John Bicknell was a journalist for 30 years in Florida and Washington, D.C., and a senior editor for the Almanac of American Politics. He is the author of Lincoln’s Pathfinder: John C. Frémont and the Violent Election of 1856 and America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation. The article in this issue is excerpted from his next book, The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation, scheduled to be published by Stackpole Books in April 2025.

Martha Dunkelman received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University under the wise and kind guidance of H. W. Janson.. She has taught at Wright State University as well as at the University at Buffalo and at Canisius College where she chaired and expanded the art history program. She also spent many years working for the College Board on the Advanced Placement Exam in Art History and has been a field editor for caa.reviews. Most of her publications and presentations have been on works by Donatello and Michelangelo, and more recently on historic plaster casts. She is currently working on a book about the fate of the historic plaster cast collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

Terence Esvelt is an independent scholar currently writing a biography of John Todd Stuart.

Edward Achorn is the author of two books about Abraham Lincoln, Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention that Changed History.

Thomas J. Brown is professor of history at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) and co-author of Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance (LSU Press, 2024).

Joshua A. Claybourn is an attorney, historian, and Vice President of the Abraham Lincoln Association. His scholarship primarily focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s youth. He is the author or editor of several books, including Abe’s Youth: Shaping the Future President and Abraham Lincoln’s Wilderness Years. Visit him online at JoshuaClaybourn.com.

Michael Green is chair of the history department and professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of several books on the Civil War era, including, most recently, Lincoln and Native Americans, published as part of The Concise Lincoln Library series by Southern Illinois University Press.

Mark Grimsley is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University. In 2008–2010 he was a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and essays, including The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Andrew F. Lang is associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. A recipient of the Society of Civil War Historians’ Tom Watson Brown Book Award and a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, Lang is now writing a book on the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.