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Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Jonathan W. White, professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, to discuss his new book, co-authored with William J. Griffing, A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln. They chat about the excerpts of the more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War featured in the book, what the writers thought about Lincoln, and how these letters and diaries shed new life on Lincoln’s life, his contemporary reputation during the war and before his assassination, and how his death instantaneously turned Lincoln into a revered martyr.
Creators & Guests
Host
Tim Benson
Ill Literacy, the newest podcast from The Heartland Institute, is helmed by Tim Benson, Senior Policy Analyst for Heartland’s Government Relations team. Benson brings on authors of new book releases on topics including politics, culture, and history on the Ill Literacy podcast. Every episode offers listeners the author’s unique analysis of their own book release. Discussions often shift into debate between authors and Benson when ideological differences arise, creating unique commentary that can’t be found anywhere else.
What is Ill Literacy: Books with Benson?
The Heartland Institute's podcast discussing notable new works with their authors. Hosted by Tim Benson.
Hello, everybody. And welcome to the Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, the National Free Market Think Tank. We are now in, like, the episode I think we're getting close to episode 170. This might actually be 170.
Tim Benson:I'm not sure. But, anyway, we're somewhere close to there. But, for those of you just tuning in for the first time, basically, what we do here on the podcast is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on something, some event, someone, some idea, etcetera, that we've, like, that we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about. And then, hopefully at the end of the podcast, you go ahead and give the book a purchase and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving Illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show.
Tim Benson:And also by sharing with your friends as that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today, once again, the guy can't find better things to do with his time, I guess. I don't know. He's always here. My guest today is a friend of the podcast, doctor Jonathan White.
Tim Benson:And doctor White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and also serves as vice chair of the Lincoln Forum and sits on the boards of directors of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and the Ford's Theater Advisory Council. And he is also a winner of the prestigious Gilder Lerman Lincoln prize back in it was last year? It was last year, wasn't it? Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:2023.
Tim Benson:2023. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, last year.
Tim Benson:So, this marks his league leading 6th appearance on the podcast. He's still still a little bit ahead. You're now too ahead of of, h w brands, but, he's, I was just talking to his girl this morning, so he's coming back on in a couple weeks probably. So but, you'll at least maintain your one podcast advantage. Anyway, he's here to talk about, his new book that he edited with a man named William J.
Tim Benson:Griffin. I'll tell you a little bit about him before we get started. William J. Griffin, held positions at the Department of Labor and Department of Energy before serving as the ESH director at both the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. And since retiring, has dedicated a significant amount of his time to preserving American history with
Jonathan W. White:this particular focus on the civil war era. And we'll talk about his, his efforts in a
Tim Benson:second here. Anyway, so, doctor White is here to talk about their new book, which is called A Great and Good Man, Rare Firsthand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln, which was published, early October, I think, by by Reedy Press. So that's the book we're talking about today. So, doctor White, thank you so, so much for coming back on, man. I appreciate it.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Tim Benson:Oh, no problem. Alright. So, yeah, this book, what was, you know, normal entry question? How did you guys, you know, come up with the idea of this book? What made you want to write it or edit it, I guess?
Tim Benson:You know, what was what was the genesis of the project?
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. So this book is really unlike any other book that I think has ever been created. William Griffin, he goes by Griff, so I'll call him Griff. William Griffin retired from this chemical safety industry about 15 years ago, and he started going on eBay and buying civil war letters and things. He was interested in shopping and collecting those sort of things.
Jonathan W. White:And as he was trolling eBay, he sort of realized, you know, these letters go online, and they're there for about 7 days for the length of an auction, and then they're gone. And they disappear into someone's collection, and all the information that's that's in those letters is completely lost to history until maybe a few years later, 10, 20 years later, the letter pops back up on eBay again. And so on a whim, he emailed one of the big manuscript dealers on eBay, and he's he he offered a proposition. He said, if you'll send me scans of the letters and let me transcribe them and give me permission to put the scans and the transcriptions on my website, then I will give you the transcriptions and you can list them in your auction. And the rationale there was, you know, the more words that are listed in an eBay listing, the more likely it's to come up when people are searching for something.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Jonathan W. White:And so he to his surprise, the eBay dealer said, sure. That would be fine. And over the last 15 years, Griff has transcribed more than 15,000 civil war letters and diaries, And he's put all of them up on his website, which is called spared and shared. And I'll just say to your listeners, if you're interested in the civil war and you wanna see things that no one else has ever seen before, you can follow his website, spared and shared, at Facebook. He's got a Facebook page.
Jonathan W. White:And every day or so, he posts new letters that he has just transcribed. And so someone told me about Griff last summer. I didn't really think that much about it. And then last fall, I started following his Facebook page, and he posted a a letter about the Lincoln assassination. And it was just a really powerful reaction of a guy who had been at a play at Ford's Theatre when it was announced that Sherman had captured Atlanta.
Jonathan W. White:And then he learns about, you know, months later, Lincoln's assassination, and he kinda reflected on the difference between how the theater must have been on the night when they celebrated the fall of Atlanta versus the night Lincoln was killed there. And so I reached out to Griff, and we started emailing a little bit. And then last May, I I said, we should have a Zoom because I just wanted to meet the guy. So we met on Zoom, and we talked for about 2 hours. And I said to him, you know, you've got whole books here.
Jonathan W. White:Like, you've you've transcribed whole collections of letters. This is incredible stuff. And he said, oh, well, I created a website of just quotes about Lincoln. And I said, send it to me. So he sent me this link, and while he and I were talking, I downloaded the whole page into a Word document.
Jonathan W. White:It was 93 pages, and I said, you've got a book here. And I proposed to him, what do you think about this? We'll use this as a starting point. I'll do the legwork of cleaning up the transcriptions, proofing them, and everything, and we'll turn it into a book. And Griff loved the idea.
Jonathan W. White:And so during for 2 months this summer, I worked with a very talented student of mine named Lainie Pratsner, and she and I sat in my office here at Christopher Newport University for 8 hours a day proofreading the transcriptions, and the book then came out in October. So probably the fastest book I've ever done and I think probably the only book in the history of the world based on eBay auctions, which is a pretty cool thing.
Tim Benson:Yeah. The you, you wrote in the foreword of the book that in 2,000 back in, like, 2006, somewhere around, you wrote, actually a piece on how eBay was sort of underutilized, an underutilized tool for research for historians. And I never, I never thought about that. You know, like you said, all these letters and things that just, you know, pop up there all the time. And, has, so has that changed since 2006 when you first wrote that piece?
Tim Benson:Is it Yeah. Is eBay still, as in still is underutilized? Are more people cognizant of it now? Or is it I mean, is it still, you know, are the types of things that are being offered on eBay, you know, similar to, you know, what was on offer 20 years ago, or are things getting more, you know, specialized in that manner with, you know, how people are doing auctions for these things or anything like that?
Jonathan W. White:So when I wrote that article, I was still in graduate school. I was in my maybe 4th year of grad school or so. And I actually in the article, I describe how embarrassed I was that one day I ran into a professor and I told him about this book I had just found, and he asked how I found it. And I I had to admit eBay. Like, you just wouldn't have thought about it back then that to go on eBay to look for sources.
Jonathan W. White:Right. But that the article was published in a news magazine for professional historians, and it gained some traction. Actually, there was a a writing guide for undergraduates that quoted the article and quoted me and said, you know, eBay can be a great way to find sources. And I find that now historians are very open to searching eBay and using it sort of as a library catalog. And one of the ways that it's most useful, not only for finding sources that you might not otherwise know about, like letters or whatnot, but a lot of times when you publish a book, you wanna have illustrations.
Jonathan W. White:And the thing that's interesting about that is you you typically have to pay permissions fees.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Jonathan W. White:And some libraries will charge you 100 of dollars just to use a scan in a book. But then you can go on eBay and find the same image for $10 and buy it and scan it in yourself. And then you own the image, and you can reproduce it if it's not copied.
Tim Benson:Of the this image, part of the Jonathan White collection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:That's right. Oh, yeah. I mean, lots of I mean, I have lots of friends who publish books, and I'll say, oh, you're writing about this. I got a I got a photograph from 18/64 about that. And then it says from the collection of Jonathan w White.
Jonathan W. White:And, you know, I I like it because, you know, it helps them out, and it helps me with building my collection. And and I guess that makes it a tax write off too if it's all for work.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Is have more historians been utilizing it? Because it is it sort of like a generational shift, or or even, like, the older, you know, like, the old historians sort of
Jonathan W. White:I think even older school people are starting to
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:To do it. And there are a lot of times where I'll be emailing with old professors of mine or colleagues who are maybe 10 or 15 years older than me, and we'll send each other things like, oh, check this out. It might be useful for you. And sometimes you don't wanna do that because you don't wanna get outbid on something. So sometimes I wait, like, last minute to let my friends know about something really cool.
Tim Benson:But Sure.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. I mean, you know, people are finding all sorts of things in their attics, in their basements. They don't know what to do about do with it, and so they put them on eBay.
Tim Benson:Yeah. You know? Think about that. I remember, so my my grandmother, her uncle by marriage, so so her aunt's husband actually served in, he was in the army during he didn't I don't think he served in World War 1, but he was in the army around, like, 18 or he wasn't like on the ground, I don't think in Europe for World War I. But they sent him to, Archangel in Russia.
Tim Benson:I guess it wasn't the Soviet Union, or they were still fighting. So for the Russian civil war, all these countries sent troops there to sort of back up the white Russians, the non Bolshevik force. So he has like a diary of, it's like a very small little diary, and it's just, you know, you know, like, one sentence a day or, you know, something like that. Nothing like too interesting. But, like, but, like, it exists and, you know, might be to some value as someone somewhere at some point in time.
Tim Benson:I don't know. And then, there's like they have a picture of him. It's like at the port there in Archangel where it's like him, like a British soldier, a French soldier, an Italian soldier, like a British sailor, you know, an American sailor, an Italian sailor, you know, all these different nationalities, like, in this one picture together. So that's actually pretty cool, but I assume there's gotta be a ton of that kind of stuff, like, just floating around everywhere.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. And the thing so one of the nice things about using eBay now, unlike in 2006 when I wrote that article, is that you can create favorite searches.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Jonathan W. White:So when I'm working on a research project, I will create different search combinations of keywords so that every morning, I get about 30 emails from eBay, and it says, here are the things that have been listed in the last day that match your search criteria. And that actually makes it really easy. It's not a lot of labor then to have to search for things, whereas in the I still spend hours on eBay. I think, you know, my wife chagrin. Like, I'm sitting there when we're watching a movie or something, and I'm trolling eBay.
Jonathan W. White:But it is a it's a very user friendly way to to search for information. And one of the cool things that's kinda come out of this for Griff is that when he makes this information available, he then has people contact him and say, oh, that's my great great great grandmother or that's my relative, and you you've, you know, provided the missing link. And so by Griff saving this stuff in the process before it goes on eBay and then making the information available, it's not just for scholars like me, but it's for everyone. And even this book, I I decided to assign it in class this semester, and not because I make a lot of money off of it because I don't. Like, I don't make it.
Jonathan W. White:I told the class I would buy them treats with my royalties and bring it in, so I'm not giving money. But these these writings about Lincoln are just so vivid and so interesting that, you know, I wanted students to be able to engage with it. I'm looking forward to next week. We're gonna read the assassination accounts, and I look forward to hearing what the students think of them. Yesterday, we talked about accounts where people were talking about emancipation, and some loved what Lincoln was doing and some hated it.
Jonathan W. White:And you see some really colorful language in there. So it's engaging for general readers and for students too.
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah. So, back to the before we get to, like, the actual contents of the book, the you mentioned how, you know, basically sitting in your office with your with one of your students and just going through all these letters and, you know, putting them together and whatnot. So, was the was the transcription process for the letters difficult? Did you, I mean, did you have to do a lot of work on them to sort of you know, what what was your process for how you presented the letters in the book?
Jonathan W. White:So when Griff does his transcriptions, he does a little bit of cleaning up of the the letters just to make them readable. Because, again, they're supposed to go on eBay, And then he posts the scan so that if a scholar or writer wants to use them, they can look at the original. And all he asks if you use something on his site is just the site spared and shared. He wants the information out there. And so when Lainie and I sat down in my office, we had to kinda I had to think through, okay.
Jonathan W. White:What do I wanna do with these letters? Because you've got hundreds of different writers, about 200 different writers. So some of them are very well educated, and some of them are barely literate.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Jonathan W. White:And how do it it's hard to deal with them with one coherent set of rules or principles in terms of transcription. Some editors would say, well, you just transcribe everything exactly as it appears. And even if that means it's not readable, like, you still do it that way. And I thought, you know, I want the book to be readable. So the principle I came up with was if the writer was educated and the writing was generally clear and coherent, usually words spelled correctly and so forth, then we silent we kept Griff's silent corrections.
Jonathan W. White:And, you know, if a period was missing, we might add in a period just for the sake of readability.
Tim Benson:Right.
Jonathan W. White:For a small percentage of the letters where the writers were barely educated or not educated at all, we actually then retained the poor spelling and grammar and so forth. And we did that because, in a sense, for those writers, the reader really gets a sense of the writer's voice because those writers have no understanding of spelling. So everything they spell, it's phonetic. And so as you read those letters, then you get a sense of how did this person talk. You can only Right.
Tim Benson:Right. Right. I I I was thinking that's the same thing too. I mean, it sounds like they're, you know, they're basically just writing down how they would speak How they would say it. Yep.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:And so in those letters, you know, we didn't wanna add punctuation because that would be inauthentic. So wherever we thought there should have been a sentence break and a period, we put in 5 blank spaces so that the reader at least isn't reading, like, 300 words without a break. The reader can kinda get a sense of where the sentences are.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. So, now right now to the book itself, some of the letters. Oh, we'll just highlight a few of them or the ones so it's funny. I I especially like, because there's a few people in here that are that have a a couple different letters or sometimes more than that.
Tim Benson:And one of them that was, like, right at the beginning of the book that was really interesting was this was this teenage girl from Springfield, Illinois, which is Lincoln's hometown Right. Named Anna Ridgley. And she has, I think, just two letters in
Jonathan W. White:the book. Yeah. Those are 2 diary excerpts.
Tim Benson:Oh, diary excerpts. I'm sorry. So one from 18/60 and one from 18/61. And 18/60, she's not very, you know, hot on Lincoln. She she talks about, like, the election.
Tim Benson:The only way he won was, like, the, you know, the republicans stole the election. I mean, the shit's going on.
Jonathan W. White:For Yep.
Tim Benson:And then, you know, just a few months later in 18/61, the I guess the Lincolns have this event in their house where, you know, the people are coming in just to wish them well or whatever. And she goes and, you know, shakes hands with Mary Todd and and with Dave, I guess, and and has, like, a almost like a complete change of heart from where she was just, you know, a few months ago.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. The her diary is great, and I actually just discovered it in July. So I we added it very late in the process. I I found that one. We we supplemented the spared and shared stuff with a few archival finds that I had.
Jonathan W. White:So I found that at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield. And, yeah, the so it's right after the election, November 11, 18 60, and she was from a Democrat family. Her family had migrated from Maryland. They had some slaveholders in their in their extended family. So she is not a Lincoln supporter, and she describes that.
Jonathan W. White:But it's really interesting. At the end of that first diary entry, she says this, which is so counter to how most Americans think today as we're in, like, the you know, we're for when when we're recording, we're about to have a massive election in less than a week. And she did this. Of course, we are disappointed. So she's disappointed that Lincoln won.
Jonathan W. White:But she says, but I have tried to cherish no ill feeling. I have been cheerful and have not felt unhappy at all. I don't care much. I like disappointment sometimes. I know how to bear it.
Jonathan W. White:It does me good. It's just this really funny thing. Like, here's a Democrat. She just lost the election.
Tim Benson:She's a kid too. I mean, you know what I mean? Like yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Tim Benson:No. She's
Jonathan W. White:like, well, you know, sometimes disappointment is good for you, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be bitter against my Republican neighbors. So then February of 18/61, she and her family go to this farewell reception at the Lincoln Home. And by now, Lincoln has grown a beard, and this is actually pretty interesting where, you know, Lincoln was beardless for most of his life. And in October of 18 60, an 11 year old girl from Westfield, New York writes to Lincoln and basically says, you know, I think you'd look better with a beard, and some of my brothers are planning to vote democrat. But if you grow a beard, maybe I could convince them to vote for you.
Jonathan W. White:Like, I think of JD Vance. What I think of is, like, maybe the beard pays off. Right?
Tim Benson:And so For him, I think it definitely did. Like, Lincoln Or
Jonathan W. White:link yeah.
Tim Benson:Lincoln yeah. Lincoln likes better with the beard, I think. He's he's he's a beard guy.
Jonathan W. White:He is. Well and that's that's the vision we have of Lincoln, and it's because of this 11 year old girl who wrote to him and said you should grow a beard. And so now this teenage girl, Anna Ridgely, you know, she's in Springfield. She goes to this party at the Lincoln home, and she sees Lincoln and shakes his hand. And she said, mister Lincoln really looked handsome to me.
Jonathan W. White:His whiskers are a great improvement, and he had such a pleasant smile I could not but admire him. Yeah. I thought, what did you know, that jumped out at you, and it sure did to me when I found it a couple months ago. And I thought, what a change? And, you know, the beard really did affect the way people viewed Lincoln.
Jonathan W. White:It made for most people, it made them like him. One of the fun things about this book is so many people meet Lincoln, and they comment on him. Like, you know, he's really ugly. He's the homeliest guy I ever saw, or he's really handsome. His pictures don't do him justice.
Jonathan W. White:One person wrote and said he looks like a shark, and I don't even know what that means. I guess he was I don't know. But, like, the the way people thought about him when they saw him was pretty remarkable.
Tim Benson:Yeah. There's, the one part of the book that literally made me laugh out loud, actually wasn't about Lincoln. It was about Seward.
Jonathan W. White:Oh, yeah.
Tim Benson:So the the letter by this guy, Henry Joy, who is a member of the, I think, the 3rd New York Calvary Calvary, something like that. Yeah. So Seward and Lincoln and few others are there, you know, like, reviewing the troops or what have you. And this guy, Henry Joy, he describes Seward, as wearing, quote, a full leaf Panama hat, which concealed the whole of his countenance, but his interminable and exhaustible nose.
Jonathan W. White:Exhaustless nose.
Tim Benson:Exhaustless nose. I'm sorry. That's right. Exhaustless nose. Yeah.
Tim Benson:He resembled a moderate sized toad sitting under an overspreading cabbage leaf, which is just like it's just so funny. This sounds like something you would hear if there was, like, a, like, a 19th century version of, like, the Dean Martin celebrity roast or something like that. You know what I mean? It's like the 19th century version of Don Rickles would have, like, gone on stage and said that about about William Seward. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. That one was funny. And the other one too from early on was this kid, I guess his name is Wiley. Wiley Smith. It's Yeah.
Tim Benson:Who
Jonathan W. White:is He's a southerner. He's from Tennessee, and he's writing to his former teacher. That's the other thing. Go ahead.
Tim Benson:But he's, like, 11 years old, and I was just reading this. And so I read it first and then got to the, you know, Wiley J. Smith child, Lindley, Missouri, March 24, 1861. So then I went, like, to the footnote, and I was like, well, child. I was like, how, like, how old was this kid?
Tim Benson:And he was only 11 years old. But the thing that just struck me was that, like, he was just so erudite for a kid. You know? Like, and I'm trying to think, like, there's probably no 11 year old on earth at you know, alive today that would write a letter like this, you know, or it is probably not even an 11 year old kid today that's writing a letter.
Jonathan W. White:Right. Right.
Tim Benson:At all. But, but, you know, none that would write something like of that, like, the language he used and the and just the the the quality of his writing for an 11 year old is pretty striking.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. I mean, he was he was angry. He hated the abolitionists. He hated the Yankees. He's a Tennessean.
Jonathan W. White:Mhmm. But he was and even though his spelling is not perfect, he really is educated. I mean, the illusions in that letter, he refers to Judas. He refers to Benedict Arnold. He refers to the ancient god Mars.
Jonathan W. White:Like, he knows it's funny. There's a there's an old UVA professor named Edie Hirsch who wrote a book in the nineties called Cultural Literacy.
Tim Benson:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:And the idea was, like, there are certain things that every American should know. Mhmm. And this guy knew this stuff at 11. I'll I'll never forget one time when I was a teaching assistant about 25 years ago at the University of Maryland, I had my students list we I was doing the civil rights movement in Vietnam era, and I'm a big Bob Dylan fan. And I had my students listen to some Dylan songs, and there's one reference that that Dylan makes to Judas.
Jonathan W. White:And I had a student who said, who's Judas? Like, people today just don't know that biblical cultural reference. In the sixties, they did. In the 19 sixties, and certainly in the 18 sixties, they did. So here you've got this 11 year old kid in 18/60 one who is using all these illusions to to make his point, and it makes his writing, I think, so much more powerful that he can do that.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It's funny how many or just so many terms of phrase or, illusions as you say, like the English language. Basically, like, 2 thirds of them come from either, like, the King James Bible or Shakespeare. You know what I mean? Like, and people they're just like stuff like, you know, the writing on the wall.
Tim Benson:You know, people hear that all the time. Yeah. Probably have no idea, you know, that it's actually a biblical illusion and
Speaker 1:Right.
Tim Benson:All those sorts of things.
Jonathan W. White:My wife is she read a book about 2 years ago called How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. And the basic premise is, like you just said, the Bible and Shakespeare are the 2 greatest influences on our sort of cultural literacy.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Jonathan W. White:And I've got 2 girls. They're 11 and 8 now. But 2 years ago, they were 9 and 6, And we'd be, you know, watching TV or listening to something, and my wife would say, do you know where that's from? And my kids knew. Like, they they started to get the Shakespeare references that I think go over most people's heads.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I have a book in my collection. It's huge, and it's just a book of like all the, like biblical illusions in English literature over like the last, like, you know, 300 years, something like that. And it's it's gotta be like a 1,000 pages, and it's a very large book. Yeah.
Tim Benson:But it was it was just very striking to me, like, how knowledgeable that kid was and just how precise he was in his language. And, for that age is very, sort of it was very taken aback by it, I was. But but just in the general tone itself of the book, which is interesting, I figured going into it, I kinda figured it would be sorted this way, but I I was actually a little surprised that, like, it seemed like a majority of the letters or, you know, definitely a majority of the letters, including from union soldiers, are disparaging of Lincoln and in a lot of cases, really, like, downright hostile to him. Yeah. Basically, up until the point in late September of 18 64 when Sherman seizes Atlanta.
Tim Benson:I mean, I mean, it makes sense because the war just you know, the north didn't seem to be getting anywhere in the war. Right. And just the casualties kept mounting and mounting, and the debt kept mounting and mounting, how much money they were spending on the war and the, you know, the the the cost in human life. So it's not sort of surprising. And, like, you know, Lincoln had not been shot and murdered, had not become this martyr figure yet.
Tim Benson:But I was a little I I thought it would be a little more closer to 5050, but it seemed like it was probably about, you know, maybe, like, 70, 30, or maybe Yeah. More than that, 75, 25, you know, against Lincoln, you know, all throughout the book.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. So I wrote a book about 10 years ago called Emancipation, the Union Army, and the reelection of Abraham Lincoln. And in that book, I argued that most soldiers were willing to fight for the union, but they weren't willing to fight for emancipation.
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:And they're really angry when Lincoln says, you know, now you're fighting for black freedom. And then as you alluded to, you know, the war is going really badly at a lot of different points for the union, especially in the summer of 18 64. So you've got these guys who are exhausted. They're tired. They wanna go home.
Jonathan W. White:They're tired of losing. They're done. And it's the fall of Atlanta that I think transforms the army. And so there's one guy in this book named Cornelius Van Houten.
Tim Benson:I was just about to ask you about him.
Jonathan W. White:I wish I had known about him when I wrote my book 10 years ago because, like, he fits my argument to a tee, and so many of the people in this book do. And I said to Griff, I was like, man, I wish you were doing this in 2014 when I, you know, when I was, writing that book. But, yeah, Cornelius Van Houten, like, all of his letters are basically saying to his dad, you know, we're Lincoln is just fighting to make, you know, black people better than white people, and I'm tired, and I wanna go home. I'm not gonna fight in this anymore. And then at the very end of the fall, he writes to his dad, and he's like, well, I've kinda come around to your way of thinking.
Jonathan W. White:I'm gonna vote for Lincoln after all.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Tim Benson:And it was within, like, 2 months. You. Yeah. No. I mean, literally, he goes from I mean, I'm gonna use the language that's in the letter.
Tim Benson:I mean, just just because it emphasizes the point. So this guy Cornelius Van Houten, he's a soldier in the New Jersey light artillery. He's writing a letter to his father from Petersburg, and this is in August of 1964. And so, basically, it's a letter to his father, you know, pleading for to his father, like, do not vote for Lincoln in the election. He calls him Abe the butcher, calls Lincoln, you know, quote, a a nigger worshiper.
Tim Benson:I mean, you know, language, like, in that fashion. And that's in August. You know, he I think he writes 2 letters to his father in August of 18/64, and then there's a couple more letters, in October. So, you know, a couple months. You know?
Tim Benson:Not even. And, and he's also in those early August letters, he's, you know, very disparaging of Grant too as well. And then, yeah, a couple months later, he's like, yeah. I'm I'm actually I've come totally around to your way of thinking, dad. Grant's
Speaker 1:the man.
Tim Benson:You know? He's the man to get it done. We gotta, you know, we got to we have to we have to elect Lincoln again. And, he's just he's just a complete reversal. I mean, going from calling the guy, you know, using, you know, racial aspersions on Lincoln on Lincoln, racial epithets to describe, you know, Lincoln's positions Yeah.
Tim Benson:To being like, yeah. Hell yeah. Lincoln, you know, I'm, you know, I'm all in on Lincoln. Right. And it's it's it's just kinda funny how, because when I read the letters first, I was like, well, that's a, you know, another guy that has a change of heart.
Tim Benson:And then I went back and I was looking at it when I was doing my notes for this, and I was like, wow. These letters are only left a month and a half apart. Yeah. You know? It's crazy.
Jonathan W. White:Well and see, most historian so in in 18/64, 80% of the soldiers who voted voted for Lincoln. Mhmm. And most historians have said, oh, well, that's evidence that these guys came over to support emancipation. And I just don't think that's the case at all. I think some of them, they voted for Lincoln because they thought he's the best way to save the union.
Jonathan W. White:Some of them refused to vote for the Democrats because the Democrats had called the war a failure, and they didn't like that. They Yeah. Call that as treason. Yeah.
Tim Benson:I was gonna say once the Democrats released their platform at their convention in
Jonathan W. White:August.
Tim Benson:In August. Yeah. It seemed like there's a remarkable even, for the fact that, you know, the Democrats had McClellan, you know, as their nominee and McClellan was based I mean, for especially the guys in the Army of the Potomac, you know, McClellan was their dude. You know? Like, they loved, you know, George McClellan.
Tim Benson:But then when the, democratic platform comes out and it's basically which is basically just like a surrender document to the south. And once McClellan, you know, sort of tacitly agrees to, you know, support the platform, All these guys are just like, no. That, you know, love McClellan, but I'm not, you know Then it's Everything everything we fought for is just, you know, all the all we lived in, you know, all we bled and died for, all our, you know, compatriots is just for nothing, and we can't have that.
Jonathan W. White:Right. And his vice presidential running mate was a peace democrat. Yeah. So a lot of these guys are worried. What if he dies?
Jonathan W. White:Like, he might be willing to fight for the fight for the union, but if he dies, his his running mate will become president, and he's not gonna save the union. So they just they just can't vote for they can't vote for him. And so my view is that, you know, 20% of the soldiers who voted voted for McClellan, they're died in the wool Democrats. 80% of the soldiers who voted voted for Lincoln, but that doesn't necessarily mean they supported emancipation. And I think probably at least 20% of the soldiers who were eligible to vote just chose not to vote.
Jonathan W. White:They thought, I can't vote for Lincoln. He's an abolitionist. But I can't vote for the Democrats because they're traitors, and so they just didn't vote that year. And the letters that come out in great and good man just really bring those views to life. And then the other thing that I think is so important in what you mentioned is that we often today think about Lincoln as this icon in the Lincoln Memorial, this larger than life guy.
Jonathan W. White:He's our greatest president. Surely, he was popular during his whole life. And we forget that he was actually one of the most hated presidents of all time while he was president.
Tim Benson:Yeah. He was only elected president in 18/60 with, like, 39% of the of the vote or the popular vote. Yeah. Something like that. I mean, yeah, he was a minority president.
Tim Benson:You know, that's one of the you know, if the South had stayed in if the South had decided not to secede in 18/60, you know, when Lincoln is elected, the irony is for them that like slavery probably lasts another generation or so, at least just because the Republicans wouldn't have had you know, the majority they would've had to pass any of the Right. Civil rights legislations or anti, you know, emancipation legislation, anything like that, because it would have just been blocked by all the, you know, by the by the solid south, by the, you know, the the cotton south. So Yeah. So they stop shot themselves in the, in the butt with the with all that stuff. But but good for them.
Tim Benson:It's, you know, worked out well for everybody. Yeah. The other the other humorous one that really made me laugh, was this letter. It's on page 106. I'm sure you're familiar with it, by this guy, the reverend Arthur b Bradford, who is a Yeah.
Tim Benson:He's a guy from Enon Valley, Pennsylvania, and he's writing this shortly after, Lincoln, inauguration day in March of 18 65. And, you know, Lincoln's second inaugural is sort of, widely considered maybe like one of the 2 or 3 greatest speeches in like the history of the English language. It's in the pantheon of the pieces of political oratory throughout the entire it's, like, you know, it's there.
Jonathan W. White:Book called Lincoln's Greatest Speech about Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's like Pericles, Churchill, Lincoln.
Tim Benson:You know, that's basically it. Right? Yeah. So so this guy, this reverend from Pennsylvania, you know, reads the speech, and, you know, he writes, you know, Lincoln's inaugural, while the sentiments are noble, is one of the most awkwardly expressed documents I ever read, if it'd be correctly printed, when he knew it would be read by 1,000,000 all over the world. Why under the heavens did he not make it a little more credible to American scholarship?
Tim Benson:And, I don't know. That was just so funny to me because, you know, it's, it's like, it's like hating, like, Beethoven's, like, 5th symphony. Like like, what is this trash? This, or is that
Jonathan W. White:what you're actually the last excerpt I've added into the book. So What's that? At the very last minute when we were doing copy edits of the book, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna go through all my notes in on my computer and just see if there's anything I should include. And I saw that, and I had taken a note on that probably around 2002, maybe, like, a long time ago.
Jonathan W. White:And it it's just been sitting on my computer ever since. And I so I very quickly got got the microfilm through interlibrary loan, proofread it, looked good, threw it into the book, and I'm glad I did.
Tim Benson:Yeah, man. That that that one really stood out. Oh, the other thing I thought too, would you know, ties speaking of tying into your other work, was really this remarkable diary entry, from this woman, Elizabeth Oak Smith
Jonathan W. White:Mhmm.
Tim Benson:Who is the mother of this guy, Afton Oak Smith, who you wrote about in that. Shipwrecked. Shipwrecked. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So she writes a diary entry. We're assuming she wrote it that night. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:Right? That's how it appears in her diary as if it was written that night. Right.
Tim Benson:So the night that Lincoln is assassinated. And just so just tell everybody about this, you know, this experience that she had that she wrote about in her diary of, you know, that happened the night of Lincoln's assassination because it's very eerie.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. So I added this one in as sort of a transition to set up the assassination. She was a democrat on Long Island. Her son had been arrested for slave trading, and he was exiled in Cuba at this point. She hated Abraham Lincoln because she saw him and Seward as the reasons why her life was just falling apart.
Jonathan W. White:But as the war is ending, her community she was a very famous poet and lecturer and essayist. She was a household name in the 18 fifties. And because she was a prominent person, her community contacts her and says, you know, we'd like you to give a speech for, you know, this basic local celebration of the end of the war. It's April of 18 65. And so she doesn't really wanna do it, but she agrees to do it.
Jonathan W. White:And it's April 14, 18 65, and she's talking to this local group of citizens. And around 10 PM, she just begins to feel this immense pain. She said, without apparent cause, I had a sharp pain through my heart, just one pang like the thrust of a sword. And then, you know, someone came up to her afterwards and said she looked really pale and awful. And so she goes and writes about this in her diary.
Jonathan W. White:And then the next day, she learns that Lincoln had been shot at just about that moment. And so it was almost as if, like, she was suffering in the same moment that Lincoln is is being mortally wounded. And I and so I included that as a way of then sort of setting up what is about to unfold with a whole slew of accounts of people who are just grieving Lincoln's loss or some who are not grieving Lincoln's loss.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Definitely. A lot of Southerners were, you know, I thought it was fantastic. But
Jonathan W. White:there is a Northerners. One of my favorites is this account where, you know, this girl was at a friend's house. And just to kinda get under her friend's skin, she's like, you know, isn't it great that Lincoln was killed and her dad kicks her out of the house? He's like, you can't talk that way here.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. No. But, I mean, it's, again, it's funny. It's almost immediate that transition, you know, like you said, is we sort of think of Lincoln as this, you know, American hero, this, you know, this basically, this martyr to, you know, the American nation, you know, the great emancipator and all that stuff.
Tim Benson:And it that shift from once Lincoln is killed and assassinated, that shift is is literally, like, almost instantaneously, beginning, you know, right like, just within days weeks, of the assassination taking place.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. I mean, the thing is he shot on Good Friday. And so all of the pastors who have written sermons for Easter, they have to get rid of what they've written, and they write new sermons, and they're about Lincoln. And, I mean, be I think because of that, he be you know, he is forever seen as sort of this Christ figure role. Not everyone saw it, but I think most Americans did.
Jonathan W. White:But one of my favorite ones is from a woman named Sarah Goodrich in upstate New York. And she is actually the great, I think, the great great aunt or great great great aunt of Griff, my co editor. And this is what she wrote. I suppose you have heard about the president's being shot before this. I should preface this by saying she was a good Methodist.
Jonathan W. White:She wrote, it is so dreadful just when peace is dawning. But if he had been to church instead of the theater
Tim Benson:You're right. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:Then, I mean, what an incredible comment to Right. Like, that's her reaction.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Well, you know, you wanna stay out of trouble, you don't go where there's trouble. Yep. Anyway alright. I know you got a hard out coming up, but you guys got carpool and stuff.
Tim Benson:So, just one more highlighted that I figured I'd talk to you about. And that's that that last letter, of the book from 1927 or entry diary entry, by this guy named William Critchley, who was a member of the 13th New Hampshire Infantry. And he's writing about how his band, I guess, the, you know, the regimental band or whatever was ordered.
Jonathan W. White:He was a musician.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It was ordered to play for Lincoln, down at City Point in Virginia, which is sort of like the main union, like, supply depot, you know, down in Virginia when the war's going on there. And, he talks about how Lincoln asked the band to play Dixie at which the band first demurred because they're like, no. That's a, you know, that's a Rebel song. And, you know, that's you know, we don't we don't play Dixie.
Tim Benson:That's one of theirs. And Lincoln's like, no. No. You know, we play it. We we've captured it.
Tim Benson:Play it. You know? And that's I had never said I've seen I don't know where before. I'm sure I think it's from when he was speaking at the White House or something. He asked one of the bands to play Dixie again because he says it belongs to all of us again or something like that.
Tim Benson:So that this letter tracks with that, with that account of Lincoln that other account of Lincoln asking a band to play Dixie because it, you know, it belongs to you know, it's not just a southern song anymore. It belongs to all of us again. So, that was interesting. Just because Lincoln was a big, big fan of Dixie.
Jonathan W. White:I mean,
Tim Benson:it's a good song. You know?
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. And it was written by a northerner.
Tim Benson:So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
Tim Benson:Right.
Jonathan W. White:Because he could make the claim that it it was a northern song all along. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I think readers of this book, they'll find some familiar stories that kind of reinforce what they know about Lincoln or the civil war era. And then there's a lot in here that will just be new.
Jonathan W. White:If I can share one other one that I just absolutely love. This was written by a guy named John Fales, and he was an artillerist. And he wrote this in September of 18/61, and he said mister Lincoln reviewed us last Monday. And after the review, he came to our camp and examined our rifle cannons. And, like, I'll I'll pause there.
Jonathan W. White:I just I love that because we know Lincoln loved technology. He was fascinated by technology. He's the only president with a patent. And so he wanted to see, like, how did these cannons work? And then this guy continues.
Jonathan W. White:He says, he thanked us very kindly for our gallant conduct at the Battle of Bull Run. And when he went away, he went up to where our cook was getting dinner and took a brand of fire and lit his cigar and sit down and had a long talk with our captain. He is a very pleasant man pleasant talking man. Anyone would not think he was president of the US if they did not know who he was. And I've gotta say, I mean, I've been studying Lincoln closely for a decade and a half now.
Jonathan W. White:Mhmm. I have never in my life seen an account of Lincoln smoking at all
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah.
Jonathan W. White:Let alone with soldiers. Like, Seward, the guy with the big nose and the Panama hat. Like, he's smoking cigar all the time. Grant smoking all the time. I've never seen an account me either.
Jonathan W. White:Lighting up a cigar. And that's just what's so cool about this what was so fun about this project is that letter would be lost if Griff hadn't spared it on from Ebay and then shared it through his website. And then, you know, me and Griff finding each other and and making this book. Like, these kind of really rare accounts, I think, give us a really new window into who Lincoln was.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, because it's like I said, I've never heard anything before of him smoking any sort of tobacco, you know, whatsoever or, you know, chewing tobacco or anything like that. So it seems like it's just, you know, something Lincoln, you know, I'm assuming probably did just to, you know, ingratiate himself into with soldiers and sort of sort of show them that, you know, he's one of them and and, that sort of thing, which is a smart, you know, political move. I mean, he was, you know, obviously an astute politician.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Tim Benson:So, you know
Jonathan W. White:Maybe he didn't inhale. You know?
Tim Benson:Yeah. Exactly. Maybe that
Speaker 1:was Well,
Tim Benson:you're not supposed to inhale cigars. Right? So he probably he probably didn't. Maybe he just, you know, sat there and savored the flavor. But, yeah, I thought that was interesting too just because like I said, I'd never seen it.
Tim Benson:And that's what's really great about the about the book. I mean, because you read I mean, there's so many biographies of Lincoln. I you know, other I mean, there's more books about Lincoln than, I think, any other figure in world history other than Jesus Christ.
Jonathan W. White:Jesus. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Maybe Napoleon. But Yeah. Maybe Napoleon. And so, I mean, not to knock any of those books, but, you know, most of the time, just because the sources are limited, know, it's a lot of the same accounts and the same, you know, quotes, quotations from the same letters or the same documents and all sorts of things.
Tim Benson:So, you know, you can read you can read 50 different Lincoln books, and you'll, you know, the quotes and a lot of them will be, you know
Jonathan W. White:All the same.
Tim Benson:Not right. Yeah. Not not entirely all the same, but pretty close. Right?
Jonathan W. White:Yeah.
Tim Benson:So it's just interesting, excuse me, just to have all these new, you know, just little morsels of of, just, information on Lincoln or just what people thought of Lincoln or, you know, especially contemporary thoughts on Lincoln. Because, again, a lot of the even in the Lincoln histories, a lot of the things that are said about Lincoln or or written about Lincoln, by some of his contemporaries are written long after the events itself. So, you know, they have the ability to go in and and sort of change narratives to fit the view, you know, the the post assassination view of Lincoln.
Jonathan W. White:Right.
Speaker 4:So to
Tim Benson:have all these all these, you know, letters and diary entries in one spot is, you know, really getting a a feel for what the the populace thought of this guy, you know, at the time as the war is going on in the moment is really, really, really fascinating.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. The last two accounts in the book, the one you pointed to and one other are from years later. But then every other of the 200 plus accounts are from Lincoln's lifetime or the immediate aftermath of his assassination. And they I think as a historian, it's just so important to get records from as close to the event as possible, and
Tim Benson:Yeah. We were
Jonathan W. White:able to do that.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. So like I said, I know you gotta go, for your carpool journey. But, you know, normal I mean, you might have already we probably maybe already covered this a little bit, but it's the normal exit question.
Tim Benson:You've gotten it, you know, 5 times before already, so you're used to it. But, you know, what's the, you know, what would you like? What's the one thing you want a reader to take away from this book, you know, having read it? You know, what what would you want the audience to get out of reading this book?
Jonathan W. White:As we talked about before, I mean, I hope that readers get a sense of how Lincoln was perceived in his life time, and that it's not this sort of clear cut great emancipator, honest Abe, sort of mythical icon that we often think of today. We we really get a real life view of him, and I hope that readers will then have a deeper appreciation for him that he accomplished everything he did in light of in spite of the fact that so many of his constituents absolutely hated his guts. Like, he was able to be such a great leader that he could accomplish great things and sort of eventually bring the population along.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Tim Benson:Alright. Well said. Alright. Well, once again, the book is A Great and Good Man. Rare firsthand accounts and observations of Abraham Lincoln.
Tim Benson:Like I said before, this is just a fascinating, fascinating look at Lincoln at the period, you know, what people you know, how people responded to events, you know, at the time, you know, getting your their thoughts in the moment. It's really, really, an interesting look in, at this period, a really, really interesting and unique look at Lincoln. So it's, you know, and it's, it's a very readable book. It's one of those books you can just, you know, sort of come to you and come back to over time, you know, because or, you know, reading on the John or something like that. You know what I mean?
Tim Benson:You can, you know, just read, like, 4 or 5 letters or something like that, and then put it down and go back to it. But, or you can just read it in, you know, a setting or 2. You can do that too, but it's, it's, so there's lots of ways you can go at the book itself. But, yeah, it's really, really great. Really fascinating.
Tim Benson:If you're a civil war buff or, you know, a Lincoln guy or gal, out there, you definitely, definitely wanna pick up this book because there's so many things in here that you've that, you know, nobody has seen before, except for, you know, my handful of people for the most part. So highly, highly recommended to everybody. Once again, the name of the book, A Great and Good Man, rare firsthand accounts and observations of Abraham Lincoln, edited by William J. Griffin and our friend who, of the podcast who joined us here to talk about it, doctor Jonathan White. So doctor White, once again, thank you.
Tim Benson:Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and, you know, and putting this thing together, man, because this was really cool. Because I I don't think the the last time I talked to you, I don't even know if you even if this was even in the pipeline It wasn't. When I was like when I was like, what's going on? You know, what do you got going on, you know, coming up? And, yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you, you talked about it.
Tim Benson:And then when you're when you reached out again, I was like, oh, I was like, I didn't remember talking about this.
Jonathan W. White:Yeah. It just started in May. It was a quick turnaround.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. Yeah. So once again, yeah, great and good man, rare and firsthand accounts of observations of Abraham Lincoln, the author or one of the editors, doctor Jonathan White. So doctor White, thank you so so much for coming back on to talk about this.
Jonathan W. White:Thank you.
Tim Benson:No problem. And, again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And if you have any, questions or comments or you have any suggestions for books you'd like to see discussed in the podcast, you can always reach out to me at tbenson@heartland.org. That's tbens0n@heartland.org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org.
Tim Benson:And, we do have our Twitter account for the podcast. You can reach us there too at illbooks@illbooks. So check that out as well. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. So thanks for listening, everybody.
Tim Benson:We'll see you guys next time. Take care. Love you, Robbie. Love you, mom. Bye bye.
Speaker 4:Do you remember the great brother? His name was Abraham Lincoln. Around a 100 years or more.
Speaker 5:I don't remember,
Speaker 4:but I read books about him. What a great man he was. He freed his sound. Although you got southerner doing it.