Over the years, many distinguished speakers and authors have informed and enlightened its members on a wide variety of subjects related to the Civil War. The club’s awards include the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award for the best nonfiction book. Past winners include Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, James McPherson, James I. Robertson Jr., Amanda Foreman, and Stephen Davis. This year’s award goes to Larry J. Daniel for Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital. The Barondess/ Lincoln Award winners include Harold Holzer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gabor Boritt, and this year’s winner, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. The Bell I. Wiley Award, a nonliterary prize for achievement in the study of the Civil War, has been given to Ken Burns, Jerry Russell, Edwin C. Bearss, and Jeff Shaara, among others.
Battlefield trips have included Gettysburg, the Shenandoah Valley, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, to name a few.
Speakers for the 75th-anniversary celebration were Harold Holzer on Abraham Lincoln, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Stan Warrick on R. E. Lee, and Martin Smith on Ulysses S. Grant. Civil War-
era music was provided by John Portanova. The venue was Roosevelt House in New York City, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s one-time residence, now presided over by Director Harold Holzer. At the end of the ceremony, Patrick Falci and the club’s oldest member, Dan Jacobs, cut a cake with a saber.
