Zachery A. Fry has won the John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article published in Civil War History during 2018.  His study, “McClellan’s Epidemic:  Disease and Discord at Harrison’s Landing, July-August 1862,” appeared in the March 2018 issue of Civil War History.   The prize recipient was selected by the journal’s editorial advisory board.  The prize earns the recipient a $1,000 award from The Kent State University Press.

His article examines the Army of the Potomac after the Seven Days battles in July of 1862.  The soldiers faced poor health and even poorer spirits.  For six weeks, soldiers suffered in diseased swamps and meadows on the James River wondering aloud what their sacrifices had accomplished for the Union struggle.  Politically-aware officers argued over who was to blame for the hardship, Republicans castigating McClellan and Democrats calling out the administration.  Embittered and ill-supplied enlisted men, many of them just beginning to understand the war’s policy dimensions, complained of conservative officers protecting southern property and called for greater sacrifices from those on the northern home front.  The health crisis of Harrison’s Landing, as Fry concludes, energized the emergence of a partisan divide in McClellan’s army that would remain in place long after “Little Mac” had departed as its commander.

Now in its 65th year of publication, Civil War History is published quarterly by The Kent State University Press.  Edited by Brian Craig Miller (Mission College) and Associate Editor Frank Towers (University of Calgary), it is the premier journal in the study of the American Civil War.

Zachery A. Fry is an Assistant Professor of Military History at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Huntsville, Alabama.  He completed his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University, where he authored a Dissertation entitled “Lincoln’s Divided Legion:  Loyalty and the Political Culture of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865.”

Awarded annually by The Kent State University Press, the John T. Hubbell Prize recognizes the extraordinary contribution to the field of its namesake, who served as editor of Civil War History for thirty-five years.