Awards & Recognition

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CandidPlatinum Seal of Transparency 2022
The ACWM organization has earned a 2022 Platinum Seal of Transparency with Candid! Support our work with trust & confidence by viewing our nonprofit profile.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
‘THE BEST’ 2022 – Entertainment: Best Museum – Favorite Museum
Richmond Magazine
35th Annual Reader survey – Second Best Historical Attraction
The Branch Museum of Architecture & Design
2020 recipient of Virginia by Design Awards: Prize for Public Interest Design: Community Engagement and Participation

This prize is for a creative project that has transformed its surroundings whether a setting, neighborhood, or community. It is for an individual or entity responsible for shepherding the project within Virginia.

American Alliance of MuseumsAccredited Museum
32nd Annual Excellence in Exhibition – Special Achievement in Storytelling Supported by Collections for A People’s Contest
Greater Richmond Association for Commercial Real Estate
Real Estate Award 2019 – Best Cultural Project

Recognizing Civil War scholarship

After the creation of the Edward L. Ayers Center for Civil War & Emancipation Studies in December 2019, the American Civil War Museum is re-imagining its annual awards for scholarship about the Civil War.

Jefferson Davis Award Winners (1970–2018)

2018: Aaron Sheehan-Dean, The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War

2017: Adam I. P. Smith, The Stormy Present: Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics, 1846-1865

2016: Chandra M. Manning, Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War

2015: Adam Rothman, Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery

2014: William C. Davis, Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee: The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged

2013: Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation

2012: William J. Cooper, We Have The War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861

2011: Paul Quigley, Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848-1865

2010: George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War

2009: Joan C. Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth and Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War

2008: Joseph T. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse

2007: Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters

2006: Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War

2005: Charles W. Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War

2004: Richard Lowe, Walker’s Texas Division, C.S.A.

2003: G. Ward Hubbs, Guarding Greensboro: A Confederate Company in the Making of a Southern Community

2002: George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!

2001: William W. Freehling, The South vs. The South

2000: William J. Cooper, Jr., Jefferson Davis, American

1999: Joseph L. Harsh, Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862

1998: J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox

1997: James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend

1996: Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention

1995: David H. Donald, Lincoln

1994: William C. Davis, A Government of Our Own

1993: Robert M. Browning, Jr., From Cape Charles to Cape Fear

1992: T. Michael Parrish, Richard Taylor

1991: William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis

1990: Mary A. DeCredico, Patriotism for Profit

1989: George C. Rable, Civil Wars

1988: Thomas E. Schott, Alexander Stephens of Georgia

1987: William C. Harris, Williams Woods Holden

1986: Richard Beringer, et. al., Why the South Lost the Civil War

1985: Joseph T. Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond

1984: Walter L. Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas

1983: Michael Wayne, The Reshaping of Plantation Society

1982: Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor

1981: Michael B. Chesson, Richmond After the War, 1865-1900

1980: James Lee McDonough, Stones River: The Bloody Winter in Tennessee

1979: Stephen Z. Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War

1978: Michael C. C. Adams, Our Masters the Rebels

1977: Joseph H. Parks, Joseph E. Brown of Georgia

1976: Herman Hattaway, General Stephen D. Lee

1975: Bell I. Wiley, Confederate Women

1974: William C. Davis, Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol

1973: Thomas L. Connelly and Archer Jones, The Politics of Command

1972: Thomas B. Alexander and Richard Beringer, The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress

1971: Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory

1970: Frank E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags

Founders Award Winners

2017-18: Salvatore G. Cilella, Jr., Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton

2016: M. Jane Johansson, Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier

2014: Graham T. Dozier, A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter

2012: Donald C. Pfanz, The Letters of General Richard S. Ewell: Stonewall’s Successor

2010: George Burkhardt, Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon

2008: Charles W. Mitchell, Maryland Voices of the Civil War

2006: Kimberly Harrison, A Maryland Bride in the Deep South: The Civil War Diary of Priscilla Bond

2004: Lynda L. Crist, et. al., The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 11

2002: Michael B. Chesson and Leslie J. Roberts, Exile in Richmond

2000: Charles F. Bryan, Jr. and Nelson D. Lankford, Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey

1998: Ward W. Briggs, Jr., Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War

1996: Lynda L. Crist, et. al., The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 8

1994: Ira Berlin, et. al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, series I, vol. II

1992: Russell Duncan, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

1990: Gary W. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander

1988: Carol Bleser, Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond and John Rozier, The Granite Farm Letters: The Civil War Correspondence of Edgeworth and Sallie Bird

1986: Richard Harwell and Philip N. Racine, The Fiery Trail: A Union Officer’s Account of Sherman’s Last Campaigns

1985: Ira Berlin, et. al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, series I, vol. I

1984: Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, No Chariot Let Down

1983: LeRoy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins, The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. VI

1982: John Y. Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vols. IX and X

1981: Charles C. McLaughlin and Charles E. Beveridge, The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. II

1980: James I. Robertson, Jr., An Index-Guide to the Southern Historical Society Papers

1979: David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, The Encyclopedia of Southern History

1978: William A. Frassanito, Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day

1977: John W. Blassingame, Slave Testimony

1975: Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress

1974: John Hammond Moore, The Juhl Letters to the Charleston Courier

1972: Robert Ranson Myers, Children of Pride

1971: Haskell M. Monroe, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. I.

1970: Warren Ripley, Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War