By David J. Kent
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
The Gilder Lehrman Institute has announced its 2025 Lincoln Prize, which is "awarded annually for the finest scholarly work published in the prior year in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era, one that also enhances the general public’s understanding of the Civil War era."
The 2025 Lincoln Prize goes to Edda L. Fields-Black for her book, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War. (Oxford University Press).
According to the Institute, COMBEE "offers readers an untold story about the Civil War and Civil War soldiers. Most readers know Harriet Tubman as an abolitionist who worked tirelessly to liberate enslaved people. Yet Tubman's work as a spy and scout for the Union Army during the Civil War has been little explored, including her role in the 1863 Combahee River Raid. The 2nd US South Carolina, a regiment of formerly enslaved men, destroyed the region's rice plantations, while nearly 800 enslaved people boarded Union ships."
Dr. Fields-Black is a professor of history and director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a direct descendant of a formerly enslaved man who liberated himself after the Battle of Port Royal, joined the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, and fought in the Combahee River Raid.
The non-winning finalists for this year's award were also named:
Robert K.D. Colby for An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press)
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)
The award comes with a bust of Abraham Lincoln and a $50,000 cash prize. Fields-Black will be presented the Lincoln Prize in New York City on April 8, 2025.
Photo credit: Edda L. Fields-Black compliments of Carnegie Mellon University, Department of History
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