About

Louis P. Masur is the Board of Governors Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. He is a cultural historian whose publications include books on Lincoln and the Civil War, capital punishment, the events of a single year, the first World Series, a transformative photograph, and a seminal rock ‘n’ roll album. His most recent work is The Sum of our Dreams: A Concise History of America (2020). Other notable books include Lincoln's Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion (2015), Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (2012), and The Civil War: A Concise History (2011). Masur’s essays and reviews have appeared in prominent outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Slate. He approaches culture as a text that must be unpacked, drawing on a range of primary sources—including novels, memoirs, essays, images, movies, and music—and employs an interdisciplinary approach to the study of American culture.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Social Science
• History
• Sociology
• Law
• Physics
• Aesthetics
• Economic history
• Art
• Pedagogy
• Psychology
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ still speaks to a nation vacillating between hope and despair

  2025-08-21

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• Prologue: Travelers

  2025-05-22

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• At Fort George: Prince Taylor (June 1)

  2025-05-22

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  Abstract This chapter recounts Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s travels to Lake George and their exploration of its natural beauty and historical significance. Jefferson admires the lake’s crystal-clear waters and recalls the daring escape of Major Robert Rogers during the French and Indian War. Madison documents the region’s agricultural production, trade, and settlements, while Jefferson writes letters urging his daughters to pursue learning and practical skills. The chapter highlights Prince Taylor, a free Black farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, whose success challenges Jefferson’s and Madison’s racial assumptions. By exploring their inconsistent views on slavery and emancipation, the chapter reveals how both men fail to reconcile their principles of liberty with their complicity in maintaining slavery.

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• We Cannot Escape History

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2024-01-30

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• The Soiling of Old Glory

  Brandeis University Press eBooks · 2024-03-29

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• Abraham Lincoln and the Problem of Reconstruction

  The Journal of the Civil War Era · 2022-08-28

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  From the start of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln considered the problem of reconstruction, and for four years he took actions that he hoped would hasten the end of the rebellion: he supported the statehood of West Virginia and its admission to the Union, he appointed military governors, he issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, and, in his last speech, delivered on April 11, 1865, he offered a vision for the future, one that included Black men as voting citizens. Lincoln's ideas about reconstruction may have led to a rupture with Congress over the Wade-Davis bill, but they provided a blueprint for his vision of a just and generous peace that leaves us wondering what might have happened had he lived.

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• A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the White House

  The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association · 2022-01-01

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  Abraham Lincoln's first meeting with Frederick Douglass occurred at the White House on August 10, 1863.The president and the abolitionist discussed the service of black soldiers.A few months later, Douglass told an audience that he had been to see the president."Perhaps you may like to know how the President of the United States received a black man at the White House," he suggested.He told the audience that he had been received "just as you have seen one gentleman receive another with a hand and a voice well-balanced between a kind cordiality and a respectful reserve.I tell you I felt big there."As Jonathan White demonstrates in A House Built by Slaves, which focuses on Lincoln's reception of African-American men and women visitors at the White House, Lincoln's treatment of Douglass was no anomaly.Time and again, the president met with African Americans, and White documents every meeting that he could identify.The result is an eye-opening, deeply researched book that challenges the oft-invoked narrative that claims Lincoln was a racist who did not truly care about black Americans.Rather, White argues, Lincoln treated African-American visitors as equals and made the White House "a space where black people could make a claim to the rights of U.S. Citizenship."(xv) The argument will not surprise readers of this journal who are familiar with Michael Burlingame's recent two-part article "African Americans at White House Receptions During Lincoln's Administration," and "President Lincoln's Meetings with African Americans."Professor White's audience, of course, is broader and, in a book of just over 200 pages of main text, he offers a comprehensive account of these meetings.On April 14, 1862, Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne of the A.M.E.Church became the first black visitor to Lincoln's White House.He wanted to encourage Lincoln to sign the bill freeing the slaves in the District of Columbia, and he left Lincoln with copies of the Christian Recorder.Unfortunately, there were few accounts at the time of Payne's historic

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• Epilogue

  2020-10-22

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  Abstract The epilogue looks at the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination and legacy through the eyes of the poet Walt Whitman. Volunteering in Washington’s hospitals during the war, Whitman frequently glimpsed the president. Though they never met, Whitman admired Lincoln and praised his leadership. Whitman wrote poems about Lincoln’s death, as well as prose in which he struggled to define and understand the “four years of bleeding, murky, murderous war” and the people’s role in fighting and dying for the nation. Whitman never stopped thinking about the Civil War, but he realized that it never could—and perhaps never should—be properly described.

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• The origins of the Civil War

  2020-10-22

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  Abstract “The origins of the civil war” summarizes the years leading up to the war, which were characterized by increasing conflict over slavery and government authority. Starting with the close of the revolutionary era, attempts to compromise on slavery in the territories and maintain a delicate balance of free and slave states became increasingly challenging. In 1831, Nat Turner’s violent slave rebellion struck fear into the South, as did an emerging abolitionist movement. In the 1850s, a series of spiralling events led to protests and armed conflict. Once Abraham Lincoln won the Electoral College without carrying a single slave state, many Southerners saw secession as a necessity.

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• 1861

  2020-10-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract “1861” describes the events of that year, which began with the appointment of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy. Following the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for troops, appointed George McClellan to command Union forces, and imposed a blockade against the South. The first battles were chaotic. Union forces (“Yankees”) benefited from greater manpower and technology; Southerners (“Rebels”) had a stronger military tradition and familiar terrain. Although the war did not begin with the aim of abolishing slavery, the institution played a role in military and diplomatic developments. Abolitionists hoped that Union war aims would transform into a struggle against slavery.

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Frequent coauthors

• Ann Fabian

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  37 shared

• Sean Wilentz

  Princeton University

  37 shared

• Ileen Devault

  New York Public Library

  36 shared

• Deborah Van Broekhoven

  Rhode Island Historical Society

  36 shared

• David Dublin

  Rhode Island Historical Society

  36 shared

• Cindy Taft

  Library of Congress

  36 shared

• Karen Halttunen

  36 shared

• Joel Bernard

  Andover Historical Society

  36 shared

Education

• Ph.D., American History

  University of Pennsylvania

  1981

• B.A., American History

  Harvard University

  1976

Awards & honors

• Board of Governors Professor of American Studies and History…