Contributors to this Issue

Richard E. Hart is an attorney for Hart Southworth and Witsman and president of Springfield Preservation, Ltd., and Settlers Row, Ltd., for-profit corporations that have restored and leased Lincoln-era houses in Spring-field. He is the past president and board member of the Sangamon County Historical Society and Positive Reinforcement in Downtown Springfield, Inc. He is the vice president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Elijah Iles House Foundation. Mr. Hart is presently a member of the advisory board of the Lincoln Legal Papers and acts as chairman of fund raising.

James Hurt is a professor in the English Department at the University of Illinois. A specialist in modern literature, he teaches courses in modern British and Irish literature and in modern drama. He has also written widely on the literature and culture of Illinois. He is the author of Catilin's Dream: An Essay on Ibsen's Plays (1972); Writing Illinois: The Prairie, Lincoln, and Chicago (1992); and Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, a play about Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Vachel Lindsay that was first produced by the Great American People Show in New Salem, Illinois, in 1980. He is currently writing a book about Irish-American culture.

Lucas E. Morel is assistant professor of political science and history at John Brown University. Most recently, he is the author of "Charnwood's Lincoln: Biography as Civics Lesson," a chapter in Lincoln's Biographers (forthcoming), and was a contributing editor to American Virtues, Values, and Triumphs (1996). He is finishing a book manuscript entitled, "A Sacred Effort": Lincoln's Political Religion and Religious Politics.

Adam I. P. Smith is currently finishing his PhD at the University of Cam-bridge, England. His dissertation, with regard to popular political engagement and party strategy in the North during the American Civil War, is due for completion in November, 1998. He graduated with first-class honors from Oxford in 1994 and with an MA in American History at the University of Sheffield. In 1996–1997, he was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and was selected as a Fox Scholar at Yale for the upcoming 1998–1999 academic year.

Christopher Waldrep is an associate professor of history at Eastern Illinois University where he specializes in the United States Constitution. A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Waldrep taught in the Washington City School system (Ohio) for sixteen years before joining the faculty at Eastern in 1990. He is the author of Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch: 1890–1915 (1993). He also published twenty-four articles in professional journals, including the Journal of Southern History, Journal of American History, and the American Historical Review. He is now finishing a book entitled Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880, and he is starting a third book, tentatively entitled Word and Deed: The Rhetoric of Lynching from Charles Lynch to Clarence Thomas.