Edward Achorn’s The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History has won the Harold Holzer Lincoln Forum Book Prize for the best book about Abraham Lincoln published in 2023.

Thomas A. Horrocks, chair of the Lincoln Forum Book Prize Committee, presented Mr. Achorn with the prize at the Forum’s gathering on Nov. 18 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

“Achorn presents a brilliantly written, riveting account of the 1860 Republican convention,” Dr. Horrocks said, in announcing the prize. That convention nominated Abraham Lincoln as president, though he was the darkest of dark horses.

Dr. Horrocks called the book a “page-turner,” adding, “I admit I could not put this book down, even though I knew how it ends.”

He said The Lincoln Miracle “places the reader in the cigar-smoke-filled hotel rooms of party movers and shakers and on the raucous convention floor, introducing us to Lincoln’s rivals, and especially his convention managers, who worked the key state delegations and made the essential deals to achieve Lincoln’s nomination.”

Dr. Horrocks argued that the book makes a significant contribution to American history. “The 1860 Republican convention was one of the most important — if not the most important — in our nation’s history, and Ed Achorn has given us the book the convention deserves.”

The Forum created the prize to honor outstanding scholarship on the life and career of Abraham Lincoln published in the year preceding the presentation of this award.

The Book Prize Committee is composed of Michelle Krowl, Ph.D., Daniel R. Weinberg, Christian McWhirter, Ph.D., and Dr. Horrocks. The Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, published Achorn’s acclaimed Lincoln books The Lincoln Miracle and Every Drop of Blood.

Edward Achorn on the Miraculous Nomination of an Illinois Lawyer

History has a way of deceiving us. We know how the story turns out. In focusing on the steps that led to a result, we can’t help but form the impression that the outcome was inevitable.

We forget that the people in the middle of the most momentous events in our history had no idea what would happen.

That is why I like suspending the usual viewpoint of history from 30,000 feet up and taking events down to ground level. In my latest book, The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History, that means the floor of the Wigwam, a freshly built, massive auditorium of fragrant, unfinished wood, and in the crowded, smoky, tobacco-juice-stained saloons and hotel rooms of Chicago during one week in May 1860.

We find there a story unfolding so astonishing—and so crucial to the ultimate survival of the United States, and the destruction of slavery—that some who were there thought the invisible hand of the Almighty shaped the outcome. I consider what happened that week a miracle.

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