Tom Watson Brown Book Award
The $50,000 Tom Watson Brown Book Award is presented annually by the Watson-Brown Foundation and the Society of Civil War Historians to the author or authors of the best book “on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War,” published in the preceding year.
Each year Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, presents the Tom Watson Brown Book Award at a special banquet during the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association.
Congratulations to Sebastian Page
Winner of the 2022 Tom Watson Brown Book Award
The Society of Civil War Historians and the Watson-Brown Foundation are proud to announce that Sebastian Page is the recipient of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award. Dr. Page, of Oxford University, earned the award for Black Resettlement and the American Civil War, published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press.
The prize committee noted, “Black Resettlement and the American Civil War places the hitherto underexamined issue of colonization and emigration throughout the western hemisphere at the center of Republican policies and makes a convincing case that both are vital to an appreciation of the complex nature of the country’s approach to emancipation, the war, and post-emancipation. Separation, not integration, he shows, was more characteristic of the country’s policy. Black resettlement outside of the United States is also crucial to our understanding of competing empires and colonial policies in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Page writes beautifully applying deft, and sometimes humorous touches to his discussion of complex political and social issues.”
The Watson Brown Book Award jury consisted of Richard Blackett (chair), Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University; Barbara Gannon, Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Florida; Wayne Hsieh, Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy; and Tad Brown, President of the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc.
Tad Brown will present the award to Dr. Page at the Tom Watson Brown Book Award dinner, which will be held Thursday, November 10, at the Southern Historical Association’s annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
Past Winners
2020 – Thomas J. Brown, Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (UNC Press, 2019).
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America on Project Muse.
2019 – Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through The Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (UNC Press, 2018). Embattled Freedom also received the Avery O. Craven Award and the Merle Curti Award in social history, both from the Organization of American Historians. In addition, it was awarded the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War era history from the University of Virginia’s John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of Embattled Freedom on Project Muse.
2018 – Andrew F. Lang, In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (LSU Press, 2017).
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of In the Wake of War on Project Muse.
2017 – Christopher Phillips, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016). The Rivers Ran Backward also received the Midwestern History Association’s Jon Gjerde Prize and the Ohio Academy of History’s Distinguished Book Award.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era’s review of The Rivers Ran Backward on Project Muse.
2016 – Earl J. Hess, Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness (LSU Press, 2015)
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of Civil War Infantry Tactics on Project Muse.
2015 – Shauna Devine, Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (UNC Press, 2014). Learning from the Wounded also won the Wiley-Silver Prize from The Center for Civil War Research, University of Mississippi.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of Learning from the Wounded on Project Muse.
2014 – Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013). A Misplaced Massacre also received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, both in 2014. It was awarded the Antoinette Foster Downing Prize by the Society of Architectural Historians in 2015.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of A Misplaced Massacre on Project Muse.
2013 – John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: the Laws of War in American History (Simon and Schuster, 2012). Lincoln’s Code also earned the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, both in 2013. It was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for history, as well.
2012 – Gary Gallagher, The Union War (Harvard University Press, 2011). The Union War also received the Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies from the New York Military Affairs Symposium in 2011 and the Daniel M. and Marilyn W. Laney Prize from the Austin, Texas Civil War Round Table in 2012.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of The Union War on Project Muse.
2011 – Mark Geiger, Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865 (Yale University Press, 2010). Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War also received the Francis B. Simkins Prize from the Southern Historical Association and earned an Honorable Mention for the Lincoln Prize, awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, in 2011.
Read The Journal of the Civil War Era‘s review of Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri on Project Muse.
2010 – Daniel Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: the Decisive Role of Guerillas in the American Civil War (UNC Press, 2009). A Savage Conflict also earned the Jefferson Davis Book Award from the American Civil War Museum in 2009 and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History in 2010.
