William Brimage Bate, Civil War Veteran, Sumner Co., TN
Brig. Gen. William Brimage Bate 7 Oct 1826---9 Mar 1905
"...these dead shall not have died in vain."
Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Edwin L. Ferguson speaks of the devotion that Bate's men had for their indefatigable leader. He writes, "It would not be fitting to omit mentioning the part that William Brimage Bate of Castalian Springs, Sumner County, had in being the main figure in raising the Second Tennessee Infantry. There were two Second Tennessee Infantry Regiments raised but owing to the fact that the regiment raised by Colonel Bate was the second recognized by the Confederate Government it became officially the Second Tennessee. The other was raised in Memphis by J. Knox Walker.
Colonel Bate bestowed upon the regiment the name "Walker Legion" in honor of L. P. Walker, Confederate Secretary of War.
General Bate served in the Mexican War, then studied law at Cumberland University at Lebanon. When the Civil War began, General Bate enlisted as a private in a company being raised at Gallatin, became its Captain and later was elected Colonel of the regiment. When the one year's term of enlistment was about to expire, so great was the influence of Colonel Bate that the entire regiment re-enlisted for three years or the duration. Not one man refused. After serving in Virginia for a time, Colonel Bate was given a choice of the army in which to continue service. Naturally he selected the Army of Tennessee. When the transfer was made Colonel Bate gave the entire regiment a sixty days furlough. Before this expired, the battle of Shiloh being imminent, the regiment voluntarily hastened to report. At Shiloh, Colonel Bate was severely wounded but continued to lead and cheer on his men until loss of blood caused him to drop his bridle reins then his horse was shot from under him.
The surgeons decided that his only chance for recovery was amputation of his badly shattered leg. He over-ruled the decision of his surgeons knowing that with only one leg he would not be able to continue his service to his country. He returned to the army on crutches as a Brigadier General. [His wounds were so bad that Ferguson states the following elsewhere in his book: Wounded severely at Shiloh, April 6, 1862. Both bones in left leg broken and arteries severed. Doctors said his leg must be amputated. He refused and kept his pistol under his pillow to prevent its being done.]
At Shiloh, he had a brother, brother-in-law, and a cousin killed and another cousin wounded. Five members of one family in one battle, I wonder how many families can equal that record.
General Bate was afterwards twice wounded while still so crippled from his first wound that he had to be helped to mount his horse. He had three horses killed under him at Chickamauga. At Bentonville, North Carolina when the surrender came he dismounted from his horse, hobbled on his crutches to the remnant of his old 2nd Tennessee to surrender with them.
What else could have been expected for he was born in sight of the location of Old Bledsoe's Station, the scene of so many encounters between our early settlers and the Indians. In sight of the sycamore tree in which lived one summer, Thomas Sharp Spencer, who cultivated the first corn ever grown by a white man in Sumner County. With this background it was but a natural course of events.
While this is not a history of "the greats" of the Civil War...I would like to include two true stories concerning Col. Bate.
Col. Bate had a younger brother, Capt. Humphrey Bate, to whom he was very much attached. During a lull in the fighting at Shiloh the two brothers met and while they were conversing the colonel asked for a light for his cigar from the cigar which his brother was smoking, and he was in the act of lighting the cigar, Capt. Humphrey Bate received a mortal wound from the enemy and died in a few hours. Col. Bate was often seen with cigars in his mouth afterwards, but never lighted one as long as he lived.
At the battle of Chickamauga, Gen. Bate's command was waiting orders while under a heavy artillery fire from the enemy. Major John C. Thompson of Gen. Stewart's staff brought the order and as he reached the General he raised his hand in salute and began delivering the order, when a cannon ball passed through Gen. Bate's horse and he and the horse went to the ground together. Gen. Bate struggled to his feet with the aid of his crutch which he was still using as a result of the wound received at Shiloh and found the cool and daring Thompson still standing at salute, he then finished delivering the order, completing the partly finished sentence that was so rudely interrupted by the cannon ball, which had, or took, the right of way regardless of courtesy."---p.f 18-19
William Brimage Bate. CSA b. Bledsoe's Lick, TN, 7 Oct 1826. Little formal education was open to Bate in the rural area in which he was bon. He left home at 16 to be a clerk on the steamboat Saladier and in turn became a Mexican War officer, a journalist, a lawschool graduate and attorney, the attorney general for the Nashville district, a state legislator, and a presidential elector for John Breckinridge in 1860.
Bate had enlisted in the Mexican War as a private and come out a lieutenant. At the start of the Civil War he again enlisted as a private and was soon elected colonel of the 2d Tennessee Infantry, which he led at Shiloh, receiving a leg wound that kept him out of action for several months.
On 3 Oct. 1862 he was commissioned brigadier general and fought in all the Army of Tennessee's campaigns from Tullahoma to Chattanooga. During his assignment to Wartrace, TN, state politicians offered to nominate him governor, but he declined, saying, "I would feel dishonored in this hour of trial to quit the field". Voters remembered his commitment to duty favorably years later when he returned to his political career.
Bate was promoted major general to rank from 23 Feb 1864 at the end of operations in East Tennessee. He then fought at Dalton, GA, and in the battles for Atlanta, and joined Gen. John Bell Hood's Tennessee expedition for the Battles of Franklin and Nashville. At the end of the war he was surrendered with the Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. During his military career, Bate, an excellent soldier, was wounded 3 times and had 6 horses killed under him.
After the war he reestablished his law offices in Nashville and was twice elected governor, first in 1882. On the expiration of his last term in 1886, Tennesseans sent him to the U. S. Senate, where he held a seat until his death in Washington, D. C., 9 Mar 1905."---
Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War;
Patricia L. Faust, Editor;
Harper Perennial Publisher, 1991;
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