UA Professor Serves as President of Civil War Historian Society

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. George C. Rable, professor and Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama, has been named president of the Society of Civil War Historians.

The organization is a diverse and growing group of scholars and students committed to the study of the American Civil War. Its aim is to promote the teaching and study of the Civil War in academic settings.

Rable earned his bachelor’s degree from Bluffton College, Ohio, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Louisiana State University where he studied under the well-known historian T. Harry Williams. He is the author of four well-received books which are: “But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction,” “Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism,” which won the Jefferson Davis Award in 1989 and the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize in 1991 and “The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics.”

His most recent book “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” won the 2004 Distinguished Book Award in American History from the Society for Military History. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, this book details the military, political, and social impact of the worst military defeat that Abraham Lincoln’s Union armies suffered during the Civil War. “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” previously won the 2003 Lincoln Prize, the Jefferson Davis Prize of the Museum of the Confederacy, the Douglas Southall Freeman Book Award and was a History Book Club Selection.

Rable joined the department of history in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1998. He was selected as a Blackmon-Moody Outstanding Professor in 2003 for bringing national attention to UA through his writing achievements. Rable is currently working on a project that will examine the role of religion in the Civil War for the Littlefield History of the Civil War Era.