John M. Barr is professor of history at Lone Star College–Kingwood. His article is excerpted from his forthcoming book, Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present, due out in April from LSU Press.

Michael W. Fitzgerald is professor of history at St. Olaf College. He is the author of three books, most recently Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South.

D. Leigh Henson is professor emeritus of English at Missouri State University. The Illinois State Historical Society has given Superior Achievement awards to his publications about his hometown of Lincoln, Illinois: website findinglincolnillinois.com (2004) and book The Town Abraham Lincoln Warned (2012). He is working on a book about Lincoln’s political rhetoric.

Travis McDade is curator of law rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is the author of two nonfiction books, the most recent of which, Thieves of Book Row: New York’s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Ended it, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. He teaches a class at Illinois called “Rare Books, Crime & Punishment.”

Matthew Norman is assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. He has published essays and reviews on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Illinois history. He is currently working on two books. The first is a monograph on Lincoln and racial equality. The second is an anthology of African American writings on Lincoln.

Sean A. Scott teaches history at Huntington University and is the author of A Visitation of God: Northern Civilians Interpret the Civil War (2011).