The Avery O. Craven Award, first given in 1985, is awarded annually by the Organization of American Historians

Organization of American Historians

The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...

 (OAH) for the most original history book on the coming of the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, the Civil War years (1861-1865), or the Era of Reconstruction (1875-1877), with the exception of works of purely military history. The exception recognizes and reflects Craven's Quaker convictions. Professor Avery O. Craven was President of the Organization of American Historians, 1963-1964.

A 3-member committee, chosen by the OAH President, picks the winner. The winner receives $200.00. Co-winners were named in 1998 and 2008. In 2002, the winner Don E. Fehrenbacher had died in 1997, but a former student of Fehrenbacher's completed and edited the book in time for the 2002 award schedule.

In the table below, the link on the author is the most recent available. Priority is given to a “Wikipedia” entry. The link to the “Affiliation”—usually an academic institution appointment—is that affiliation at the time the award was given.

Year	Winner	Affiliation	Book Title
1985	Michael Perman	University of Illinois at Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...	Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879
1986	Dan T. Carter Dan T. Carter -Life:He graduated from University of South Carolina, University of Wisconsin, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a Ph.D. in 1967.He taught at the University of Maryland, and the University of Wisconsin....	Emory University Emory University Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...	When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South 1865-1867
1987	Clarence L. Mohr	Tulane University Tulane University Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...	On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia
1988co	William E. Gienapp	University of Wyoming University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...	The Origins of the Republican Party 1852-1856
1988co	Peter Kolchin Peter Kolchin -Life:He graduated from Columbia University, and from Johns Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in 1970.He teaches at the University of Delaware.-Awards:* 1988 Bancroft Prize in American History...	University of Delaware University of Delaware The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...	Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom
1989	Eric Foner Eric Foner Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...	Columbia University Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...	Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
1990	Lewis P. Simpson	Louisiana State University Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...	Mind and the American Civil War: A Meditation on Lost Causes
1991	Grace Palladino	AFL-CIO AFL-CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...	Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840-68
1992	William S. McFeely William S. McFeely William S. McFeely was a professor of history before his retirement in 1997.He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1952, and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1966. He studied there with, among others, C. Vann Woodward, whose book "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was a staple...	University of Georgia University of Georgia The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...	Frederick Douglass
1993	Tyler Anbinder	George Washington University George Washington University The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...	Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s
1994	Eric Lott Eric Lott Eric Lott is an American Professor of English and social historian.Lott received his Ph. D. in 1991 from Columbia University. He has been a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Virginia since 1990....	University of Virginia University of Virginia The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...	Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
1995	Julie Saville	University of Chicago University of Chicago The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...	The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870
1996	David Gollaher David Gollaher David L. Gollaher is the President & CEO of the California Healthcare Institute , and a historian of science and medicine. He completed undergraduate studies at University of California and received his masters and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University...	California Healthcare Institute California Healthcare Institute CHI-California Healthcare Institute is a private, non-profit public policy research and advocacy organization, representing more than 250 universities, academic research centers, biotechnology and medical device companies. Founded in 1993, and based in La Jolla, California, CHI has offices in...	Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea Dix
1997	Drew Gilpin Faust Drew Gilpin Faust Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian, college administrator, and the president of Harvard University. Faust is the first woman to serve as Harvard's president and the university's 28th president overall. Faust is the fifth woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university, and...	University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...	Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
1998co	William G. Shade	Lehigh University Lehigh University Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...	Democratizing the Old Dominion: Virginia and the Second Party System,1824-1861
1998co	Mark M. Smith Mark M. Smith Mark M. Smith is an American historian and the Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. Smith holds a B.A. University of Southampton & M.A. University of South Carolina and a Ph.D...	University of South Carolina University of South Carolina The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...	Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South
1999	Amy Dru Stanley Amy Dru Stanley -Biography :She graduated from Princeton University in 1978, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1990.She taught at the University of California, Irvine.She teaches at the University of Chicago....	University of Chicago University of Chicago The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...	From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation
2000	Walter Johnson	New York University New York University New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...	Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
2001	Lyde Cullen Sizer	Sarah Lawrence College Sarah Lawrence College Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...	The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872
2002	Don E. Fehrenbacher Don E. Fehrenbacher Don Edward Fehrenbacher was an American historian.-Biography:Born in Sterling, Illinois, he was a well known historian of 19th century United States history. He wrote on politics, slavery, and Abraham Lincoln. In 1979, he won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book about the Dred Scott Decision...	Stanford University Stanford University The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...	The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery
2002note	Ward M. McAfee	California State University, San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino, also known as Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB is a public research university and one of the twenty three general campuses of the California State University system. The main campus sits on in the suburban University District of , United States, with...	A former student of Fehrenbacher's, McAfee completed and edited the 2002 award book.
2003	John Stauffer	Harvard University Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...	The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race
2004	Dylan C. Penningroth	Northwestern University Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....	The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South
2005	C. Wyatt Evans	Drew University Drew University Drew University is a private university located in Madison, New Jersey.Originally established as the Drew Theological Seminary in 1867, the university later expanded to include an undergraduate liberal arts college in 1928 and commenced a program of graduate studies in 1955...	The Legend of John Wilkes Booth: Myth, Memory, and a Mummy
2006	Anne Sarah Rubin	University of Maryland, Baltimore County	A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868
2007	Mark Elliott	Wagner College Wagner College Wagner College is a private, co-educational, national liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,400 total students located atop Grymes Hill in New York City's borough of Staten Island...	Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson
2008	Chandra Manning	Georgetown University Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...	What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery and the Civil War
2009	Edward B. Rugemer	Yale University Yale University Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...	The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War
2010	Hannah Rosen	University of Michigan University of Michigan The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...	Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Post-Emancipation South