Stephen B. Oates, a Civil War historian and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and William Faulkner, among others, died on August 20 at age 85, the New York Times reported. His best-known works consisted of what he called the Civil War quartet, studies of John Brown, Nat Turner, Lincoln and Dr. King, who, he wrote, "humanize the monstrous moral paradox of slavery and racial oppression in a land based on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.... All 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. And all perished, too, in the conflicts and hostilities that surrounded the quest for equality in their country."
Oates also wrote a biography of Clara Barton, A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War, and several books in the first person from the perspective of historical figures, The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861 and The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865. His son, Greg Oates, said the first-person books were inspired by Hal Holbrook's and Julie Harris's impersonations of Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, respectively. Oates's Civil War quartet, including The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion, is available from Harper Perennial.