Later Life
After Senator Howell Jackson resigned in 1886, Bate appointed Washington C. Whitthorne to fill out his term, which was set to expire in March 1887. The Tennessee General Assembly then elected Bate to fill the Senate seat. He was reelected in 1893, 1899, and 1905. During his tenure, 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 sessions. He supported lower taxes, and favored funding for common schools, the United States Weather Bureau, and the Army Signal Corps. He voted for the admission of Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico as states.
Shortly after being elected to his fourth term, Bate attended the inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt on March 4, 1905, where he is believed to have caught a cold. He died of pneumonia a few days later on March 9. His body was carried back to Nashville on a specially-chartered train, and he was interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Members of the Frank Cheatham Bivouac, which consisted of surviving Confederate veterans, fired the final salute over his grave.
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“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”
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