For 1,500 miles through States whose streets had been stained with the blood of civil carnage he had marched with the national flag to the strains of patriotic music, an eloquent tribute to his countrymen’s deep-rooted love of peace. His passage was a triumphant success, and the exploit is handed down to posterity in Captain Mayne Reid’s stirring poem “From Vicksburg to the Sea,” the first of its five verses being:
Bear on the banner, soldier bold!
How Southern hearts must thrill
To see the flag, so loved of all,
Waving above them still!
What chords ’twill touch, what echoes wake,
Of that far truer time!
Who knows but it the spell may break
That maddened them to crime.
This was remotely the origin of Bates’s English expedition. Calumny was rife in the States. No theme had been so often discussed for the two years then past as that of the feeling of John Bull towards Uncle Sam. The malicious craft of certain politicians had led them to foster elements of hatred towards the Old Country, and a corrupt section of the Press had lent itself to the unworthy task of exaggerating trifles and distorting facts to suit the fancies of gullible readers.