Jean H. Baker, Elizabeth Todd Professor of History at Goucher College, received her B.A. at Goucher, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University. After teaching briefly at Notre Dame College in Baltimore, she returned to her alma mater. She has been a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and an NEH Fellow. She was honored as a teacher at Goucher College in 1979. Her most recent book is Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (1987). Other writings include The Politics of Continuity (1973), Ambivalent Americans (1976), and Affairs of Party (1983), which received the Berkshire Prize in history.

John Y. Simon, professor of history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, is editor of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (1967 to date). Sixteen volumes of this important documentary editing project have been published. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has written and edited numerous other works, including the Ulysses S. Grant Chronology (1963) and the Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (1975). He has published articles in the Journal of American History, Illinois Historical Journal, and numerous other historical periodicals. One of the nation's best known and most widely respected documentary editors, Simon is a founder and past president of the Association for Documentary Editing.

Thomas F. Schwartz is curator of the Lincoln Collection for the Illinois State Historical Library and editor of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.

Anne V. Shaughnessy, a graduate of Eastern Illinois University, has worked as an assistant in the Lincoln Library, the Illinois State Library, and the Illinois State Historical Library. In June 1989 she began graduate study for a master's in library science from the University of Illinois.

Frank J. Williams is the president of the Abraham Lincoln Association, as well as past president of the Lincoln Group of Boston. He also lectures widely. As principal advisor for the Lincoln and the American Political Tradition symposium at Brown University, he won a special Bardoness Award. Mr. Williams has one of the largest privately held Lincoln libraries in the country.