Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 20 books that cover a variety of topics related to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. 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), the University of Maryland Alumni Excellence Award in Research (2024), the Jack Miller Center’s Teaching Excellence Award (2024), and the Penn State History Department’s Outstanding Alumni Award (2025). 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); A Great and Good Man: Rare First-hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln (2024); and an exciting new children’s book, My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024). Later this year he will publish Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln.