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by MARK POWELL
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So, there I was running errands last Friday afternoon. Turning on to Highway 378 in rural Lexington County, I was met by a startling sight. Cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the road as far as the eye could see in each direction. Dozens, possibly hundreds of people stood beside them. Traffic crept at a snail’s pace. I’d never seen anything like it out in the country before. Rolling down my car window, I asked a lady sitting in a folding stadium chair what was going on.
“The monks are coming!” she replied.
I instantly knew what she meant. I’d heard about the Buddhist monks who are currently walking from Houston, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to promote peace and understanding.
And sure enough, the string of celebrated brown-robed holy men came into sight, smiling and waving at those who smiled and waved at them. They quickly passed on, and it was over in a flash.
Their trek reminded me of a similar hike another man with a message had taken 158 Januarys ago, one which also made national headlines and passed through South Carolina. Here’s what happened…
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Gilbert Bates was a 31-year-old farmer and a Union veteran of the recent Civil War. One day in November 1867, he had a heated argument with a neighbor who was a Radical Republican (that era’s version of a woke progressive).
“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 more Bates mulled it over, the more convinced he grew that he was right. So, he bet his neighbor that he could do the very thing the man had said couldn’t be done.
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On a cold January day in 1868, in Albion, Wisconsin, Bates kissed his wife and two small daughters goodbye and headed south. He was going to demonstrate that it was perfectly safe for a Northerner to walk across the former Confederacy with the Stars and Stripes 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, 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.
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The trip was national news from the start. 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,” Twain wrote. “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 U.S. flag to tote. 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, the telegraph providing updates to eager newspapers at each town. Never once was there a threat or harsh word.
On March 16, he crossed the Savannah River at Hamburg (near modern North Augusta) and was greeted by warm handshakes from South Carolinians.
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RELATED | THE DAY AMERICA STOOD IN AWE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
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He reached Columbia, S.C. two days later, a city largely still in ashes after Gen. William T. Sherman’s own devastating visit three years earlier. Bates was welcomed by the mayor and leading citizens and treated like a celebrity.
The next stop was Winnsboro, where a group of Confederate veterans met him and escorted him into town. He also visited a dying Confederate officer there before starting for Rock Hill, where he was accompanied by another ex-Confederate honor guard and given yet another warm welcome.
Finally, after three months and 1,400 miles, Bates carried Old Glory 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 U.K. on a similar wager, again carrying the U.S. flag across Britain and again being warmly received by locals there. (Thus, winning the second wager.)
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, who bore him no ill will in return.
Americans today could learn a lot from Bates’ mission of unity.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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1 comment
Would love to forever get updated great blog! .