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Holy cow! History — Gilbert’s star-spangled adventure

Portrait of U.S. Army Sgt. Gilbert Bates, taken by an unknown photographer between 1861 and 1865
Portrait of U.S. Army Sgt. Gilbert Bates, taken by an unknown photographer between 1861 and 1865
Public domain image/McLean County Museum of History via Wikimedia Commons
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Gilbert Bates was getting madder by the minute. The 31-year-old farmer was chewing the fat with a neighbor in November 1867. The man was a Radical Republican (like being a “woke” progressive today), and Democrat Bates was growing hot around the collar.

The tragedy that was the Civil War had been over for barely two years, and its wounds were still fresh. But Bates, a Union veteran of the conflict, and his militant neighbor saw things differently.

“Sergeant,” the man insisted, “the Southerners are rebels yet. They are worse now than they were during the war. They hate the Union flag. No man dare show that flag anywhere in the South except in the presence of our soldiers.”

Bates didn’t buy it. “You are mistaken. I can carry that flag myself from the Mississippi River all over the rebel states, alone and unarmed, too.”

The disagreement ended. But the more he mulled it over, the more convinced Bates grew that he was right. And so, he bet his neighbor he could do the very thing the man had said couldn’t be done.

On a cold day in January 1868, in Albion, Wisconsin, he kissed his wife and two small daughters goodbye and headed south. Bates was going to demonstrate that it was perfectly safe for a Northerner to walk across the former Confederacy with Old Glory in one hand and without a penny in his pocket. He would make ends meet by selling pictures of himself for a quarter apiece (about $10 today) along the way. The proceeds would also benefit widows and orphans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Folks said it was a foolhardy mission. Reconstruction was in full swing, and the region was occupied by Federal soldiers, just like a conquered foreign country. The infant Ku Klux Klan was rearing its ugly head there, too. How would it cotton to the show of reconciliation?

Bates shrugged off those concerns and headed to his starting point of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the site of a bloody 47-day siege with a large national cemetery and physical scars all around as reminders. Though the guns were silent, the war was far from forgotten there.

The trip made national news from the start and was widely reported. The era’s great cynic, humorist Mark Twain, was skeptical. “This fellow will get more black eyes down there among those unreconstructed rebels than he can ever carry along with him without breaking his back. I expect to see him coming into Washington some day on one leg and with one eye out and an arm gone. Those fellows down there have no sentiment in them. They won’t buy his picture. They will be more likely to take his scalp.”

Twain was wildly wrong.

Bates was warmly welcomed by Vicksburg’s mayor. Locals not only gave him a blue uniform to wear, but they even provided him with a flag. And he was enthusiastically escorted out of town on the first leg of his long journey.

The story was the same everywhere he went. People took Bates into their homes for the night and sent him on his way with a hot meal. Step by step, he made his way across Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia, the telegraph providing updates to eager newspapers at each stop. Oftentimes, he passed through areas still devastated by Gen. William T. Sherman a few years earlier. And never once was there a threat or harsh word.

Finally, three months and 1,400 miles later, Bates carried the flag into Washington, D.C. His only disappointment came when the trip was over. Though his flag had flown over Virginia’s state capitol in Richmond (which had also served as the meeting place of the Confederate Congress) and other prominent sites, federal officials wouldn’t allow him to fly it over the U.S. Capitol.

Bates had won the bet. And it wasn’t the last one, either.

In 1872, he traveled to the United Kingdom on a similar wager, again carrying the U.S. flag across Britain and again being warmly received by locals there. (Thus, winning the second bet, too.)

Bates enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame. He wrote a booklet about his experiences, lectured, and even appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

He was 81 when he passed away in 1917, just eight weeks before the U.S. entered World War I. A veteran of the blue who held no ill will for those who had worn the gray, and who bore him no ill will in return.

Americans today could learn a lot from Bates’ mission of unity.

Editor’s note: J. Mark Powell is a novelist, former TV journalist and diehard history buff. Have a historical mystery that needs solving? A forgotten moment worth remembering? Send it to him at HolyCow@insidesources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Gilbert Bates, Civil War, veteran, Mark Twain, Vicksburg, rebels, flag, unity

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