“Unlikely Collaborators: Federick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Promise of America”

The talk will be led by Jonathan White

Location: Draught 55 (245 East 55th Street, NYC)

For our October meeting, our speaker will be Jonathan White, who I [Jim Santagata] first met many years ago at the Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg, and I also saw him deliver a speech in Bryant Park in the summer of 2014, all before we finally had him speak at our CWFMNY meeting in March of 2015, when he spoke on the subject of Lincoln's Last Dream.

Jonathan is currently the Vice President of that same Lincoln Forum, assisting President Harold Holzer in running the three day annual  Gettysburg event that is undoubtedly the premier Lincoln and CW-related event in the US. He is also professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News Virginia, an extension school of the very prestigious College of William and Mary. He has won many awards in the areas of teaching excellence, mentoring, excellence in Research, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and the Penn State History Department 's Outstanding Alumni Award. He is the author or editor of 21 books that cover a variety of topics related to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. His recent books include A House Built by Slaves: African-American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022); Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade Running, and the Slave Trade (2023); A Great and Good Man: Rare First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln (2024); New York City in the Civil War (written with Timothy Orr, 2025) and Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglas on Abraham Lincoln, also 2025. This is the book that will likely be the main  source of his October 20th presentation, titled "Unlikely Collaborators: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Promise of America".   We are all plenty familiar with both of these historic giants, with their beginnings and their rapidly growing relationship, so I see no need to try to provide any explanatory background, but will instead leave all that to Jonathan. 

And now, on to the details of the evening. The meeting will be held at Draught 55, at 245 East 55th Street, and the cost will be $60 per person.   

To accommodate our speaker's travel plans, i.e. to allow him to get back to the airport in time for his return flight to Virginia that evening, this meeting will not begin with dinner, but will begin instead with the start of Jonathan's presentation, at 5:30 PM sharp!  Please do not plan on walking in at 5:30, or you will interrupt the presentation and will delay our carefully planned schedule!!! Everyone should already be seated by 5:30!  I strongly suggest that you aim for an arrival time no later than 5:15PM, recognizing that this is a full 45 minutes earlier than the usual start time of our meetings. 

Dinner will begin after the completion of the presentation and a Q&A period, probably around 6:45PM. If you have any questions regarding these changes, or about any other matters, please don't hesitate to reach out to me for an answer. 

And most importantly, if you plan to attend the meeting, please contact Ann Plogsterth at 212-877-6814, or at plogsterth@aol.com so that we can give the restaurant an accurate count of the number of people to be served. 

I look forward to seeing everyone there, since this will be my final meeting of the year before heading back down south to Sarasota FL.