As we saw last week, Martin Van Buren Bates was an imposing figure, standing 7 feet, 9 inches tall and weighing 475 pounds. Some sources, however, say that he was even larger in both height and weight than those statistics indicate.
He grew so fast that measurements recorded in one instance might be outdated a few months or years later. Regardless of exactly how tall he was and how much he weighed, all sources agree that he was huge.
When the Civil War began in April 1861, Bates was 23 years old, having been born on a farm in eastern Kentucky on Nov. 9, 1837. His slave-owning parents were sufficiently wealthy that he was attending a college in Virginia when that state voted to secede from the Union (although Kentucky did not).
Shortly after Bates joined the Confederate army in the early days of the war, he was granted officer rank. Historians of the conflict have often noted that disciplining so many new recruits – who had never intended to become soldiers and who were not used to following orders from people they did not know – was a major problem for both the northern and southern forces.
Perhaps Bates’s physical attributes were one reason for his being promoted. As an officer trying to turn civilians into soldiers, his size would give him at least the appearance of authority that few would be willing to question.
Bates also, however, proved to be a dedicated soldier, receiving a promotion from lieutenant to captain. At one of several battles that occurred in the mountains where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia converge, he was severely wounded.
Bates was taken prisoner by Union forces and imprisoned for a time in Ohio. He eventually escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp and recuperated from his wounds so that he was able to rejoin his unit before the war ended.
Ironically, however, Bates returned to Ohio after the war to live an eventful life that lasted until he was 81 years old. We will explore that part of his biography next week.
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