Join us Thursday, February 6, 2025, at 7 p.m. CT, for a great conversation with author Dr. Jonathan White on his recently released book, A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln, co-edited with William J. Griffing.
One hundred sixty years after Abraham Lincoln’s death, it can be difficult to find sources that shed new light on his life, but that is exactly what Jonathan W. White and William J. Griffing have done. A Great and Good Man provides excerpts from more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War. Some saw Lincoln deliver speeches, review the troops, or light up cigars with soldiers. Others offer pointed commentary on his policies and decisions. Through these selections, readers get an in-depth and, at times, startling view of the Civil War era, from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 to the assassination in 1865.
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.