The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize is awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era.
The $50,000 prize was established in 1990 by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, in partnership with Dr. Gabor Boritt, Director Emeritus of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
Image: Abraham Lincoln, by Alexander Gardner, Washington DC, November 8, 1863 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC00245)
The 2025 laureate is Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black for her book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press). The laureate and five finalists were celebrated at an award ceremony in New York City on April 8, 2025.
The 2025 Finalists:
Robert K. D. Colby for An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press)
Edda L. Fields-Black for Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press) ⭐Laureate
Lesley J. Gordon for Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press)
Jon Grinspan for Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Allen C. Guelzo for Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment (Knopf)
Nigel Hamilton for Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents (Little Brown and Company)
Books or other works nominated for the 2026 prize must have a date of first publication between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025.
Publishers, critics, and authors may submit or nominate works published in the current year. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis from January 1 through November 1. Books should be submitted in the same month they are published. Special accommodations can be made for books bearing publication dates between November 1 and December 31.
The Prize will generally go to a book, but in rare instances an important article, essay, editing project, or literary work might be honored, provided that it is true to history.
There is no entry fee or form. Just send five copies of each book you wish to nominate, plus a cover note to
Daniela Muhling
Book Prize Manager
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
49 W. 45th Street
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10036
For more information, please call 646.366.9666 ext.144 or send an email to bookprizes@gilderlehrman.org.
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Edda L. Fields-Black | COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press) |
| 2024 | Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant | Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era (Oxford University Press) |
| 2023 | Jon Meacham | And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House) |
| Jonathan W. White | A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (Rowman & Littlefield) | |
| 2022 | Caroline E. Janney | Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (The University of North Carolina Press) |
| 2021 | David S. Reynolds | Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times (Penguin Press) |
| 2020 | Elizabeth R. Varon | Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press) |
| 2019 | David W. Blight | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster) |
| 2018 | Edward Ayers | The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America (W.W. Norton) |
| 2017 | James B. Conroy | Lincoln’s White House: The People’s House in Wartime (Rowman & Littlefield) |
| Douglas R. Egerton | Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America (Basic Books) | |
| Special Achievement Award | Douglas L. Wilson & Rodney O. Davis | Herndon on Lincoln: Letters (University of Illinois Press) |
| 2016 | Martha Hodes | Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press) |
| 2015 | Harold Holzer | Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion (Simon & Schuster) |
| 2014 | Allen C. Guelzo | Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| Martin P. Johnson | Writing the Gettysburg Address (University Press of Kansas) | |
| Special Achievement Award | Steven Spielberg | Lincoln (DreamWorks Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Participant Media presented in association with Amblin Entertainment, Kennedy/Marshall Company, 2012) |
| 2013 | James Oakes | Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (W. W. Norton) |
| 2012 | William C. Harris | Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas) |
| Elizabeth D. Leonard | Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky (University of North Carolina Press) | |
| 2011 | Eric Foner | The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W. W. Norton) |
| 2010 | Michael Burlingame | Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Johns Hopkins University Press) |
| 2009 | James M. McPherson | Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (Penguin) |
| Craig L. Symonds | Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War (Oxford University Press) | |
| 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.) |
| Special Achievement Award | John Y. Simon | for editing 26 volumes--to date--of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Southern Illinois University Press) |
| 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 & 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) |
| Charles Royster | The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (Vintage Books) | |
| 1991 | Ken Burns | The Civil War (Public Broadcasting Service) |
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