Sergeant Gilbert Bates, 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery, Post-Civil War CDV of the "Pedestrian Patriot" 

E. & H.T. Anthony CDV of Sergeant Bates displaying his famous American flag.

Gilbert H. Bates (1836-1917) was a Sergeant in the First Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Regiment during the Civil War and returned to his farm in Dane County afterward.  After talking with a neighbor who claimed Southerners had more hatred for the Union flag after the war than during, Bates bet him that he could walk all the way across the South carrying the flag, unarmed and without a cent in his pocket.  Starting in Vicksburg, where he was given a reception by the mayor, Bates made the 1400 mile march to Washington unscathed and with great notoriety, his travels being reported in newspapers across the country.  He proved not only his neighbor wrong, but also a young Mark Twain, who had written "...this fellow will get more black eyes down there among them unreconstructed rebels than he can ever carry along with him without breaking his back." 

Sergeant Bates made a similar bet in 1872 that he could walk the length of England in the same manner without being insulted.  He won again, and returned to America to become a fixture on the lecture circuit, giving rousing patriotic speeches and displaying his famous flag.  In 1886 he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as -- of course -- their standard bearer. 

Provenance: William Gladstone Collection of Early Photography & African Americana

Trimmed at top and bottom edges.  Light soiling.