Hubbell Prize Awarded

Tyler Anbinder has won the John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article published in Civil War History during 2006. His article, "Which Poor Man's Fight? Immigrants and the Federal Conscription of 1863," was selected by a three-person panel at the Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University. The prize earns the recipient a $1,000 cash award.

Anbinder's article earned distinction for both the significance of its argument and for opening up a fresh resource that can stimulate further analysis of draft enrollment and evasion. The article demonstrated just how easy it was for immigrants in an urban environment to avoid the draft and suggested that it was more difficult for native-born laborers in rural areas to do the same. To conduct his analysis, Anbinder combed ledgers maintained by the Provost Marshal General's Bureau in the National Archives.

Anbinder is chairman of the history department at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1994. His research focuses on Civil War–era politics and nineteenth-century immigration. His first book, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (1992), won the Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians. His most recent book, Five Points (2001), a history of immigrant life in that New York City Neighborhood, was named to the New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember" list for 2001. He is currently at work on an article about antebellum Irish immigrants' savings patterns as well as a book about immigrant life in New York City from the first Dutch settlers to the present.

Awarded annually and funded by a donor through the Richards Civil War Era Center, the John T. Hubbell Prize recognizes the extraordinary contribution of its namesake, who served as editor of Civil War History for thirty-five years.