Episode 38: The Less-Than-Dashing Abner Doubleday, Part III

So I am going to be perfectly honest, I failed to get ahead of the ball and put together a good blog post for today's episode so I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Plus, this episode turned into a real battlelogue so if you want to learn more about specific battles, I highly recommend Rich and Tracey Youngdahl's "The Civil War (1861-1865): A History Podcast" which just finished its 65 (!) episode series on Gettysburg. 

It took Doubleday about a a year to get back into the fight after Fort Sumter and he provided one of the few bright spots for the Union at Second Manassas. After that, he was a filed commander and found himself on campaign for the next year. After Manassas, he successfully commanded at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville (kind of) at higher and higher levels - brigade, division, and corps

Most of these fights were absolute disasters for the Union, but even still, Doubleday and his troops acquitted themselves well, even frustrating the vaunted Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, who had grown to assume that the Yankees didn't have the fortitude to stand and fight with his experienced troops.

Despite his success in the field, he took a lot of gruff from his detractors - namely he's a little chubby and isn't dashing while riding a horse, qualities that were often considered more important than battlefield success in the 19th century.

Episode 37: The Less-Than-Dashing Abner Doubleday, Part II

Abner and Mary Doubleday were quite the team, both ardent abolitionists and supporters of the Union. Mary's support and council helped Abner stick to his beliefs and values when it would have been easier - and possibly more beneficial to his career - to be less vocal about the beliefs he held so dear.

Mary accompanied her husband to all of his pre-Civil War postings and when the garrison at Fort Moultrie had to flee to the relative safety of Fort Sumpter in the Harbor, she remained in Charleston and continued to row out to bring information to Doubleday and the others, news about negotiations between the north and south. When it became clear that a compromise was unlikely, the southern soldiers obliged the families of the northern troops to leave. Only then was Mary separated from her husband.

This painting, titled The Bombardment of Fort Sumpter, by the iconic American duo Currier & Ives, depicts the 36-hours period between April 12 - 14, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumpter and started the Civil War. Captain Doubleday, the commander of one of two artillery batteries station in the harbor, commanded the first guns that returned fire but when the Yankee's shot, shell, and food were all but diminished, with no hope of resupply, the valiant defenders had no choice but to negotiate an end to the cannonade.

The Federal soldiers were allowed to remove their flag and return north, sailing to New York City, where they received a hero's welcome. After the Union troops abandoned Fort Sumpter, Confederate forces moved in. The below photo shows some of the damage inside the fort, including many burned out brick storage areas.

For recognition of the important role he played in the first battle of the Civil War, Doubleday was promoted to major and given command of Fort Hamilton in New York City, which, as a bonus, allowed him to be reunited with Mary once more.

Doubleday did not see combat again for more than a year. He was primarily assigned to supporting roles during that time but did find himself promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and put in command of a brigade. But in mid-April 1862, his brigade marched as part of a much larger force toward Manassas, VA, where the Confederates had defeated Union troops in the first major battle of the war the summer before. 

On April 28, the day before the battle officially began, Doubleday's sister brigade, commanded by Brigadier General John Gibbon found itself in contact with Stonewall Jackson's much larger force. Gibbon's soldier were known as the Black Hat Brigade for the Model 1858 dress hat, aka the Hardee Hat, they wore into combat.

The Black Hats were on the verge of falling back in the face of a superior force, as just about every Union unit had done since the start of the war, when Doubleday heard heady fire and rushed his brigade to reinforce the Black Hats. Thanks to Doubleday's initiative, both his and Gibbon's forces were able to fight Jackson to a draw until nightfall. Only after sunset did the Yankee perform a textbook orderly withdrawal from the battlefield - it was the first time the mythic Jackson was unable to drive his enemy from the field. 

In true less-than-dashing fashion, Gibbon's brigade got the recognition for the stand and their nickname was changed from the Black Hats to the Iron Brigade, by which they were known for the rest of the war. Doubleday didn't need the recognition. He and his boys knew what they had done.

Iron Brigade reenactors at Brawner's Farm on the Manassas Battlefield in 2009 

Episode 36, The Less-Than-Dashing Abner Doubleday, Part I

One of the rarer photographs of Doubleday I was able to come across on the internet - according to reddit user chubachus, this is a postcard from 1847 showing Doubleday with Mexican youth during the Mexican American War. The image is rough but when you think I came from an itinerate photographer 175 years ago, that fact that it exists at all is amazing. I'll also post a digitally cleaned up (apparently mirror image) version of the original:

The only other thing I really wanted to post was an artist's rendition of the Battle of Monterrey which is almost assuredly an inaccurate stylized account of things but I find it interesting to remember in an era when urban warfare is more and more common - particularly which what is happening in Ukraine right now - it isn't a new concept of the last few decades. This type of warfare has been around for centuries and centuries and I can only image that it was just as devastating for all involved then (soldiers, civilians, innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire), as it is today.

Episode 35: Abner Doubleday and the American Pastime

Union General Abner Doubleday invented baseball, right? No. But since he was named the father of baseball by a commission lead by the fourth commissioner of the National League he must have done a lot to popularize the sport, right? Also no. In fact, he had absolutely nothing the do with the game and never mentioned it in the mountains of writings he left behind after his death. So where did the story that Doubleday invented baseball come from?

Sports equipment magnate Albert Spalding, a former major league pitcher who would be elected to the hall of fame in 1939, published the most widely read baseball periodical in the late 19th and early 20th century, and when it was suggested, by this own editor, that the game of baseball evolved from the British bat and ball sports cricket and rounders he was outraged and formed a commission to investigate the origins of baseball. Spalding said that whatever the commission found, he would support. He then appointed a commission of like-minded individuals to make sure they came to the correct conclusion. 

In 1905, the Mills Commission - lead by and named after AG Mills, the fourth president of the National League - put of a nation-wide call for any and everyone to send in any information they had about the creation of baseball.

The idea was for the commission to spend two years gathering evidence about the history of baseball, but what actually happened was they received hundreds of letters from dozens and dozens of former ball players who shared their memories of the game but not actual evidence.

One of the letters came from an unreliable source, a man named Abner Graves, who loved to see his name in print and he claimed that he was with Abner Doubleday in 1839 in Cooperstown, NY when the 20 year old Doubleday invented the baseball. There is a lot of evidence that point to this story being false - particularly the fact that Doubleday was a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point in 1839, not in Cooperstown. Graves spent the last years of his life in an asylum after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial after fatally shooting his much younger second wife.

In 1907, Spalding pressured the Mills Commission to release its findings so they used the admittedly EXTREAMLY circumstantial evidence to name Union Major General Abner Doubleday the inventor of baseball. It probably helped that AG Mills and Doubleday had been close friends for the last 30 years of Doubleday's life - so much so that Mills organized Doubleday's funeral when he died about 15 years before the commission report's findings.

From the very beginning there was doubt in some circles that Doubleday actually created baseball, but the story gained traction in other circles. However, by in large, the commission report was filed away in a desk drawer and mostly forgotten until the 1930s when Cooperstown, NY resident and developer Stephen C. Clark rediscovered the story and approached Major League Baseball about establishing a Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown that would open in 1939, the supposed 100th anniversary of baseball itself.

The first commission of Major League Baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, went all in promoting baseball's centennial and the opening of the museum, and he was highlighting Doubleday's role in everything when he received a received a letter from Bruce Cartwright - the grandson of Alexander Cartwright, Jr. The elder Cartwright had been a charter member of the New York Knickerbocker Club and the one who had actually come up with the diamond design of the baseball field, the player positions, and the rules of the game in 1845 - but too much money and prestige had been spent on the 1839 date to change things now. But what would happen when Cartwright took his grandfather's story to the press - well, he died just after sending Landis the letter so the commissioner didn't have to worry about it.

Cartwright did get a plaque in the museum when it opened and he is now considered the Father of Modern Baseball, but old stories die hard and the Abner Doubleday myth persists today.

The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened on June 12, 1939 but the first Hall of Fame class was elected in 1936 and included: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.

In 1920, a baseball field opened in downtown Cooperstown. The field expanded over time and got the name Doubleday Field. Seating nearly 10,000 fans, Major League Baseball played a regular season game, called the Hall of Fame game from 1940 - 2008. The Hall of Fame game was replaced with the Hall of Fame classic, an exhibition game of hall of famers and other former major league players.

Abner Doubleday may be the only Ghost of Arlington with a mascot caricature of himself. In 1996, Auburn, NY, the city where Doubleday grew up, renamed its minor league baseball team after its famous son and named the mascot Abner.