A House Built by Slaves
African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Readers of American history and books on Abraham Lincoln will appreciate what Los Angeles Review of Books deems an "accessible book" that "puts a human face — many human faces — on the story of Lincoln’s attitudes toward and engagement with African Americans" and Publishers Weekly calls "a rich and comprehensive account."
Widely praised and winner of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, this book illuminates why Lincoln’s unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. From his 1862 meetings with Black Christian ministers, Lincoln began inviting African Americans of every background into his home, from ex-slaves from the Deep South to champions of abolitionism such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. More than a good-will gesture, the president conferred with his guests about the essential issues of citizenship and voting rights. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how African Americans used the White House as a national stage to amplify their calls for equality. Even more than 160 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s inclusion of African Americans remains a necessary example in a country still struggling from racial divisions today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
