Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize Winners

The purpose of the Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize is to recognize and encourage young scholars to conduct research on Abraham Lincoln and his times.  An annual prize of $5,000 is underwritten by the Lincoln Institute and the Lehrman Institute. The Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Institute, Inc. select the recipients.  The first year, both organizations selected recipients.  The award alternates between each organization from year to year. A panel of five scholars representing each entity serves as the jury.  Past winners are:

2007
Russell McClintock, Shall it be Peace or an Accord?  Northern Political Culture and the Crisis of Secession, 1860-1861, Clark University

2006
David Work,  Lincoln's Political Generals, Texas A & M University

2005
Jennifer Weber, The Civil War and Northern Society, Princeton University

2004
Matthew Parks, Self-Evident No More: American Political Thought, 1820-1850, Boston University

2003
Graham Peck, The Social and Cultural Origins of Sectional Politics: Illinois from Statehood to Civil War, Northwestern University

2002
Brian Dirck, Mystic Chords: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, American Imagined Community, 1808-1860, University of Kansas

2001
Stewart Winger, Lincoln's Religious Rhetoric: American Romanticism and the Antislavery Impulse, University of Chicago

Deren Kellogg, The Lincoln Administration and the Southwestern Territories, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign