Previous Seaborg Award Winners

 

2007 Peter Seaborg Prize Winner, Finalists, and Honorable Mentions


The winner of the 2007 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship was Dr. Bruce Levine, J. G. Randall Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Levine received the award for his book entitled Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War. Published by Oxford University Press, Levine’s work looks closely at the 1864 proposal to arm and free slaves of the South after the disastrous results at the Battle of Chattanooga. Throughout the book, Levine captures the voices of the various factions across the South and sheds light on such controversial topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South.



Other finalists for the award were:  Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War by A. Wilson Greene and published by University of Virginia Press; Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson by Mark Elliott and published by Oxford University Press; John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship by Donald B. Connelly and published by University of North Carolina Press; No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North by Adam I.P. Smith and published by Oxford University Press.

Established in 1998, the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship celebrates the life and interests of Peter Seaborg, son of Nobel Prize winner Glenn Seaborg. The award is designed to encourage the publication of Civil War history of unique perspective and superior quality. The George Tyler Moore Center is part of the History Department at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and administers the prize for the Seaborg Family.

 

2006 and earlier Seaborg Prize Winners

The winner of the 2006 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship was Dr. Edward J. Blum, assistant professor of history at Kean University in New Jersey, received the award for his book entitled Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism 1865-1898. In Reforging the White Republic, Blum focuses on the vital role that religion played in reunifying northern and southern whites into a racially segregated society. He tells the fascinating story of how northern Protestantism, once the catalyst for racial egalitarianism, promoted and sanctified notions of a mythic "white republic."

The winner of the 2005 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship was After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans, published by the University Press of Kansas and written by Donald R. Shaffer, who teaches history at the University of Northern Colorado. In After the Glory, Shaffer chronicles the postwar transition of black veterans from the Union army, as well as their subsequent life patterns, political involvement, family and marital life, experiences with social welfare, comradeship with other veterans, and memories of the war itself.

The winner of the 2004 Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship was Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era, published by Louisiana State University Press and written by Dr. Michael A. Ross, formerly a corporate lawyer and now associate professor of history at Loyola University in New Orleans. It documents the career of one of one of the most important Supreme Court justices whose opinions helped to define our nation’s legal policies following the Civil War during the turbulent period of Reconstruction. Miller is considered by many as one of the hundred individuals in the history of the world who have most influenced the law.

A biography of the notorious and enigmatic American figure, Jesse James, was chosen as the winner of the 2003 Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, documents the outlaw’s experiences in pre-war Missouri, his Civil War exploits as an irregular cavalry trooper, and his infamous post-war career as a bank-robbing criminal. The work was written by T.J. Stiles of New York City and published by Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Company. A free-lance historian, Stiles is a native of Benton County, Minnesota, and has studied history at Carleton College and Columbia University. Kenneth W. Noe won the 2002 Seaborg Award for his book Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, the account of a significant yet historically neglected Civil War battle.His accomplishment is particularly noteworthy as the 2002 prize was selected from nominations covering three publishing years (1999-2001). Previous Seaborg awards went to Noel C. Fisher for his work, War at Every Door, a study of partisan politics and guerrilla violence in East Tennessee in the years 1860-69, and to Professor Joseph Harsh of George Mason University for his study of Robert E. Lee’s war strategy in Confederate Tide Rising.