Bell Irvin Wiley

➢  back to top

Bell Irvin Wiley, born in 1906, joined the University of Mississippi’s history department in 1938 and worked along side Silver until departing for military service in 1943.  Wiley served as a First Lieutenant and historical officer in the Army Ground Forces Headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Wiley is renown for his The Life of Johnny Reb (1943) and The Life of Billy Yank (1952), as well as a number of other influential works in Civil War and southern history.  By the time of his death in 1980, Wiley had accumulated more than 50 years of classroom experience and had authored, co-authored and edited 24 books while serving at universities such as the University of Southern Miss, Louisiana State University, and Emory University.

James W. Silver

➢  back to top

Serving as a history professor at the University of Mississippi from 1936 to 1964, James W. Silver was an established and respected figure on campus. Silver, born in 1907, served as chair of the department from 1946 to 1957.  Although Silver is best known for his influential Mississippi: The Closed Society (1964), Silver was also a historian of the Civil War.  He is the author of Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda (1957) and A Life for the Confederacy (1959).  Silver would end his teaching career at Notre Dame.   

2012 Wiley-Silver Prize Winner

Dr. Barbara Gannon recieved the Wiley-Silver Prize for her book, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic. Her book explores the role of comradeship in fostering interracial cooperation in the GAR. Their sense of camaraderie, she says, was strong enough to overcome racism and even facilitated the creation of a new, interracial Civil War memory in opposition to the Lost Cause—the “Won Cause.”  Together, black and white veterans came to remember the Civil War as a war not only for the Union, but for emancipation as well. Gannon received her doctorate from Penn State in 2005 and is currently an assistant professor of history at the University of Central Florida.

Eligibility Rules and Regulations

➢  back to top

The Wiley-Silver Prize in Civil War History will be awarded annually to a scholar’s first book or monograph in Civil War history published in the previous year.  For this competition, books published in 2012 are eligible.  Results will be announced 1 July 2013.  The winner will receive $2000, to be awarded at the University of Mississippi’s Conference on the Civil War in October 2013. Books or monographs published by scholarly or popular presses are eligible.  Except in extraordinary circumstances textbooks are not eligible, nor are anthologies or edited works.  One copy of each entry must be received by the Center and each prize committee member listed below by Wednesday, February 15, 2013.  Entries may be submitted by publishers or authors.  Each entry must be clearly labeled “Wiley-Silver Prize Entry.” If the book carries a copyright date different from the publication date, publishers must enclose a letter explaining the eligibility of the entry.  Entries submitted after close of business on the deadline date will not be considered. Send one copy of the entry to each of the following four addresses:

Center for Civil War Research

Department of History

University of Mississippi

University, MS 38677

Daniel Sutherland

Department of History

Old Main 416

University of Arkansas

Fayetteville, AR 72701

Elizabeth Varon

Corcoran Department of History

Nau 395

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA 22904

George C. Rable

2927 Hawthorne Circle

Tuscaloosa, AL 35406

If you have any questions, please contact us at civilwar@olemiss.edu, or 662-915-3969.