Abner Doubleday Totally Explained

Everything about Abner Doubleday totally explained

Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893), was a career United States 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, 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, California, 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. His most lasting claim to fame is the popular myth that he invented baseball, which has been debunked by almost all sports historians, although Doubleday himself never made such a claim.

Early years

Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New York. His grandfather had fought in the American Revolutionary War and his father, Ulysses F. Doubleday, represented Auburn, New York, for four years in the United States Congress. Abner practiced as a surveyor and civil engineer for two years before entering the United States Military Academy in 1838, from which he graduated in 1842, 24th in a class of 56 cadets, and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery.

Military career

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 1852 he married Mary Hewitt of Baltimore. In 1858 he was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor, but 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 Maj. Gen. 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.

Washington

Doubleday assumed mostly administrative duties in the defenses of Washington, D.C., where his only return to combat was directing a portion of the defenses against the attack by Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Also while in Washington, Doubleday testified against George Meade at the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, criticizing him harshly over his conduct of the Battle of Gettysburg.
   Doubleday died of heart disease
   However, there's considerable evidence to dispute this claim. Baseball historian George B. Kirsch has described the results of the Mills commission as a "myth." He wrote, "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. 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; a few years later, he shot his wife to death, apparently because of mental illness, and he was committed to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life. Doubleday Field is a minor league baseball stadium named for Abner Doubleday, located in Cooperstown near the Baseball Hall of Fame. It hosts the annual Hall of Fame Game, originally between "old-timers" teams, but currently an exhibition game between two major league teams.
   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."

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