Dear Members & Friends:

      I am honored to announce that Dr. Mark E. Neely, Jr. has won the Lincoln Group of New York “Award of Achievement” for 2011.

     His book Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War was the greatest Lincoln book published for the year.  It did more than any other accomplishment to advance our understanding and appreciation for the Lincoln presidency produced last year.

     Dr. Neely is respected as one of the most knowledgeable Lincoln scholars of all time.  He has a long and distinguished career in the Lincoln field that dates back to the former Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana where he served as director for twenty years. We are honored that he will join us in Manhattan on Wednesday, February 15^th to lecture and sign copies of his new award winning book.  Destined to become a classic the field,  Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation examines the US and Confederate constitutions and how they shaped the Civil War.

     The conclusions and vote of our award committee were unanimous.  Members of the committee included former Lincoln Group  President and museum director Joseph Garrera, Civil War Roundtable President Joseph Truglio, and author Stuart Schneider who has himself written twenty books.

    This is your rare opportunity to meet a winner of the Pulitzer Prize; an author who is one of the greatest Lincoln scholars.  You will learn factual details of the Lincoln presidency rarely discussed. Plan to be with us as our  award committee confers our coveted “Award of Achievement”.

     I look forward to welcoming all of you on February 15, 2012

 
                                                                        Sincerely,

                                                                        Paul Ellis-Graham

                                                                        President

Dr. Mark E. Neely, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian.  He earned his undergraduate degree in 1966 and Ph.D. in history in 1973 from Yale University.  In 1972 he was named director of the former Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a position he held for twenty years.  Of his many books Neely is perhaps best known for his 1991 book: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties which won both the Pulitzer prize and the Bell I Wiley prize the following year.  In 1981 Neely produced another classic in the field, The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. Dr. Neely's latest book Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press); 408 pages covers the US and the Confederate Constitutions and their role in the conflict.  It immediately takes its place as a seminal achievement.