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Jonathan W. 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 and the Battle of Hampton Roads, the presidential election of 1864, and what Abraham Lincoln and soldiers dreamt about. He serves as vice chair of The Lincoln Forum, on the Boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council. Among his awards are the 2019 State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award—the highest honor bestowed upon college faculty by the Commonwealth of Virginia; CNU’s Alumni Society Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2016); the 2015 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and the 2024 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 $50,000 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize (with Jon Meacham); 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 edited with Brian Matthew Jordan. He has published two books with CNU students: Untouched by the Conflict: The Civil War Letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College (2019), which he edited with Daniel Glenn; and My Work among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021), which he edited with Lydia J. Davis. And he recently published a children's book, My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024) which was illustrated by CNU student Madeline Renaux.

Check out his website at www.jonathanwhite.org/ or follow him on Twitter at @CivilWarJon