WTK Reporter Libby interviewed Professor Jonathan W White, PhD

Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is author or editor of 19 books and more than 100 articles, essays and reviews about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, slavery and emancipation, and the U.S. Constitution. His book A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), was co-winner (with Jon Meacham) of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Among his other titles are Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), which was named a best book by Civil War Monitor, was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and the Jefferson Davis Prize, and won the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize; Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017), which was named a best book by Civil War Monitor; and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway, which was a finalist for the Indie Book Awards and honorable mention for the John Lyman Book Award.

His recent books include My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021), which he co-edited with his student, Lydia Davis; To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln (2021); 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), which he co-edited with Brian Matthew Jordan; From Dakota to Dixie: George Buswell’s Civil War (2025), with his student Reagan Connelly; and New York City in the Civil War (2025), with Timothy J. Orr. In 2024, he published his first children’s book, My Day with Abe Lincoln.​

White is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, serves on the Boards of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Abraham Lincoln Association, and is the Vice Chair of The Lincoln Forum. He also serves on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council, the editorial board of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and is editor of both Lincoln Lore and ​The Lincoln Forum Bulletin. In 2019 he won the Outstanding Faculty Award of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the highest award given to faculty in the Commonwealth.

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Credits: 
2025 Produced, written and recorded by Judy Frazier
Edited by Hass K

Posted by: We The Kids Inc.
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