Stephen B. Oates

Stephen Baery Oates (January 5, 1936 – August 20, 2021) was an American historian. He was a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He specialized in the American Civil War era and authored numerous books.

Early life and education Stephen Baery Oates was born in Pampa, Texas, on January 5, 1936. He obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958. He remained at that institution, receiving a Master of Arts two years later. He taught at Texas for four years before being awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in 1969.

Career Oates began teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1968. He was a professor of history and the Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography there until 1997. He also wrote 20 books during his career. Many were biographies of 19th-century American historical figures. In the biographies of John Brown, Nat Turner, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., Oates examined the lives of men committed to the struggle for equality. He wrote that "ll four were driven, visionary men, all were caught up in the issues of slavery and race, and all devised their own solutions to those inflammable problems nd all perished, too, in the conflicts and hostilities that surrounded the quest for equality in this country." He was ultimately cleared by the University of Massachusetts and the American Historical Association. In 2002, Lincoln biographer Michael Burlingame restated the charge that Oates committed plagiarism in his Lincoln biography.

Oates was a commentator in the 1990 Ken Burns PBS miniseries, The Civil War. Of Oates, Burns said: “Stephen was an extremely valuable advisor to our Civil War series and an informed and passionate participant. He knew the bottom-up story as well as the top-down one, but more importantly, he knew and appreciated the huge stakes for the US and indeed the world in a Union victory." A decade later, Oates received the 1993 Nevins-Freeman Award of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for his historical work on the American Civil War.

Personal life Oates was married to Helen (Perry) Oates. They divorced, and she died in 2019. Together, they had two children. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 1970, Visions of Glory: Texans on the Southwestern Frontier, 1970, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion, 1975, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1977, Our Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and the Civil War Era, 1979, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1982, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind The Myths, 1984, Harper Perennial, (paperback reprint 2011, ) "The Ravages of War" (essay) in Touched by Fire: A Photographic Portrait of the Civil War (1985) Biography as High Adventure: Life-Writers Speak on Their Art, 1986, William Faulkner: The Man and the Artist, 1987, Biography as History, 1990, A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War, 1994, Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820–1861, 1997, Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861–1865, 1998, Portrait of America: From Before Columbus to the End of Reconstruction (2 vols., 7th edition), 1999,