Daniel Moore Bates was born in Laurel, Delaware on January 28, 1821 as Daniel Elzey Moore, the son of Methodist minister Jacob Moore.  He had lost his mother very early in life and as a young boy traveled with his father on his circuit.  When his father died in 1829 he was still only eight and he was taken in by local lawyer Martin Waltham Bates and his wife, Mary Hillyard Bates.  They became his well loved family and he adopted their name legally, becoming Daniel Moore Bates.  In later life he would care for his ailing father until his death in 1869.

In October 1869 Stanley was summoned to Paris by James Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of the [New York] Herald, who instructed him to find David Livingstone, the famous African missionary believed to be lost in central Africa, but he was to begin the search only after completing a series of assignments in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and India. It was March 1871 before he left Zanzibar with a large expedition bound for Tanganyika (the two countries now form Tanzania) in East Africa.

Pickett's division arrived on the field at Gettysburg late on 2 July, in time for a night's rest before their famous and fateful action on 3 July. [General Robert E.] Lee believed that the fighting on 2 July had weakened the Union center, and that was his target on the third day. Pickett's division spearheaded the charge. Pickett was apparently confident of success, according to some witnesses, notwithstanding the obvious hazards his soldiers faced. After a long and largely ineffective cannonade, Pickett's men stepped off, as if on parade.