Richard Carwardine

Professor Richard Carwardine has the distinction of being the only British scholar to receive the prestigious Lincoln Prize, awarded annually to the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or a subject relating to their era.

The Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, he also taught history at the University of Sheffield and has studied, taught and held visiting research appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, Syracuse University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He authored Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790-1865, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, and, most famously, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power. Lincoln is an analytical political biography of Abraham Lincoln. The work received the Lincoln Prize, the largest award in the United States for 19th century American history. The prize, which included $30,000 and a bronze bust of Lincoln, was awarded by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in 2004. Previous recipients of the prestigious award include acclaimed historians such as Ken Burns, Don Fehrenbacher, Kenneth Stampp, David Donald and, last year, Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The book gives a new perspective on the life of Lincoln as a nation-builder, as a  man who looked  beyond his own administration for help in the increasing turmoil between the Union and the Confederacy. Carwardine also examines Lincoln’s rise in politics, working his way from a leading lawyer and founding member of the Republican Party to his Presidency. Though most Americans are familiar with basic facts of Lincoln’s life, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power delves deeper into some of the support behind Lincoln, most notably the evangelical Protestants who became supporters of the Union and of emancipation.

Here is how Professor Carwardine has described this book (from the Oxford Web site): "My book is an analytical political biography. It recounts a compelling personal and public story: Lincoln ’s winning the presidency, his wartime leadership, his role in turning the war for the Union into a war for emancipation, and his deeply moral relationship to political power. But beyond that, it analyzes the external sources of Lincoln ’s authority. In the world’s first mass democracy, winning the presidency depended on the interplay of personal ambition, public opinion, and the power of the political party. Then, through the grueling days of war, Lincoln learned how to use his party, the army and the Union ’s religious institutions as the means of sustaining the struggle for national survival.
The study argues that Lincoln, in his encounter with slavery and secession, blended ethical convictions and moral vision with attentive, day-to-day management of men and public opinion; that understanding his career demands attention to his evolving and unorthodox religious ideas; that, though largely confined to the White House, he proved an effective and imaginative communicator; and that, though he made tactical mistakes, he got the big decisions right. "

Carwardine’s broad research interests lie in the society, politics and the influence of religion in the United States in the era of the early Republic and Civil War. He has long been interested the role of evangelical Protestantism in the nation’s construction and postwar Reconstruction in the South during the nineteenth century. His next book will be about American nation-building during the years between the Revolutionary and Civil wars.