Historian Allen Guelzo Wins $50K Prize for Gettysburg Book

Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo won the $50,000 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History prize for his book Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.

According to the Associated Press the award was created by the “Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation and Lewis E. Lehrman, a businessman, former Republican candidate for governor and co-founder of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.”

Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College and has written a number of important books on Civil War history, including Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and many others.

Guelzo’s book, launched just before the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, has been considered “perhaps the best book” on the subject. He is often viewed as the the “go-to” historian on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. He played a prominent role in the Breitbart News coverage of the anniversary’s events and provided analysis of the battle and its larger implications in Civil War politics.

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion covers some of the most important and overlooked aspects of the battle, standing out compared to the countless other books on the subject. Guelzo said that he believed there were many aspects of Gettysburg that have never been covered before and his narrative delivers a detailed, but highly readable account. 

He has stressed that Americans, especially American leaders, need to become better acquainted with Lincoln, the Civil War, and the Gettysburg Address. He said at a Heritage Foundation event that the higher principles explained in the Gettysburg Address are rarely discussed at, “Georgetown cocktail parties.”

In his interview with Breitbart News’s Stephen K. Bannon, Guelzo chastised American political leaders and the mainstream media for failing to properly cover perhaps the most important event in American history. He said, “”Where is the president? Where is the vice president? They aren’t here.” He explained that most of the people who showed up for the event demonstrated great reverence for the men who died on the battlefield and sacrificed so much.