Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and Union major general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men. In San Francisco, after the war, he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. In his final years in New Jersey, he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society.

Although he never made such a claim, Doubleday was declared to have invented the game of baseball in 1908, fifteen years after his death, by the Mills Commission. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by baseball historians.

Early years Doubleday, the son of Ulysses F. Doubleday and Hester Donnelly, was born in Ballston Spa, New York, in a small house on the corner of Washington and Fenwick streets. As a child, Abner was very short. The family all slept in the attic loft of the one-room house. His paternal grandfather, also named Abner, had fought in the American Revolutionary War. His maternal grandfather Thomas Donnelly had joined the army at 14 and was a mounted messenger for George Washington. His great-grandfather Peter Donnelly was a Minuteman. His father, Ulysses F., fought in the War of 1812, published newspapers and books, and represented Auburn, New York, for four years in the United States Congress. Abner spent his childhood in Auburn and later was sent to Cooperstown to live with his uncle and attend a private preparatory high school. He practiced as a surveyor and civil engineer for two years before entering the United States Military Academy in 1838. He graduated in 1842, 24th in a class of 56 cadets, and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery. In 1852, he married Mary Hewitt of Baltimore, the daughter of a local lawyer.

Early commands and Fort Sumter

Doubleday initially served in coastal garrisons and then in the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848 and the Seminole Wars from 1856 to 1858. In 1858, he was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor serving under Colonel John L. Gardner. By the start of the Civil War, he was a captain and second in command in the garrison at Fort Sumter, under Major Robert Anderson. His men were routed when they encountered Major General James Longstreet's corps, but by the following day, August 30, he took command of the division when Hatch was wounded, and he led his men to cover the retreat of the Union Army. At Fredericksburg in December 1862, his division mostly sat idle. During the winter, the I Corps was reorganized and Doubleday assumed command of the 3rd Division. At Chancellorsville in May 1863, the division was kept in reserve.

Doubleday's staff nicknamed him "Forty-Eight Hours" as a compliment to recognize his tendency to avoid reckless or impulsive actions and his thoughtfulness and deliberateness in considering circumstances and possible responses. In recent years, biographers have turned the nickname into an insult, incorrectly claiming "Forty-Eight Hours" was coined to highlight Doubleday's supposed incompetence and slowness to act.

However, there is considerable evidence to dispute this claim. Baseball historian George B. Kirsch has described the results of the Mills Commission as a "myth", writing that "Robert Henderson, Harold Seymour, and other scholars have since debunked the Doubleday-Cooperstown myth, which nonetheless remains powerful in the American imagination because of the efforts of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown." At his death, Doubleday left many letters and papers, none of which describe baseball or give any suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the evolution of the game, and his New York Times obituary did not mention the game at all. Chairman Mills himself, who had been a Civil War colleague of Doubleday and a member of the honor guard for Doubleday's body as it lay in state in New York City, never recalled hearing Doubleday describe his role as the inventor. Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in the year of the alleged invention and his family had moved away from Cooperstown the prior year. Furthermore, the primary testimony to the commission that connected baseball to Doubleday was that of Abner Graves, whose credibility is questionable. In the years after he gave his testimony, Graves shot his wife to death and was committed to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life. Part of the confusion could stem from there being another man by the same name in Cooperstown in 1839.

Despite the lack of solid evidence linking Doubleday to the origins of baseball, Cooperstown, New York, became the new home of what is today the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1937.

There may have been some relationship to baseball as a national sport and Abner Doubleday. While the modern rules of baseball were formulated in New York during the 1840s, it was the scattering of New Yorkers exposed to these rules throughout the country that spread not only baseball, but also the "New York Rules" in particular, thereby harmonizing the rules, and being a catalyst for its growth. In his capacity as a high-ranking officer, whose duties included seeing to provisions for the U.S. Army fighting throughout the South and border states, Doubleday is said to have provisioned balls and bats for the morale of the men.

Namesakes and honors

Doubleday's men, admirers, and the state of New York erected a monument to him at Gettysburg. There is a obelisk monument at Arlington National Cemetery where he is buried.

Doubleday Field is a 9,791-seat baseball stadium named for Abner Doubleday, located in Cooperstown, New York, near the Baseball Hall of Fame. It hosted the annual Hall of Fame Game, an exhibition game between two major league teams that was played from 1940 until 2008, and has hosted the Hall of Fame Classic since 2009.

The Auburn Doubledays are a collegiate summer baseball team based in Doubleday's hometown of Auburn, New York.

At the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where the Army Black Knights play at Johnson Stadium, Doubleday Field is named in Doubleday's honor.

In Ballston Spa, New York, the town of his birth, Doubleday Fields are named for Doubleday. The house of his birth still stands in the middle of town and there is a monument to him on Front Street.

At the Doubleday Hill Monument, a sign to commemorate Doubleday's occupation of a hill in Williamsport, Maryland during the Civil War claims he invented the game in 1835.

For numerous years, Mendham Borough and Mendham Township, New Jersey has held a municipal holiday known as "Abner Doubleday Day" in the General's honor and in 1998 commissioned a plaque near the site of his home in the borough, even though the borough was known as Mendham Township back then.

The Abner Doubleday Society erected a monument to Doubleday in Iron Spring Park near his birthplace in Ballston Spa in 2004.

Dates of rank United States Army + Date Insignia Rank Brevet Promotions September 1, 1838 75px Cadet July 1, 1842 75px Brevet Second Lieutenant February 24, 1845 75px Second Lieutenant March 3, 1847 75px First Lieutenant March 3, 1855 75px Captain May 4, 1861 75px Major Bvt. Lieutenant Colonel (1862) Bvt. Colonel (1863) September 20, 1863 75px Lieutenant Colonel Bvt. Brigadier General (1865)Bvt. Major General (1865) September 15, 1867 75px Colonel July 20, 1848 Placed on the retired list with the rank of colonel (died January 26, 1893).

United States Volunteers + Date Insignia Rank Brevet Promotions February 3, 1862 75px Brigadier General November 29, 1862 75px Major General January 5, 1866 Honorably mustered out of volunteer service.