Project. Busy people get things done, and we knew we were in for it when dr. Whittenberg talked about that. Jonathan white has to be the busiest young scholar in the field today. Hes not only a prolific historian, with more projects on the back burners than ive ever seen on the stove before. He won the outstanding faculty award for academic education. Hes a parent of young children, i dont know where john finds the time. Hes been very generous with what remaining time he has from all of that for this museum and our Education Programs for which were all very grateful. As you can see from your printed programs, the topics of johns work are his published work are many and varied with something of a focus Abraham Lincoln with the legal and constitution, as well and hes coauthor of a book entitled Civic Education and the work of citizenship and because he has news they wrote our little monitor, the greatest invention of this civil war. I asked him to put it on a topic, and it draws from other two manuscripts. Hes currently time is, africanamericans in the Lincoln White house. Ladies and gentlemen, jonathan white. [ applause ] thank you, john, for that very kind introduction. I missed ballet practice to be here today not my own ballet, i should say. My 3yearolds, but im really thrilled to be here at the library of virginia. Its the middle of the civil war, early 1863 a black teenager is living in the capital and working for frank pruitt. One night lizzy went to bed and she lay down on the couch and all of a sudden she heard someone come in next to her. She asked who was there . And he said, liz, it is me, frank. I want to get into bed with you, but dont want you to tell lib, will you . Lib was his wife. Lizzy said she was tired and she told him to go away, but she persevered and put his arms around her neck and slept with her and that happened on several occasions. When lizzy realized she was pregnant she told frank. He asked if the baby was his and she confirmed that it was. A baby girl was born on november 3, 1863. In may of 1864, frank told lizzie he wanted her to take the child and get out of his home. She replied that she would leave if he gave her Financial Support, but he refused. When lizzie then learned that frank was going to kick her out of the house she decided to confront him in front of his wife. The next morning, a sunday, lizzie packed up her belongings, packed her baby and knocked on the pruitts bedroom door, frank stayed in bed while his wife who just had a baby of her own got out of bed and she turned to frank and she said look at me, look at the baby and remember what you have done to me. He, sitting in bed simply replied, well, she then reminded him that he had promised to give Financial Support for the child and she threatened i will disgrace you on the morrow if he didnt supply Financial Support. At this pruit became angry and he turned to his wife and said do you believe that damned black bitch and she said yes, frank, for the last three months you have acted as if you were a phrase of liz. He jumped out of bed and grabbed a revolver, and he said i never intend to die a natural death and i will blow your brains out and his wife grabbed the revolver and said frank, a murder over my child. He choked her, threw her against the wall and ordered her to get out of his house. Lizzie hurried her way out of the home with the baby in her arms. She returned later in the day to get her trunk and when she went back to the house mrs. Pruit gave her some money. The next morning, a monday at 7 00 a. M. She went to find a local judge, and she wanted to file a complaint against pruitt and the judge refuse period upon she then went to another judge who was willing to issue the warrant. Unfortunately, when pruitt found out about this he decided to act, too, and he had lizzie arrested for grand larceny that very same night and he claimed that the money his wife had given to her had actually been stolen. She spent the rest of the week in jail and was finally released on bail. On june 16, 1864, a judge in d. C. Heard the case against pruitt. Lizzie testified and told her story and its a remarkable moment because prior to the civil war, africanamericans are generally not allowed to testify against whites in state or federal courts or in the district of colombia but the ward changed that and she testified and told her story. Several eyewitnesses offered their own accounts of what they had seen or thought happened and the judge decided to acquit pruitt. Some time around when this trial took place, lizzys baby died. Lizzie then went to trial herself as a defendant on november 3, 1864, what would have been her babys first birthday. She was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison at the albany penitentiary in new york. The following day she sent a letter to Abraham Lincoln. She was not able to write herself and so an unknown hand wrote it for her, and you can see this is the actual letter and these are some of her words. The fault was my own for which i was convicted, but i most solemnly declare before my maker that i am guilty of no crime. She explained how in an evil hour she gave way to the import unities and having nowhere left to turn she implored lincoln for mercy. The monies given to me by mrs. Pruitt on condition they would say nothing of myself and mr. Pruitt. At the end of the letter she marked her name with an x. As lincoln sat in his White House Office holding lizzies letter and reviewing her case file, many thoughts may have flashed through his mind. His own genealogy had striking similarities to the story of lizzie shorter. Lincoln believed that his own mothers conception was the result of a wealthy virginia planter taking sexual advantage of a poor young girl and lincolns law partner said that this was a painful memory for lincoln. Lincoln also had strong misgivings about societys double standards when it came to cases of seduction or extra marital sex. He thought it was unjust that women received more blame than men who participated in sexual indiscretions and he wrote a poem about this in the 1830s and these are a few lines of that poem. Whatever spiteful fools may say, each jealous ranting yelper, no woman ever played the whore unless she had a man to help her. That ones not on the lincoln memorial. [ laughter ] pruitts Sexual Exploitation of elizabeth shorter clearly offended lincolns sense of justice and lincoln felt empathy for the young mother. He knew the grief of losing a child. He had lost two sons of his own. Considering all of the evidence on hand and moved with compassion, lincoln issued a pardon on november 5th before she could even be sent to new york for imprisonment and this is what he wrote on the back of her letter. Elizabeth shorters case is probably the fastest pardon lincoln ever issued. She was convicted on november 3rd, wrote a letter on november 4th and he pardoned her on november 5th. All the more remarkable is the timing. Three days later lincoln would stand for reelection for the presidency for his second term in office. Now the story of elizabeth shorter is an important one. Although its completely unknown today, it confirms lincolns belief that all people deserved a fair hearing and equality before the law. He knew that lizzie shorter had been wronged and so he did what he could do to rectify the situation. When dealing with pardons and cases like this, he acted upon principles of equality regardless of a persons race, color, sex or previous condition of servitude. Recently the New York Times project 1619 has gotten a good deal of attention among scholars and the general public. The essays in the project do a wonderful and Great Service for reminding us for the centrality of race and slavery to the american story, but unfortunately, the project introduces some significant distortions of its own. The project presents an incomplete and misleading portrait of lincoln and part of the mischaracterization has to do with the lack of historical context. One of the primary pieces of evidence against lincoln and project 1619 is a meeting that lincoln had with a black delegation in august of 1862 in which he sought to persuade five black leaders from washington, d. C. To lead africanamericans out of the country to Central America through a process known as colonization. Its an unfortunate moment that lincolns scholars like myself have to deal with because we find lincoln lecturing his guests in a very con descending way. He tells them that the war is their fault, if they werent here we wouldnt be at war and they should leave the country, taken at face value, its really quite pathetic. Yet, within the context of the time it makes more sense. Lincoln brought a stenographer to this meeting because he wanted his words to be written down and spread throughout the newspapers immediately. He wanted white americans throughout the north to read his speech for a very important political reason. He had decided to issue an emancipation proclamation, but he knew that a white racist northern populous was not going to be likely to absent it so he had to prepare them for it and this was part of how he chose to do that. In essence, lincoln was telling white northerners, you dont need to be worried about emancipation because i will try to persuade people of color to leave the country once theyre freed. On the one hand this was a remarkable moment that demonstrated a great step forward in american Race Relations for it was the first time in American History that a sitting president had invited africanamericans to the white house for a meeting. On the other hand, it was a pr stunt, and it was tremendously condescending toward africanamericans and so much so that it had negative impacts on black northerners throughout the north, but lincoln was a masterful politician. He did this as an entering wedge so that he could introduce something bigger and better in the near future, the emancipation proclamation. William lloyd garrisons newspaper the liberator captured the complexity and multiple pieces of this meeting calling it a spectacle as humiliating as it was extraordinary. Here is the question i want to set out for today. Was this meeting with lincoln and the black delegation in august 1862, was this typical of his meetings with africanamericans . Should it have been held as exemplary of his behavior as the New York Times has done . To put it simply, i would argue absolutely not. As early as april of 1861 lincoln began engaging with africanamericans in ways that no other president ever had. On april 18th, a baltimore mob badly wounded a black servant named Nicholas Bittel who was traveling from pennsylvania to washington, d. C. , with the regimen of pennsylvania volunteers. Someone in this mob shouted n word in uniform, while the other yelled kill the damned brother of abe lincoln. Bittel received a horrifying blow to the face by a paving stone thrown in his direction. As one of his comrades wrote in his diary, nick bittel had his head cut open by a stone thrown. The pennsylvania soldiers eventually made it to washington and they were quartered in the u. S. Capital. Bittel lay in pain, a pool of blood staining the floor where he slept that night. The next day lincoln went to the capital with several cabinet secretaries to greet these soldiers. He took each man by the hand including Nicholas Bittel. A black chaplain for the union army later wrote this. He said bittels pain was mixed with pleasure at the capital, for it was his priviledge to be visited by Abraham Lincoln and to be received by the president words of compliment and cheer. Until the day he died in 1876 bittel never tired of telling people about what he called the supreme hours of his life, the time he was wounded in baltimore and went to washington, d. C. And met Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln welcomed his first black guest to the white house in arlington 1862, a bishop named daniel payne. Payne came to discuss emancipation in the district of columbia. They had a long conversation, about 45 minutes in lincolns office and afterwards, payne wrote about it and these are paynes words. There was nothing stiff or formal in the air and manner of his excellency, nothing egotistic. President lincoln received and conversed with me as though i had been one of his intimate acquaintances or one of his friendly neighbors. I left him with the profound sense of his real greatness, and his fitness to rule a nation composed of almost all the races on the face of the globe. The following month in may of 1862, lincoln visited a hospital in washington, d. C. , where a white nurse introduced him to three black cooks who were preparing food for the sick and wounded soldiers. At least one of the three cooks was a former slave. Lincoln greeted the three africanamericans in a kindly tone. How do you do, lucy, he said to the first. The nurse then remarked that lincoln stuck out his long hand in recognition of the womens services. He stuck out his hand to shake her hand. Next, lincoln turned to the two black men and gave them a hearty grip and asked them, how do you do . When the president left the room the three black cooks stood there, the nurse described it, they had shining faces that testified to their amazement and joy for all time, but soon she began to look around the room and she noticed how the white officers who were convalescing there reacted to the scene. They expressed a feeling of intense disgust and claimed that it was a mean, contemptible trickle for those to introduce those damn n words to the president. Fortunately, lincoln paid those racist views no mind. He treated the black cooks the same way he did the White Union Soldiers at the hospital. He was grateful to them for their service and to their nation and he didnt alter his behave consider simply because white soldiers were looking on in disbelief. Throughout his time at the white house, lincoln welcomed several dozen black visitors. Some of these guests were famous like Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth. Most are completely forgotten today. When lincoln met with these black visitors whether they were famous or not, he always shook their hands and he almost invariably initiated that human contact. We have to put this in context. For lincoln, shaking hands was a tiresome chore because he has to do it all day every day and yet when a black visitor came to his office he always warmly, kindly, eagerly and repeatedly grasped their hands. This small gesture should not be discounted for it carried not only great meaning for his black visitors and also important symbolic meaning for white americans who read about these encounters in the newspapers. Most white politicians in the 1860s never would have been willing to be so genuinely welcoming to an africanamerican. As the historians james horton wrote, blacks often work with white reformers who displayed partial views and the hortons describe in their research that there were white abolitionists and they refused to shake the hands of the black abolitionists. This continue in the postwar period where reformers showed the prejudice. During his run in 1872 horace is touring in pennsylvania and a black delegation comes up to him and they go to shake his hand and he showed great disdain for them, towards them for thinking that they ought to be able to shake his hand. Not so with Abraham Lincoln. In fact, lincolns hospitality toward africanamericans was well known during his presidency. Union nurse Mary Livermore wrote this, she said to the lowly, the humble, the timid colored man and woman he bent in special kindness. Another washingtonian in 1866 said the good and just heart of Abraham Lincoln prompted him to receive representatives of every class then fighting for the union. Nor was he above shaking black hands for hands of that color then carried the stars and stripes or used muscular saver in its defense. Africanamericans took great pride in being able to shake president lincolns hand. Some believed it had near talismanic power. After lincoln was assassinated mary lincoln gave several gifts to prominent africanamericans who had been close to lincoln including Frederick Douglas and mary lincolns seem stress. And douglas and quickly cherished these gifts and relics that had been held close in lincolns right hand. As Sojourner Truth said it was the same hand that signed the death warrant of slavery. In 1815, the poet James Weldon Johnson celebrated the 50th anniversary of the emancipation proclamation with these words. Since they struck off our bonds and made us men. In january 1864, four black men decided to push the boundaries and attend a new years reception at the white house. The first time that black men would go to the white house in a social way, and not as a servant or a slave. People who observed this scene noted that lincoln greeted them in a kindly way and not treating them any different than the white visitors. About a month and a half later two black Army Surgeons decided to go to the same thing and one of them is alexander augusto, who is here on the left. Augusta had overcome tremendous life, and his family moved to baltimore in the 1830s . So in 1863 he sent a letter to Abraham Lincoln. He was still in canada, but he wanted lincoln to know he wanted to serve his nation and a race in the union army. Despite his qualifications, augusta faced intense discrimination in the application process. He appeared before the Army Medical Board in march 1863 and examined by this guy on the left, dr. Meredith climber. Dr. Climber expressed and these are his word, surprise that augusta, quote, appeared to be a person of african descent. Augusta explained to the members of the board i have come a thousand miles of sacrifice hoping to be of use to my country and my race in this eventful period and hope of the board will make a favorable view of my case, but the board was unmoved and dr. Climber and Surgeon General william a. Hammond both wanted the