Anne Sarah Rubin is a professor of history and the associate director of the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory and the award-winning A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868.

Stephen Murphy is a retired management consultant for small businesses. His wife, Chris, is the great-great-granddaughter of George W. Quimby and helped bring Quimby's unpublished manuscript to the attention of the scholarly community. They live in Seattle, Washington.