James HollowayKellisonHistory 43689 December 2013

Baseball During the Civil War & Reconstruction Era

“Before any cannon was fired or rifle loaded, men from

the north and south had been playing the game of baseball.”1

The game of baseball is often called America’s Pastime that

had its beginnings in the decades leading up to the Civil

War. Before, during, and after the Civil War it was one of

the most played recreational activities in the United

States. The game of baseball is entrenched in the history of

the United States and its creation is even ensconced in

Civil War myth. While there were other bat and ball games

contemporaneous with the early form of baseball, baseball

emerged and separated itself from these other sports and

when war split the country it was baseball that was one of

the most popular recreational activities of soldiers. The

history of baseball during its early years, the civil war,

and the reconstruction era is preserved through the writings

1 Patricia Millen, From Pastime to Passion: Baseball and the Civil War (Westminister, MD: Heritage Books, 2007), xii.

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of journalists in newspapers, diaries and journals of

soldiers and players, and as well as drawings and

photographs. Like everything else in the country the game of

baseball was greatly affected by the outbreak of the Civil

War. Yet it survived and continued throughout the war,

perhaps even prospering during and from the war.

The creation of baseball is shrouded in myth; one of

the myths relates to the Civil War. There were many that

believed that the person that invented baseball was a Union

general by the name of Abner Doubleday. As Spalding

suggests,

Baseball had been born in the brain of an Americansoldier. It received its baptism in the bloody days of our Nation’s direst danger. It had its early evolution when soldiers, North and South, were striving to forget their foes by cultivating,through this grand game, fraternal friendship withcomrades in arms.2

The Mills Commission of 1907 lead by Abraham G. Mills, which

was urged into formation by Albert G. Spalding, spawned this

2 Albert G. Spalding, America’s National Game: Baseball (San Francisco: Halo Books 1991), 64.

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myth.3 The Commission had been charged with deciding on the

true origins of baseball; specifically, the commission

investigated whether baseball was derived from the English

game of rounders, or whether it was purely a native

invention. Mills concluded, “First, that ‘Base Ball’ had its

origins in the United States. Second, that the first scheme

for playing it, according to the best evidence obtained to

date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New

York, in 1839.”4 The evidence obtained by the commission was

the testimony of Abner Graves, a friend of Doubleday’s, who

recalled watching him outline a diamond-shaped baseball

field with a stick in the dirt, draw a diagram of the bases,

and write a list of rules for his new game; which he named

“Base Ball”.5 Abner Doubleday later went on to serve in the

Union Army eventually rising to the rank of brevet major

general.6 Graves’ testimony was submitted to the commission

by Spalding who underlined the connection of baseball,

3 George B. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), x.4 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, xiii.5 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, xii.6 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, xii.

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Doubleday, and the Civil War, “it certainly appeals to an

American’s pride to have had the great national game of Base

Ball created and named by a Major General in the United

States Army and to have that same game played as a camp

diversion by the soldiers of the Civil War.”7 The decision

by the Mills Commission brought on by Mills and Spalding

concocted a creation myth of baseball that connected the

game that had become the national pastime with the country’s

greatest ordeal, that of the Civil War.

Another belief is that Alexander J. Cartwright, Jr. a

member New York Knickerbockers, an early ball club, in the

mid-1840s created the regulations that would be the rules to

the “New York game” which would eventually develop into the

modern game of baseball.8 These rules, “included the infield

diamond for bases, underhand pitching, foul territory, the

force out and tag play for retiring runners, three outs to a

side, and victory to the first team to score twenty-one

runs.”9(Kirsch 7)8 It is more likely that he shared this

7 Mark Alvarez, The Old Ball Game (Virginia: Redefinition, Inc, 1990), 34.8 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 6.9 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 7.

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task with several other members of the Knickerbockers;

therefore, he cannot be solely given the credit for the

creation of the “New York game”. It is due to these

competing accounts that many historians now believe that,

“neither Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright or any

other person created the modern sport of baseball; rather,

it evolved in stages from earlier bat and ball games.”10

There were many stick and ball games in early America,

“but by the 1840s the game of baseball had evolved into a

game that nay 20th century observer would have recognized.”11

In the twenty years leading up to the Civil War the game of

baseball had spread through much of the country. As Porter’s

Spirit of the Times reported on September 13, 1856:

This fine American game seems to be progressing inall parts of the United States with new spirit, while in New York and its neighborhoods its revival seems to have been taken u almost as a matter of national pride. Matches are being made all around us, and games are being played on everyavailable green plot within a ten mile circuit of the city.

10 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 7.11 Millen, From Pastime to Passion, 7.

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Baseball was played in most major cities of the northeast,

in the Midwest, as far south as New Orleans, and as far west

as California. Baseball was mainly played in urban areas,

which caused the south to lag behind the north in the

organization of baseball organizations, but it also became

popular in what cities the rural south had: “baseball was

organized in cities such as New Orleans (where at least 7

teams were organized in 1860); Baltimore, Maryland;

Washington D.C.; and Louisville, Kentucky prior to the

war.”12 While there were several variations of the game; the

most popular and widespread version being played was the

“New York game”. “Prior to the outbreak of war the ‘New York

game’ was rapidly invading New England, the Philadelphia

area, and even southern and western states in a drive to

become the nation’s most popular team sport.”13 The second

most popular version of baseball was the “Massachusetts

game”, was played mostly in the Northeast: it never spread

like the “New York game” did and was eventually replaced by

it. While up to the point of the Civil War the game of 12 Millen, From Pastime to Passion, 8.13 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 9.

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baseball had been solely a sport for white men, just

preceding the Civil War several black teams were organized.

“Reports of their baseball matches were carried in the New

York Anglo-African as early as July 30, 1859—possibly the first

published account of a baseball game by African-

Americans.”14 Perhaps one of the biggest contributions to

the spread and popularization of baseball was periodicals,

such as the New York Clipper, Porter’s Spirit of the Times, and Wilkes’ Spirit

of the Times, as their coverage increased interest and

enthusiasm for the game. Perhaps the leader in this was

Henry Chadwick. Some have actually called Chadwick the

“Father of Baseball” as he was a tireless advocate of the

game of baseball and made many contributions to the sport.

Another reason for the popularization of the game was the

inter-city competition that was taking place in the years

leading up to the Civil War. “Individuals, clubs, and the

press all gave baseball a big boost during the 1850s, but

perhaps the key event in the sport’s early modernization was

the founding of its first centralized governing body—the

14 Millen, From Pastime to Passion, 9.

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National Association of Base Ball Players, or the NABBP.”15

The creation of this organization, which goal was, according

to Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times on January 15, 1861, to “foster and

extend this most popular of all American pastimes, until the

National Association game is unanimously adapted throughout

the land.” Players met annually, giving them a platform to

refine rules, resolve disputes, and control the development

of the sport. The NABBP also helped the perception of

baseball as the national game. Porter’s Spirit of the Times,

expressing this concern in January 1857, urged, after the

creation of the NABBP, that baseball, “ought to be looked

upon in this country with the same national enthusiasm as

Cricket and Football are regarded in the British Islands.”

There seemed to be nothing that could slow the spread and

popularization of baseball throughout the United States:

then the Civil War began.

The Civil War had a significant impact on baseball;

baseball, however, also had a big impact on the Civil War.

Baseball became a feature of military life, as soldiers

15 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 14.

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played in military and prison camps. The game took on new

meanings in the context of the war, as sports observers

urged the use of baseball and other team sports as training

for battles due to the similarities between the two. The

Civil War initially dealt a major blow to baseball being

played on the home front as thousands of baseball club

members joined the armies of the Union and Confederacy to

fight in this fraternal war. As the New York Clipper noted on

June 22, 1861,

Many of the most active participants in sporting matters have enlisted in the defense of the Union,and are now either at the seat of war, or preparing to march thither at short notice. Cricket and Baseball clubs, usually so busy in thefield at this period of the year, are now enlistedin a different sort of exercise, the rifle or gun taking the place of the bat, while the play ball gives place to the leaden messenger of death. Men who have heretofore made their mark in friendly strife for superiority in various games, are now beating off the rebels who would dismember this glorious ‘Union of States.’”

This caused a disbanding of many clubs, a reduction in the

number of contests, and a drop in attendance at the annual

NABBP convention. Baseball, however, would survive in many

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of the major cities, especially those in the northeast where

there was somewhat of wartime prosperity and there were many

men that were able to avoid military service that allowed

for the continuation of many sports including baseball to

continue at the home front. After the initial setback due to

the Civil War, baseball generated a good amount of

enthusiasm during the war era. “Intercity tours, benefit

matches, conventions, and sportswriters all helped early

baseball sustain itself during the Civil War.”16 These

factors allowed for baseball to survive the trying times of

the Civil War.

While there was a decrease in the number of baseball

clubs and games being played due to the Civil War: that does

not mean, however, that baseball was not being played

elsewhere, as there is record of many soldiers playing the

game of baseball for recreation in their downtime between

battles.

16 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 65.

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The image above is the only known photograph of a game ofbaseball being played during the Civil War. The soldiers arefrom Company G of the 48 New York State Volunteers at Fort

Pulaski in Georgia. The game is being played in thebackground. Ca. 1862-63. National Baseball Hall of Fame

Library and Archive, Cooperstown, NY.

Playing the game of baseball on holidays, in winter camps,

and during breaks was encouraged by officers on both sides

of the war as it helped alleviate boredom in camps and

enliven the troops during training. “Many of the boys had a

revival of their school days in a game of ball. These

amusements had much to do in preventing us from being

homesick, and were productive, also, of health and

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happiness.”17 The playing of baseball was also encouraged by

military doctors as they saw it as way for soldiers to

augment their exercise regimen and maintain good health. In

his military surgery manual, Doctor Julian Chilsolm wrote

that he was familiar with and recommended the “manly play of

ball” as an exercise that “should be encouraged as

conductive to health, strength, agility, and address.”18

Companies and regiments were recruited from the same area,

so soldiers that comprised those units generally knew each

other. These companies of military institutions resembled

the private voluntary associations such as athletic clubs

that were very common in America at the time. The towns and

cities where baseball had been spread and popularized were

the places that produced the military units that actively

played baseball in camps. “There were many excellent players

in the different regiments, and it was common for the ball-

players of one regiment or brigade to challenge another

regiment or brigade . . . These matches were watched by

17 George Lewis, History of Battery E, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery (Providence, RI, 1892), 26.18 Julian J. Chilsolm, A Manuel of Military Surgery, For the Use of Surgeons in the Confederate Army (Columbia: Evans and Cogswell, 1864), 56-57.

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great crowds with intense interest.”19 Many baseball players

entered the Civil War and brought with them the game that

they loved. While most soldiers that were baseball players

were from the northeast, there were those on the confederate

side that played baseball as well. John G. B. Adams of the

Nineteenth Massachusetts wrote that he and his fellow

soldiers while encamped played baseball and also watched

confederate soldiers play across a river. “We would sit on

the bank and watch their games, and the distance was so

short we could understand every movement and would applaud

good plays.”20 There is even a tale of Union and Confederate

soldiers playing against each other. In Wells Twombly’s Two

Hundred Years of Sport in America he recounts a tale of members of

Stonewall Jackson’s second brigade, which was out hunting

when they came upon a group of Union soldiers. After the

northern troops showed that they were not armed they played

a game of baseball together using the rules of the “New York

game” which intrigued the Confederate soldiers who expressed

19 George T. Stevens, Three Years in the Sixth Corps, 77th Regiment, New York Volunteers, 2nd ed. (New York, 1870), 183.20 John G. B. Adams, Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment (Boston,1899), 60-61.

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a desire to learn them.21 While this tale may be apocryphal,

it is a nice tale of baseball bringing soldiers from

different sides together through the game of baseball.

Not only was baseball played in both Union and

Confederate camps; it was also played in prison camps, most

notably the Prisons in Salisbury, North Carolina and

Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio. Among the

prisoners at Salisbury was Otto Boetticher, a commercial

artist from New York City that while serving in the 68th New

York Volunteers was captured in 1862.22 After his release

from Salisbury he drew a picture depicting Union soldiers

playing baseball in the Confederate prison camp.

21 Wells Twombly, Two Hundred Years of Sport in America (New York, McGraw Hill, 1976), Chapters 1, 2.22 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 43.

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“Union Prisoners at Salisbury, N.C.” Drawn by OttoBoetticher. It is an image of Union troops playing baseballin the Confederate prison camp in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Published in 1863. Library of Congress, Prints andPhotographs Division.26

Another prisoner at Salisbury was a Union doctor by the name

of Charles Carroll Gray. In the diary that he kept while

imprisoned at Salisbury he wrote that the fourth of July was

“celebrated with music, reading of the Declaration of

Independence, and sack and foot races in the afternoon, and

also a baseball game.”23 A Confederate witness to baseball

being played at Salisbury was Adolphus Mangum, a Confederate

Chaplain who visited Salisbury in 1862. He wrote that

23 Charles Carroll Gray, July 4, 1862, Charles Carroll Gray Diary, #2569-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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prisoners “ran like schoolboys to the play ground and were

soon joining in high glee in a game of ball . . . others sat

down side by side with the prison officials and witnessed

the sport.”24 After 1862 through the end of the Civil War

the conditions at Salisbury began to deteriorate, likely

ending any opportunity for prisoners to play baseball.

Baseball was not just played by Union prisoners, but by

Confederate prisoners as well. In the Union prison on

Johnson Island Colonel D. R. Hundley of the 31st Alabama

Infantry recorded in his diary of a baseball match between

the Southern and Confederate clubs.

During the progress of the game, nearly all the prisoners looked on with eager interest, and bets were made freely among those who had the necessarycash, and who were given to such practices; and very soon the crowd was pretty nearly equally divided between the partisans of the white shirts [Southerners] and those of the red shirts [Confederates], and rebel yell went up from the one side or the other at every success of the chosen colors. The Yankees themselves outside the prison yard seemed to be not indifferent spectators of the game, but crowded the house-

24 Adolphus W. Mangum, “Salisbury Prison,” in Walter Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-65, vol. 4. (Raleigh, NC: The State of North Carolina, 1901), 747.

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tops, and looked on with as much interest almost as did the rebels themselves.25

Prisoners also played baseball at other prison camps, but

the accounts of Salisbury and Johnson Island are the most

documented.

During the Civil War baseball was played at home, in

military camps, and prison camps. Not only did baseball

survive the Civil War, but also it also thrived and perhaps

even prospered during wartime. The army experience played an

important role in the popularization of the sport after the

war. In the immediate years following the Civil War,

baseball experienced impressive growth throughout the United

States as both civilians and former soldiers contributed

greatly to the growth of baseball in the south and west. The

Civil War might have contributed to the rapid spread of

baseball during the late 1860s, but the game’s popularity

prior to the war provided baseball with a foundation that

made it likely that it would grow after the return to peace.

Some believed that the game of baseball helped in the

25 D.R. Hundley, Prison Echoes of the Great Rebellion (New York: 1874), 135.

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reunification and restoration of the country. In December

1869 the Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times observed: “This National Game

seems destined to close the National Wounds opened by the

late war. It is no idle pastime which draws young men,

separated by two thousand miles, together to contest in

friendship, upon fields but lately crimsoned with their

brothers’ blood in mortal combat.” Sports have shown

throughout history that it has a unique way of healing

wounds, so perhaps this is true.26

The spread of baseball after the Civil War was not

limited to only whites but to blacks as well. “Baseball

fever swept through the African-American communities of many

cities and towns during the 1860s.”27 Black baseball players

experienced limited success in gaining respect and equal

treatment from their white peers, as they were not allowed

to join the NABBP. Black and white baseball clubs did, never

the less, usually got along well, as white teams would often

allow black teams to use their facilities to play and

26 Christmas Eve soccer game during World War I between German and British soldiers; 1995 Rugby World Cup; First baseball game in New York City after 9/11.27 Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 122.

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practice. There was, however, much resistance among white

baseball players to the recognition of equality implicit in

interracial competition. The first match between black and

white baseball clubs took place in late 1869; to which the

Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times declared in the September 1869, “old

time prejudices are melting away in this country.”

Unfortunately this would not fully come to pass in baseball

till 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in

Major League Baseball, and our nation in the 1960s.

At the beginning of baseball no one could of guessed

the impact that the game would have gone on to have in

American culture. Baseball helped soldiers in the Civil War

in many ways, and it also helped repair the country in a way

in the aftermath of the fratricidal war. Whether it is

purely an American invention or an evolution of the English

game of rounders, baseball became the nation’s pastime and

it has played an important part in American history

especially during the Civil War.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources

Adams, John G. B. Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment. Boston, 1899.

Boetticher, Otto. “Union Prisoners at Salisbury, N.C.” Illustration New York: Goupil, 1863. From Library of Congress,Prints and Photographs Division.

Charles Carroll Gray Diary, July 4, 1862, #2569-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill.

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Chilsolm, Julian J. A Manuel of Military Surgery, For the Use of Surgeons in the Confederate Army. Columbia: Evans and Cogswell, 1864.

Hundley, D.R. Prison Echoes of the Great Rebellion. New York: 1874.

Lewis, George. History of Battery E, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery. Providence, RI, 1892.

Mangum, Adolphus W. “Salisbury Prison,” in Walter Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-65, vol. 4. Raleigh, NC: The State of North Carolina, 1901.

Stevens, George T. Three Years in the Sixth Corps, 77th Regiment, New York Volunteers, 2nd ed. New York, 1870.

Unknown. “Soldiers and Ball Players from Company G, 48th New York State Volunteers at Fort Pulaski, GA.” Photograph. c. 1862-63. From National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, NY.

Secondary Sources

Alvarez, Mark. The Old Ball Game. Virginia: Redefinition, Inc, 1990.

Kirsch, George B. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Millen, Patricia. From Pastime to Passion: Baseball and the Civil War. Westminister, MD: Heritage Books, 2007.

Spalding, Albert G. America’s National Game: Baseball. San Francisco:Halo Books 1991.

Twombly, Wells. Two Hundred Years of Sport in America. New York, McGrawHill, 1976.

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