The Oates Case

The charges of plagiarism against Professor Stephen B. Oates were so sweeping that they had to be taken very seriously. When in 1977 the author was first asked by Civil War History to review Oates's With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, he concluded that it was an excellent one-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of information ethics 1994-04, Vol.3 (1), p.76
Main Author: Trefousse, Hans L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biographies
Dictionaries
Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)
Plagiarism
Race relations
War
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Summary:The charges of plagiarism against Professor Stephen B. Oates were so sweeping that they had to be taken very seriously. When in 1977 the author was first asked by Civil War History to review Oates's With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, he concluded that it was an excellent one-volume biography which deserves to stand beside Benjamin Thomas' as a standard and modern treatment of the Great Emancipator. Nothing that has happened since, none of the charges brought against the author, has caused him to change his mind. Plagiarism as defined in Webster's New World Dictionary is the act of plagiarizing, which in turn is to take and pass off as one's own. The two books in question, however, are completely different. `While Oates presents the Civil War President as a great statesman attuned to pressing problems of race relations and emancipation, Thomas is more interested in Lincoln as the savior of democracy.
ISSN:1061-9321
1941-2894