One of the earliest images of baseball players as a team (circa 1865)
(Possibly From Brooklyn NY)

Some historians believe baseball (or at least a form of it) has been around since the Egyptians some 2000 BC.  Others believe it has its roots in countries such as England, Greece, Scotland, Mexico and many other places.  Regardless of its earlier versions and geographical roots, the game of “American baseball” as we know it today really has its historical “American roots” in the earlier sports of cricket, rounders and especially “town ball.”  In fact, there is numerous recorded evidence showing American Revolutionary War soldiers playing “ball” and “cricket” here in the Colonies during the American Revolution.  There are even accounts of American Revolutionary War prisoners of war that were being held in English prisons actually watching British soldiers playing “ball.”

The ballgame had many different names and many different rules as it evolved in America throughout the 18th & 19th Centuries.  The two prominent names one regularly notices in American historical records are that of “cricket” and “town ball.”  It is the description and historical accounts of the manner in which the game of “town ball” was played that probably best resembles our modern day sport of baseball.

Although the game of baseball as we know it today had been played for decades in the United States (especially in New York and the New England area) prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, it was the soldiers of the Civil War that were largely responsible for it becoming America’s national pastime during the latter part of the 19th Century.  Many northern soldiers from cities, including St. Louis, where the game had already been introduced and played before the war, brought the game into their army camps and taught others how to play.  The game of baseball caught on well with the soldiers and soon became one of their most popular and enjoyable pastimes in their forts and camps. Many soldiers would play it whenever and wherever they got the chance. 

Confederate troops as a group were largely unfamiliar with the game at the beginning of the war since most had come from many rural areas of the South.  Many Confederate soldiers were first introduced to the game when they observed Union prisoners of war playing it in some of the prison camps in the South.  Southern troops also learned how to play the game when they themselves were held prisoners of war in Northern prison camps and watched Union soldiers playing the game there.

19TH Century cartoon of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas playing ball

It is widely accepted and there are numerous accounts that Abraham Lincoln himself was playing the game of “town ball” in a field in Springfield, Illinois when he received the news that he had been nominated for President of the United States in 1860.  It is a known historical fact that Lincoln himself had played the game for decades before he became President.  Some accounts state that he enjoyed the game so much that he occasionally played the game on the White House lawn, sometimes with soldiers, sometimes with staff and at other times with children.

 “Father of Modern Day American Baseball?”


Union General Abner Doubleday
(Father of Modern-day American Baseball?)

Even Union General Abner Doubleday, the man who fired the first Union response shot against the Confederates at Fort Sumter and fought in some of the most notable Civil War battles of the war such as Antietam, Gettysburg and Second Bull Run played “town ball” in Cooperstown, New York as a teen in the 1830s.  According to reports and a little bit of legend, General Doubleday as a youth had altered the normal way of playing town ball and made up some new rules that made the game closely resemble our modern way of playing baseball. 

Albert G. Spalding
19th Century Baseball Pioneer, Player and noted sporting goods retailer

As the game of baseball became more and more organized and popular at the end of the 19th Century, many people started questioning and wondering where the true origin of the game actually came from.  At the request of popular baseball pioneer and sporting goods retailer Albert G. Spalding (1850-1915), a commission in 1905 made up of prominent men connected to the world of baseball was established for the purpose of “determining the origin of baseball.”  In 1907, after two years of research and investigation, the Mills Commission determined that the “originator of baseball” was in fact General Abner Doubleday who had altered the game of “town ball” to include a “diamond and bases” among other things.  To add creditability to General Doubleday, in 1939 the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum was established in of all places, Cooperstown, New York and he is considered by some to be the “Father of Baseball.”

Although there has been much controversy in the claim that General Doubleday is the true “Father of Baseball,” the official findings of the Mills Commission in their final report dated December 30, 1907 did state that “the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839.”  So although there are others who dispute the true origins of American Baseball and the controversial findings of the Mill’s Commission involving General Doubleday, the fact really remains that it was primarily from the interactions of Civil War soldiers during and after the war that the popularity of baseball exploded in the years following the Civil War.  As hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both North and South went back home at the war’s conclusion, many also brought the game of baseball back home with them to many of the cities, towns and hamlets in the nation.  This caused baseball teams and baseball clubs to start sprouting up all throughout the newly re-united country like never before. 

Although when most of the soldiers of the Civil War went home after the war, baseball in the military did not leave with them.  Instead, it continued to grow in popularity in the military just like it was growing in the civilian world.  Baseball became so popular in the military that many of the U.S. army forts and camps scattered all about the nation and western territories to the west created teams and played on a regular basis.  Even Jefferson Barracks had baseball teams and played ball soon after the Civil War.  The historic photo below shows one of Jefferson Barrack’s teams in the 1880’s. In fact, soon after this photo was taken, three of the soldiers in the photo were wounded and killed in the Battle of Wounded Knee.

The early days of Civil War Baseball in St. Louis

Baseball was first brought to St. Louis just before the American Civil War started in 1861.  Men like Jeremiah (Jerry) Fruin, Joseph Hollenbeck & Merritt Griswold who played the game back in New York and elsewhere brought the concept of organized baseball here in the late 1850s into 1860.  Hollenbeck and Griswold both were actually in the Federal Army in St. Louis before the war broke out and was organizing and playing ball here.  Many believe that it was Merritt Griswold who actually organized St. Louis’ very first baseball team known as the ‘Cyclone’ and planned and scheduled the very first game in St. Louis as well. 

The historical record states that The St. Louis Republican newspaper announced on July 9, 1860 that the first regular game of baseball in St. Louis was to be played that day at a location of what we know today as Fair Grounds Park in St. Louis.  The game was to be played between the “Cyclone” and the “Morning Star” Baseball Clubs.

Merritt Griswold was responsible for this game happening and actually wrote a letter to the founder of The Sporting News, Mr. Alfred Spink around 1911 making him aware of that fact.  Griswold’s initial Cyclone team had many men on it that went on to make their own marks in history as well.  Some of these first Cyclones were U.S. Navy Commodore Orville Mathews, General Fred Benteen of the 7th Cavalry (Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn fame), Mr. Whitney of Boatman’s Bank, General Fullerton, Charles Kearney (Son of General Kearney) and others.    

Unfortunately, less than nine months after the first game was played in St. Louis, the Civil War erupted and most of the St. Louis baseball players went into the war with some of them never again returning to St. Louis.  Although the war took many of these ballplayers away from the ball diamond, it did have an unexpected positive impact on the game itself and propelled it to a new level on national scale after the war.  As mentioned before, it was the thousands of soldiers who ultimately learned how to play the game of baseball from men like Fruin, Hollenbeck and Griswold during the war that helped popularize the game after the war when they took the game back home with them and taught others how to play.

St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park

In 1866, less than a year after the Civil War ended, historical notes state that “a ball diamond was laid out in a field in western St. Louis that would later be known as Sportsman’s Park.”  Here, some of the organized St. Louis ball clubs would play baseball.  Games in the 1860s started drawing thousands of spectators to them and attracted many out-of-town baseball clubs to come to St. Louis and play ball.  As the 1870s came around, St. Louis baseball teams were now attracting ten thousand spectators to some of its games.  Baseball in St. Louis was finally off and running in the “Big Leagues.”  In fact, when the present-day “National League” was born on February 2, 1876, the St. Louis Brown Stockings was one of only eight chartered teams in the nation to have joined.

Many of the athletes on these earlier national teams in the 1860s and 1870s were in fact former Civil War soldiers who were still in their twenties and thirties by then.  It was this period in time around the 1870s that many baseball historians view as the period in which when baseball explodes all throughout the nation and gains the serious financial backing and public support that made it the great game we know of today.  The sport of baseball and its adoring fans of today and of tomorrow therefore owe a tremendous thanks to the “real pioneers” of American Baseball and the ones that were responsible for it becoming America’s national pastime in the first place, America Civil War soldiers.  And the rest is history!

Sources: 

Missouri Civil War Records/Archives, MCWM, St. Louis, MO
National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, Cooperstown, NY
19th Century Baseball, Eric Miklich, 2007
“Background of Professional Baseball in St. Louis,” Anthony Lampe, 1950
“A Revolutionary Prison Diary,” of Dr. Jonathan Haskins, New England Quarterly, 1944
Journal of Lt. Ebenezer Elmer, 3rd N.J Continental Army, NJ. Historical Society, 1848
Letters of Abner Graves to Mills Commission, April 3,1905 & November 17, 1905
“How Lincoln Received The Nomination,” Daily Evening Bulletin, San Fran. Ca., 1860
The National Game, Alfred H.. Spinks, 1910