2011 Lincoln Prize Announced

Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute have announced that the 2011 Lincoln Prize will be awarded to Eric Foner for his book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Foner, a named professor at Columbia University, has written several books on Lincoln and the Civil War era, including a couple of well-regarded volumes on Reconstruction.

Perhaps just as interesting as this award was the committee's decision to class all of the six other finalists with Honorable Mention status.

Though I have not yet read Foner's book, I imagine that it offers something recently lacking in books about Lincoln's views on race and slavery: a sophisticated consideration of a very complicated subject. Too often, Lincoln's words are judged by today's standards and understandings of race, which usually lead to unnecessarily harsh condemnation or a complete misunderstanding of the context in which they were made.

The Lincoln Prize will be awarded to Foner on May 11.

2010 Lincoln Prize Announced

Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute have announced the 2010 Lincoln Prize will be awarded to Michael Burlingame for his 2000+ page two volume biography, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Burlingame, now the Chair of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois-Springfield, is reputed to have spent two decades working on the first major multi-volume biography of Lincoln in over a generation.

Needless to say, I have yet to read Burlingame's now award-winning book. I've twenty-some pages of the original unedited draft, which has more extensive footnotes and is available at the Lincoln Studies Center's website. It is impressive, but I know that I need to read it in old-fashioned book form.

Even without reading Burlingame's work, it is not surprising that it was recognized. Burlingame is frequently seen as one of the foremost Lincoln scholars alive, with a reputation for an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Lincoln-related source materials. More surprising was the scholarly nature of the other finalists, which overlooked some other high profile Lincoln releases in the bicentennial year.

Burlingame will receive the award at a ceremony on April 27.

2009 Lincoln Prizes Announced

Gettysburg College has announced the winners of its annual Lincoln Prize, which honors the best scholarly work of the previous year on Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War era. The award has been given annually since 1991, and previous winners have included David Herbert Donald, Allen Guelzo, Douglas Wilson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, the late Don Fehrenbacher, and the late Philip Paludan.

This year's award honors two books, James McPherson's Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief and Craig Symonds' Lincoln and His Admirals. I have not read either book, but am looking forward to both of them. (Interestingly, I am currently reading the 2007 Lincoln Prize book, Lincoln's Sword by Douglas Wilson.) This prize shows the recent scholarly interest in Lincoln as a military leader, something that has been overlooked -- the last generation has really focused, I think, on Lincoln the political leader, certainly a related topic, but not identical.

Read the full news release here.

The awards, which have recognized truly outstanding work for almost two decades, are very prestigious -- and have financial repercussions. Not only do the award winners receive a cash prize, and a nice bronze Lincoln bust, but subsequent printings of their books are imprinted with the Lincoln Prize medal, which can spur sales. And while James McPherson is a well-known historian (and Pulitzer Prize winner), Symonds, a well-respected military historian who taught at the US Naval Academy, is not nearly so well known, even within the Lincoln community despite being a finalist for the Lincoln Prize in 1993.

The 2009 Lincoln Prizes will be officially awarded on April 7.