Down the Stretch, It’s Rable

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A University of Alabama history professor has done what thoroughbred racehorse Funny Cide could not — win a Triple Crown in competition.

Dr. George C. Rable, the Charles G. Summersell Professor of Southern History at UA, was recently honored as the 2002 Jefferson Davis Award winner for outstanding narrative on the period of the Confederacy for his book, “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!”

Rable became only the second rider…er…writer to ever win both the Jefferson Davis Award, presented by the Museum of the Confederacy, and the prestigious Lincoln Prize, awarded earlier by Gettysburg College. The Jefferson Davis Award, the third leg of Rable’s triple crown, was presented to him exactly one week to the day before Funny Cide failed in his attempt to win the Belmont Stakes and capture horse racing’s Triple Crown.

Previously this season, Rable won the Douglas Southall Freeman Award from the Military Order of the Stars and Bars. All three of Rable’s recent jaunts to the winner’s circle were for his book, published by the University of North Carolina Press, detailing the military, political, and social impact of the worst military defeat that Abraham Lincoln’s Union armies suffered during the Civil War.

“Neigh, I did not expect to win,” Rable said.

Rable nosed out Robert J. Bonner’s “Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South,” published by Princeton University Press, and Gordon Rhea’s “Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26 – June 3, 1864,” published by Louisiana State University Press, for the Jefferson Davis Award.

Judges, commenting on Rable’s book, called it one of the “best battle books” ever published and “magisterial.” The win marked the second time Rable’s book has crossed the finish line as winner of the Jefferson Davis Award. In 1989, he won for his book, “Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism.”

Published by the University of North Carolina Press, Rable’s book details the military, political, and social impact of the worst military defeat that Abraham Lincoln’s Union armies suffered during the Civil War.

Rable joined the UA faculty in 1998. He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees from Louisiana State University and his bachelor’s degree from Bluffton College.

Rable’s previous books also include “The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics,” and “But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction.” He is currently researching the role of religion in the Civil War.

Rable’s web site lists his hobbies as “playing bad tennis, watching bad baseball (Reds fan), reading British mystery novels, and listening to Warren Zevon music.” He said he doesn’t care much for oats.