Abraham Lincoln: Frederick Douglass Measures the Man

Join us next Tuesday, October 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET for a conversation with two award-winning scholars and Academic Council members Lucas Morel and Jonathan W. White about their new book, Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln. Morel and White reveal Douglass’s most meaningful and poignant statements about Lincoln, some of which come from a dozen newly discovered documents that have not been seen for 160 years. JMC’s Resident Historian and Manager of Network Engagement, Elliott Drago, will moderate.

The complicated and at times fraught relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln helps understand not only these great men, but their mutual strivings to end slavery and bring about a more perfect union. With the end of the Civil War and the death of Lincoln, Douglass expressed deeper appreciation for the fallen president’s statesmanship and praised him as a model for postwar America.

We’ll ask: How did Morel and White discover the never-before-seen letters and speeches? How did Frederick Douglass’s views of Lincoln change over time? Why was Douglass so critical of Lincoln when the Civil War began? What caused Douglass to change his mind about Lincoln? What makes Measuring the Man different from other books about Lincoln and Douglass?

Lucas Morel is a Jack Miller Center Board Member, Academic Council Member, and Founding Civics Initiative Faculty. He is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University.

Professor Morel has taught at Washington and Lee University since July 1999. He also teaches in the summer Master’s Program in American History and Government at Ashland University in Ohio; summer programs for the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy; and high school teacher workshops sponsored by the Ashbrook Center, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, the Jack Miller Center, the Bill of Rights Institute, and the Liberty Fund.

In 2008-09, he was the Garwood Visiting Research Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Professor Morel is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, former president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, a consultant on Library of Congress exhibits on Lincoln and the Civil War, and was a member of the scholarly board of advisors for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He currently serves on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which will plan activities to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Jonathan W. White is a Jack Miller Center Academic Council Member and
Founding Civics Initiative Faculty and Professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

He is author or editor of 17 books and more than 100 articles, essays and reviews about the Civil War, slavery and emancipation, African American history, Abraham Lincoln, and the U.S. Constitution.

His book Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln was named a best book of 2014 by Civil War Monitor, was a finalist for both the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Jefferson Davis Prize, and won the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War was named a best book of 2017 by Civil War Monitor. His 2018 book, “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War, co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway, was a finalist for the Indie Book Awards and honorable mention for the John Lyman Book Award.

He is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, serves on the Boards of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Abraham Lincoln Association, and is the Vice Chair of The Lincoln Forum. He also serves on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council, the editorial board of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and as editor of both Lincoln Lore and ​The Lincoln Forum Bulletin. In 2019 he won the Outstanding Faculty Award of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the highest award given to faculty in the Commonwealth.

His recent books include My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021), which he co-edited with his student, Lydia Davis; To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln (2021); A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), which was co-winner with Jon Meacham of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize; 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 co-edited with Brian Matthew Jordan. In 2024, he published his first children’s book, My Day with Abe Lincoln.​