Tom Watson Brown Book Award

The Society of Civil War Historians gives an annual Tom Watson Brown Book Award for the best book published on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War. This includes, but is not exclusive to, monographs, synthetic works presenting original interpretations, and biographies. Works of fiction, poetry, anthologies, and textbooks are not considered. Jurors consider nominated works’ scholarly and literary merit as well as the extent to which they make original contributions to our understanding of the period.

The prize is presented at the SCWH banquet at the Southern Historical Association annual meeting, where the winner delivers a formal address that will be published in a subsequent issue of the Journal of the Civil War Era.

Call for the 2024 Tom Watson Brown Book Award

The Society of Civil War Historians solicits nominations for the Tom Watson Brown Book Award for books published in 2023. Publishers are asked to send books, along with a cover letter nominating the work for the Tom Watson Brown Award, directly to the four prize jurors no later than January 31, 2024. Only books published in 2023 will be considered. 

All genres of scholarship on the causes, conduct, and effects of the Civil War, broadly defined, are eligible. This includes, but is not exclusive to, edited volumes, monographs, synthetic works presenting original interpretations, and biographies. Works of fiction, poetry, and textbooks will not be considered. Jurors will consider the scholarly and literary merit of nominated books as well as the extent to which they make original contributions to our understanding of the period.

The winner will be announced by August 1, 2024. The prize will be presented at the SCWH banquet at the Southern Historical Association annual meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, where the winner will deliver a formal address that will be published in a subsequent issue of the Journal of the Civil War Era.

Nominated books with cover letters should be sent to:

· Tad Brown, President, Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc.

  310 Tom Watson Way, Thomson, GA 30824

· Brooks D. Simpson, ASU Foundation Professor of History, Arizona State University

  7271 E. Sonoran Arroyo Mall, SANCA 251-MC2780, Mesa, AZ 85212 (committee chair)

· Susannah J. Ural, Williams Chair for Abraham Lincoln & Civil War Studies, Department of History

  Mississippi State University, Mailbox H, Mississippi State, MS 39762

· Diane Miller Sommerville, Professor of History, Department of History

  P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York 13902-6000

The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2024. Any questions may be directed to Brooks D. Simpson at [email protected].

2023 Winner of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award:

The Society of Civil War Historians and the Watson-Brown Foundation are proud to announce that R. Isabela Morales is the recipient of the 2023 Tom Watson Brown Book Award. Dr. Morales earned the award for Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom which was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press. The $50,000 award is funded by the Watson-Brown Foundation in honor of Tom Watson Brown, a dedicated student of the Civil War.

In making its selection, the prize committee stated:

“Happy Dreams of Liberty tells the story of the extended Townsend family: African Americans freed by the wills of Samuel and Edward Townsend, their fathers and enslavers in Alabama. With graceful prose and deep empathy R. Isabela Morales tells a sweeping American story of multiple generations' struggles to first gain their freedom, then preserve it and thrive through the tumultuous Civil War and Reconstructions eras. We follow the Townsends from Alabama to Ohio, Kansas, and Colorado as they search for places where they can live free from interference and discrimination. This is a model of microhistory, using the Townsend's unique circumstances to illuminate broad questions about race, color, and liberty.

This is a sprawling family drama, full of contradictions and conflict. Morales tells it beautifully, almost novelistically, by imbuing it with atmosphere and minute detail. Some Townsends attended Wilberforce in Ohio before the Civil War, another fought in the Union Army. After the war, one became a successful barber and entrepreneur in Colorado, and another returned to Alabama as a politician, clinging to political power as the constrictions of Jim Crow closed in.

The book is a powerful read, one that is as much the story of America in the nineteenth century as it is the story of a family. We are unanimous in our praise for, and selection of, this important work.”

The Watson Brown Book Award jury consisted of Anne Sarah Rubin (chair), Frances M. Clarke, Adam Rothman, and Tad Brown, President of the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc.

Dr. Morales will be honored at the SCWH banquet taking place this November during the 2023 Annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, held this year in Charlotte, North Carolina.  

Winner Biography

R. Isabela Morales is an award-winning author and public historian. She is the Editor of the Princeton & Slavery Project, an expansive historical investigation into Princeton University's links to the institution of slavery. She also serves as the Education & Exhibit Manager at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum (SSAAM), central New Jersey's first Black history museum. Dr. Morales received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2019 and a B.A. in history and American Studies from The University of Alabama in 2012, where she first began the research that would become Happy Dreams of Liberty.

Previous Tom Watson Brown Book Award Winners:

2022: Sebastian Page, University of Oxford, Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2021)  

2021: Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History, Duke University, for The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)

2020: Thomas J. Brown, Professor of History, University of South Carolina, for Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)

2019: Amy Murrell Taylor, Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky, for Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (University of North Carolina Press, 2018)

2018: Andrew Lang, Assistant Professor of History, Mississippi State University, for In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (Louisiana State University Press, 2017)

2017: Christopher Phillips, John and Dorothy Hermanies Professor of American History and University Distinguished Research Professor in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Cincinnati, for The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016)

2016: Earl J. Hess, Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History, Lincoln Memorial University, for Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness (Louisiana State University Press, 2015)

2015: Shauna Devine, Professor, Schulich School of Medicine and Department of History, Western University, for Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (The University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

2014: Ari Kelman, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of History, University of California, Davis, for A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013)

2013: John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duff Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a Professor of History in the Yale History Department, for Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Simon & Schuster, 2012)

2012: Gary W. Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, for The Union War (Harvard University Press, 2011)

2011: Mark W. Geiger, a 2011-12 Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University Library of Congress and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, for Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865 (Yale University Press, 2010)

2010: Daniel E. Sutherland, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Arkansas, for A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War  (University of North Carolina, 2009)