Baseball was a sport started in the mid-19th century in New York City. That led to it being a sport played at the time of the US Civil War. Here, Richard Bluttal looks at the impact of baseball during the war.
The New York Knickerbockers baseball team in 1858 (on the left in the picture).
Rather than the pastoral Cooperstown, modern baseball was born in America’s largest metropolis: New York City. By the 1840s, the first known consolidated rule set was created by the Manhattan-based New York Knickerbockers led by Alexander Cartwright. The Knickerbockers were well organized and promoted formalized rules for their game, emulating the more prestigious cricket clubs common in New York City at the time. Other teams in Manhattan and Brooklyn quickly emerged and sought to copy the Knickerbocker’s success.
As the Civil War began, the baseball clubs of New York became enthusiastic supporters of the Union war effort. The New York Clipper, an entertainment journal that covered the NABBP, celebrated players who enlisted and urged others to follow their example: “better join in boys, than be loafing the streets or hanging around bar-rooms, and thus show the people you have some noble traits that atone for whatever bad ones you get credit for.” The rules of baseball in 1860 as adopted by players and organizations are not too different from the modern version of the game. There are four bases spaced evenly apart with one of those being home plate, three strikes and you’re out, three outs in an inning, and nine innings for a standard game. One of the major differences in the rules of baseball in the 19th century is that the batter, after hitting the ball, can only be called “out” if he is hit by the ball. The President learned and loved the game prior to his election campaign in 1860. A popular newspaper even published a political cartoon showing him batting against his opponents in his campaign. During the Civil war he even had a baseball field constructed on the White House lawn. There are stories such as he was late for a war council meeting and said,” They will just have to wait. It is almost my turn at bat”.
Organized game
The first organized baseball game of the war took place on July 2, 1861, when a team from the 71st New York Regiment defeated the Washington Nationals amateur club, 41 to 13, in a park across from the White House. Later that month, the regiment suffered heavy casualties at the First Battle of Bull Run, losing many of its best athletes. The teams arranged a rematch in early 1862 where the Nationals defeated the decimated New Yorkers 28 to 13.
Organized events like this helped to popularize the game among Union soldiers. Colonel Mason Whiting Tyler explained that by 1863 baseball was “all the rage now in the Army of the Potomac…[the camps are] alive with ball players, almost every street having its game.” John G.B. Adams of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment reported that “base ball fever [had] broke[n] out” as different regiments played against one another usually favoring the New York game.
In most cases, Civil War baseball was played in the relative safety of military encampments. However, battles often disrupted these games. George Putnam, a Union soldier stationed in Texas in 1863, described one such incident. He wrote that a game had to be “called-early” after a surprise attack by Confederate infantry: Despite these dangers, baseball usually provided a welcome distraction from the carnage of the battlefield. On April 3, 1862, Frederick Fairfax of the Fifth Ohio Infantry wrote home from Virginia describing the specter of violence that haunted these games:
“It is astonishing how indifferent a person can become to danger. The report of musketry is heard but a very little distance from us…yet over there on the other side of the road is most of the company, playing [baseball] and perhaps in less than half an hour they may be called to play a ball game of a more serious nature.”
Moments of leisure
For soldiers, these games were rare moments of leisure from the anxiety and rigorous lifestyle typical during the Civil War. As John G.B. Adams put it, playing baseball “was a grand time, and all [participants] agreed that it was nicer to play base [ball] than minie [bullet] ball.” Consequently, officers often used baseball for official purposes, encouraging soldiers to play as relief from the monotony of military camp life and to complement training activities. They also hoped to use these games to foster camaraderie and teamwork among men who would soon be required to fight together in the battlefield.
The Civil War exposed many soldiers from all southern states to New York baseball for the first time and, over the course of the war, helped to popularize the game. Unfortunately, relatively little documentation exists regarding Confederate baseball. Judging from soldiers’ letters and diaries, many southerners’ initial exposure to baseball came largely in the form of watching Union men play the New York game in prisoner of war camps. Within Confederate POW camps, Union prisoners often used baseball to pass the time, with the most prominent site of play occurring at Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. Charles Carroll Gray, a Union physician held at Salisbury during the summer of 1862, reported in his diary that POWs celebrated July 4th “with music, reading of the Declaration of Independence, and sack and foot races in the afternoon, and also a baseball game.”
The Civil War started and ended in April, the traditional beginning of the now baseball season. The soldiers on both sides went home and brought baseball with them. The game exploded in communities all over the country. They were often referred to as the Textile Leagues.
What do you think of the role of baseball in the US Civil War? Let us know below.
Now read Richard’s series of articles on trauma and medicine during war, starting with the American Revolution here.
