he Institute co-sponsors the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes for outstanding books in American History, which are among the most prestigious awards for history writing in the U.S. The Lincoln Book Prize Under the auspices of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, the Institute co-sponsors an annual $50,000 prize for the best book on Lincoln or the Civil War era. The prize is awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on the era of the American Civil War. When submissions carry similar merit, preference is shown for work on Abraham Lincoln or the common soldier, or work that reaches a broad literate public.

For more information about the Lincoln Prize, visit the Lincoln Book Prize home page.



2008
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)

2007
Douglas L. Wilson
Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)

2005
Allen C. Guelzo
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster)

2004
Richard J. Carwardine
Lincoln (Pearson Education Ltd.)

2003
George C. Rable
Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (University of North Carolina Press)

2002
David W. Blight
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press)

2001
Russell F. Weigley
A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Indiana University Press)

2000
John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger
Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation (Oxford University Press)
Allen C. Guelzo
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans)

1999
Douglas L. Wilson
Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf)

1998
James McPherson
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press)

1997
Don Fehrenbacher
Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s and The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Stanford University Press)

1996
David Donald
Lincoln (Touchstone Books)

1995
Phillip Shaw Paludan
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (University Press of Kansas)

1994
(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)

1993
Kenneth Stampp
The Peculiar Institution (Vintage Books)

1992
William S. McFeely
Frederick Douglass (W.W. Norton & Company)
Charles Royster
The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (Vintage Books)

1991
Ken Burns
The Civil War (Howell Press)


The Frederick Douglass Book Prize

In partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, the Institute awards an annual $25,000 prize for an outstanding book published on the subject of slavery or abolition. The prize was first awarded in 1999.

2007 (awarded in 2008)
Christopher Leslie Brown
Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina Press)

To see video of Christopher Brown's acceptance speech, click here.

2006
First Prize: Rebecca J. Scott
Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Harvard University Press)

2005
First Prize: Laurent Dubois
A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation
in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (University of North Carolina Press)

2004
First Prize: Jean Fagan Yellin
Harriet Jacobs: A Life (Basic Civitas Books)

2003
First Prize: Seymour Drescher
The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford)
Second Prize: James F. Brooks
Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press)

2002
First Prize: Robert W. Harms
The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (Basic Books)
Second Prize: John Stauffer
The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and Transformation of Race (Harvard University Press)

2001
First Prize: David W. Blight
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press)

2000
First Prize: David Eltis
The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge University Press)

1999
First Prize: Ira Berlin
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery
in North America (Harvard University Press)
Second Prize: Philip D. Morgan
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century
Chesapeake and Lowcountry (University of North Carolina Press)



The George Washington Book Prize

In partnership with Washington College and Mount Vernon, the Institute awards an annual $50,000 prize for outstanding published works that contribute to a greater understanding of the life and career of George Washington and/or the founding era. For more information, visit the George Washington Book Prize homepage.

2008
Marcus Rediker
The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking)

2007
Charles Rappleye
Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2006)

2006
Stacy Schiff
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Henry Holt and Company, 2005)

2005
Ron Chernow
Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press, 2004)