Join us Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 7 p.m. CT, for a great conversation with Dr. Jonathan White and Dr. Lucas Morel about their soon-to-be-released book Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln. The book is scheduled to be released on October 1, 2025.
In Measuring the Man, acclaimed authors and scholars Lucas E. Morel and Jonathan W. White assemble Frederick Douglass’s most meaningful and poignant statements about Abraham Lincoln, including a dozen newly discovered documents that have not been seen for 160 years. Readers will encounter the distrust and vitriol Douglass directed at Lincoln throughout much of the Civil War, including his anger and frustration with the president as he moved slowly, but methodically, toward emancipation. Douglass’s writings also reveal how three personal interactions between these two great men led to powerful feelings of friendship and mutual admiration. After Lincoln’s assassination— as Jim Crow laws and political violence gutted the hard-won rights of Black Americans— Douglass expressed greater appreciation for Lincoln’s statesmanship during the Civil War and praised him as a model for postwar America. There is no one better than Frederick Douglass to offer a critical assessment of the Great Emancipator and savior of the Union. His reflections not only convey Lincoln’s contributions to the nation but also teach today’s generation timely lessons on how to fulfill the promise of the American republic. Measuring the Man sheds new light on the most critical period of American history and will transform the way we think about these two extraordinary leaders.
Dr. Lucas Morel
Professor Morel has taught at W&L 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.
Prof. 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. Semi quincentennial 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.
Dr. Jonathan W. White
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. He serves as vice chair of The Lincoln Forum, on the Boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council. Among his awards are the 2019 State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award—the highest honor bestowed upon college faculty by the Commonwealth of Virginia; CNU’s Alumni Society Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2016); the 2015 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and the 2024 University of Maryland Alumni Excellence Award in Research. His recent books include A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House, which was co-winner of the $50,000 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize (with Jon Meacham); 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 edited with Brian Matthew Jordan. He has published two books with CNU students: Untouched by the Conflict: The Civil War Letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College (2019), which he edited with Daniel Glenn; and My Work among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021), which he edited with Lydia J. Davis. And he recently published a children's book, My Day with Abe Lincoln (2024) which was illustrated by CNU student Madeline Renaux.
Register HERE.