Portrait of America: From Reconstruction to the present

Stephen B. Oates was a Civil War historian and biographer. He was born in Pampa, Texas on January 6, 1936. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving a bachelor's degree (1958), earned a Master of Arts degree (1960), and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (1969). From 1968 to 1997, he taught history and biography at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He wrote over 17 books which included, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (1970); The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion (1975); With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (1977); Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982); and A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War (1994). Dr. Oates was an adviser for the Ken Burn's Civil War series (1990). Stephen B. Oates died from pancreatic cancer on August 20, 2021 at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was 85.