Dr. Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 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).
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Dr. Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 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).
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
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. Today, we have a returning guest, this is his third time on Phronesis. Dr. Jonathan White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 17 books that cover a variety of topics, including civil liberties during the Civil War, the USS Monitor, 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, Christopher Newport University's Alumni Society Award for teaching and mentoring, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and the University of Maryland Alumni Excellence Award in research. His recent books include ‘A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House,’ which was co-winner of The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. ‘Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade’ and ‘Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves.’ His most recent book is a children's book, ‘My Day with Abe Lincoln.’ Jonathan, thank you so much for being with me again today. I look forward to these annual discussions on Lincoln, probably 10 years from now we're going to have a dozen of them. But what's new with you, sir? What's going on? What's the latest?
Jonathan White 1:35
Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah, I've moved into the realm of writing children's literature now. I have two little girls, and for 11 years now, I've been telling bedtime stories. I also take them to Lincoln sites and historic sites. My poor kids have probably been to more Lincoln statues than most Americans ever see in their lives. And I decided I wanted to try to meld these two parts of my life; my historical writing about a great American leader, and my love of telling stories for kids. And my hope is that I can get kids interested in someone like Lincoln now.
Scott Allen 2:10
Well, tell us a little bit about it for all of those parents out there looking for a wonderful gift. What are some things that stand out for you in either writing this or in the content?
Jonathan White 2:19
So, the book really evolved over the course of about a year or two. Originally, I was going to do a picture book about Lincoln's childhood and what it was like for him to go to school, and I realized, though, that there are a lot of those kinds of books that just sort of tell a straight narrative history of Lincoln or his childhood, and what it was about his youth that led him to become a great leader later in his life. And I decided I didn't want to do just another kind of run-of-the-mill biography. And so I had this idea to write a time travel adventure, which, as a scholar, is very different from what I normally do, but it ended up being a lot of fun, and it's something that I think a lot of parents will relate to. And I know my kids sometimes when we were reading it together, it struck a little too close to home. So, the basic premise is, there's this girl named Lucy. She's about third grade. She wakes up on a Monday morning, she doesn't want to go to school, and so she throws a tantrum. And that's basically every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in my house on a school day. And so, she decides that maybe if she dresses in a really silly outfit, her parents will just say, “Well, you can't go to school like that,” and she'll get to stay home. And so, she dresses in a really silly outfit. And, to top it all off, she puts on a top hat from her brother's magic kit. And when she puts on this top hat, she's transported back to Indiana in the 1820s and she encounters a young Abraham Lincoln and his sister Sarah as they're walking to school. And she doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know where she is, she doesn't know when she is, she doesn't yet realize that this is Abraham Lincoln. With nothing else to do, she goes to school with them, and throughout the day, she learns all about Abraham Lincoln's life. And what I like to tell people is the book is 100% historically accurate, except for the time travel part.
Scott Allen 4:17
(Laughs) I don't know, but we could probably talk with some theoretical physicists and see if there's another dimension where that is happening. Who knows? Oh, how fun. And how did your girls, how did they take to it? Did they enjoy it?
Jonathan White 4:33
They've really enjoyed it. So, I wrote the first draft, and then we would go to coffee shops or restaurants and sit there for hours reading through it. Talking about the plot, the word choice, the devices we wanted to use, the characters, names, those sorts of things. So, they were very involved in the writing process, which gave them, I think, a nice sense of ownership over it. I also wanted them to realize that writing is a process. This is something that we, as professors, are constantly teaching our students. The first draft is never the final draft, and it's never the best draft, and the best writing happens when you revise and revise and revise. So, even though my kids, at the time, were, I guess, in first and third, or fourth grades, I wanted them to begin to understand that process. And I think it was a good exercise for them because, now when they do homework, and they write their essay and they think, “I'm done,” and I say, “Well, no, you need to go back over it and think about what you've written and how can you improve it.” So, it was a lot of fun in that regard. And then, I actually was able to get a Christopher Newport student, an art student, to illustrate it, which was also a great experience. And so, my girls also worked with her as we thought about what illustrations we wanted to include, what we wanted them to look like, and those sorts of things.
Scott Allen 5:58
So, did they get co-authorship on this book?
Jonathan White 6:01
I tried. It's a good question. They're a little jaded about this. When I wrote the book, I put their names on the title page, and the publisher took them out mainly for space issues, but they are in the table of contents because there's a message from them at the beginning of the book, a note to the reader, where they kind of speak to the kids and say, “Here's what you can expect to find in this story.” And the artist actually drew them on that page and then also drew them at the end. There's a scene in a modern… So, the main character, Lucy, comes back to the present at the end and goes to school, and now she's excited to learn and to read. And so there's a modern classroom scene, and my kids are hidden in there as well.
Scott Allen 6:47
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, they're a little easter egg, it sounds like.
Jonathan White 6:52
That's right.
Scott Allen 6:54
Well, I will put links to that in the show notes so listeners can access them. I think it's wonderful. Just love the fact that you involve your children in that way. I just met another gentleman, John Acuff, and he had written a book for teenagers with his two daughters called ‘Your New Playlist.’ And I'll also put a link to that in the show notes. But, again, just involving, I've done that in a very small way. I did an episode where we discussed Harry Potter and a gentleman who'd written a book about Harry Potter and leadership. And my girls co-hosted that episode, and they were in heaven. (Laughs)
Jonathan White 7:29
I bet.
Scott Allen 7:30
It was awesome.
Jonathan White 7:31
The artist drew my daughter, Charlotte, with a golden snitch necklace in a… And we've written Book Two, and in Book Two, there are a couple of Harry Potter references. That'll come out next year.
Scott Allen 7:44
Oh, that's awesome. Well, we'll have another conversation in a year.
Jonathan White 7:48
That's right.
Scott Allen 7:49
Well, okay. So, I know, for today, I just kind of sprang on you that I wanted to have this conversation about political skill. I had a wonderful, wonderful… She's a podcaster, she's a professor, her name is Laura Emson, and she has a podcast called Leading Professional People. And her podcast is really focused on people who are leading consultancies, law firms, and accountants, and it's a really, really cool, cool podcast. And she talked about the need for political skill in these organizations because, oftentimes, you're elevated to maybe partner. But then you're placed in a position of authority, but you may not have formal authority over a lot of your peers, you have to be politically skilled. So, I was hoping that we could explore a couple of stories today about Lincoln and his political skills. Before we started, you said, “Look, he had no formal training in a lot of this, but he was masterful at certain times in displaying political skills.” So, maybe a couple of stories from you today. That would be a lot of fun,
Jonathan White 8:56
Sure. And actually, I'll kind of draw the first one from the kids' book. So one of the big themes that comes out in the kids' book, which is called ‘My Day with Abe Lincoln,’ is that Lincoln was a really bad speller. And I know that might not seem like it's related to leadership, but, in a sense, it is because it points to Lincoln's authenticity as a human being, which then came out as a leader. So, Lincoln was a really bad speller. He struggled with spelling words like “very” as an adult. He spelled very with two R's almost 40 times in his collected works. It is incredible. And Lincoln knew that he had this weakness. When he was running for president, he talked about how defective his education was, and he said if anyone happened to sojourn into the neighborhood in backwoods Indiana, supposing to know Latin, he was looked upon as he was a wizard. And Lincoln didn't know how to spell wizard. He misspelled it. When Lincoln was President-Elect writing his inaugural address, he didn't know how to spell inaugural. He misspelled that. He misspelled words all the time. And one of the stories that I remember and that I talk about in the kids' book is when Lincoln was president at one point in the White House, he had this group of men around him, and he said, “Does anyone know how to spell missile? I don't know how to spell it.” And my kids have spelling tests every Friday when they're in school, and they hate it. And I'm sure that most kids hate that kind of thing. And one of the lessons that I wanted kids to realize in reading ‘My Day with Abe Lincoln’ is that they may struggle with spelling, and so did our greatest president. And the thing about Lincoln was he didn't try to hide it, he didn't try to cover it up. Here you have the president of the United States in a group full of people at the White House saying, “Does anyone know how to spell this word? Because I don't know how to spell it.” And I think that that sort of authenticity on Lincoln's part is what won people over to him as a leader. Lincoln at one point said -- I'm going to mess up this quote a little bit, but during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, he said, “Public sentiment is everything. He who molds public sentiment goes further than he who passes statutes or makes pronouncements,” those sort of things. He says, “He who can shape public sentiments makes statutes and pronouncements possible or impossible to be executed.” Meaning that if you wield political power, you may be able to ram things through, but if you don't have your followers behind you, you're not going to be able to really enforce the policies that you want. But if you can bring people along to your way of thinking, if you can connect with them in a real way, then you can accomplish way more. And so, in Lincoln's authenticity, he was able to try to bring his followers, as a nation, his constituents over to support his policies. And he faced a lot of opposition to his policies during the war because a lot of them were really controversial. Most of the North did not want to fight to free the slaves, most of the North was very critical of some of his other controversial policies, but he was so persuasive as a leader. And people could just feel like they could connect with him as a person because of his authenticity that he was able to win them over. And when he ran for reelection in 1864, he won 55% of the popular vote, which is a pretty… And a huge majority in the electoral college, I think it was 212 to 21, and that was because of how he could connect. When people saw his picture or read his words, they felt like they knew him, which is something that I think a lot of our modern political leaders are lacking and it comes out of Lincoln's genuine character.
Scott Allen 12:58
Well, talk a little bit more about how he was… So, you have this authenticity, like, “Look, I'm a human. This is who I am. I'm imperfect, but this is me.” And you said that he could bring people along. So talk about what were some either rhetorical techniques, or what are some other ways, maybe storytelling, I imagine, that he could bring people into his way of thinking. What was it about him, some things that stand out for you?
Jonathan White 13:25
Yeah. He was a brilliant storyteller and joketeller. And there's actually a wonderful book by a British historian named Richard Carwardine called ‘Lincoln's Sense of Humor,’ where Carwardine just sort of traces out Lincoln's humor. It's kind of funny because Lincoln was actually a very smutty joke teller, and some of his jokes were burned by his friends after his death because they thought, “If these stories get out, his reputation will be forever ruined.” But Lincoln just had a way of knowing how to use a story to make a point. So, there are a lot of accounts of Lincoln as a lawyer in the 1840s and 50s where he's in these county courthouses, and you've got these 12 men sitting in the jury box, and Lincoln just sort of leaning against the jury box telling a story as a way to try to get them to see his point. He rarely told a story without having a purpose in mind; he always had an end goal. What's interesting is a lot of the stories and jokes were not original. He read joke books from the 18th century, in the early 19th century, he had an extraordinary memory. He would often read out loud because he said if he read out… This is another theme that comes out of my kids' book. He said if he read out loud, he got the ideas by two senses. So, he would see the words and hear the words, and he would remember them better. And I think he must have had a photographic memory, or close to it, so he could remember almost anything he read or heard. And then he could Marshal those stories at just the right time, and being able to do so helped him win people over. So, whether it was in a jury box or in a public speech, he could use those sorts of ideas. Another, I think, key point for him was pointing to what people believed in and trying to get them to live up to their ideals. So, most Americans in the antebellum period and the Civil War era claimed to believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Well, the declaration says all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, for most Americans, I should specify, most white Americans in the 1850s, they thought, “Well, this applies to me.” And Lincoln would give speeches where he would say to the audiences, essentially, you profess to believe in these ideas, well, what does ‘all’ mean? Lincoln said, and these are Lincoln's words; he said, “The declaration, those principles refer to all people of all colors everywhere.” So, all means all. And men in that sense, for Lincoln, was a gender-neutral term. Lincoln often spoke about black women as deserving of the rights embodied in the Declaration. Now, this was a bold thing for a politician in the 1850s to be doing, but what he was doing as a leader was he was saying, look, you've got these ideas, you've got these principles, live up to them. Don't be hypocritical, but realize that your principles are good and they mean something, and they should be carried out. And he faced a lot of opposition throughout the course of his political life, but he never compromised on those principles. And it's fascinating to see, at the beginning of the Civil War, there was a 13th Amendment that was proposed that actually got through Congress, that would have been an unamendable amendment that would forever protect slavery where it existed. And a mere five years later, we get a very different 13th Amendment that abolishes slavery based on race, color, or that sort of servitude. And it was Lincoln who was willing to stick up for those principles, I think, that was able to guide the nation from one 13th Amendment to a very different, much better one at the end of the war. And just one last point on this. In 1861, when Lincoln was on his way to Washington, DC to be inaugurated president, he gave a speech at Independence Hall, which, of course, is where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written. And Lincoln didn't expect to give a speech, but he raised a flag, he expected to do that. And, of course, people call for a speech. And so, he gives some extemporaneous remarks. And the only reason we know what he said is that there were reporters there who wrote it down. And Lincoln knew that there were credible threats on his life in Baltimore, which is where he was about to pass through. As he raised the flag and gave the speech, he said, speaking extemporaneously, he said, “I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender the principles of the declaration.” And, ultimately, that's what happened. He stuck to his guns. He stuck to these principles. He got the nation to adhere to them and live up to them as best they could at that time. And, five years later, he was assassinated for it.
Scott Allen 18:32
Okay. So, there's an authenticity and a connectivity that occurs because he's human. He had this photographic memory but couldn't spell ‘very’ or ‘missile.’ And then, there's this innate ability to bring people along, and bring people along through the story, bring people along through humor, and bring people along through connecting to core values that we need to be living up to. Kind of riding on the back of like, look, this is who we say we are. What are some other examples of his prowess when it came to political skill? Were there his command of the law, and were there legal techniques that he enacted that he used to move some of these agendas forward? How do you think about that?
Jonathan White 19:21
As bad a speller as Lincoln was, he was very precise and careful when it came to words and to language. He was a master of language arts. He also cared very deeply about reason and logic. As a lawyer in the 1850s, I think it was, he got Euclid geometry and just read it because he wanted to understand how logic worked, and he wanted to be able to apply those principles to his political career and to his legal career. And so, when I think about Lincoln in those regards, he was always making logical arguments. As early as the 1830s, he gave a speech where he said something like, “Passion has led us so far, but now we need a cold, calculating reason.” And whether it was in a speech or a public letter, Lincoln would use words to bring people over to his way of thinking, and he was always working to persuade. One of the things I often try to show my students as well is that these principles come out not only in his political writing but also in his private writing, whether he was writing love letters or about his love life, or his friend's love lives, in private letters, or in his poetry, he's always focusing on the importance of reason and logical skills. So, those things come out as a lawyer, where he's able to use evidence in a way to persuade people. So, one of the best stories is a story of a guy named Duff Armstrong. Now, the background is this: when Lincoln was a young man, he was a very good wrestler. In fact, he's our only president who's in the Wrestling Hall of Fame, and which I believe is in Ohio, in your neck of the woods. And when Lincoln moved to this town of New Salem, he was a young guy, he's in his 20s, and he started working as a store clerk, and there's a local gang there called the Clary's Grove boys, and the owner of the store that Lincoln worked for went up to the Clary's Grove boys and said, “Hey, my guy, Lincoln, he can beat your your champion in a wrestling match.” And so, Lincoln wrestles the head of the gang, a guy named Jack Armstrong. Now, there are a lot of different accounts that survive, but Lincoln allegedly was going to win, and the rest of the gang saw this, and so they all piled on, and Lincoln's flailing and yelling essentially, “Look, I'll take all of you on. It just has to be one at a time.” And Jack Armstrong apparently cheated, and Lincoln kind of got really angry about this. But then Jack was impressed, and Jack shakes his hand and kind of welcomes him in, and Lincoln becomes this sort of local hero because of his bravery in this moment. And that actually helps catapult Lincoln's political career, because this is where he's going to first run for office and get elected. Fast forward a decade or two, Jack Armstrong is dead, but he has a son named Duff. And Duff gets involved in a fight. I guess this is just a backward thing in the Midwest where people get in fights all the time, Duff gets into a fight, and in the process of the fight, another guy gets whacked in the head and killed. Whacked in the head by a stick of wood. So Duff gets arrested and charged with murder. And Duff's mother, Jack's widow, Hannah, comes to Lincoln and says, Please defend my son. And she doesn't have any money, and Lincoln says, “Well, my connection to your family, of course, I'll do it, and you don't have to pay me.” So Lincoln defends Duff. Now, at the murder trial, this one witness says, “I know that Duff killed this other guy because I saw him. It was a full moon, and it was moon bright, and I could see it.” And Lincoln had the man repeat this over and over again. “How did Duff kill him?” “It was moon bright. I could see it. I saw him hit the guy with the firewood and kill him.” So then Lincoln gets out an almanac, and the almanac shows that there was not a full moon that night. And, at that moment, the jury is completely convinced that the other guy was lying, that he was not a credible witness, and that Duff wasn't guilty, and Duff is acquitted. It's a true story, and it's a great story because it captures how Lincoln knew how to use evidence and facts in a way to persuade people. It reminds me of a quote from John Adams, where John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.” And I think if a leader can find evidence, and it's really hard in our day and age because, in the world of social media and partisan news media that we live in, it seems like each side has its own facts, but it actually wasn't so different back then. In the 19th century, the Republicans had their own newspapers, and the Democrats had their own newspapers. If you lived in the city, you were one party, you read your party's paper, and you were persuaded by their facts. But Lincoln often found ways to reach above that and provide evidence and facts to bring people over to his way of thinking. And the last thing I'll say about that is, at the same time, Lincoln was willing to change his mind when he was persuaded by new evidence. And that's something that leaders today are often not willing to do because today you get criticized, you get called a flip-flopper if you change your mind. But in one of Lincoln's very famous public letters where he was trying to persuade Americans to support emancipation, he said, I'll adopt new views so fast as they be shown to be true views. In other words, if you can show me that your facts are right and that mine are wrong, or that your ideas are better than mine, I'll be willing to change my mind. And I think in saying that, Lincoln was saying to Americans, to his followers, “If I'm willing to do that, if I'm willing to change my mind, you should be willing to change yours too.” And I think that's another really key part of his leadership. He never waffled. And when he was accused of vacillating, he responded by saying, “I never vacillate.” But if he could be shown that a different way was better, he was always open to that. I wrote a book, actually, a couple of years ago that you mentioned in the intro called ‘A House Built by Slaves,’ and it's about black visitors to the Lincoln White House. And one of the things I do is I show how African Americans coming to the White House and meeting with Lincoln actually helped change his mind on certain policy issues. So, at the beginning of the war, Lincoln opposed allowing black men to fight. He said, “This is a white man's conflict, it doesn't involve black men.” Lincoln was afraid that black men would prove cowardly on the battlefield. He didn't want to put guns in their hands, he said, because they might just quickly wind up in the hands of the Confederates. Well, in 1862, a slave in South Carolina named Robert Smalls stole a Confederate ship, escaped from slavery, and brought 15 people with him, including his wife and children. And at the end of that summer, Robert Smalls met with Abraham Lincoln. I think Lincoln was captivated by Smalls and his bravery, and that meeting helped persuade Lincoln that arming black men was the right thing to do. It'll help win the war. In the 1840s, Lincoln opposed the idea of black men voting. He thought it was ridiculous, and he used it to hammer his political opponents. During the war, at least three delegations of black men came to the White House and said, “We deserve the right to vote. We are loyal. We support the Union, we support the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And by the way, black men used to have the right to vote in places like North Carolina, and they said, “We should have it again.” Lincoln was persuaded by that, and he came to work privately behind the scenes for the last year of his life to win the right to vote for black men. April 11th, 1865 his last speech ever, he comes out publicly and says that black men should have the right to vote if they are educated or serving in the military. John Wilkes Booth was in the audience that night., says that means N word citizenship, by God, that'll be the last speech he ever gives, and four days later, Lincoln was dead. But what is it? It is meetings with black men and Lincoln being willing to listen to them and be presented with evidence and change his mind that changed his mind. And then, as a leader, he went out to the public and said, “This is the right thing to do.” So, there's a lot there. Hopefully, it makes sense to capture some of Lincoln's thinking in these ways, though.
Scott Allen 28:22
Well, you've done a beautiful job: authenticity. We've got bringing people along, and the storytelling, and the sense of humor. We've got logic and his ability to connect arguments from the standpoint of logic, and just having that skill, and then there's an ability to change his mind and be persuaded. And I loved that, “I will shift my views,” and I think that's a great phrase that I'm going to put into the show notes, for sure. Did he ever deceive? Did he ever trick? I'm wondering, and this is kind of like in service of the greater good, maybe, but how did he, from a political skill standpoint, was he always just honest Abe, and always straightforward, and never deceitful in negotiating with others. How did that work?
Jonathan White 29:23
It’s a great question. That's something that historians really argue about. There are times when I think in his effort to persuade the public, he's not always 100% forthright, but I wouldn't say that he's deceiving either. So, two examples come to mind. The first is Lincoln decided to issue an emancipation proclamation in the summer of 1862, the problem at that point was that the war was going very badly for the union. And when Lincoln presented this idea to his cabinet, most of them were supportive, but his Secretary of State essentially said, “Look, if you do this now, you're going to make the union look weak to the powers of Europe.” It's going to, to use a modern metaphor, it's going to look like a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game, and they're going to say, well, the union's losing so they're going to this extreme measure and so we are going to now recognize the Confederacy as a legitimate nation. And if that happened, it would be devastating for the Union because England and France would start giving weapons and supplies to the Confederacy, which would hurt the Union. And so Seward, the Secretary of State, persuaded Lincoln, “You've got to wait until after we win a victory on the battlefield; only then can you come out with an emancipation proclamation.” And so Lincoln waits. The problem was that the Union generals were not very competent at that point, so they lost battles, and Lincoln was waiting. And in that period of time, the most prominent Republican newspaper editor in New York, a guy named Horace Greeley, wrote an editorial called The Prayer of 20 Millions. And you've got to be a pretty audacious guy to claim that you speak for 20 million people. But he says, “The Prayer of 20 Millions is that Lincoln freed the slaves.” Now Lincoln already knew that was his plan, but he couldn't come out publicly and say so. But he also couldn't ignore this editorial because it was written by the most important journalist in the country. And so, Lincoln responds with a public letter where he essentially says to Greeley, “My top priority here is to save the Union. And if I could save the Union by freeing all of the slaves I would do it, if I could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves I would do it, if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone.” He said, “I would do that.” And he said, “What I do about slavery, I do because it will help me to save the Union.” Now, this is actually the letter where Lincoln says that he's willing to change his mind. He'll adopt new views as soon as they are shown to be true views. Now, a lot of people have accused Lincoln of lying in this letter because he's already decided what he's going to do. I see it as Lincoln being persuasive. He knows that most of the North is racist. He knows that most of the North is not willing to fight to free the slaves, but he also knows that most of the North is willing to fight to save the Union. And so what he's trying to do is to get them to understand, “If you really believe in saving the union, you have to be open to the possibility that the best way to do that is to end slavery.” And he is going to show that he has changed his mind, and he's hoping that he can get northerners to change their minds too. And it's going to be a process because a lot of people are going to be really against this sort of policy. And, in fact, there are whole regiments of Union soldiers that throw down their arms and walk away from the battlefield because they say, “I'm not willing to fight for N-word citizenship.” But this is the beginning of a process where Lincoln…. Again, he's not fully forthright. He could have come out and said, “All right, really said this. Here's the plan, we're going to free the slaves, and this is the best way to save the Union.” He doesn't do that because he understands he has to work within the parameters of what do most of his followers believe. They believe in union. They certainly don't believe in black equality, but he can begin to bring them over to his way of thinking through a slightly deceptive use of persuasion. Another example, which I think gets a little overblown, but for listeners who've seen the Spielberg Lincoln movie where Lincoln has his meeting going on in the spring of 1865 with Confederate leaders. The meeting took place where I live, actually in Hampton Roads, Virginia, but there were rumors that the meeting was taking place in Washington, DC. And Lincoln says, “There's nothing to my knowledge that says…” He puts this in writing, “There's nothing to my knowledge that says that Confederate leaders are coming to Washington, DC.” Well, Lincoln knew they weren't coming to Washington, DC; they were going to Hampton Roads, so there was a meeting going on. But, again, he was very careful with language, and so he wasn't lying. You might say he was lying by omission, maybe, but he wasn't lying. The meeting was not in DC, so when he said there was nothing in DC happening, he was technically true. So, there are some accounts like that, but, for the most part, Lincoln was a very honest guy. His reputation is well deserved. It stretches back to his youth. And there was certainly corruption in his house and in both his personal house, I think his wife was corrupt, and also in his political house. When you have a huge administration with thousands of people, there's going to be some corruption there. But, for the most part, he was one of the most honest people we could ever expect to see in the White House.
Scott Allen 35:11
And it sounds like, at least in that first example, at times, you're bridging. Like you said, we're not going to be able to go to Z in the minds of people, we need to move along a continuum. So, based on your telling of the story, I agree with you. So, tell all those other Lincoln historians that he wasn't lying for me.
Jonathan White 35:32
I will. I will try.
Scott Allen 35:34
Say Scott from Phronesis thinks this. (Laughs)
Jonathan White 35:39
And it’s interesting, with his law practice, there are a number of examples of cases that he wouldn't take. There are sometimes where he took cases where he knew the client was probably in the wrong, but there are other cases where, if he heard the client's story and he just said, “There's no way you can win this, you're not in the right.” He often tried to persuade people to settle. And actually, that's also true of cases where people were in the right. He would try to persuade people to settle. He had a phrase where he said, “Discourage litigation.” Litigation is not good for communities. It's not good when people are suing each other. And in these small communities, he would go in as a lawyer and take cases. And if he saw a case where he thought, okay, even if you're in the right, and I think you can win, this is bad for you. There was one case where a young man came to him and said, “My neighbor wronged me, and I want to sue him $600.” And Lincoln said, “I know you're in the right, but there are better ways to make $600 than suing your neighbor for this.” And so, he tried as a lawyer, as a leader, as a president, he tried to be a peacemaker, to get people to find ways to work together rather than to be at loggerheads or odds with each other.
Scott Allen 36:54
Well, back to the film Lincoln, you have the Team of Rivals narrative that tried to involve people from different viewpoints and perspectives in the effort, right?
Jonathan White 37:09
Yeah, absolutely. So, for the listeners who don't know, Lincoln was elected… He became the Republican nominee in 1860, beating out four very prominent people, and he ended up bringing them into his cabinet. He found a way to work with them, even though they were not only his rivals, but, in some cases, they continued to be his rivals. Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, a guy named Salmon Chase tried to undermine Lincoln's presidency so that he could win the Republican nomination in 1864. Imagine the Secretary of Treasury today thinking, “I'm so great, I'm going to beat out the incumbent and try to steal the nomination away.” It's insane, but Lincoln was able to manage his cabinet in a way that he let them know, “I'm the guy in charge.” His Secretary of State, William Seward, very early in Lincoln's presidency, thought Lincoln's a country bumpkin. I'm a prominent New York Senator. I know how things run. In April of 1861, Seward wrote out this memo that he called ‘Wanted a Policy,’ meaning, Lincoln, you don't know what you're doing, and you've not come up with a policy, so I'm going to tell you what we're going to do. And Lincoln very quickly showed Seward, “I'm the guy in charge. I'm going to develop the policy, not you,” and put Seward in his place. And it took a little bit longer for the Secretary of the Treasury... And what's funny is the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of State kept going at it for the whole four years. And the Secretary of the Treasury would keep trying to resign, to basically force Lincoln to make moves like, “Oh, I'm going to resign if you don't give me what I want.” And Lincoln was always able to orchestrate things to put these guys in their place, to keep them from resigning and to, ultimately, do what he wanted to do, not give in to what they wanted. Although the last final time that Chase, in 1864, threatens to resign, Lincoln finally says, “Fine.” Takes his resignation. And, at that point, Chase didn't see it coming, he didn't think he'd actually resign. And Lincoln forces him out of the cabinet. And when a vacancy on the Supreme Court arose, Lincoln said, “Okay, I'll give you that job. You can have life tenure there and you can stop trying to steal the presidency from me.” So, he was just such a brilliant strategy guy. He knew how to manage people, which, as we talked about earlier, is incredible because he had no executive experience before this. He had a very good understanding. He was so well read. He had read about so many great leaders from the history of the world. I think he gleaned a lot of lessons from them.
Scott Allen 40:05
Okay. So, we've got well-read, knowledgeable, student of history, so that was probably his greatest educator in some ways or one of them. And then, we've got an ability to stand up for yourself when you need to, assert yourself, and kind of take on more of an authoritative or very assertive and aggressive stance when needed. But trying, ultimately, to be a peacemaker and to try to figure out what's the best path forward for the whole. So, there's also kind of a whole that's in the perspective here of not just me, but the whole is the ultimate objective, right?
Jonathan White 40:48
Yeah. He had a vision for preserving the union and preserving democracy, and he was able to do everything, or he strove to do everything he could to carry out that vision and to get people to buy into that vision. And I think that's really important. And then, I know that a big topic in leadership is servant leadership, and I think that's another piece of it, and that connects to his authenticity. But Lincoln understood the importance of not towering over his followers but serving them in a very real way. So, there are a lot of accounts. I read one last night as I was reading through ‘A Diary of a Nurse,’ and this also gets captured in the Spielberg movie. Lincoln would regularly go to the hospitals in Washington, DC, and sometimes even in the field, and shake the hands of the people who were sacrificing their lives for the Union. So, if these people were willing to lay their lives on the line, sacrifice their comfort and well-being, and be away from their families, Lincoln was going to go and thank them. And I think that's one of the most beautiful pictures of servant leadership that you can see. And it wasn't just white people that he did that for. In May of 1862, Lincoln went to a hospital in Washington, DC, and he shook the hands of all these convalescing white soldiers. And there were three black cooks there, and these were refugees from slavery. At least one was from Maryland, at least one was from Kentucky. And one of the white nurses there introduced Lincoln to these three black cooks, and Lincoln went up to them and shook their hands, and learned their names. And I still know their names because Lincoln learned them; one was named Lucy, and one was named Brown, and one was named Garner. And he goes up to them, shakes their hand and says, “How do you do Lucy? How do you do Brown? How do you do Garner?” And what Lincoln didn't see in that moment was those white soldiers were cursing in the background, saying, “How can he shake the hands of these N-words, and I'm censoring what they didn't censor. Whereas, for Lincoln, from his perspective, these people are serving the union and they deserve his respect as well. And so, in the 1860s, it was almost unheard of for a white person to shake a black person's hand. Lincoln did that with these essentially homeless refugees because he wanted to show them his gratitude for what they were doing. And I think he's the ultimate servant leader in American history. As a quick aside, people often ask me about the Spielberg movie and about historical inaccuracies. And for those who have seen the film, there's this scene where Lincoln goes and shakes the hands of these soldiers. And when he meets one of the soldiers, he says, “What's your name?” And the soldier says, “Kevin.” And, actually, Kevin was not a name in America in the 1860s, no one was named Kevin. So. if you want kind of a funny historical inaccuracy in the film, there's one of them.
Scott Allen 43:54
Oh, okay, we're going to wind down. But before we do, man, I respect your mind, and your craft, and your wisdom and your knowledge in this space. It's incredible, John, and I'm so appreciative for your time because I learned every time we talk. And so, you've given us a really, really nice roadmap of kind of what were some of the ingredients that equaled political skill for Abraham Lincoln and a time in our history when it was needed most. And so, thank you for that. As you know, I always close out our conversations by asking you what you've been listening to, reading, streaming, and what's caught your attention in recent times. It may have something to do with what we've just discussed, it may have nothing to do with what we've discussed. But what's caught your attention, sir, that listeners might be interested in?
Jonathan White 44:48
Yeah. I just finished editing a diary of a Civil War soldier who fought in Minnesota against Dakota Indians and then wound up becoming an officer in a black regiment in the southwest during the Civil War. And so, in working on that, I read a lot about Minnesota during the Civil War, and I'll just tell a very quick story here because it connects to Lincoln's leadership. So, in 1862, the federal government was very corrupt in how it dealt with Native Americans, as I think we all know. And the Dakota were starving in Minnesota because they were not getting the money that had been promised to them by the federal government. And four Dakota warriors killed a couple of unarmed white civilians, and this led to an all-out war between the Dakotas and white Minnesotans. And, in the end, after about six weeks of fighting, the whites defeated the Dakota, they captured hundreds of prisoners. They tried almost 370 of them in a military court. And, in most of the cases, the trials were perfunctory. The Dakotas, in many cases, didn't speak English, they didn't have representation, they didn't know what they were being charged with. 303 of them were sentenced to be executed. And Lincoln deliberately slowed down what was going on out there, and he sent a telegram saying, “Do not execute anyone until you've heard from me.” He then had three lawyers review all the cases in Washington, DC. Now, the people of Minnesota wanted all of these Dakota warriors killed and executed. And what Lincoln did was he said to the lawyers, “Look for people who were essentially committing war crimes, rape, or killing unarmed civilians. Those are the people we'll execute, but anyone who was just picked up on the battlefield should be treated as a prisoner of war.” Now, he ended up executing 38 and pardoning 269. Now, Lincoln is criticized for this because he's seen as… It is the largest single-day mass execution in American history; 38 Dakota warriors were hanged on December 26th, 1862, but it's also the largest commutation in American history. And I think it's so important, and in reading about this, I've just learned so much. Lincoln treated those Indians in the same way that he treated white soldiers. If they were found committing a war crime, he allowed the sentence to be carried out; if he found mitigating circumstances, he would commute the sentence. White Minnesotans were furious with Lincoln for not executing all 303; they wanted them all executed. And one of them came to Lincoln after an election and said, “If you had killed them all, we would have won by larger margins. And Lincoln turned to this politician and said, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.” And I just think that speaks so beautifully of Lincoln's way of thinking as a leader. As much as he wanted to win elections, he was not willing to sacrifice his principles and just give in to the popular sway of the day and kill people, because that's what everyone else wanted. There was enough blood shedding in that time period, and he was going to treat people with dignity and respect, look for extenuating circumstances and make decisions accordingly. He sought justice. So, that was a very long answer too, I've been reading a lot about Minnesota, and that's one of the things that's really stood out to me in the books I've been reading.
Scott Allen 48:26
Well, I'm a Minnesotan. That's my roots.
Jonathan White 48:28
Oh, are you? I didn't know that.
Scott Allen 48:30
Oh yeah, for gosh, for the first 20, 21, 22 years. So, that story is close to home, for sure.
Jonathan White 48:39
Had you grown up hearing about the Dakota War?
Scott Allen 48:41
I had not. I hadn't, no. But Jonathan, I am so thankful for our time together as always. You're just so knowledgeable, and the wisdom you bring to the conversation is very, very much appreciated. So, we'll do it again. We'll do it again next year. I expect a whole new batch of incredible stories.
Jonathan White 49:08
Thanks. I love coming on. Thanks so much for having me.
Scott Allen 49:13
Okay, sir. For everyone, there's a bunch of links in the show notes, ]go ahead and check those out. And, of course, Jonathan, congratulations on the new publication. So, awesome that you involved your daughters. That's wonderful. Everyone, go ahead and click on that link. Buy that book. Take care everyone, bye-bye.
Scott Allen 49:32
Okay. Political skill, what are some of the ingredients? Is this a complete list? No, but some of the ingredients. Authenticity, he was a human logic, storytelling, and humor. He was willing to change his mind at times. And was known as someone who was a peacemaker, but would stand up for what he believed, and again, kept that large picture and the large vision and mission of keeping the Union together in mind. He was also an individual and a history student. Those are a few things that stood out for me, I'm sure some things stood out for you as well. As always, thank you so much for checking in everyone. Take care. Be well.