Lincoln & Civil War Research

My work as a Lincoln scholar centers on the ideas that shaped him and the historical worlds he inhabited.

My debut book, Lincoln’s Compass: The Declaration of Independence and the American Idea (Bloomsbury, 2026), tells Lincoln's story through the text that guided him more than any other: the Declaration of Independence. From his frontier youth in Kentucky and Indiana to the trials of the Civil War, Lincoln treated the Declaration as a living compass, one that oriented the nation toward equality, democratic consent, and the rule of law. I am also completing, with historian William Bartelt, a comprehensive history of Lincoln's youth in Kentucky and Indiana, under contract with the University of Illinois Press.

My earlier scholarship focused on primary and secondary sources from Lincoln's formative years. I edited The Wilderness Years of Abraham Lincoln and co-edited, with Bartelt, Abe’s Youth: Shaping the Future President, both published by Indiana University Press. I have also edited a volume on American national identity.

Beyond print, I host Lincoln Log, a long-running podcast featuring conversations with leading historians and public officials about Lincoln, the Civil War era, and the craft of historical inquiry. My research has reached a national audience through television as well: I appeared as a featured historian in CNN's six-part documentary Lincoln: Divided We Stand.

I serve as president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. I belong to the Lincoln Forum, the American Historical Society, and the Organization of American Historians. Earlier in my career, I chaired the Southern Indiana Civil War Roundtable and founded the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War John W. Foster Camp No. 2, serving as its first commander. I am currently at work on a comprehensive regimental history of the 80th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.

• Lincoln's Compass: The Declaration of Independence and the American Idea. Bloomsbury, 2026 (forthcoming).
• Abraham Lincoln’s Wilderness Years: Collected Works of J. Edward Murr. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2023.
• Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative. Lincoln, Neb.: Potomac Books, 2019.

• Claybourn, Joshua. “Lincoln the Reader 1809–1865.” Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print, edited by Mazy Boroujerdi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024.
• Hoosier Roots of Lincoln the Lawyer (forthcoming).
• “Abe Lincoln: An Acceptable Nickname?,” For the People, A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association 20, no. 3 & 4 (Fall-Winter 2018): 8.
• “We Need To All See The American Declaration As Abraham Lincoln Did,” The Federalist, 4 July 2017.

• House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College: Matthew Pinsker’s House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College offers researchers a look at the Civil War era through the prism of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, from which both James Buchanan and Roger B. Taney graduated. There is also a substantive Lincoln-Douglas debates site, as well as another section that analyzes Lincoln’s writings, which was the product of an innovative online course in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• Abraham Lincoln Online: Created, written, and published by Rhoda and Lowell Sneller, Abraham Lincoln Online has been around for over a couple decades and remains a great central location for all things Lincoln, from breaking news and upcoming events to book announcements and author interviews.
• The Abraham Lincoln Research Site: Created in 1996 by former history teacher Roger J. Norton, The Abraham Lincoln Research Site is a portal to dozens of links particularly suited for students and teachers, including a variety of classroom activities and lesson plans. The resource also offers research sites for the Lincoln assassination, the life of Mary Lincoln, and a discussion board called the Lincoln Discussion Symposium.
• Lincoln/Net: This resource, hosted by Northern Illinois University, features lesson plans and uses Lincoln as a vehicle to examine larger social and political themes from his era.
• The Lehrman Institute: This resource offers a diverse collection of sites devoted to students who want to learn more about Lincoln’s life and legacy. In addition to supporting the annual Lincoln Prize, which recognizes the best printed and electronic work on the Civil War and Lincoln, as well as the Hay-Nicolay Prize, awarded to the best doctoral dissertation about Lincoln, the Lehrman Institute has published and maintains eight different websites, such as Mr. Lincoln’s White House and Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom.
• The Lincoln Forum: The Lincoln Forum is an assembly of people who share a deep interest in the life and times of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era. Through a roster of activities and projects including symposia, tours, student essay competitions, teacher scholarships, a newsletter, and annual awards to recognize special contributions to the field of Lincoln studies, the Forum endeavors to enhance the understanding and preserve the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
• The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: The Papers of Abraham Lincoln has launched an incredibly ambitious documentary editing project aimed at making high-quality digital scans of every document Lincoln wrote or received. They also intend to transcribe, annotate, and cross-reference the documents to make the collection especially useful to researchers. They envision a database that may grow to include two hundred thousand documents.
• Abraham Lincoln: A History: Published in 1890, Abraham Lincoln: A History is a ten-volume account of the life and times of Abraham Lincoln written by John Nicolay and John Hay, who were Lincoln's personal secretaries during the Civil War.

Most of the resources and their descriptions featured in this section are derived, and in some cases copied directly, from Samuel Wheeler, "Building a Twenty-First-Century Lincoln Memorial: The Digital Revolution in Lincoln Studies Scholarship," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 37, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 30-47, available at http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0037.105.

This unit was comprised of ten companies that drew primarily from eight southern Illinois counties. Over the course of the war the regiment traveled approximately 6,000 miles, and was in over 20 battles. I am currently researching and writing a regimental history of the 80th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. In preparation for this work I am collecting and publishing a number of papers and diaries from this unit. Here is a sampling of scholarship relating to this unit:

• A Memorandum of the 80th Illinois Infantry: Civil War Notes of Pvt. Armgstrong McGee (2014), edited by Joshua A. Claybourn.
• 80th Illinois Recruiting Flag (2016), a brief blog post

Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW)
The SUVCW (www.SUVCW.org) is a fraternal organization dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of heroes who fought and worked to save the Union. Organized in 1881 and chartered by Congress in 1954, it is the legal successor to the Grand Army of the Republic. I am involved with the SUVCW in a number of capacities and at a number of levels, as listed below.

• National Signals Officer (2014 – 2015)
• National Webmaster (2013 – 2015)
• National Assistant Counselor (2014 – present)
• Chair, Natl. Comm. on Communication & Technology (2014 – 2015)
• Department of Indiana Webmaster and Signals Officer (2014 – present)
• Camp Commander and Organizer of SUVCW John W. Foster Camp No. 2 (2014 – 2016)

Southern Indiana Civil War Roundtable (SICWRT)
Begun in 1957, the SICWRT (www.SICWRT.org) is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of the U.S. Civil War and the stories of those who fought in it. I previously served as chairman of the SICWRT. I have also presented to this group with the presentations below.

• Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (May 2014)
• The Abraham Lincoln Almanac Trial (April 2015)
• Little Egypt Goes to War (January 2017)