William B. Bate
William Brimage Bate (
October 7,
1826–
March 9,
1905) was
governor of Tennessee from
1883 to
1887 and subsequently
United States Senator from
Tennessee from 1887 until his
death.
Bate had served as a
volunteer in the
Mexican War. He served in the
Tennessee House of Representatives from
1849 to
1851. He graduated from
law school in
Lebanon, Tennessee in
1852 and was admitted to the
bar in that year, establishing his practice in
Gallatin, Tennessee. He became
district attorney general for the
Nashville district in
1854.
Bate served in the
Confederate forces in the
Civil War, attaining the
rank of
major general commanding a
division. He first saw combat action in July 1861 as
colonel of the 2nd Tennessee Infantry at the
First Battle of Manassas. Returning to the
Western Theater, he rose to
brigadier general and served in numerous battles and campaigns. After the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, he returned to the practice of
law; as was the case of many prominent ex-Confederates, full
civil rights were eventually restored to him.
Bate was
elected governor as a
Democrat in
1882 over the
incumbent Republican,
Alvin Hawkins, and re-elected in
1884 and is credited with having found a satisfactory solution to the
debt problems of the
state. His subsequent four elections to the
U.S. Senate were by the
Tennessee General Assembly, the method of choosing U.S. Senators prior to the ratification of the
Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in
1887,
1893,
1899, and
1905, one of only three Tennessee senators to be elected to more than three terms and one of two prior to the adoption of popular election to the office. As a Senator, he served as the chairman of the Committee on the Improvement of the
Mississippi River and Its Tributaries in the
53rd Congress and the chairman of the Committee on
Public Health and the National Quarantine in two later
Congresses. He died only five days into his fourth term, in
Washington, D.C.. His
funeral was held in the Senate chamber of the
United States Capitol, and he is buried in Nashville's
Mount Olivet Cemetery.
