Richard N. Current, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on Abraham Lincoln and one of America's most highly respected historians. His most recent published book, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers (1988), has received numerous accolades from professional historians. A onetime Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University and Fulbright Professor at the University of Munich and the University of Chile, he lectured on American history in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, India, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Antarctica. A former president of the Southern Historical Association, he has published seventeen books including Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure with J. G. Randall (awarded the Bancroft Prize), The Lincoln Nobody Knows, and Lincoln and the First Shot.

Don E. Fehrenbacher taught at Stanford University for thirty-one years and is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies Emeritus. A graduate of Cornell College with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he has served as Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University and as Harrison Professor at the College of William and Mary. Fehrenbacher has been an NEH fellow, a Guggenheim fellow (twice), and in 1985–86, the Huntington-Seaver Fellow at the Huntington Library. He is the author of several books and many articles on Lincoln and the Civil War era. His book, The Dred Scott Decision, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. He has edited Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings in two volumes for the Library of America series.

Norman Ferris, professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University, received a B.A. degree from George Washington University, his LL.B from Blackstone School of Law, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University. He has written Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward's Foreign Policy, 1861 (1976) and The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis (1977), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His articles and reviews have appeared in many journals, and he is at work on a biography of William H. Seward.

James M. McPherson, Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University, received his B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. His first book, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1964), won the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and his most recent work, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), won the Pulitzer Prize, the American Military Institute's Best Book award, and the Christopher award. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, the Huntington Library, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. A collection of McPherson's essays is scheduled for publication in 1991.

John Niven, professor of American history, Claremont Graduate School, received his B.A. degree from the University of Connecticut and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has written four biographies: Gideon Welles (1973), Connecticut Hero: Israel Putnam (1977), Martin Van Buren and the Romantic Era of American Politics (1983), and John C. Calhoun: The Price of Union (1988). He has won the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association award for the best work in history, the Commonwealth Club Silver Medal, and the Jules and Frances Landry award. He was also a grant-in-aid recipient from the American Philosophical Society and the American Council of Learned Societies and a senior research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. Niven, editor of the Salmon P. Chase Papers, is working on a biography of Chase.

Frank J. Williams is the president of the Abraham Lincoln Association, as well as past president of the Lincoln Group of Boston. He lectures widely, most recently at the International Lincoln Conference, Taipei, Taiwan. As principal advisor for the Lincoln and the American Political Tradition symposium at Brown University, he won a special Bardoness Award. He is writing a two-volume Lincoln bibliography, as well as expanding his private collection of Lincoln books and manuscripts.