Jonathan W. White
Description
Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of 17 books that cover a variety of topics including civil liberties during the Civil War, the USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads, the presidential election of 1864, and what Abraham Lincoln and soldiers dreamt about.
Books
Ex Parte Milligan Reconsidered
"In 1869, Justice David Davis of the US Supreme Court decided Ex parte Milligan, which held that citizens could not be tried under military commissions while civilian courts were still open and there was no war. Beginning already with Ex parte McCardle (1869), however, the Court seemed to hem in the Milligan precedent and disregarded it in subsequent cases. By 1991, the case was declared "irrelevant." All of that changed with the War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In defense of their use of military tribunals, the Bush administration cited cases like Ex parte Quirin (1942) that upheld the use of a military tribunal for Nazi saboteurs. Rejecting such arguments, the Supreme Court has cited Milligan in four decisions, revitalizing interest in a case that had long seemed all but overruled. In doing so, the Court also effectively characterized Reconstruction as a "war on terror"-a war on the terrorist insurgencies against the assertion of black freedom by the Republican Party, the Union Army, and African Americans themselves. Ex parte Milligan Reconsidered explores the precedential power of Milligan and the questions it poses about the Civil War, the War on Terror, and executive power"--
Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln
The Union army's overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864 has led many Civil War scholars to conclude that the soldiers supported the Republican Party and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil War historiography, arguing instead that the soldier vote in the presidential election of 1864 is not a reliable index of the army's ideological motivation or political sentiment. Although 78 percent of the soldiers' votes were cast for Lincoln, White contends that this was not wholly due to a political or social conversion to the Republican Party. Rather, he argues, historians have ignored mitigating factors such as voter turnout, intimidation at the polls, and how soldiers voted in nonpresidential elections in 1864. While recognizing that many soldiers changed their views on slavery and emancipation during the war, White suggests that a considerable number still rejected the Republican platform, and that many who voted for Lincoln disagreed with his views on slavery. He likewise explains that many northerners considered a vote for the Democratic ticket as treasonous and an admission of defeat. Using previously untapped court-martial records from the National Archives, as well as manuscript collections from across the country, White convincingly revises many commonly held assumptions about the Civil War era and provides a deeper understanding of the Union Army.