A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House by Jonathan W. White

Abstract

Reviewed by: A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House by Jonathan W. White Christopher Thrasher A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House. By Jonathan W. White. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022. Pp. xxii, 249. $26.00, ISBN 978-1-5381-6180-7.) A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House by Jonathan W. White analyzes what an unprecedented wave of African American visitors to the White House during the Abraham Lincoln administration meant to the people of the nineteenth century and what those visits might mean to the people of the present. White is well qualified to write this book. In 2008, he received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland at College Park. He currently serves as an associate professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University. White's previous books include the award-winning Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge, 2014) and Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams During the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2017). A House Built by Slaves begins in the present, with a preface focused on modern debates about Lincoln's legacy. This preface helps White demonstrate this topic's contemporary relevance. To provide context for Lincoln as a person, White spends chapter 1 covering Lincoln's pre-presidential interactions with African Americans. The next fifteen chapters provide stories and quotations from many of the African Americans who visited the Lincoln White House. The book's last chapter covers responses to Lincoln's death and documents how African Americans mourned him. The work's epilogue explores immediate postwar perceptions of Lincoln. The book concludes with an appendix that mentions several unconfirmed meetings between Lincoln and African Americans. White interspaces the book's seventeen chapters with six interludes that provide helpful context for the primary narrative. His use of these interludes is an odd stylistic choice, but one that works well for this story. This book provides an important contribution to scholarship on the Civil War, Lincoln's presidency, and continuing debates about race in America. Long hailed as the great emancipator, Lincoln has been attacked by critics in [End Page 782] recent years, particularly for his treatment of African Americans. In response to these critics, White provides a powerful and well-researched defense of Abraham Lincoln. White argues, "When Lincoln met with African Americans—whether enslaved or free—he treated them with dignity and respect" (p. xiii). To prove his point, White uses extensive quotations from African Americans who visited the White House to demonstrate that while Lincoln was not perfect, he was a friend to slaves and a powerful advocate for racial progress. In the words of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln was "emphatically the black man's president: the first to show any respect for their rights as men" (p. 193). The book's research and writing are both very good. The work rests on a solid foundation of sources, including archival collections, published primary sources, and secondary literature. The writing is easy to read and free of obscure jargon. White wisely includes pictures of many of the African Americans highlighted in the book, which helps humanize the topic. The book's 206 pages of text are both sufficient to cover the subject and brief enough to remain accessible to casual readers. Overall, A House Built by Slaves is an excellent book. It is well written and well researched, and it provides an important contribution to the scholarship. The excellent research will offer seasoned historians new insights into Lincoln and his legacy. The book's conversational tone, carefully selected illustrations, and reasonable length make it a great option for casual readers or for use in undergraduate history courses. Christopher Thrasher National Park College Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association