Abner Doubleday Biography
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Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January
26, 1893), was a career U.S. Army officer and Union general in the
American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter,
the opening battle of the war. Although he himself made no such claim,
some believe he should be credited with the invention of baseball.
****
Early years
Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New
York. His grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary War and his father
served four years in the U.S. Congress. Abner practiced as a civil
engineer for two years before entering the U.S. Military Academy, from
which graduated in 1842 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the
3rd U.S. Artillery.
Military career
Doubleday served in the Mexican-American
War and Seminole Wars. At the start of the Civil War, he was a captain
in the garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, under Major Robert
Anderson. He aimed the cannon that fired the first return shot in answer
to the Confederate bombardment on April 12, 1861, starting the war.
Doubleday served in the Shenandoah Valley
from June to August, 1861. He was appointed brigadier general of
volunteers on February 3, 1862, and led the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division,
III Corps at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He took command of the
division on August 30 when its commander was wounded. He again led the
division at South Mountain, Antietam (where he was wounded by a shell
exploding nearby), and Fredericksburg (where his division mostly sat
idle).
Doubleday was promoted to major general of
volunteers on November 9, 1862, and commanded 3rd Division, I Corps, at
Chancellorsville, and took over corps command for a day when General
John F. Reynolds was killed in opening of the Battle of Gettysburg, July
1, 1863. Army commander George G. Meade replaced Doubleday with John
Newton, a more junior major general from another corps, after the first
day of battle, one in which the I Corps was overwhelmed by a Confederate
assault. Meade had a long history of disdain for Doubleday's combat
effectiveness, dating back to South Mountain. Doubleday was humiliated
by this snub and held a lasting grudge against Meade. He was wounded in
the neck on the second day of the battle and assumed mostly
administrative duties in the defenses of Washington, D.C., including the
attack by Jubal A. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.
Later life
After the Civil War, Doubleday retired from
the Army in 1873 and moved to San Francisco, where he obtained a charter
for the cable car railway that still runs there. By 1878, he was living
in Mendham, New Jersey, from where, that year, he became a prominent
member of the Theosophical Society. When two of the founders of that
society, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, moved to India at the
end of that year, he was constituted as the President of the American
body.
Doubleday died in Mendham, and is buried in
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
Legacy
Although Doubleday was a competent, if
colorless, combat general with experience in many important Civil War
battles, the lore of baseball credits Doubleday with inventing the game,
supposedly in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in
1839.
The Mills Commission was appointed in 1905
to determine the origin of baseball. The committee's final report, on
December 30, 1907, stated, in part, that "the first scheme for playing
baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised
by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839."
However, there is considerable evidence to
dispute this claim. 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. An
encyclopedia article about Doubleday published in 1911 makes no mention
of the game. He was a cadet at West Point in the year of the alleged
invention and there is no record he requested leave to travel to
Cooperstown.
Doubleday published two important works on
the Civil War: Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie (1876), and
Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882), the latter being a volume of the
series Campaigns of the Civil War.
Doubleday's indecision as a commander
earned him the uncomplimentary nickname "Forty-Eight Hours".
In World War II the United States liberty
ship SS Abner Doubleday was named in his honor.
****
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URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Doubleday
Date Article Copied:
April 24, 2006
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