“Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South” earns $50,000 as exceptional work that amplifies the vital nature of historic battlefields as irreplaceable literary sources
Karen Testa, ktesta@mercuryllc.com
Mary Koik, mkoik@battlefields.org
June 27, 2024
After considering nearly 100 titles submitted by 24 different publishing houses, the American Battlefield Trust Prize for History has its inaugural awardees!
For her richly reported biography of the complicated Civil War leader who later encouraged an examination of the conflict’s roots and advocated for racial reconciliation, Elizabeth Varon has claimed the top honor and accompanying $50,0000 prize. Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South is published by Simon & Schuster.
In making the selection, Dr. James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Battle Cry of Freedom and one of the prize’s three judges, called Varon’s work “a literary and research achievement” that is “beautifully crafted and original in its good many insights.”
“It is a humbling honor to win this inaugural award from an organization that does so much to promote and revitalize the study of America's formative military conflicts,” Varon said. “I am especially grateful to be recognized with such an impressive group of fellow finalists, representing the dynamism of the field and the centrality of landscapes to the historical imagination.”
The judging panel, which also included Dr. James Kirby Martin, professor emeritus at University of Houston and Dr. Joan Waugh, professor emeritus at UCLA, bestowed Honorable Mention status on D. Scott Hartwig’s I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign and Friederike Baer’s Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War. Each author will receive a $2,500 award.
An excellent book can ignite the imagination and the Trust is pleased to honor works of scholarship that make use of battlefields as they would other primary source research documents. We truly appreciate the generous benefactor who has underwritten this program, ensuring that no funds are diverted away from our crucial land acquisition mission as we seek to uplift the broader discourse surrounding American history.
When notified of his honor, Scott Hartwig responded that the prize was “an outstanding way to encourage scholarship about our nation's history and from that scholarship, deeper understanding of the importance of preserving the landscapes where the great and tragic events of that history occurred. If I Dread the Thought of the Place helps to advance the cause of battlefield preservation, then I am deeply grateful.”
The inaugural awards will be presented in September, during the Trust’s annual Grand Review weekend in Raleigh, N.C. Publishing houses may submit nominations of 2024 titles for next year’s award after October 1. Further details on the prize may be found on the American Battlefield Trust website.
The full roster of finalists for the inaugural prize also included:
Ricardo A. Herrera, Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778, (University of North Carolina Press)
Mark Edward Lender, Fort Ticonderoga, The Last Campaigns: The War in the North, 1777–1783 (Westholme Publishing)
George Rable, Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War (Louisiana State University Press)
Timothy B. Smith, Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25-December 31, 1862 (University of Kansas Press)
Victor Vignola, Contrasts in Command: The Battle of Fair Oaks. May 31 - June 1, 1862 (Savas Beatie)
Jack Warren, Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution (Lyons Press)
Jeffry D. Wert, The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle (University of North Carolina Press)
Ronald C. White, On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Random House)