Seeing Lincoln Through His Front Door with Dr. Jonathan White

Dr. Jonathan W. White is an endowed professor in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or editor of more than 17 books covering various topics, including civil liberties during the Civil War, the USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads, the presidential election of 1864, and what Abraham Lincoln and soldiers dreamt about.

Among his awards are the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award (2019), CNU’s Alumni Society Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2016), the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize (2015), and the University of Maryland Alumni Excellence Award in Research (2024).

His recent books include A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), which was co-winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize (with Jon Meacham); Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (2023); Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves (2023); and an exciting new children’s book, My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024).

Quotes From This Episode

• “Lincoln understood you start with something that everyone can agree on.”
• “He believed that persuasiveness is the most important thing for a leader.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book:  Lincoln Home (Images of America)

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Attend The Global Conference in Toronto, October 28-31.

About  Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

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Transcript

Scott Allen: [00:00:00] Okay, everybody. Welcome to Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. We have a returning guest. It's an annual thing now, and I think we're gonna continue that because he's gonna continue being so incredibly, insanely productive, but not in Virginia any longer.

We have breaking news on the podcast. Jonathan White is moving to Texas. Jonathan, thank you so much for being with us and me, and tell us a little bit about your future adventures here, and then we'll jump into the topic for today. 

Jonathan White: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me back. I have been at Christopher Newport University for 17 years.

I've been part of the Department of Leadership and American Studies. It's been a wonderful run. I started as a postdoctoral fellow, actually, and they- Really? ... liked what I was doing in the classroom and my writing, so they offered to make me tenure track. And you know as well as I do, when that offer comes, you take it.

And so I've had a great run here but I was offered a position at the new School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas. So I am busily packing up my [00:01:00] office and my home, and will be moving in the second week of June down to Austin. So it's gonna be an exciting opportunity. 

Scott Allen: Now, how many... I you just made me think.

How many Lincoln artifacts do you have to move to Texas? 

Jonathan White: Oh, man. I... So I should say, I don't have any really original Lincolns. I don't quite get paid enough for that. But I've got a lot of tchotchkes, I got a lot of those sort of squishy heads, those stress things that you can squeeze, and bookends, and I don't know, maybe 2,000, 3,000 books that I've gotta move.

So that's the hardest part, I think, is moving the books. I was thinking about it. So I love collecting historical wine bottles. Huh. And I collect the Federalist wine, and so I've got bottles of Hamilton, Washington, Ben Franklin, and of course, Lincoln. And part of me was thinking, "I wonder if I really need to move these, or maybe I can just buy new ones and drink them down in Texas [00:02:00] and save myself having to move them."

So I just Googled before we got on this call, "Can I buy Federalist wine in Texas?" And it turns out I can. So- Oh, wow ... I haven't decided if I'm gonna move them or not. The biggest Lincoln thing I have, I won the Lincoln Prize in two- 2023, and that comes with a hundred-pound Lincoln bust. And that's gonna be riding on the front seat of my minivan next to me.

I'm not gonna trust that one in the moving truck. 

Scott Allen: Kids in front row. Kids in the back, bus in the front seat 

Jonathan White: Kids in the back, bus in the front. Or if the kids are in the other car, then that way I figure I can ride HOV.

Scott Allen: Oh. Okay, so speaking of books, you've added another one, and so I'm excited for this conversation. Y- there's a scholar named Brad Jackson. He's in New Zealand, and he's he's been on the podcast. For listeners, just look up the episode with Brad Jackson. But he really writes a lot about leadership and place- Yeah

and the importance of place in [00:03:00] leadership and in an individual's leadership. We know that... And so of course when he's looking at it from a context of a New Zealander, place is very important, and the history of that place, and the environment that these people grew up in. And so I'm excited for this conversation, because you're adding a new dimension to the dialogue we've been having.

For listeners, you can just Google up other episodes with Jonathan. It's been a really fun run of i- of episodes. But you've written about place, and so I'm excited to hear a couple thoughts that you have about your exploration of this topic 

Jonathan White: Yeah, so when we think about Abraham Lincoln, it's interesting.

I hadn't really thought about it till you were just saying it. I imagine most people, if their minds were to think about Lincoln and place, their minds would probably go to a place that Lincoln never saw, never went, and that would be the Lincoln Memorial. 

Scott Allen: Oh, wow.

Jonathan White: Where we envision this giant temple with this giant statue, and that's how we associate often place with [00:04:00] Lincoln.

One of my favorite places associated with Lincoln is a place he spent a lot of time, and that was his home in Springfield. And, in the Lincoln Memorial, you see the public Lincoln, you see this larger than life icon. In Springfield, you see the private Lincoln. You see the Lincoln who is rising into s- the upper middle class and becoming a politician of national renown.

And my favorite place is Lincoln's home. And this was a house, it's the only house he ever owned. He lived there for 17 years, minus when he was in Congress in the late 1840s. But for much of his adult life, this was where he lived. And it's a place where when you go into the Lincoln home, you can almost imagine the private man.

Wow. He's not this figure who is dealing with national problems. He's thinking about those things, but he's the father, he's the husband, he's the local lawyer. He [00:05:00] is the customer who has, businessmen coming over selling him things, or selling things to his wife maybe would be the more appropriate way to think about it.

And it, it gives us, I think, a real person, and that's something that the Lincoln Memorial often doesn't give us. Yeah. When we go there we don't think about Lincoln as a real person. He's almost like godlike in his stature. But when you go to the Lincoln home, you see the real man. And so I've been going to Springfield for years, and I, every summer I actually teach a group of high school teachers through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and we bring in teachers from around the country, and we spend a week just talking about Abraham Lincoln, and I teach them how to teach Lincoln to their students.

Wow. But then we also go to all the sites, and my favorite one to go to is the Lincoln home. And as I was there a year ago, I thought, there's no really good book about the Lincoln home. And so I talked to the staff there, and then I approached the History Press about it. They've got this [00:06:00] wonderful Images of America series where you basically pull together 150, 200 photographs, and you tell the story of a place through photos and short captions.

And everyone loved the idea, and so I ended up writing it last year, and it was a real joy and it-- I learned a lot about Lincoln in the process. 

Scott Allen: Okay. So I'm super... Now, Jonathan, do they know you at the Lincoln Home? The people 

Jonathan White: that- They do. I've gotten to know the gift shop manager very well.

She carries a lot of my books, and whenever I'm in town she has me do a signing. And it's great because whenever my students go to Springfield or friends go to Springfield, they go to the Lincoln Home and they'll always send me a selfie. They'll be like, "Here I am with your book." And then I write back and I'm like, "But did you buy it?

That's what I need to know." 

Scott Allen: That's what I need, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So I'm interested in, in, in hearing, two or three things that stood out for you. What did you learn that in this process that really stood out. I'm excited to hear what those [00:07:00] are. 

Jonathan White: Yeah. This is a place where Lincoln grew a lot as an adult and where he struggled.

So he didn't always have the happiest marriage, which I think is very well known among general readers who read about the Lincoln marriage or who read about the Lincolns. And I think some peop- it's actually a very hotly contested thing about did they love each other? Did they hate each other?

What were the dynamics? My view is, in a lot of ways, we'll never really know what- ... went on behind closed doors in that case. But we also see Lincoln the father here, and this is one of the things that's really interesting to me. So Lincoln had a terrible relationship with his father. His father was a strict disciplinarian.

His father didn't value education and didn't value Lincoln getting an education. His father was a, was just a hardworking, plodding man. And Lincoln wanted something better for himself. He wanted to self-educate. He wanted to use his mind instead of his [00:08:00] hands to work and to make something bigger than just a farmer or a cabinet maker like his father was.

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Jonathan White: And in fact, when Lincoln die-- or sorry, when Lincoln's father died, Lincoln didn't go to see him one last time before he died. It would've been a short journey. It was, he was in Illinois, but Lincoln wrote a letter to his stepbrother saying basically, "It'd be better for all of us if I didn't go see Dad before he dies."

Wow. That's how estranged they were. 

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Jonathan White: And Lincoln had a big reaction as a parent then, as the leader of his home, in a sense, or of his children, in that he was not strict at all. So whereas Lincoln was very harshly punished as a child, he never disciplined his children. Okay. He let them run around and create all sorts of havoc, and there's all these stories about what their home was like, the noise and the mess.

Lincoln's law partner-- I don't know, I can... If I'm- Please ... saying a quote on here, can I say a curse that, yes, yeah ... is true to the record? 

Scott Allen: No [00:09:00] problem. 

Jonathan White: Yeah. So Lincoln's law partner said that, if his boys, if Lincoln's boys had shit on the table and on his boo- h- his hat and rubbed it on his boots or something, that Lincoln would've laughed and called it smart.

And this, here's a fascinating side of Lincoln that I don't think we normally think about. Because he had been raised in such a strict home, he had a complete, reaction to that- Aversion ... and raised his kids without any real discipline. And in fact, one of his sons, Tad, didn't learn how to read till he was 13 or 11, and which is incredible to think about because Lincoln valued education so much, and yet He didn't force his one son to learn how to read.

And it's a pretty remarkable thing. And that's something that you can kinda get a sense of when you're in the house and you see the toys and you see the things that the children would've played with. And they actually do have some of the original toys that belonged to the Lincoln boys that are still there to see.

Scott Allen: Wow. Wow. Okay Lincoln the father, interesting. I didn't know [00:10:00] any of that. And so that, that had a big impact on him, his relationship with his father. And yeah, to your point, it sounds like there's just this kind of pendulum swing almost to the extreme of the other side . 

Jonathan White: Yeah. Yeah, when they got to the White House, actually, Willie and Tad, his two youngest sons, surviving sons, they they would r- ride goats through the White House.

And you'd have all these people, these women in hoop skirts and these men in suits, and they're walking around the White House there to see the president, and here come the two boys riding ... they would hitch up chairs to the goats, and then prod the goats, and they'd go running through while they're riding on chairs.

And it was just wild. It's not what you think of when you think about Abraham Lincoln. 

Scott Allen: Wow. Now, how did Mary parent, then? Was she similar? 

Jonathan White: Mary, no, Mary was much stricter. Okay. And there are stories that I tell in the book where Mary is very strict, and Lincoln would come in and try to kinda, intervene.

So there's a story that I tell in the book where Mary had given [00:11:00] a dime to her son, Tad, and she, Tad was supposed to go to the store to buy something, and he lost it And Mary just, starts yelling at him, "You're a thief. You stole this dime." And Abraham comes in and says, "What's going on?" And, Mary tries to explain, and Tad says, "I didn't steal it I promise."

And Lincoln picks him up and pulls out his pocket, and it turns out the dime had just gotten stuck in the seam of his pocket, and so he wasn't a thief. But yeah, there are stories that survive about Mary being very strict or Mary being a very anxious parent. And on one occasion, their oldest son, Robert, had gotten into the lime box out by the outhouse.

Yeah. And it was in his mouth, and Mary was screaming, "Robert will die. Robert will die." And, some- a neighbor heard it and came over and, cleaned out his mouth and said he's gonna be fine. So Abraham was a very lax parent. Mary was the exact opposite. 

Scott Allen: Wow. Okay, couple other things. What else stood out for you in, in, in the research for this book?

Jonathan White: [00:12:00] Yeah, this is a place where Lincoln does take a step towards his greatest achievement, becoming president, and this was something that was really interesting to me. In 1860, he wins the Republican nomination for president, and the thing is, nobody expected him to win. He was a nobody.

He wasn't well known outside of Illinois. And so in 1860, there were a bunch of front runners, and they all convened on Chicago for the Republican National Convention. And the thing was, in those days when delegates got to the convention, nobody knew who was gonna win. Today, when you hold a convention, everyone knows who the nominee is gonna be.

But in those days, the delegates would show up, and they were pledged to vote for one candidate, and they had to vote for that candidate on the first ticket. But then after that, they could change their vote So the frontrunner was a guy from New York named William Seward, who was a very famous senator.

And Seward's men were so confident that [00:13:00] he was gonna win the nomination that they all went out and got drunk, and they were partying the night before the big vote. Lincoln's men showed up at the convention, and they went to the delegates for all the other frontrunners and said, "Hey, if your guy doesn't win, how about you consider Abraham Lincoln as your second choice?"

And so Seward's guys are drinking, and Lincoln's guys are working hard. And the next day, and there's a lot that goes on that I won't tell you, but the next day, Seward wins the most votes on the first ballot, but not enough to get a majority to win the nomination, and Lincoln is way down on the bottom.

The second vote, Seward picks up a few delegates, but Lincoln jumps way high. And on the third vote, Lincoln overtakes Seward. Wow. And so you have this situation where, a guy nobody's ever heard of is now the nominee for a major political party. And a telegram is sent back to Springfield, and Lincoln finds out that he's won the nomination, and they've gotta get the house ready [00:14:00] because all the leaders, or a lot of the leaders of the Republican Party are gonna come down and formally tender him the nomination.

Scott Allen: And- So he's not even there. He's not even at the- 

Jonathan White: No. He's not even at the convention. Yeah, that's right. In those days, the, in the Civil War era and before the leader of the party, the guy who wins the nomination's not gonna be there. They're not gonna give speeches. And in fact, if you think about the terminology, today we say that candidates run for office.

In those days, a candidate stood for office. Wow. Because it was beneath the dignity of a leader to go out and pander for votes. You let other people do that for you, but if you were running for president, you wouldn't be out there giving speeches. There's a very famous the Tippecanoe and Tyler Too race in 1840 where William Henry Harrison just kinda hangs out in his log cabin, and if people wanna come talk to him, they can.

But otherwise, he's not out there campaigning. Very different way of becoming president than we have today. [00:15:00] And so Lincoln is back in Springfield, couple hours south of Chicago. And the, they find out that he's won, he got a telegram, and so they start to set up for a reception. And I never knew any of...

I knew the sort of outlines of the story, but I didn't know the details of it. And Mary is kinda setting up for this fancy reception, and they set out alcohol and somebody says to her, some of these guys are teetotalers. They don't drink. Maybe we shouldn't have alcohol." And Abraham has to convince her to put it away.

And when they sh- when the delegation shows up, they see Lincoln's boys just kinda sitting out on the front step, and, these two little hooligans who are, mischief makers. And they talk to the boys a little bit, and then they come into the parlor. And so for the listeners, if you ever go to the Lincoln Home, you go in the front door, and on the left is a huge room.

It's a double parlor, and that's where they greet Lincoln. And this is the first time that these men ever see him or ever meet him, and they [00:16:00] don't know what he is. They don't know who he is. They know he's famous for splitting rails, like splitting logs, and they know he's a self-taught politician and lawyer, but they don't have very high expectations of him.

And so they go in and they make a few speeches to him, and then he responds with a short speech. And afterwards, a number of these delegates wrote about the meeting, and a few of them were still not impressed by Lincoln, but most of them, I think, were taken in by just, how smart they could tell he was, how articulate he was.

One of them, a guy from Pennsylvania, was very short and made a joke about, now Pennsylvania looks up to Illinois because Illinois had this tall six-foot-four nominee. And so it's this great moment where, again, you can walk in the parlor, you can stand in the very spot where this meeting happened, where Lincoln essentially accepted the nomination to run for president.

And that's a spot where he's beginning to shape his the way people think about [00:17:00] him because- Yeah ... he knows interacting with these leaders, they're gonna go out to their communities and talk about what he's like, and it's gonna begin to radiate his image outward. 

Scott Allen: Wow. Wow. And so I had no clue that's how that worked, and so it then becomes an epicenter for his rise, that location.

Jonathan White: That's right. And in fact- Or at 

Scott Allen: least the awareness building of him, relationships about him, all that, right? 

Jonathan White: Yeah. And th- again, this was something I never knew until I was researching the book. So newspaper correspondents from around the country, from New York to California, converge on Springfield, and because they know their readers wanna know, "Who is this guy?

What does he look like?" Yeah. "What does he sound like?" Many of them are writing about his home, and they're like, it's a very modest two-story home that, that he lives in." Some of the journalists are allowed to just go in and hang out in the house while other politicians are coming to, to meet with him and [00:18:00] talk to him.

So they're just... This- these were a lot of my sources, were these very in-depth journalistic articles where these correspondents come in and just describe every little detail, the pictures that are on the wall, the things that are on the shelves, the books that are there, the law books the behavior of his boys or of his wife.

And you get all these really wonderful firsthand accounts, and it's people at the time letting the country know who is this guy. There's no Twitter that Abraham Lincoln can go out on. There's no real bully pulpit like TR would have to be able to get his message out there, and so it's gonna me- be mediated through these journalists.

Scott Allen: Wow. Okay. How about one or two more things that stood out? 

Jonathan White: Yeah. The one thing about Lincoln that I love is his ability to deliver speeches. I think he's one of the greatest orators we've ever had. And so- Yes ... when you go into his bedroom, you can see the desk that he probably [00:19:00] wrote the House Divided Address on, which was one of his most important speeches in 1858.

The story behind that desk, and I don't know if this is true or not, but it's a story that does survive, Mary apparently threw out the desk, and then Lincoln apparently trash picked it to save it, which is great because now it's still in the house and you can see the desk where he wrote at least one, if not more of his speeches.

But then there's this touching moment as he's leaving Springfield, and again, he's been in Springfield since about 1837. It's now 1861. He's getting ready to board a train and head to Washington, and his whole community comes out. And these are the shopkeepers that he knew. These are the law clients.

These are the children that he played with. These are the servants who worked in his home. And they all gather around as he's about to board the train, and the station is still there. It's been modified a bit, but it's still there. And [00:20:00] he gives a very short impromptu speech where he talks about, "This is where I came here as a young man.

I'm now leaving as an old man, not knowing whether or ever I'll ever return." He talks about how his four boys were born there, and one of them is buried. He's heading to Washington, DC, he says, with a task upon him greater than that which faced George Washington. And he concluded by asking for the prayers of his neighbors and his friends- as he embarked on this journey. It's a really incredible speech, and I've done a lot of work on Lincoln over the years, and I have found letters where during the Civil War, people write to him and they say, when you gave that last little speech before leaving Springfield, you asked for prayer, and we're praying for you.

We're praying for your leadership during the Civil War, that you'll lead us through this horrific event and reunite the nation." And that's where I think you see, Lincoln as the man and the [00:21:00] politician wrapped into one. Yeah. You see him giving a message of hope and optimism that he's gonna be able to accomplish this, but he's also connecting in a very personal way.

And when I think about Lincoln as a leader, I think- if I were to think about the one word that really comes to mind, and I think I've used this word before in, in previous conversations that we have, it would be authenticity. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Jonathan White: We look at so many modern politicians today, and they're so inauthentic.

They poll test things before they put it out on social media. They wanna know what's the reaction gonna be, and they won't do anything that's not perfectly calculated. 

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Jonathan White: And that wasn't Lincoln. The Lincoln that you see in his home is the real guy. That's the same Lincoln that you get in public who speaks honestly to you.

That's why we call him Honest Abe, it's the same guy who would do things that were not politically advantageous. I- we had a conversation a few years ago about my book, A House Built by Slaves, where Lincoln is out there in Washington, DC [00:22:00] shaking the hands of Black men and women. Yep. Which a politician in that era never would've done but he was an authentic guy, and he greeted people with dignity and respect.

And so you see that in Lincoln in Springfield, and he takes that with him to Washington, DC, and it's a pretty refreshing thing, I think to see that side of Lincoln. 

Scott Allen: Now, for the time, is this home impressive? Is it average? H- how... I guess- What impression would people have gotten when they embarked on this nominee's home instead, right?

Jonathan White: So when he bought it, it was a one-and-a-half story home. Okay. And at some point, at various points he did some improvements on it, and he raised it up to be two full stories. So when you go there today, it's the full two-story home, which is what it looked like when he left for Washington in 1861. I think it's a beautiful home, and I've often fantasized about if I ever bought a plot of land and built my own home, [00:23:00] like I would love to redesign it and-

and live in something like that. But it's funny, when a lot of these journalists came to Springfield in 1860 and '61, they kinda mocked it. They're like, "Yeah, it's okay for a Western lawyer," but it's not... they weren't terribly complimentary of it. One journalist compared it to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's home.

So if any of your listeners know that house in Cambridge, which is another one of my favorite houses to visit there are some similarities, but I think Longfellow's house is probably a little bit bigger. But generally speaking, it w- it, it was a very modest home. And, he didn't really make it big in law until the 1850s, where he was getting some really huge fees.

So for most of his life, he lived a pretty modest life. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jonathan White: What- And but think about, like, where he rose from. The guy- Oh ... was born in a log cabin with no wood floor, no windows, no glass in the windows, no door in the doorframe. Pretty incredible to think about how he rose. And [00:24:00] actually, the first chapter traces the various places he lived from birth until he moved into this house, and shows, the people he boarded with.

He was living in poverty for much of his life. When he was a guy in his 20s, he couldn't afford his own place, so he had to rent half a bed from another guy, like that, above a store. That's how he had to live. 

Scott Allen: Half a bed. 

Jonathan White: Yeah. It was not uncommon back then for male strangers to share beds in hotels or living like that.

So he came into a store in Springfield. The store is no longer there, but it faced the town square where the old state capitol is. And he went in and he said to the guy, how much is a mattress? I need to buy a bed." And the guy told him the price, and he couldn't really afford it. And the guy said I have a bed upstairs, if you wanna pay rent, you can share it with me." And Lincoln took his stuff upstairs, looked around, dropped off his saddlebags, came back downstairs. The guy's name was Joshua Speed, and he said Speed, I've [00:25:00] moved." And they ended up living together for years and becoming very good friends for the rest of their lives.

Scott Allen: Speed, I've moved." 

Jonathan White: And again that's not the Abraham Lincoln we would think of. No. That when he was down on his, luck and poor, that's how he had to get by. 

Scott Allen: Any other sense of, like, how just Springfield as a community, I think it's a beautiful story of when he left. W- good, bad, indifferent, how did Springfield shape him?

And maybe we'll kinda conclude there. 

Jonathan White: Sure. I think this is where he honed his political skills, and he started in politics as a very sarcastic kind of guy where he would say things that today might make people blush. He would write kinda scurrilous newspaper editorials making fun of people.

And after a while he really matured, and he matured into a statesman. And so I think that's a maturation that takes place as a result of the experiences he has [00:26:00] in Springfield. And the Lincoln we know today, the great orator, the guy who's able to, transcend boundaries for us today, like everyone today can claim Lincoln as- Yep

Their representative in a way. And but that was not the Lincoln who moved to Springfield. And, Lincoln almost got involved in a duel at one point, ... because of some scurrilous things he had written. And the guy who challenged him, when you were challenged you got to pick the terms of the duel, and so the guy who challenged him was a very good marksman and Lincoln was not, and the guy who challenged him was very short and Lincoln was tall.

So when this guy, James Shields, challenged Lincoln to a duel Lincoln said, "Okay, we'll do the duel, but the rules are we stand in a square and there's a line dividing the square into halves, and if you step on the line you automatically forfeit your life, and we're gonna use broadswords to hack at each other until one of us is dead."

And that got James Shields to [00:27:00] think, "I, I was expecting guns. I wasn't expecting swords." "And Lincoln's got long arms and he's really big. Maybe honor's been met. We don't need to have the duel after all." But those are experiences he had as a young politician that after that Lincoln was horrified that he had written what he wrote.

And- Ah ... he never wanted to talk about that duel. He was ashamed of it. In fact, during his presidency someone asked him about it at the White House and Lincoln said something like, "If you wanna be a friend of mine, you'll never ask me about that again." And so that's I think about the way Lincoln changed and grew in that town.

It's really, it's a fundamental part of the story that often gets left out of the Lincoln story, 'cause we usually just think about Lincoln the president, but he had a lot of really incredible experiences that led him to that place. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. And it was probably in an interesting way push back on this if you disagree or if it's inaccurate, but did it provide him the space to do that growing, to- Yeah

[00:28:00] become that person in a different way than maybe had he been elsewhere? Had he been in New York City or Chicago, for instance. It almost feels like it created space for him to do that deep work m- both as in maturity, but also probably in his understanding and studies. And he's also probably a little more in tune with Even what rural Americans are experiencing than maybe some others.

Jonathan White: Yeah, I think that's 

Scott Allen: absolutely right. Look back on any of that, please. 

Jonathan White: It's funny, before he lived in Springfield, he lived in a town called New Salem, and he lived there from 1831 to '37. New Salem was created in 1829, and by about 1840 the little boom town had completely been abandoned. It was a ghost town.

And so to your point, there are scholars who say it's like New Salem was there for the 10-year period that Lincoln needed it to start his adult journey, and then [00:29:00] Springfield becomes that next place where he grows in exactly the way you're describing. And yeah, I... central Illinois, the way a lawyer would work is he would ride the circuit.

So he would go around all the counties in central Illinois and hear cases from people. So basically, all the lawyers and a judge show up in the county seat, and all the people with cases come out, and they find a lawyer, and then they argue the cases, and then the lawyers and the judge move on.

And Lincoln being in that world enabled him to connect with a lot of people from a lot of walks of life. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Jonathan White: And, actually, it makes me think of Frederick Douglass in that, there are a lot of people who criticize Lincoln for having grown up in poverty, and they're like, oh, W.E.B.

Du Bois was very derogatory towards Lincoln for having grown up in poverty. Douglass saw it very differently. Douglass saw Lincoln's ability to connect with people as a way as an outgrowth of his upbringing. And in fact, Douglass saw Lincoln's [00:30:00] politics of being able to persuade by starting with a small goal and then eventually getting to a larger goal as a result of learning how to split rails.

Like Douglass said that Lincoln's politics was like splitting rails. First, you put in the narrow edge of a wedge, and you hammer it in until eventually the thick edge is in, and you get what you want. And that's an incredible leadership principle. Wow. Yeah. Because so many politicians are like, "I've got this big goal, and I gotta get it now," and it's really hard to bring your followers over to, to be where you're at.

Whereas Lincoln understood you start with something that everyone can agree on. 

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Jonathan White: And you start there, and then you eventually push and persuade until you get the bigger goal that you want. And on Black suffrage, that was the example that Douglass was talking about. Lincoln initially talked about only giving the right to vote to Black men who had either served in the military or were educated.

And some people criticized Lincoln. They're like, "Oh, but there's no [00:31:00] restrictions on white male voting. Why would you put a restriction here?" And Douglas wasn't bothered. From his perspective, he knew, as Lincoln knew, if you started by s- a common point of, okay, Black men who have served in the army of all men deserve the right to vote, surely they should have it.

You start there, you eventually get to universal Black manhood suffrage, which is what happened. Yeah. And Lincoln learned that in the country. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. Change, y- you can kinda flood and provide the sweeping broad vision, and it's too, it shocks the system. It takes us out of homeostasis, or to your point, I love that.

Yeah, you might have the larger vision in mind, but where do you start? And I love how you phrased that. Is it a place of commonality that, generally speaking, if this isn't gonna be too controversial, and you start opening the door to the conversation- ... versus everything shutting down right away.

Love it. 

Jonathan White: There's a very famous quote that Lincoln did in one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, where he said, and I'm [00:32:00] gonna butcher the quote a bit, but he said, "Public sentiment is everything. He who shapes public sentiment goes deeper than he who ma- enacts statutes or makes pronouncen- pronouncements.

He makes statutes possible." In other words he says possible or impossible to be executed, I think. In other words if you have raw power, you can force something through, but if you don't bring the people along with you, it's gonna be really hard to actually make it part of the culture or the law.

And Lincoln's view was you've gotta first persuade people of what you think, and once you've done that as a leader, then you'll bring them along to get them to the goal you want to be at. And that's another thing I think you really see th- in Lincoln in Springfield, is that, logic and reason are central to who he is.

Yeah. And he believes that persuasiveness is the most important thing, I think, for a leader to do to be able to accomplish his or her goals. 

Scott Allen: Sir okay, [00:33:00] I'm closing down the podcast a little bit differently these days, and so what's the practical wisdom in this conversation? How do you think about that question?

What's the practical wisdom for listeners when you think about-

Jonathan White: That's a great question. I think the practical wisdom, in a sense, is something that we haven't even talked about. But, a lot of times when we look at leaders or public figures, we don't think about them as real people. 

Scott Allen: Yeah.

Jonathan White: This is especially true in our online age, where it's so easy to go on social media and write something, that you would never say to a person. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Jonathan White: But because it's online, it's I could say something horrific and usually without consequence. And we forget that in our politics and in our workplaces and, in, in our sports, that these are real human beings.

And so I think that as we think about how we engage with one another and how we respond to leaders in different fields or [00:34:00] different worlds in which we operate or which, in which we view online or on television, that w- we would do well to remember that they're people. And that, I think, can give us a sense of charity, where we can try to be understanding or try to at least understand where they're coming from.

And that's something I think Lincoln was masterful at, and that's something that I think I often think about when I think about this book, because it gives me Lincoln the man, not Lincoln the marble icon. Yeah. And it, it enables me... I think we should have charity for people in our own lives and in our world, and even historical figures.

We can criticize, and we should, where criticism is warranted, but we should also try to have understanding. Yep. And I think that comes out in this book in a way. 

Scott Allen: Always love our conversations. Have, just love your command of the space, sir, as always. I'm gonna butcher this quote, and then you get it [00:35:00] almost exactly.

From 18 whatever. I've already packed up my books- At least one speech ... so I 

Jonathan White: couldn't pull it off the shelf. 

Scott Allen: Oh. Best of luck as you make this transition. We'll do it again next, next summer. It's an annual summer thing now, but- 

Jonathan White: Yeah ... 

Scott Allen: always love our conversations and just really appreciate you, sir.

Best of luck in your new adventures, and thank you. 

Jonathan White: Thank you.