Passing of Stephen B. Oates

[David Lockmiller]

(08-28-2021 05:10 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thank you to forum member Tom Lapsley for sending this sad news.

Well-known Civil War author and Lincoln biographer Stephen B. Oates has passed away.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertain...608206001/

Stephen B. Oates Obituary in the Washington Post – August 28, 2021

Dr. Oates was a prolific writer whose books were, for many years, considered models of historical scholarship presented in an accessible style that made them popular with ordinary readers. He published more than 15 books, including a two-volume textbook of American history that was widely used in classrooms, and he was a featured expert in filmmaker Ken Burns’s 1990 PBS series on the Civil War.

After writing several books about his native Texas, Dr. Oates turned his focus to biography, believing it could have the same dramatic force and literary grace as fiction.

“Biography appealed to me as the form in which I wanted to write about the past because the best biography — pure biography — was a storytelling art that brought people alive again.”

Dr. Oates turned to Lincoln, publishing “With Malice Toward None” in 1977. Scholars praised the book for its treatment of Lincoln’s complex inner life and his oft-overlooked abilities as a strong chief executive and military strategist. Harvard historian David Herbert Donald, in his review for the Times, called Dr. Oates’s book “full, fair and accurate” and “certainly the most objective biography of Lincoln ever written.”

“With Malice Toward None” sold more than 100,000 copies, was studied in college courses and was hailed as the best single-volume biography of Lincoln until it was superseded by new studies by Donald in 1995 and Ronald C. White Jr. in 2009.

In 1990, Robert Bray, an English professor and literary critic at Illinois Wesleyan University, delivered a paper at a conference in which he cited similarities between passages in “With Malice Toward None” and a 1952 biography of Lincoln by Benjamin Thomas.

Dr. Oates vigorously disputed the charges, saying the resemblances were incidental and the result of a common body of knowledge about Lincoln. He demanded apologies from his detractors, hired a law firm and public relations agency, and threatened to sue.

“I was shattered, blindsided, lying on the floor in public humiliation,” he said in 1991. “Suddenly, I stood accused.”

Scholars joined the fray, with some accusing Dr. Oates of outright plagiarism, others arguing that he had been unfairly maligned.

The American Historical Association conducted a year-long investigation, which Dr. Oates called a “kangaroo court,” before concluding in 1992 that he had used language from other sources without proper attribution. He was not charged with plagiarism.

Nonetheless, Frank J. Williams, a past president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and a former chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, said in an interview, “I still recommend ‘With Malice Toward None’ to my students at the Naval War College as one of the five best biographies of Lincoln.”

After teaching at colleges in Texas, he joined the University of Massachusetts faculty in 1968. His classes on biography, the Civil War and the era of John F. Kennedy were among the most popular on campus, attracting as many as 500 students a semester. Dr. Oates retired from teaching in 1997.

[Dr. Oates] was deeply affected by the charges of plagiarism and said his health and public reputation were irreparably damaged. Once a prominent figure at conferences and in the media, he retreated from public life. Old friends said they had not heard from him in more than two decades.