Herman Belz is a professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Practice During the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era. He is Academic Director of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation and is presently engaged in a study of "Secession, Revolution, and Social Contract Theory in American Political Thought."

Dan Monroe is Visiting Assistant Editor with the Lincoln Legal Papers. He received his doctorate in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has two books forthcoming in 2003: The Republican Vision of John Tyler and At Home with Illinois Governors: A Social History of the Illinois Executive Mansion.

Matthew D. Norman is an advanced Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. As an editor at the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, he has headed the effort to transcribe the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Currently he is the managing editor of the Center's electronic edition of Lincoln's presidential papers—the Presidential Papers of Abraham Lincoln Online.

Barry Schwartz earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is now professor of sociology at the University of Georgia. Much of his research has focused on collective memory and how the work of historians and commemorative agents corresponds to the historical consciousness of the general public. He has written or edited five books, including George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol and Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory.

Daniel W. Stowell is the author or editor of four books, including Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863–1877 (1998) and In Tender Consideration: Women, Families, and the Law in Abraham Lincoln's Illinois (2002), and several articles in southern history and American religious history. Dr. Stowell received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Florida. He is the director and editor of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln.