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Narrator
The rest of the story. Sergeant Gilbert H. Bates had served proudly in the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery. When the shooting stopped, he had returned home to Edgerton. And now, more than two years after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the civil War was still happening in the Yankee soldier's heart never came to a proper conclusion. Gil Bates complained to his old war buddies around the stove at the Edgerton general store. There ought to be, he insisted, a final demonstration of some sort, maybe a triumphal March to Washington, D.C. to show him once and for all, a march to the nation's capital. Well, that's over a thousand miles, one of the veterans declared. And just who, another asked, is going to do all of this marching? Sergeant Gilbert H. Bates of the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery replied, I am all by myself. Well, the remarkable solitary trek began in the Dead of Winter, 1-18-68. With him, Sergeant Bates took an unfurled Union flag and the clothing on his back, and nothing more. And still, because word of his intentions preceded him, every town through which he passed hailed him as a hero. Councilmen rode out to meet him on horseback. Mayors held dinners in his honor. Brass bands serenaded him. Prominent citizens squabbled over who would host him during the stay. In one town, as a gentle snow began to fall, an old man, a total stranger, took off his over overcoat and placed it on Gill's shoulders. At railroad crossings, trains stopped and passengers poured out to meet the feller who was marching to Washington. And everywhere, citizens saluted. Sergeant Bates took his hand till his fingers went numb. Many offered him money for the remainder of his journey, but always he refused. No, he said, this was a mission of honor. Gill said, this was not an enterprise, a mission of honor. And the folks understood that. As he drew nearer the nation's capital, the cheering crowds grew and began demanding speeches from the lone pilgrim. Gill spoke to them sometimes, but he had a goal. Washington by the fourth of July. So he kept marching, his Union flag unfurled before him, and indeed, long before Independence day, he arrived at his destination. And thus, for one tired Yankee soldier, the war came to an end. The war between the states came to a fitting end at last. Some say it was the publicity surrounding his march that kept then President Johnson from being impeached. But Gill didn't care much about that. You see, the flag he displayed throughout his journey was not intended as a symbol of conquest, but a symbol of reconciliation and peace. For Sergeant Bates did not journey through the northern states to Washington. He began instead at Vicksburg. He marched through still war torn Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and the Carolinas and Virginia. 1400 miles, taking the same route General Sherman had taken to the sea, bearing the same flag General Sherman had borne, relying exclusively on the generosity and the hospitality of the defeated South. That was the triumph of the triumphal march of Sergeant Bates, a triumph of truth over misconception, of brotherhood over blind hatred. Know your enemy, declared the military strategists of old. But maybe the Union did not, after all, for the Yankee veteran friends of Sergeant Gill Bates had predicted that he would be torn limb from limb, that the angry former Confederates would cut out his heart and trample it on the flag. They couldn't have imagined what you now know the rest of the story.