General Abner Doubleday had nothing to do with the invention
of baseball, even though a hand-picked commission gave him credit for it in
1907. He did, however, have something
to do with Stonewall Jackson and his horse Little Sorrel.
Doubleday was a professional soldier, a West Pointer who saw
action in the Mexican War and the Seminole War in Florida. His combat
experience in the Civil War began just as the conflict did when, as a major and
second-in-command of Federal troops at Fort Sumter, he ordered the first shot
fired in defense of the doomed fort.
He gave respectable if not spectacular service during the
war, rising to Brigadier General and then to Major General. One of his most
important actions took place on August 28, 1862. That was either the first day
of a three-day Battle ofSecond Bull Run or, depending on how you look at it, a separate
battle that took place the day before a two-day Second Bull Run. Late in the
afternoon of the 28th Doubleday led his brigade east along the
Warrenton Turnpike in Northern Virginia, expecting—as the rest of the Union army
did—that they would soon face Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Doubleday stopped briefly on the march near a farm operated by John
Brawner and noticed a scruffy man on a scruffy horse on a hillside overlooking
the turnpike.
“I at once came to
the conclusion that it was a rebel officer,’ Doubleday wrote later. Another Union officer disagreed, thinking that the man looked like a poor farmer. The
lone rider turned and was allowed to ride away unmolested, even though he was within easy
musket range of the Union soldiers.
Doubleday had been
right. It had been a Union officer, and quite an officer at that. Later
writings from both sides identified the scruffy horse and rider as Stonewall
Jackson and Little Sorrel. Jackson, as he often did, wanted so see the Union
troops for himself. If the Union army had known, the course of the war—but
probably not its outcome—might have changed. As it was, Jackson attacked
shortly after, resulting in the bloody and inconclusive Battle of Brawner’s
Farm. Second Bull Run, which took place the following two days, was definitely
conclusive, resulting in a resounding Confederate victory.
The marker at Doubleday’s birthplace in Ballston Spa, NY,
refers to the baseball myth and his outstanding service at Gettysburg. The
story of what he saw on the hillside at John Brawner’s farm is not mentioned.
