He published newspapers and books and served two terms in the US Congress. In the library at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown is a letter that gives some insight into how Abner Doubleday spent his youth.
I was fond of poetry and art and much interested in mathematical studies. The mythology remains strong today, but most serious baseball historians believe the game comes from England and other ball and bat games in prehistory.
Doubleday grew up in Auburn and attended the Cooperstown Classical and Military Academy, studying civil engineering before he was appointed to West Point in During his first year he stood 30th out of 85 plebes. In , West Point began issuing grades and standings for students. In his sophomore year Doubleday scored third in Drawing; 21st in Mathematics; 29th in English Grammar and 46th in French.
Overall, Doubleday stood number 19 in a class of 76 members; many first-year students did not make it through the plebe year. In his junior year, Doubleday stood 20th in a class of 60 members, scoring 17th in Drawing; 21st in Philosophy; and 27th in Chemistry. He graduated from West Point in ranking 24th in a class of 56 members on July 1 of that year.
His last-year scores were 26th in Engineering; 29th in Ethics; 30th in Infantry Tactics; 32nd in Artillery; and 32nd in Mineralogy and Geology. Despite his opposition to the war, 10 he volunteered to fight. He began the war as a supply officer but applied for and received an artillery posting. After the conflict with Mexico, Doubleday returned to Texas. As a lieutenant of the 1st Artillery, Doubleday was involved in the hostilities against the Apaches from to on the Texas border.
In he posted to Florida. According to the National Archives in Washington, D. Doubleday was posted to the garrison at Fort Moultrie at Charleston, South Carolina, in , an assignment that had a huge influence on his military career.
Doubleday was a supporter of abolition and voted for Abraham Lincoln in His service against the Confederacy began where the war began, at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Fort Moultrie had been abandoned after South Carolina seceded, and its garrison was moved to Fort Sumter.
There, Doubleday was second in command to Major Robert Anderson, who was from Kentucky and was from a slave-owning family. In , the Mills Commission, a small group of respected former baseball executives and players devised to crown an originator of baseball, announced that Doubleday was without a doubt the man who invented the game.
Doubleday was never involved with the game of baseball before, during, or after his Civil War career. He never associated himself with baseball when it became a professional organized sport.
He never once mentioned anything about the game to his good friend A. Mills, who not only was at the time of their friendship the president of the National League, but also the head of the Mills Commission that would name him the game's founder. So what evidence is their to support the Mills Commission's claim? The answer is not much. The only pro-Doubleday claim made by anyone came from Abner Graves in Graves, who would later be committed to an insane asylum, claimed that he remembered Doubleday creating a game that he called baseball in Cooperstown, NY in even Graves never mentioned anything about the drawing of a baseball diamond or the writing of rules, two things claimed by the Mills Commission.
Was Doubleday in Cooperstown in ? Not surprisingly, he wasn't. A graduate of West Point, Hood joined the Confederacy in and gained a reputation as a talented field commander during the Peninsula Campaign and the Second Battle George Meade was a U.
Army general and civil engineer who served as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War Meade entered the Civil War as a brigadier general and first served during the Peninsula Campaign in He was badly George Pickett was a U.
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick graduated from the U. James Longstreet was a U. Army officer, government official and most famously a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War One of Robert E.
Winfield Scott Hancock was a U. Army officer and politician who served as a Union general during the Civil War Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Doubleday was relieved of command by General George Meade but still participated in the second and third days of the battle, commanding a division. Doubleday retired to New Jersey where he died of heart disease in Explore This Park.
Portrait of Brig. Abner Doubleday Library of Congress. Place of Birth:.
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