The General Credited With Inventing America’s Favorite Pastime
Baseball has often been ascribed to Abner Doubleday, an Army officer who fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter at the start of the US Civil War. He became a Union Army general, and played a pivotal role in the Battle of Gettysburg. On the civilian side of the ledger, he secured a patent on the San Francisco cable car railway that runs to this day. He is best known, however for his links to baseball, and was credited for many years with inventing the sport in the 1830s. Doubleday was born in 1819 in New York, to a family of warriors. His father fought in the War of 1812, and his paternal grandfather fought in Patriot ranks in the Revolutionary War. His maternal grandparent had been a messenger for George Washington, and at least one of his great grandparents had been a Minuteman.
Doubleday was accepted into West Point in 1838, graduated four years later, and was commissioned as an artillery officer. He fought in the Mexican War, 1846 to 1848, and in the Seminole Wars, 1856 to 1858. In 1861, he was second in command in the federal garrison at Fort Sumter when it was fired upon by Rebels to start off the Civil War. He personally aimed the first cannon that returned fire, and forever after credited himself with firing the war’s first shot in defense of the Union. After the Sumter garrison capitulated and vacated the fort, Doubleday served in the artillery of the Army of the Potomac. By the time of the Second Battle of Bull Run, he commanded a brigade.