Passing of Stephen B. Oates

[David Lockmiller]

(09-01-2021 04:23 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 10:33 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  https://artsfuse.org/235927/author-appre...n-b-oates/

The author was a former student.

I have a very strong memory of Oates lecturing. The Civil War course was taught in a large lecture hall with no windows; he always said he was glad for that because he wanted us to forget that we were in 20th-century Amherst and instead feel as though we were on a 19th-century battlefield. Delivered from the stage, his lectures were more like absolutely riveting one-man shows. Yet, like in his books, he always let the characters tell their own stories.

I decided to read some of Professor Stephen B. Oates book “With Malice Toward None – The Life of Abraham Lincoln,” as a result of what I have read about the man recently. I was surprised and pleased by what I read. I don’t know why I had not read much of the book; I have had the book a long time.

I started with the beginning of the Civil War – the Fort Sumter situation. Professor Oates describes the attempted takeover of the government by Secretary Seward and President Lincoln’s response.

The end of Secretary Seward’s document, as described by Professor Oates, reads: “[W]hatever policy was chosen, it must be pursued energetically either by the President or by “some member of his Cabinet” –in other words, Seward himself. Then all debate must stop. Everybody in the administration must agree with the policy and execute it dutifully.

Obviously Lincoln was appalled, for the Secretary of State was not only upbraiding his own boss, but offering to take over the administration. Lincoln wrote Seward a blunt reply, but evidently chose not to rebuke him in writing and never sent it. Instead he apparently confronted Seward in private, rejected his advice, and disagreed that the administration had no policy. On the contrary, Lincoln said, he was doing what he vowed to do in his inaugural address – to hold Sumter and Pickens. Moreover, Seward had read the address and given it his distinct approval. On the matter of who should carry out “whatever policy we adopt,” Lincoln declared that “I must do it.” Because Lincoln was President and nobody else. Finally, he had no intention of squelching Cabinet debate. “I wish,” he asserted, “and suppose I am entitled to have the advice of all the cabinet.”

In looking up footnote references to this narrative, I noticed that there was an amazing number of footnotes from a wide array of sources in his work. And, yet, all this was weaved together in a sensible and concise narrative. Pretty amazing, in my opinion. It is no surprise to me that Professor Oates was very dismayed and deeply offended by the charges of plagiarism that had been made against him.


[Seward] quickly and completely altered his judgment is shown in a letter written two months later to his wife , in which he declared : “ Executive force and vigor are rare qualities . The President is the best of us ...

Abraham Lincoln - Page 150
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Wilbur Fisk Gordy · 1917