Jonathan W. White
Jack Miller Center Academic Advisory Council Member and
Founding Civics Initiative Faculty
Professor of American Studies, Christopher Newport University
Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is author or editor of 17 books and more than 100 articles, essays and reviews about the Civil War, slavery and emancipation, African American history, Abraham Lincoln, and the U.S. Constitution.
His book Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln was named a best book of 2014 by Civil War Monitor, was a finalist for both the Gilder Lehrman 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 was named a best book of 2017 by Civil War Monitor. His 2018 book, “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War, co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway, was a finalist for the Indie Book Awards and honorable mention for the John Lyman Book Award.
He 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 as 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.
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); A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), which was co-winner with Jon Meacham of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize; Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (2023); and Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves (2023), which he co-edited with Brian Matthew Jordan. In 2024, he published his first children’s book, My Day with Abe Lincoln.
Research interests:
American Civil War
Slavery and emancipation
African American history
Abraham Lincoln
U.S. Constitution
