What do you think?
Rate this book
Marching for Union: A Civil War Soldier's Walk across the Reconstruction South
In January 1868, a Union veteran named Gilbert Bates set out from his Wisconsin farm for Vicksburg, Mississippi, to prove a point and win a that he could safely walk across the post–Civil War South—alone, unarmed, with no money—while carrying the flag of the United States. The effort quickly riveted the attention of Americans everywhere, who weren’t yet sure the country could meaningfully reunite after their fratricidal war. Mark Twain believed Bates would be abused, attacked, possibly even scalped, during this time when the U.S. Army still occupied the South, resentment ran high, and groups like the KKK were spreading terror. Starting from Vicksburg, Bates walked 1,400 miles through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, through places where Federal soldiers shattered Confederate arms and Sherman’s men razed the land. He was never harmed—and almost always greeted with hospitality, generosity, and celebration. En route, Bates planned to sell photos of himself with the Stars and Stripes to raise money for widows and orphans and eventually called off the bet, which he would’ve lost on a even though he successfully traveled the South unharmed and reached Washington, DC, in the agreed-upon timeframe, he was not allowed to raise his flag above the U.S. Capitol and had to settle for the unfinished Washington Monument. This is a deeply researched book that taps into big- and small-town newspaper coverage that described Bates’s journey across the American South and his reception. It recounts the courage of a former soldier who believed strongly in the bonds of Union and Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory” and underscores the missed opportunities for a more perfect union.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published July 15, 2021
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 21, 2022
This book has a great concept: a few years after the Civil War, a Union Army veteran from Wisconsin comes up with a novel way to prove to his friends that Southerners have gotten over rebellion, that they've accepted the verdict of the war that the U.S. is now one nation "indivisible" and they are now ready to swear undying loyalty to the Union and its flag and even fight and die to protect them both. Quite a turnaround from just a few years previously.
It's a heartwarming story, to hear how Bates started from Vicksburg, Mississippi (where ex-Confederate ladies lovingly sewed the Stars and Stripes that Bates would carry on his trip) and walked, without any money, through six Southern states, generating goodwill all along the way from former opponents in arms. Though friends back in Wisconsin, along with many northern newspapers, predicted that Bates wouldn't make it out of the South alive carrying the Union flag, the only ones to actually oppose him on his walk were a pack of dogs near Milledgeville, Georgia. And, once Bates reached Washington, DC, Radical Republican leaders in Congress who wouldn't let him raise his flag over the dome of the US Capitol.
That seems mean, until you understand the context. Apparently, partisan politics were as polarized then as they are today. But back then, politics had a very good reason to be polarized.
Bishop tells us near the beginning that Sergeant Gilbert Henderson Bates was always a Democrat. That's fair warning that Bates, though he fought for Lincoln in the war, didn't support the president's approach to slavery and race. Instead, Bates shared the views of fellow "War Democrats."
Often confused with Copperheads who supported peace at any price, including Confederate independence, War Democrats actually wanted the Union restored, and many like General George McClellan were willing to fight for it. But Democrats who fought for Union didn't necessarily also fight for emancipation or Black citizenship, which were priorities of the opposing party, Lincoln's Republicans.
Fair enough. Most northerners, including some Republicans, shared Bates's views at the time. They wanted Union but they didn't want emancipation. If they had to accept the end of slavery to end the war and remove slavery as a cause of sectional conflict in the future, then most northerners were not ready for Black people to gain full rights of US citizens. And they certainly didn't support giving the vote to Black men, as Reconstruction authorities were forcing southern states to do, at the point of a bayonet, as white southerners liked to put it.
The book reflects the views of northern Democrats like Bates along with the ex-Confederates, who after the war returned to being southern Democrats, who greeted him so warmly in Mississippi or Georgia by presenting lots of primary source quotes, mostly from newspapers of the time, whether North, South or international. The problem is that the book lacks context for the political issues that it raises. And the few quotes on race and Black citizenship that Bishop shares might've stood on their own in 1868 but they haven't aged well since then.
For example: "I often thought that if my Radical friends at the North could have witnessed it as I saw it in Alabama, they would have lost all love for negro suffrage, and would condemn the men who enforce it on unwilling people against their will, and by military power. Such a loathsome mass of ignorance never before exercised political power in a civilized community. To my mind such a state of things is disgusting. I certainly never fought for any such object." (p. 40).
It's hard to read a quote like this in 2022 and retain much sympathy for the author.
Though I wanted to like Bates and rejoice in the ex-Confederates who put aside sectional animosity for patriotism and saluted Bates's flag, I found myself sympathizing instead more and more with the Radical Republicans, Black Southerners and Union Leaguers who Bishop presents as the villains of Bates's epic odyssey.
(Yes, somehow the Union League, an ordinary out-in-the-open political action group favoring the Republican Party and civil rights for freedmen in the South, becomes, in Bishop's telling, a secret terrorist group to promote Black domination over white Southerners. Unfortunately, Bishop cites as source the Abbeville Institute, a well known neo-Confederate propaganda shop that peddles Lost Cause myths about the Civil War. This is just one way that Bishop undercuts his own pretensions to write history and instead, winds up just retailing myth.)
The book is clearly a labor of love in finding quotes from hundreds of primary sources. Where did Bishop find all those newspaper clippings from the 1860s and 1870s? Impressive research. But Bishop as an author had a responsibility to provide more explanation and give his own perspective to make 150-year old quotes comprehensible to a modern reader.
The message of the book winds up just a repeat of the outdated call by Democrats and Copperheads after the war for the "Union as it was and the Constitution as it is." In other words, we don't need no stinkin' 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Let those friendly white Southerners, ex-Confederates who've shown that we can now trust them because they say they're now loyal to our flag, handle their own racial problems without interference from northern Radicals, carpetbaggers, or other outside agitators.
That message was wrong in 1868 as white southern leaders used terrorism, intimidation and election fraud to deprive Black men of the ballot and keep them out of politics for nearly a century to come. And today, a message that civil rights is wrong is just terrible.
This book is a good collection of primary source quotations, even many that criticize Bates. But it fails as history because it lacks context. That risks this book becoming neo-Confederate propaganda, which is ironic for a tale of a Union soldier who carried the Stars and Stripes.
It's a heartwarming story, to hear how Bates started from Vicksburg, Mississippi (where ex-Confederate ladies lovingly sewed the Stars and Stripes that Bates would carry on his trip) and walked, without any money, through six Southern states, generating goodwill all along the way from former opponents in arms. Though friends back in Wisconsin, along with many northern newspapers, predicted that Bates wouldn't make it out of the South alive carrying the Union flag, the only ones to actually oppose him on his walk were a pack of dogs near Milledgeville, Georgia. And, once Bates reached Washington, DC, Radical Republican leaders in Congress who wouldn't let him raise his flag over the dome of the US Capitol.
That seems mean, until you understand the context. Apparently, partisan politics were as polarized then as they are today. But back then, politics had a very good reason to be polarized.
Bishop tells us near the beginning that Sergeant Gilbert Henderson Bates was always a Democrat. That's fair warning that Bates, though he fought for Lincoln in the war, didn't support the president's approach to slavery and race. Instead, Bates shared the views of fellow "War Democrats."
Often confused with Copperheads who supported peace at any price, including Confederate independence, War Democrats actually wanted the Union restored, and many like General George McClellan were willing to fight for it. But Democrats who fought for Union didn't necessarily also fight for emancipation or Black citizenship, which were priorities of the opposing party, Lincoln's Republicans.
Fair enough. Most northerners, including some Republicans, shared Bates's views at the time. They wanted Union but they didn't want emancipation. If they had to accept the end of slavery to end the war and remove slavery as a cause of sectional conflict in the future, then most northerners were not ready for Black people to gain full rights of US citizens. And they certainly didn't support giving the vote to Black men, as Reconstruction authorities were forcing southern states to do, at the point of a bayonet, as white southerners liked to put it.
The book reflects the views of northern Democrats like Bates along with the ex-Confederates, who after the war returned to being southern Democrats, who greeted him so warmly in Mississippi or Georgia by presenting lots of primary source quotes, mostly from newspapers of the time, whether North, South or international. The problem is that the book lacks context for the political issues that it raises. And the few quotes on race and Black citizenship that Bishop shares might've stood on their own in 1868 but they haven't aged well since then.
For example: "I often thought that if my Radical friends at the North could have witnessed it as I saw it in Alabama, they would have lost all love for negro suffrage, and would condemn the men who enforce it on unwilling people against their will, and by military power. Such a loathsome mass of ignorance never before exercised political power in a civilized community. To my mind such a state of things is disgusting. I certainly never fought for any such object." (p. 40).
It's hard to read a quote like this in 2022 and retain much sympathy for the author.
Though I wanted to like Bates and rejoice in the ex-Confederates who put aside sectional animosity for patriotism and saluted Bates's flag, I found myself sympathizing instead more and more with the Radical Republicans, Black Southerners and Union Leaguers who Bishop presents as the villains of Bates's epic odyssey.
(Yes, somehow the Union League, an ordinary out-in-the-open political action group favoring the Republican Party and civil rights for freedmen in the South, becomes, in Bishop's telling, a secret terrorist group to promote Black domination over white Southerners. Unfortunately, Bishop cites as source the Abbeville Institute, a well known neo-Confederate propaganda shop that peddles Lost Cause myths about the Civil War. This is just one way that Bishop undercuts his own pretensions to write history and instead, winds up just retailing myth.)
The book is clearly a labor of love in finding quotes from hundreds of primary sources. Where did Bishop find all those newspaper clippings from the 1860s and 1870s? Impressive research. But Bishop as an author had a responsibility to provide more explanation and give his own perspective to make 150-year old quotes comprehensible to a modern reader.
The message of the book winds up just a repeat of the outdated call by Democrats and Copperheads after the war for the "Union as it was and the Constitution as it is." In other words, we don't need no stinkin' 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Let those friendly white Southerners, ex-Confederates who've shown that we can now trust them because they say they're now loyal to our flag, handle their own racial problems without interference from northern Radicals, carpetbaggers, or other outside agitators.
That message was wrong in 1868 as white southern leaders used terrorism, intimidation and election fraud to deprive Black men of the ballot and keep them out of politics for nearly a century to come. And today, a message that civil rights is wrong is just terrible.
This book is a good collection of primary source quotations, even many that criticize Bates. But it fails as history because it lacks context. That risks this book becoming neo-Confederate propaganda, which is ironic for a tale of a Union soldier who carried the Stars and Stripes.
July 25, 2025
An interesting story set in a period of US history that is poorly understood and given to much political smoke screens from both sides than is healthy for the nation.
A Union veteran on what was apparently a whim, bet an associate that he could walk from one end of the former Confederacy to the other carrying an American flag. He did this only 3 years after the most bloody period of American history and did so safely, in many regions of the formerly rebelling states to large crowds and general enthusiasm.
Both regions followed the story with varying degrees of incredibility, patriotic fervor, and as time went on questions on what actually was being accomplished by such effort. Despite violence in parts of the South against the US occupation forces and Reconstruction governments, one could judge overall Southerners did want reconciliation but at least somewhat on THEIR terms. The former Union soldier Gilbert Bates does repeatedly note the Southerners hated the occupation forces, military/Reconstruction governments and especially black suffrage.
A good point brought forward by period questioners and given a prominent position in this short work was given the huge amount of publicity, did that not affect Bates reception very much to the positive? In other words would Bates have received a very different greeting if no one had known his mission before hand. My personal opinion would be yes to some extent but given the tradition of hospitality much of N. America extended to travelers and the sheer exhaustion of the South, that he would still have traveled safely but just not to so much acclaim.
Anyway a decent read of the actual march short as that was. The rest of the book goes on to Mr Bates post march life and the media/public reactions post march. In the end though, this story would have been better served as a magazine article rather than a book I'm afraid.
A Union veteran on what was apparently a whim, bet an associate that he could walk from one end of the former Confederacy to the other carrying an American flag. He did this only 3 years after the most bloody period of American history and did so safely, in many regions of the formerly rebelling states to large crowds and general enthusiasm.
Both regions followed the story with varying degrees of incredibility, patriotic fervor, and as time went on questions on what actually was being accomplished by such effort. Despite violence in parts of the South against the US occupation forces and Reconstruction governments, one could judge overall Southerners did want reconciliation but at least somewhat on THEIR terms. The former Union soldier Gilbert Bates does repeatedly note the Southerners hated the occupation forces, military/Reconstruction governments and especially black suffrage.
A good point brought forward by period questioners and given a prominent position in this short work was given the huge amount of publicity, did that not affect Bates reception very much to the positive? In other words would Bates have received a very different greeting if no one had known his mission before hand. My personal opinion would be yes to some extent but given the tradition of hospitality much of N. America extended to travelers and the sheer exhaustion of the South, that he would still have traveled safely but just not to so much acclaim.
Anyway a decent read of the actual march short as that was. The rest of the book goes on to Mr Bates post march life and the media/public reactions post march. In the end though, this story would have been better served as a magazine article rather than a book I'm afraid.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews