Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America's Greatest President

Contributors

243 Contributors Roger Billings came to the Salmon P. Chase College of Law of Northern Kentucky University in 1972 after working seven years for a New York City publishing company, Charles Scribner’s Sons. He received his A.B. from Wabash College and his J.D. from the University of Akron. He has written four books for practitioners, Prepaid Legal Services; Handling Automobile Warranty and Repossession Cases; Floor Planning, Financing and Leasing in the Automobile Industry; and Handling Business Transactions in the Common Market and Eastern Europe. Since 2004, when he was designated Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria, he has returned each year to Salzburg as a visiting professor teaching international trade law. Professor Billings writes articles and speaks about Abraham Lincoln, specializing in Lincoln’s legal career. Brian Dirck is professor of history at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana . He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Kansas, specializing in American legal and constitutional history and the Civil War era. He has written numerous books and articles on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, most recently Lincoln the Lawyer, which was awarded the Benjamin Barondess Award from the New York Civil War Roundtable for the best book on Lincoln in 2007. He is currently working on a study of Lincoln and race, to be published sometime in 2011. Billie J. Ellis Jr. is a partner in the law firm of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP in the firm’s Dallas, Texas, office. His practice consists of real estate, private equity, and finance. He has chaired various state and national bar committee groups. He is a frequent writer and speaker on Abraham Lincoln and his legal career. Mr. Ellis is currently working on a course for law students on the history of the American law firm. He received his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Texas at Austin, his M.B.A. at Southern Methodist University, and his J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. 244 Contributors WilliamT.Ellisreceivedhismaster’sdegreeintheologicalstudies,concentrating in religion, ethics, and politics, at Harvard Divinity School in 2010. He received his B.A. from Kenyon College in 2005, cum laude, with department honors in philosophy. He is now studying law at the University of Texas at Austin. Harold Holzer, who served nine years as cochairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, is the author, coauthor, or editor of thirty-six books on Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War. He has also lectured widely, written some 440 articles in popular and scholarly journals, published dozens of monographs, and contributed chapters to dozens of additional books. Among his awards are four Barondess/Lincoln honors, a second-place Lincoln Prize, and awards of distinction from Lincoln groups throughout the nation. In 2008 he won the National Humanities Medal from the president of the United States. Holzer, who lives in Rye, New York, currently serves as vice chair of the Lincoln Forum. John A. Lupton is the director of history programs with the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission. Previously, he worked for nearly twenty years on the Lincoln Legal Papers and Papers of Abraham Lincoln projects. Lupton received his bachelor’s degree in history from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and his master’s degree in history from the University of Illinois, Springfield. He has published dozens of articles and chapters on Lincoln’s law practice and antebellum legal history and was an assistant editor in the publication of The Papers ofAbraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases in 2008 and of The Law Practice ofAbraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition in 2000 on DVD and in 2008 on the Internet. Lupton also specializes in Lincoln’s handwriting and has appeared in several television programs to authenticate Lincoln documents. Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and editor of Orbis, the journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia. He is a Marine Corps infantry veteran of Vietnam, where he served in 1968–1969. He is the author of a 2009 FPRI monograph on Lincoln as war president, titled “Abraham Lincoln: Leadership and Democratic Statesmanship in Wartime.” Contributors 245 William D. Pederson is the American Studies Endowed Chair and director of the International Lincoln Center at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He is...