Dennis B. Conklin II Wins 2025 Roberts Foundation Book Award!

Dennis B. Conklin II won the 2025 Roberts Foundation Book Award for his book, Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command:  Davis, Johnson, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (2025). 

The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 played a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of the American Civil War and bolstering Abraham Lincoln's reelection in November, securing the path to eventual Union victory.  Long overshadowed, this Georgia campaign has experienced a resurgence of interest over the past decade.

Conklin's book, originally a Ph.D. dissertation, examines the dysfunctional relationships that plagued the Confederate high command, contributing to the defeat of the Army of Tennessee and the loss of Atlanta., a logistical rail hub.  He highlights critical flaws in Jefferson Davis's leadership and the deep mutual distrust between the Confederate president and Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Tennessee, which led them to work at cross purposes.  As the campaign slowly unfolded and William T. Sherman's advancing armies claimed vast swaths of  territory, tensions escalated among Davis, Johnston, corps commander John Bell Hood, and Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, further compounding the Confederacy's strategic woes.

Davis's initial unease with Johnston's leadership partly explains why he promoted Hood to command an infantry corps in the principal Western army before the campaign began.  Hood, who had honed his skills as a tactical commander under the aggressive Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia, grew increasingly exasperated by Johnston's repeated withdrawals.  This tension, Conkilin argues, culminated in their inevitable clash at Cassville -- a pivotal dispute driven by inconsistent maps and divergent battlefield philosophies.  The ensuing correspondence among key figures in Richmonad further eroded Davis's confidence in Johnston, paving the way for Hood's eventual rise to command the Army of  Tennessee.

Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command offers a compelling and briskly paced exploration of command politics, human nature, and the pressures of war, illuminating how these forces shaped the outcome of one of the Civil War's most consequential campaigns.

Richard W. Hatcher III Wins 2024 Roberts Foundation Book Award!

Richard W. Hatcher III won the 2024 Roberts Foundation Book Award for Thunder in the Harbor:  Fort Sumter and the Civil War (2023).  He received the award at the 3rd Annual Fort Sumter Civil War Banquet, held on May 12 at Mark Clark Hall, The Citadel, where he also served as the program speaker.  His topic:  "April 14, 1865:  Maj. Robert Anderson Returns to Fort Sumter."

Hatcher's book, described as "detailed, authoritative, and expansive," has been credited with being the first modern study to document Fort Sumter from its origins, through the war, and up to its transfer to the National Park Service in 1948.

A native of Richmond, Va., Hatcher received his B.A. in History in 1973 from Virginia Commonwealth University. His lifelong love of the subject began during the Civil War Centennial and grew when he later worked as a seasonal employee at Richmond National Battlefield Park. He then began working permanently with the National Park Service in 1976, and retired in 2015 as Historian from Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. 

Hatcher is the author or coauthor of numerous articles articles and books, including the award-winning Wilson's Creek, The Second Major Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It (2001), and The First Shot (2011). He is a regular on the Civil War speaking circuit.

Michael Laramie
2023 Award Winner

Michael G. Laramie won the 2023 Roberts Foundation Book Award for Gunboats, Muskets, and Torpedoes: Coastal South Carolina, 1861-1865.  Laramie is a military history writer and the author of eight books, including: The Road to Ticonderoga:  The Campaign of 1758 in the Champlain Valley; Gunboats, Muskets, and Torpedoes; and  King George's War and the Thirty-Year Peace. Laramie has also published articles in a number of magazines and journals, inclluding Vermont History, Military History Magazine, Military History Matters, and The Journal of America's Military Past.

Anna Koivusalo won the 2022 Roberts Foundation Book Award -- the Foundation's first -- for The Man Who Started the Civil  War:   James Chestnut, Honor, and Emotion in the American South.  Much more than a biography of James Chestnut, the book provided a new way of looking at honor in the South. It is an important book that will influence the study of Southern culture and honor for many years to come.