Civil War Essay Contest
The Gilder Lehrman Institute joins the Civil War Round Table of New York to co-sponsor an annual essay contest for Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School students. Students examine the nation’s most divisive conflict through letters, speeches, songs, photographs, newspapers, military orders, and other documents, conducting research with primary as well as secondary sources. More information may be found in the contest entry forms below.
Participation is limited to Gilder Lehrman Affiliate and Flagship School students. If you’re a student interested in participating in the contest and your school hasn’t become an Affiliate yet, print out the forms and flyer below and show them to your history teacher.
For full information, contest forms, a scoring rubric, and other important details, please download the 2012–2013 Civil War Essay Contest Forms and Information (PDF). Become an Affiliate School to participate in the Civil War Essay Contest.
Prizes
- High School: $1,000 to the first-place student and $500 to the school; $750 to the second-place student; $500 to the third-place student; $100 to seven honorable-mention students.
- Middle School: $300 to the first-place student; $200 to the second-place student; $100 to the third-place student.
- In addition, the student with the top score from each school will receive a Gilder Lehrman publication to recognize their achievement.
Submission Requirements
- Essays are due to the Gilder Lehrman Institute by 5pm EST on Friday, February 1, 2013.
- Essays must be submitted electronically. Word or RTF documents are preferred; scanned documents sent as PDFs will also be accepted. Essays may not have any grade markings or corrections visible. If submitting an essay that was used in class, please submit a clean copy without any grades or teacher marks.
- Essays may be submitted to our website by using the online form and attaching their essay as a PDF or Word document, emailed to affiliates@gilderlehrman.org, or burned to a CD and mailed to Courtney Roy’s attention at the Gilder Lehrman Institute, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 500, New York, NY 10036. The online form will be posted to the Gilder Lehrman website in the coming weeks, and a link to the form will be posted here as soon as it is available. Hard copies of essays are not accepted and will not be reviewed.
- If essays are emailed, clearly identify your school name (with city and state—we have a number of schools with the same name) and include the names of all students submitting so we can confirm that all essays have been received. If possible, please send all essays in one email.
- A cover sheet must accompany each essay. Cover sheets can be scanned and emailed to the Institute. If you’re sending cover sheets separately from essays, please note this.
