Birthplace of William B. Bate

William Brimage Bate was born here in 1826, and during the Civil War he rose to the rank of major general. He left home at the age of sixteen to be a clerk on a steamboat. During the Mexican War, he served as a lieutenant, then became a journalist, a lawyer, and a state legislature. As the Civil War approached, he raised a militia company in Castalian Springs and was soon elected colonel of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry. Arriving in Virginia with his regiment in time for the First Battle of Manassas, he captured a Congressman from New York who had come out to see the action. In February 1862, he and his men reenlisted and returned to Tennessee. In the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, he received a severe leg wound that incapacitated him for several months. Commissioned brigadier general in October 1862 and major general in February 1864, he led a brigade and then a division in the Army of Tennessee in all of the major battles in the western theater, including Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, and Nashville. Bate declined the offer of a nomination for Tennessee governor, saying "I would feel dishonored in this hour of trial to quit the field"—-a commitment to duty that voters later remembered. Bate surrendered with his old regiment at Greensboro, North Carolina, in April 1865.

After practicing law in Nashville, Bate was elected governor of Tennessee in 1882 and held office for two terms. In 1886, he was elected United States Senator and served until his death in 1905.

Bate's cousin, Eugenia Bate, was also born here at Hawthorne Hill. After being widowed during the war, she later married an Italian diplomat. She became Countess Bertinatti and resided in Italy and in Mississippi where she owned a plantation.

(Side Bar) "I never felt so overpowered with responsibility before, for all them seem to look up to me. I feel determined on one thing, never to take my neighbors' children under me again. That simple fact gives me more anxious hours than all else here."
-Col. William B. Bate, September 12, 1861.

James P. Taylor and Humphrey Bate constructed Hawthorne Hill for John Beardon before 1817, when Bate purchased the house and the surrounding 208 acres. It remained the Bate family home place for more than a century.

(Inscription under the photo on the bottom left)
General William B. Bate — Courtesy Allen Haynes.

(Inscription under the photo in the upper right)
Countess Eugenia Bate Bass Bertinatti — Courtesy Allen Haynes.

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