Gabor Boritt
Gabor Boritt, a Hungarian-born American historian, reached New York with exactly one dollar in his pocket. He judged it the dirtiest city he had ever seen. He was a teenager, a refugee, and far from anyone who knew him. Behind him lay a childhood shaped by war, occupation and loss. Ahead lay a long career devoted to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. How does a boy from a Budapest orphanage become one of the most honored Lincoln scholars in the country? What did a stranger to the English language find in a president's words? And what did he build with the life he rescued?
Born Róth-Szappanos Gábor on the 26th of January 1940, he came into a Jewish family in Budapest just as World War II was beginning. The Nazis forced the family into a single room in a hospital at the edge of the ghetto. The small boy played on floors that were stained with blood.
His father helped lead resistance against the Nazis. His grandfather's family, living in the countryside, was deported and murdered at Auschwitz.
When the war ended, Budapest lay in ruins and Hungary had fallen under Stalin's control. Peace did not bring safety. Boritt's mother died. His father and his brother were both imprisoned, and Gabor was sent to an orphanage.
By the autumn of 1956 he was sixteen and had lost nearly every anchor a child can have. That autumn he would walk straight into a revolution.
"We thought it was a whole new world. Anything was possible." That is how Boritt remembered the first euphoric days of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which he joined at sixteen.
The hope lasted only days. Then 3,000 Soviet tanks crushed the uprising. Boritt and his sister Judith set out for the Austrian border.
They hiked through wooded hills in the dark. At the end of the trees they found a no man's land, watched by men in towers who carried machine guns. Freedom lay on the far side. The two of them began to run.
What followed was a stay of several months in a refugee camp in Austria, before the long journey to America.
Advised to "go west," Boritt traveled from New York to South Dakota. Along the way he changed his surname to Boritt, and he kept a piece of the old one, Szappanos, as his middle name.
He wanted to learn English, so he picked up a free booklet of Abraham Lincoln's writings. He was captivated by two things: how masterfully Lincoln used the language, and how far Lincoln had risen from poverty to the presidency. The booklet pulled him into the study of American history.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yankton College in 1962 and a master's degree from the University of South Dakota in 1963. A Ph.D. from Boston University followed in 1968.
Feeling an obligation as an immigrant, he went to Vietnam, where he taught soldiers about the American Civil War. A decade later he would turn his attention to the economics of Lincoln's world.
In 1978 Boritt published Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, his first book. He had decided to approach Lincoln through economics, an angle few had taken. At the center of the book he placed an idea he called "the right to rise."
The 1970s produced only a handful of books on Lincoln, and this was one of them. In 1995, Civil War Times surveyed leading experts and asked for the most important books ever written about Lincoln. Boritt's first book made their list of ten.
The idea suited its author. A man who had climbed out of an orphanage was writing about a president who had climbed out of poverty.
That first book was only the start of a long shelf.
Sixteen books about Lincoln or the Civil War carried Boritt's name as author, co-author or editor. Among the co-authored works were Changing the Lincoln Image, published in 1985 with Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely Jr. The same trio produced The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print in 2005.
Most of the rest were collections he edited. The Historian's Lincoln appeared in 1988, and Why the Confederacy Lost in 1992. Lincoln's Generals followed in 1995, and Jefferson Davis's Generals in 1999. In 1995 he also edited War Comes Again, which compared the Civil War with World War II.
In 2006 came The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech Nobody Knows. It reached the cover of U.S. News & World Report, and The New York Times called it "fascinating."
He kept editing late in life. Slavery, Resistance, Freedom appeared in 2009, edited with Scott Hancock. In 2014 he compiled Lincoln's own words for The Will of God Prevails, a book of meditations on God and the Gettysburg Address.
In 1981, after teaching at the University of Michigan, Boritt came to Gettysburg College. There he founded the Civil War Institute. The college created a chair for him, the first fully funded chair for the study of the Civil War in the nation.
He helped create the Lincoln Prize, which carries $50,000 and is widely considered the most coveted award for the study of American history. He also helped create the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which works to improve how history is taught in schools.
His service reached beyond the campus. He sat on the board of the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation. Congress appointed him to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
In September 2008, the battlefield itself became his classroom for a very particular group of visitors.
That September 2008 tour took Boritt across the Gettysburg battlefield with President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. Their group included White House Advisor Karl Rove, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
On the 17th of November 2008, Bush awarded him the National Humanities Medal. The citation praised "a distinguished career of scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era." It added that "His life's work and his life's story stand as testaments to our nation's precious legacy of liberty."
Other honors came before and after. The Lincoln Forum gave him its Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement in 1996. In 2009 the governor of Illinois made him a Bicentennial Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and gave him the Order of Lincoln, the state's highest honor.
His story also reached the screen in Budapest to Gettysburg, a feature-length documentary from 2007 directed by his son Jake Boritt. In 2009 Gabor Boritt retired, though he stayed in a house that sat at the edge of the battlefield.
Boritt and his wife Liz lived in an 18th-century farmhouse on the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield. They restored it with their own hands. The house had served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and later as a Confederate hospital.
They raised three sons. Beowulf Boritt became a set designer in New York City, and he is also known as a streaming video ad star. Jake Boritt became a filmmaker who lives in Harlem. Daniel Boritt became a biologist who specializes in birds and lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Gabor Boritt died in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on the 2nd of February 2026, at the age of 86. The cause was complications of dementia.
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Common questions
Who was Gabor Boritt?
Gabor Boritt was a Hungarian-born American historian who lived from the 26th of January 1940 to the 2nd of February 2026. He was the Robert Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
How did Gabor Boritt escape Hungary?
Gabor Boritt left Hungary after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which he joined at sixteen. When 3,000 Soviet tanks crushed the uprising, he and his sister Judith hiked through wooded hills at night and ran across the Austrian border.
Why did Gabor Boritt study Abraham Lincoln?
Gabor Boritt began with a free booklet of Abraham Lincoln's writings that he picked up to learn English. He was captivated by Lincoln's mastery of the language and his rise from poverty to the presidency.
What was Gabor Boritt's first book about Lincoln?
Gabor Boritt's first book was Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, published in 1978. It placed the idea Boritt called "the right to rise" at the center of Lincoln's outlook, and a 1995 survey by Civil War Times listed it among the 10 most important books about Lincoln.
What awards did Gabor Boritt receive?
Gabor Boritt received the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush on the 17th of November 2008. He also received the Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement from The Lincoln Forum in 1996 and the Order of Lincoln from the governor of Illinois in 2009.
What institutions did Gabor Boritt help create at Gettysburg?
Gabor Boritt founded the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College after arriving in 1981. He also helped create the $50,000 Lincoln Prize and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which focuses on improving how history is taught in schools.
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14 references cited across the entry
- 5Plowing Hallowed Ground: The Address, Word by Word4 December 2006
- 8Budapest to Gettysburg1 January 2000
- 9Gabor Boritt Looks at His Own PastLevin — 16 November 2009
- 12Gabor Boritt, Refugee Who Became Expert on Lincoln, Dies at 86Clay Risen — The New York Times — February 10, 2026
- 13NewsObituary: Gabor Boritt, Immigrant, Refugee-Turned-Renowned Scholar of Lincoln and American Civil War History, Dies at 86Gettysburg Connection — 3 February 2026
- 14BookLincoln and the Economics of the American DreamGabor S. Boritt — University of Illinois Press — 1 January 1994