E. MERTON COULTER (1890–1981) was an American historian and writer of the South, American Civil War, and Reconstruction, publishing twenty-six books on the subjects. He was a founding member of the Southern Historical Association. For forty years, he was a professor at the University of Georgia, where he was chair of the Department of History for eighteen years; for fifty years, he was editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly.

KEITH HEBERT is an associate professor and public history program officer at Auburn University. He is the author of The Long Civil War in the North Georgia Mountains: Confederate Nationalism, Sectionalism, and White Supremacy in Bartow County, Georgia and Cornerstone of the Confederacy: Alexander H. Stephens and the Speech That Defined the Lost Cause.