A House Built by Slaves

November 8, 2021
White (Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln), a professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University, provides a granular study of Abraham Lincoln’s practice of welcoming African Americans to the White House. Pushing back against historians who have questioned Lincoln’s commitment to “racial egalitarianism,” White documents the president’s meetings with Daniel Payne, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; former slaves who joined the Union Army; and abolitionists including Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Through these and other visits, Lincoln demonstrated his “willingness to welcome black leaders into his orbit when discussing great matters of state,” according to White, who admits that it was “terribly condescending” of the president to lecture a group of African American leaders who visited the White House in 1862 about slavery’s “evil effects on the white race” and why free Blacks would be better off leaving the country, but raises the possibility that it was part of Lincoln’s efforts to prepare “a white racist Northern public” for the Emancipation Proclamation. The detailed recaps of each meeting can grow tedious, and White sometimes overreaches in his readings of primary sources. Still, this is a rich and comprehensive account of a groundbreaking aspect of Lincoln’s presidency.

December 10, 2021

White, the author and editor of several books on Abraham Lincoln, extends his recent work on Black Americans' engagement with Lincoln to include their visits to Lincoln's White House. Drawing heavily on the letters, speeches, memoirs, and newspaper accounts of such meetings, White shows that Black people were welcome visitors, both as invited guests and uninvited drop-ins. That Lincoln extended his hand in greeting them and treated them with dignity and respect spoke volumes about his attitudes toward Black people and gave lie to arguments then, and later by some historians, that Lincoln regarded Black people as inferior and unworthy of serious attention. Rather, as White tells it, Lincoln took Black leaders into his confidence, sought their advice, and encouraged them to promote his policies, especially those securing emancipation and raising Black troops. Lincoln's unassuming nature in dealing with Black people earned him the respect of Black leaders, but it also cost him politically among northern whites who worried Lincoln's practices opened the door to social and political equality. White argues these visits did much to move Lincoln toward ever stronger commitments to civil rights. VERDICT An original and revealing book on a subject heretofore surprisingly missing from the large Lincoln literature. --Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2022
White does not write about the enslaved people who helped build the White House but rather capably documents the experiences of African Americans who came to see President Lincoln. White shows Lincoln zigging and zagging in words and actions on race relations, and one key event is Lincoln's 1862 meeting with five African American leaders, during which he avidly pushed for them to leave the U.S. But White asserts that this meeting is the exception to Lincoln's otherwise substantive, empathetic, and respectful discussions with African Americans thereafter. Using a format that is partly chronological and partly organized by subject, White describes, movingly, Lincoln's meetings with many African Americans of all backgrounds, providing brief biographies of each participant and describing the conversation and its aftermath. Readers will perceive the sacred and the profane in White's accounts of the historical context for these encounters. During this era, politicians, journalists, and the public often used biblical references in framing their opinions, yet their commentary was also laced with racial epithets. Images of 20 African Americans who met with Lincoln complete this unusual history.

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