Passing of Stephen B. Oates

[RJNorton]

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/

[LincolnMan]

One of the greats.

[David Lockmiller]

(08-28-2021 04:10 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copies, was studied in college courses and was hailed as the best single-volume biography of Lincoln until it was superseded by new studies by Donald in 1995 and Ronald C. White Jr.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.

[RJNorton]

(08-29-2021 02:21 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  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.

I was certainly aware of the controversy, but I did not know about this.

[David Lockmiller]

(08-30-2021 03:52 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-29-2021 02:21 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  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.

I was certainly aware of the controversy, but I did not know about this.

I also thought that was why the Washington Post obituary was so informative. There was another sentence therein that struck me as well:

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

This statement was made by Professor Oates in the year following the criticism by the English professor and literary critic at Illinois Wesleyan University of his 1952 biography of Lincoln.

[RJNorton]

https://artsfuse.org/235927/author-appre...n-b-oates/

[David Lockmiller]

(09-01-2021 09:33 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. He liked to talk in dialect so we had the sense we were sitting in an army camp with these people. You could almost hear cannons in the distance.

In one particular class, the war was over and it was clear that Lincoln’s assassination was going to be the last thing he taught us that day. Sure enough, as the president and Mrs. Lincoln were preparing to go to Ford’s Theatre, Oates told us, “Put down your pencils. You won’t forget this.” By the end of the lecture I was in tears. I literally couldn’t remove myself from my seat for several minutes. Only the noisy onslaught of students coming in for the next class roused me from my seat. As I walked outside, I felt a sense of shock as that rainy night in Washington, DC, morphed into a sunny day in Amherst, with cars instead of horses. No writer, historian, or filmmaker ever took me nearly as close to Lincoln, the man, as did Stephen B. Oates. I have always been indebted to him for that.

[David Lockmiller]

(09-01-2021 03:23 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 09:33 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
books.google.com › books

Wilbur Fisk Gordy · 1917

[LincolnMan]

I just looked in my book collection and found my copy signed by him. I don’t remember how I obtained it but it had to be years ago.