Past Winners and Finalists:
2015
First Place:
Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion
Finalists:
William Blair – With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era
Richard Brookhiser – Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln
James B. Conroy – Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865
Joshua Zeitz – Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln’s Image
2014
First Place:
Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
Martin P. Johnson, Writing the Gettysburg Address
Special Achievement Award:
Steven Spielberg, "Lincoln"
Finalists:
Christopher Hager, Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing
Margaret Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War
Robert E. May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America
John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis, The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On
2013
First Place:
James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States,1861-1865
Finalists:
Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889
Yael A. Sternhell, Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South
2012
First Place: William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union and Elizabeth D. Leonard,Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky.
Honorable Mention: Barbara A. Gannon, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic
2011
First Place: Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.
Honorable Mention: Robert Bray, Reading with Lincoln. Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor and Manhood in the Union Army. Mark W. Geiger, Financial Fraud and the Guerilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865 Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War. Kate Masur, An Example of All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington D.C.Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations.
2010
First Place: Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life.
Finalists: Robert McGlone, John Brown's War Against Slavery. Mark Wahlgren Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction.
2009
First Place: James McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief and Craig Symonds,Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War
Honorable Mention: Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War. Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer and William Lee Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman.
2008
First Place: James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (W. W. Norton)
Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (Viking)
Finalist: Robert Cooke, Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965
Honorable Mention: Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War(Alfred A. Knopf)
2007
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage)
Finalists: Martha Hodes, The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (W. W. Norton); Harry S. Stout, Upon the Alter of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (Viking Adult).
2006
First Place: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Ronald White, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through his Words,Steven Woodworth,Nothing But Victory: The Army of Tennessee 1961-1865, Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
Honorable Mentions: Carol Bundy, The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-1864 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Margaret Creighton, The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History - Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle (Basic Books); and Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (University Press of New England).
2005
First Place: Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (Simon & Schuster)
Second Place: Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President(Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Jonathan D. Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Harvard University Press); Jane A. Schultz, Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America (University of North Carolina Press).
2004
First Place: Richard J. Carwardine, Lincoln (Pearson Education Ltd.)
Special Achievement Award: John Y. Simon for editing 26 volumes--to date--of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Southern Illinois University Press)
Finalist: Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
2003
First Place: George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (University of North Carolina Press)
Second Place: John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race(Harvard University Press)
Honorable Mention: Michael Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890 (Louisiana State University Press)
E-Lincoln Prize: John Adler for HarpWeek Presents Lincoln and the Civil War.com (website)
2002
First Place: David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, (Harvard University Press).Honorable Mention: Alice Fahs, The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North & South, 1861-1865(University of North Carolina Press)
Honorable Mention: Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Taylor Trade Publishing, Dallas).
2001
First Place: Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Indiana University Press).
Second Place: Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860(Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: Mark L. Bradley, This Astounding Close Road to Bennett Place, (University of North Carolina Press)
E-Lincoln Prize Winner: Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, and William G. Thomas for Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War (CD-ROM)
Second Place: Stephen Railton for Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (web site).
2000 First Place: John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation (Oxford University Press) and Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).
Second Place: Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford University Press).
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard N. Current, University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
1999
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf).
Second Place: J. Tracy Power, Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Univ. of North Carolina Press).
1998
First Place: Jim McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press)
Second Place: William C. Harris, With Charity For All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (University Press of Kentucky)
Honorable Mention: Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave off Defeat (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: James Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (MacMillan Publishing Co).
1997
First Place: Don Fehrenbacher, Lifetime Achievement with special recognition of Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s and The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Stanford University Press).
1996
First Place: David Donald, Lincoln (Touchstone Books).
Second Place: Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865 (Cambridge University Press).
Finalist: Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Random House).
1995
First Place: Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (University Press of Kansas).
Second Place: William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (University of North Carolina Press).
Finalist: Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (W.W. Norton & Company).
1994
First Place: (co-winners) Ira Berlin, Barbara Fields, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy, Leslie Rowland, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New Press).
Second Place: Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Winthrop D. Jordan, Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy(Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: John Evangelist Walsh, The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Anne Rutledge Legend(University of Illinois Press).
1993
First Place: Kenneth Stampp, Lifetime Achievement with special recognition of The Peculiar Institution (Vintage Books).
Second Place: Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (University Press of Kansas).
Finalist: John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Craig L. Symonds Joseph E. Johnston, A Civil War Biography (W.W. Norton & Company).
1992
First Place (split equally): William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (W.W. Norton & Company) and Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Ira Berlin, et al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867: Series I, Volume III, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New Press)
1991
First Place: Ken Burns, The Civil War (Howell Press)
Finalist: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Warren Wilkinson, Mother May You Never See The Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Last Year of the Civil War (HarperCollins).