Regina Akers is an archivist with the Operational Archives Branch of the Department of the Navy's Naval Historical Center. She also a Ph.D. candidate in history at Howard University, at work on a study of African American women in the U.S. armed forces in the era of the two world wars. Her publications include "Female Naval Reservists during World War II: An Historiographical Essay," Minerva 8 (Summer 1990): 55-61.

Adele Logan Alexander teaches United States and African American history at George Washington University. She has written two books: Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879 (1991), and Homelands and Waterways: The American Saga of the Bond Family, 1846-1926 (1999). The latter focuses on the lives of her great-grandfather, John Robert Bond, a Civil War sailor, and his descendants.

Charles C. Brewer is a former president of the African American Historical and Genealogical Society and has been researching the history of black sailors in the Civil War navy for nearly two decades. His publications include: "African American Sailors and the Unvexing of the Mississippi River," Prologue 30 (1998): 278-86.

Lt. Cmdr. Wesley A. Brown, U.S.N. (Ret.), graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949. Since retiring from the Navy in 1975, he worked for many years as a consultant on construction projects. More recently he has been active in a number of organizations, including service as a board member of the African American Revolutionary War Memorial.

William S. Dudley is director of the U.S. Department of the Navy's Naval Historical Center and a naval historian of wide-ranging interests. He has edited the two published volumes of The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History (1985, 1992). His other publications include Going South: U.S. Navy Officer Resignations and Dismissals on the Eve of the Civil War (1981).

Harold D. Langley is an emeritus curator of naval history at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History and an expert on the social history of the U.S. Navy. His many publications on naval history include Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1798-1862 (1967) and A History of Medicine in the Early U.S. Navy (1995).

Rebecca Livingston is an archivist at the National Archives who specializes in naval records. Her publications include "Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines of the Spanish-American War: The Legacy of U.S.S. Maine," Prologue 30 (1998): 62-72, and "Civil War Cat-and-Mouse Game: Researching Blockade-Running at the National Archives," Prologue 31 (1999): 178-89.

Christopher McKee is librarian of the college at Grinnell College and a specialist on the history of the early U.S. Navy. Among his numerous publications are Edward Preble: A Naval Biography (1972) and A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991). He is presently writing a history of the enlisted force of the U.S. Navy from 1800 to 1861.

John Peterson of the National Park Service's Information and Telecommunications Center is manager of the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.

Martha S. Putney is a historian who taught for many years at Morgan State University and at Howard University before retiring. Her publications include Black Sailors:African American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War (1987) and When a Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps During World War II (1994).

Mark A. Snell is director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd College and editor of the journal Civil War Regiments. He has edited Dancing Along the Dead Line: The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy (1996), and his study of Union Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin will be published by Fordham University Press in 2000.

At various times the advisory committee has also benefited from the advice and counsel of:

Herbert Aptheker, author of numerous works on U.S. history and African American history, including pioneering research on black soldiers and sailors in the Civil War.

W. Jeffrey Bolster, who teaches history at the University of New Hampshire and who authored the influential Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997)

Ira Dye, a specialist on the early history of the U.S. Navy, particularly its force of enlisted men

William B. Gould IV, a professor of law at Stanford University and the great-grandson of a Civil War sailor whose name he bears and whose diary he is editing for publication