision. And William Scott, for his part, was so grateful that he said something like, you know, I'll do whatever I can for Lincoln and for the country. And for William Scott died a few months later, in April of 1862, just up the road from Christopher Newport University there; there was a battle here. And he was hit six times, attacking entrenched Confederates across the river. And he's now buried in Yorktown National Cemetery. And I take my kids there every now and again, and to the site where he was killed, because it's now a walking trail in a municipal Park and then to the cemetery. And it's really interesting, I think, to just reflect on the sacrifices of the generation, and also on sort of the greatness of Lincoln's decision-making. Again, he is personally involved in so many individuals' lives. And it's, it's pretty incredible.
Scott Allen 21:42
Is there another one that comes to mind for you that that just kind of highlights and it could be a pardon, maybe it's not a partisan, but just a complex decision where he probably won't completely please either side, but this is just the situation he finds himself in...anything come to mind for you?
Jon White 22:02
Yeah. I mean, I would talk about emancipation in that regard. You know, Lincoln's perspective at the beginning of the Civil War, was that the Constitution protected slavery where it existed. And as President, he couldn't do anything he wanted to, I mean, today, we live in a world where presidents believe they're omnipotent. They don't really believe the Constitution restrains their action, and they can do whatever they want. But Lincoln didn't view it that way. And he always believed that slavery was morally wrong. But he didn't believe that he could just act on that moral belief. And so when he takes over as president, he promises the South. I'm not going to touch slavery in the South, you have no reason to secede, I'm going to enforce the law because the law is the law. And as the executive branch, it's my job to execute the law. Now, that isn't enough for white Southerners, and they still say we're out of here; they still secede. It also is infuriating to abolitionists who say, "Look, this war is clearly about slavery. Let's end the issue. Let's end slavery." And so nobody is happy with Lincoln when he takes these kinds of positions. And one of his most vocal critics was Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass says that Lincoln is the "South's greatest slave hound in abolitionism, his worst enemy." I mean, today, we think about Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, none of us would say he was abolitionist's, his worst enemy, but that's how Frederick Douglass saw Lincoln. The war goes on. And by 1862 the summer of 1862, the war is going very badly for the Union. And Lincoln decides that the best way to win the war is to free the slaves. Because if you free the slaves, you take their labor away from the Confederates. And you also then bring them into the Union, and they can work on behalf of the Union, and black men could fight on behalf of the Union army. And so it's a double-edged sword. It hurts the Confederacy and it helps the Union. Well, now you're upsetting all the northern Democrats who say, "Wait a second, a year ago, you said you can't free the slaves. And now you're going to do it." And you still have the abolitionists upset because they say, Well, you didn't do it fast enough. And so what's so ironic is that the thing Lincoln is most famous for being the great emancipator; freeing the slaves and preserving the union is the most controversial thing. And in his approach, he basically upset everybody. But the thing about Lincoln, he was always willing to change his mind if he could be shown that his view was wrong. But he didn't vacillate, and once he made a decision, if he believed it was right, he didn't turn away from it. And so, from that point forward, he stood his ground. He stuck to emancipation. He gave public he made public statements about the importance of emancipation trying to persuade racist white northerners that this is the right way to do it. And he ended up being successful in winning reelection and then ultimately getting the 13th amendment through Congress. And so his approach, I think, was a very good one. And again, it received a lot of criticism, then a lot of people today still criticize it. Historians say, "Well, he was too slow." But the reality is the approach he took worked, and ultimately, that's what needed to be done.
Scott Allen 25:24
Would you talk a little bit about what we know about how he handled some of the stress? How he personally...was it that he was so clear on his principles? And again, he was open enough that if you have a sound argument and you can convince him, then was it his principles that guided him? I mean, obviously, it's many things. But what are some of those elements based on what we know of him that helped him navigate just the stressors on all fronts on all fronts?
Jon White 25:58
Yeah, his principles guided him, he put together a cabinet made up of men who had very different views from each other, and from him, in a lot of cases. There's a famous book that won the Pulitzer Prize by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals, and she captures this where all you know, his cabinet were people he'd run against to win the Republican nomination in 1860. And then rather than, you know, to get out of here, he made them his advisors, and he would often come to them seeking advice. And he would take their advice when he believed it was right. And he would ignore it and disregard it when he thought it was wrong. In terms of dealing with the stress, you know, there were some times when Lincoln lashed out at people when the stress was so great. There are accounts of him treating people with great anger in his White House office, saying, "you know, don't bring this issue to me," or "I just can't deal with this right now"...that sort of thing. But he also had other ways of trying to cope. And you know, he was working 24/7, but he would get away sometimes to go to the theater. He loved Shakespeare, he loved the theater, and it was, you know, he loved comedy and laughing. He would tell jokes, and those kinds of things drove his cabinet nuts. You know, his Secretary of War could Edwin Stanton couldn't stand when Lincoln would start telling stories and jokes, but that was how Lincoln dealt with all the horror and the pain and suffering of the nation. He needed an outlet and humor was that for him? Really? I've never thought of him. I guess I just haven't. I have not heard that before. Talk a little bit more about humor with Lincoln. Yeah, Lincoln, Lincoln loved humor and storytelling from a young age. When we talk about leaders and being persuasive, one of the skills Lincoln developed as a lawyer was storytelling and using anecdotes and jokes to persuade juries of the rightness of his cause. And so he would tell a lot of stories that were just folksy and would help win jurors over. He was very, very funny. He loved reading humor, books and so forth and telling jokes and he would make up his own stories as well. And in fact, one of the biggest fans of Lincoln live today is Conan O'Brien. Conan O'Brien, the comedian, loves Abraham Lincoln. And I think part of the connection that Conan feels for Lincoln is, you know, just knowing some of Lincoln's jokes. There's a really funny one with an expletive, but I think I can use it on a podcast. That actually, it's a true story, or it's a true joke. And it gets told in the Lincoln movie that Spielberg made, where Lincoln told the story of Ethan Allen, the American Revolutionary War hero the way Lincoln told it was Ethan Allen went over to England after the American Revolution and he was having dinner at his British house. And at some point, he asks where the water closet is, and they point him in that direction, and he goes out. And when he gets out to the bathroom, he sees that the British have hung a picture of George Washington, right above the toilet. And Ethan Allen does his business and then comes back in and doesn't say anything about it. And eventually the British host, you say, Well, what did you think of the water closet? And Ethan Allen says, well, it was great. And they say, Well, what do you mean? And Alan says, "Well, nothing could be better calculated to make an Englishman shit quicker than a picture of George Washington." Lincoln just loved those kinds of stories. And he would use them in ways to defuse situations. So say he has an agitated visitor in his office. And again, these guys who would just come in during office hours, he would often put his hand on their back and tell a story, and as he's distracting them with a story, usher them back out of the room like that was a way to get rid of them, or he would use them to make points and to try to illustrate something. And so that was how one of the ways he would deal with the stress.
Scott Allen 30:07
Well, Jonathan, as we begin to wind down our time a little bit, I know you have the edited volume coming out. What else is on your radar right now, when it comes to this topic? What else are you thinking about?
Jon White 30:21
In July, I'm going to publish a book called Shipwrecked. And it's a story of a really important family from the 19th century. The mother was a very important feminist leader in the feminist movement in the 1840s and 50s. The father was an important journalist, their favorite son wound up getting convicted of slave trading during the Civil War, and he escaped from jail - he was imprisoned in Boston for your listeners in Boston if you know the Liberty Hotel, which is a luxury hotel now it was a jail in the 1800s. And their son Appleton Oaksmith was imprisoned in the jail there; he escaped and then went to Cuba and became a Confederate blockade runner in Havana. And it's the book itself tells the most incredible adventure story I've ever found in the 19th century and of this family just being ripped apart by the Civil War, but relating it to Lincoln and leadership, I use the book to explain the great lengths that Lincoln went to destroy the transatlantic slave trade, and how his administration worked with foreign powers and both legal and illegal ways to destroy slave trading from Africa to the United States. The United States outlawed African slave trading and 1808, but people continued to do it for the next 50 years. And it wasn't until Lincoln's administration that it ended, and he was dead set, on having his administration destroy the slave trade, which was just one of the most immoral aspects of world history. And so using the story of this really bizarrely named guy, Appleton Oaksmith, I explore how Lincoln did that.
Scott Allen 32:07
And I'm gonna leave that as a little bit of a cliffhanger "legally and illegally."
Jon White 32:14
It involves kidnapping schemes and illegal extraditions. And I mean, it's really, it was...what's incredible. So as a historian, I often view my job as detective work. And years ago, I'd set out to write a history of the transatlantic slave trade. And I had a student research assistant to who I gave a bunch of names. I said, "Go on newspaper databases and search for these." And one day, he came to me, and he said, "Have you ever heard of Appleton Oaksmith?" I had never heard that name. If I had, I wouldn't have forgotten it. And so he said, Well, his name is coming up in all these searches. And so he kept searching. And then I started searching. And I thought, well, I'll do a chapter on Appleton locksmith. And then, as I kept digging and realized just how remarkable his family was, I thought this deserves a book of its own. And so I got rid of the broader slave trade book and decided to write a biography. It's sort of a dual biography of Appleton and his mother, Elizabeth Oaksmith, who, again, was this really important feminist writer. And it tells a number of stories that touch on just the most important moments of the 19th century. And it's a great read...well, I shouldn't say that I wrote it. It's just an incredible story.
Scott Allen 33:31
So I love the confidence there! Sometimes, we'll be at the dinner table, and, and we'll say, this is really good, hon, with my wife, she loves to cook and bake. And she'll look at us, and she says, "it is it is really good, isn't it?" So be confident!
Jon White 33:54
Well, Jonathan, I'm so thankful for your time today. I'm so thankful for you sharing your knowledge. As you know, we are always in this conversation with maybe what is something you've been streaming, watching something that's caught your attention in recent times, that listeners might be interested in anything come to mind for you? I just finished a book called The Cross of Snow. And it's a biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I want to get into the world of writing children's books. I've written a children's book about Lincoln, about a little girl who travels back in time and meets Lincoln when he was a kid. And I tell real stories about Lincoln's youth that then portend his future as the greatest American leader, and I think I want to make it a series and the next book, we'll have this little girl go back in time and meet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's children. And I've always loved Longfellow's poetry, and his story is just really incredible. And so I read this biography or listen to it on audible.com called the Cross of Snow and you know, Longfellow is not a leader in the traditional sense. And yet he was...he was the most important writer of the mid-19th century. And he's really fallen in disfavor in the 20th and 21st centuries. And, I think we have a lot that we could learn from him as someone who helped shape culture. And so if people are looking for just a fascinating story of an incredible American who, I mean, I don't know how much your listeners know about Longfellow, he lost two wives, the second one in a horrific burning accident, where he went in and tried to save her life and couldn't. She was too badly burned and his face was so badly burned, that he grew his famous beard to cover the scars. I mean, he just has this most tragic life. And yet at the same time, he was a world-renowned writer. And by the 1880s, his birthday was basically a holiday in America. And school children would write to him and ask him questions. And so yeah, if you're looking for a great read across the snow is is a really fascinating one.
Scott Allen 36:02
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you, sir. We appreciate it - as always, we would love to have you back once the new book is published and we can hear some more stories. Okay, be well, thank you.
Jon White 36:13
Thanks.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai