Gabor Boritt

Gabor Szappanos Boritt ( Róth-Szappanos Gábor; January 26, 1940 – February 2, 2026) was a Hungarian-born American historian. He was the Robert Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Born and raised in Hungary, he participated as a teenager in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 before escaping to America, where he received his higher education and became a scholar of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. He was the author, co-author, or editor of 16 books about Lincoln or the Civil War. Boritt received the National Humanities Medal in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Early life Boritt was born as Róth-Szappanos Gábor on January 26, 1940 to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary at the start of World War II. He changed his surname to Boritt upon arriving in America, and kept a part of his original surname, Szappanos, as his middle name. He helped create the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, widely considered the most coveted award for the study of American history. He also helped create the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which is focused on improving the teaching of history in schools.

Modern accomplishments Boritt served on the boards of the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by Congress. His book The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech Nobody Knows (2006) was featured on the cover of U.S. News & World Report and called "fascinating" by The New York Times. In September 2008 Boritt gave a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield to President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and a group including White House Advisor Karl Rove, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

On November 17, 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Boritt the National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities "for a distinguished career of scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era. His life's work and his life's story stand as testaments to our nation's precious legacy of liberty". His life story is the subject of a feature-length documentary film titled Budapest to Gettysburg (2007), directed by his son Jake Boritt. In 2009 he retired.

Gabor Boritt was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 2009 as a Bicentennial Laureate. In 1996, Boritt received The Lincoln Forum's Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement.

Personal life and death Boritt and his wife Liz lived in an 18th-century farmhouse on the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield, which they restored with their own hands. It served as both a stop on the Underground Railroad and as a Confederate hospital. Together they raised three sons: Beowulf Boritt is a set designer (and streaming video ad star) in New York City, Jake Boritt is a filmmaker who lives in Harlem, and Daniel Boritt is a biologist specializing in birds who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Gabor Boritt died in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, of complications of dementia on February 2, 2026, at the age of 86.

Works Author "War Opponent and War President", in And the War Came'? Abraham Lincoln and the Question of Individual Responsibility", in "Did He Dream of a Lily-White America: The Voyage to Linconia", in The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (2005) (with Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely Jr.) The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows (2006)

Editor The Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (1988) Lincoln, The War President: The Gettysburg Lectures (1992) Lincoln's Generals (1995) War Comes Again: Comparative Vistas on the Civil War and World War II (1995) Why the Civil War Came (1996) The Gettysburg Nobody Knows (1997) Jefferson Davis's Generals (1999) The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon (2002) Slavery, Resistance, Freedom (2009) (edited with Scott Hancock) The Will of God Prevails: Meditations on God and the Gettysburg Address (2014) (words of Abraham Lincoln compiled and edited by Gabor Boritt)