historian university professor
He earned his Bachelor in American Studies and Doctor of Philosophy in history at Yale University in 1966 and 1973.
In 1971–1972 Neely was a visiting instructor at Iowa State University. In 1972 he was named director of the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a position he held for 20 years. In 1992 Doctor Neely was named the John Francis Bannon Professor of History and American Studies at Saint Louis University.
In 1998 he was named the McCabe Greer Professor of Civil War History at Pennsylvania State University.
In March 1991 he published an article in the magazine Civil War History entitled "Was the Civil War a Total War?", which is considered one of the top three most influential articles on the war written in the last half of the 20th Century.
1981 � The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia1984 � (with Gabor S Boritt and Harold Holzer) The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print1985 � (with Gabor S Boritt and Harold Holzer) Changing The Lincoln Image1986 � (with R Gerald McMurtry) The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln1987 � (with Boritt and Holzer) The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause1990 � (with Holzer) The Lincoln Family Album1991 � The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (winner of the Pulitzer and Wiley prizes mentioned above)1993 � (with Holzer) Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in America1993 � The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of American (for which he received the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award from the National Jesuit Honor Society)1999 � Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism2000 � (with Holzer) The Union Image: Popular Prints in the Civil War North2002 � The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North2005 � The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era2007 � The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction2011 � Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (U of North Carolina Press). 408 covers the U.S. and the Confederate constitutions and their role in the conflict.