Gabor S. Boritt (born 1940) is a Hungarian‑American historian specializing in the American Civil War and the life of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Budapest, Boritt emigrated to the United States after the 1956 Hungarian uprising and pursued his higher education at the University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in history.
Boritt’s academic career includes positions at several institutions, most notably the University of Louisville, where he served as a professor of history and founded the Civil War Institute in 1999. He also held the role of Director of the Abraham Lincoln Center at the University of Louisville, overseeing collections related to Lincoln and the Civil War.
His scholarly contributions focus on political, military, and social aspects of the Civil War era. Boritt has authored and edited numerous books and articles, including Lincoln and the Civil War (1990) and The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Narrative (2004). He has been involved in curating major exhibitions on Lincoln, such as the national traveling exhibit “Lincoln: The Man Who Saved the Union,” and has contributed to public history programming and educational initiatives related to the Civil War.
In recognition of his work, Boritt has received several honors, among them the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary and the Abraham Lincoln Award from the Lincoln Forum. He continues to lecture, write, and consult on Civil War and Lincoln scholarship, and remains a prominent figure in both academic and public history circles.