Phillip S. Paludan is professor of history at the University of Kansas. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and is the author of A Covenant with Death: The Constitution, Law and Equality in the Civil War Era (1975), Victims: A True Story of the Civil War (1981), "A People's Contest": The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865 (1988), and The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1994). He has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Harvard Law School.

David L. Wells is a member of the history faculty of Caddo Middle Magnet School in Shreveport, Louisiana. He earned an M.S. in history from the University of New Orleans and a B.A. in religion from Baylor University.

Frank J. Williams is president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and past president of the Lincoln Group of Boston. He lectures widely, most recently at "'The Last Best Hope of Earth': Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America," a symposium and exhibit at the Huntington Library and Museum. Current projects include a two-volume Lincoln bibliography and Abraham Lincoln: Sources and Style in Leadership, a collection of papers read at the Lincoln Legacy Conference at Louisiana State University, Shreveport. He continues to expand his private Lincoln book and manuscript collection.

David Zarefsky is dean of the School of Speech and professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (1990), which won the Speech Communication Association's Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address.