The Abraham Lincoln Association has lost a friend. Lewis Lehrman, who died on March 11 at the age of 87, was a Distinguished Director of this Association, a recipient of our Logan Hay Medal, and one of the most consequential figures the Lincoln community has ever known. We mourn him and remain grateful for his contributions.

Lehrman was an investment banker, public intellectual, one-time candidate for governor of New York, and one of the most consequential patrons American historical scholarship has ever known. The Lincoln field in particular owes him a debt that cannot be fully measured.

Together with his partner Richard Gilder, Lehrman co-founded the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which has educated students and teachers across the United States and England through primary-source scholarship and rigorous programming. With Gilder and Professor Gabor Boritt, he established the Lincoln Prize at Gettysburg College, the most prestigious award in Lincoln scholarship, which has directed a $50,000 annual prize and enormous public attention toward the finest work in the field for more than three decades. He founded the Lincoln Institute and built a network of websites, including AbrahamLincoln.org and AbrahamLincolnsClassroom.org, that bring authoritative Lincoln scholarship to anyone with an internet connection.

Then there is the Gilder Lehrman Collection itself, more than 60,000 original historical documents, gathered over years from private hands and placed on public deposit at the New-York Historical Society, where they remain available to scholars and citizens alike. Lehrman once described the purpose was to get documents out of private hands and into a place where they could serve American students and teachers. That is exactly what he did.

Lehrman was also a serious scholar in his own right. His Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point traced Lincoln’s antislavery campaign from 1854 to 1865 and remains an important contribution to the literature. Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War drew a compelling parallel between the two leaders Lehrman considered the defining statesmen of their respective centuries. President George W. Bush awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2005 for his contributions to American history and Lincoln scholarship.

The Abraham Lincoln Association recognized Lehrman as a Distinguished Director in 2013. We later honored him with the Logan Hay Medal, the Association’s highest recognition, for his contributions to our mission: to observe Lincoln’s birth, preserve the landmarks of his life, and encourage the collection and dissemination of authentic information about the man and his career. He received that recognition because he had earned it many times over.

Lehrman leaves behind his wife Louise, their children, and a community of scholars, teachers, and students whose work is richer for everything he built. The Abraham Lincoln Association mourns his passing and is grateful for his life.

The Board of Directors has adopted a formal resolution in his honor, which is available here.