We’ve all read books and seen movies about soldiers in wartime, stories about their actions in battle, their deprivations and the sacrifices of those they left behind at home. We never hear much about their dreams and what they tell us about their reactions to all they are enduring.

But these dreams can reveal volumes about their inner thoughts, fears and premonitions. My guest on this episode of Dream Power Radio, historian Jonathan White, has taken a special interest in the dreams of soldiers and their loved ones during the Civil War. He documented his research in the book Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War, which was selected as a “best book” by Civil War Monitor. Jon discusses these dreams and what they reveal, including:
• the differences between the dreams of Northern and Southern soldiers
• the surprising dreams wives would tell their husbands…and vice versa
• did Abraham Lincoln dream of his own death?
• why slave owners would look to their slaves for the meaning of dreams

Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, where he has taught since 2009. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman and Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln, which was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and Jefferson Davis Prize, a “best book” in Civil War Monitor, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. He has published more than one hundred articles, essays and reviews, and is the winner of the 2005 John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article in Civil War History, the 2010 Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize, and the 2012 Thomas Jefferson Prize for his Guide to Research in Federal Judicial History.

www.jonathanwhite.org