His first wife of 45 years Rose Bonar died in 1983, and in 1984 he married Marcia Ewing, who co-wrote a biography of dancer Loie Fuller with him.

Current wrote at least half of the fourth volume Lincoln the President: Midstream to the Last Full Measure (1955), which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize from Columbia University, establishing his reputation.

After Gore Vidal published his 1984 novel Lincoln, Current began a running feud in the pages of The New York Review of Books, accusing Vidal of willfully distorting the historical record, misrepresenting Lincoln's views, and "utter ignorance" of the linguistic differences between British English and American English because he spelled "jewelry" and "practice" in the British way.

[7][1] In response, Vidal explained that he used what was then-common agreed-upon American speech, and as a writer of novels was obliged to dramatize his story through someone's consciousness.

Vidal asserted that Current never read his book in whole, that he was fault-finding, and that he could not separate a biography from a novel, "getting all tangled up in misread or misunderstood trivia".

The real reason for Current's criticism, Vidal maintained, was his portrayal of Lincoln as wanting to colonize the liberated slaves in Liberia, which would go against the political correctness of the 1980s.