It's Friday, July 1, 2022, the day of the week when I pass along a quotation intended to be uplifting or enlightening. Today's words of inspiration come from the ranks of Union soldiers marching on a road outside Gettysburg, Pa., on this date in 1863. The account comes from Abner Doubleday, a general in Mr. Lincoln's Army.
Later this month, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will induct seven new members into its esteemed ranks. If you've never been to Major League Baseball's shrine in the upstate New York village of Cooperstown, it's worth a trip even if you're not an aficionado of the sport once known as America's "National Pastime."
For anyone who cares about U.S. history, organized baseball can be a fascinating prism. Whatever interests you -- racial reckoning, wartime sacrifice, feminism, American literature, technological advancement, gambling, nationalism, internationalism, the perils of unfettered greed -- it's all wrapped up in baseball's story.
Or you can just go to Cooperstown's Doubleday Field and catch anything from the annual Hall of Fame Classic Legends Game or youth baseball. I've played on that diamond, and it's a magical place, a real Field of Dreams. True, its name is problematic. Abner Doubleday, contrary to the myth, did not invent baseball. More than that, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the game in his lifetime.
Doubleday was a West Point cadet on the date in 1839 when a local commission claimed he drew up baseball's rules in the dirt. But his New York Times obituary doesn't mention baseball; neither do any of his 67 diaries, the numerous letters or articles he wrote in his lifetime, or the book he wrote about the Civil War. Abner Doubleday no more invented the game of baseball than Tom Hanks invented synchronized swimming.
However, as having a New York Times obit implies, Abner Doubleday wasn't a nobody. Far from it. He had an amazing life, a Forrest Gump-type romp through 19th century America. As a U.S. Army captain, Doubleday directed the first cannon fired in defense of Fort Sumter. Nearly two decades earlier, while at West Point, Doubleday had been classmates with future Union generals John Pope, John Newton, and William Starke Rosecrans -- as well as a South Carolinian named James Longstreet. Doubleday and Longstreet both have monuments at Gettysburg, although they were on different sides in that great struggle. Before and after Gettysburg, Doubleday feuded with Gen. George Meade, although most historians side with Doubleday in this dispute, which began at an earlier battle and was based on misinformation provided to Meade.
After the Civil War ended, when he was stationed in San Francisco, Doubleday took out a patent for an invention of local note -- the cable car. So this New York state native was a very capable man. At Gettysburg, he was among other capable officers, including two other West Point men who arrived in that bucolic Pennsylvania village on the eve of the battle. Yet another was Robert E. Lee, whose tough Army of Northern Virginia may have underestimated the Union Army's will to fight. It was miscalculation also shared by many Union officers. The night before the battle, some officers cooked up a dumb scheme of planting a rumor in the ranks to the effect that popular, but timid, Gen. George McClellan was returning to command. The Union soldiers were too smart to believe it, but in any event it didn't matter. Key officers, including John Buford and John F. Reynolds, knew how tough their troops had become -- and were about to prove it.
(Neither man would survive the war. Reynolds would be dead by noon on the first day the great battle, just a couple of hours after he met Buford outside a theological seminary near Gettysburg and had a brief conversation that would alter the course of history. Typhoid fever would take John Buford before the arrival of the New Year. Abraham Lincoln mourned his passing.)
Buford had led his 3,000-man First Cavalry into Gettysburg expecting to find rebels. He got more than he bargained for. Then again, the same can be said about Lee. "If the Confederates were looking for a fight, Buford was just the man for them," wrote historian Bruce Catton. "Unsupported cavalry was not expected to stand off infantry … but Buford liked to fight and he did not propose to leave until somebody made him leave."
Buford ordered his men to dismount and fight off the advance of a much larger Confederate force, allowing Reynolds' men to occupy the high ground on Seminary Ridge that the Union troops never surrendered. Reynolds had instantly grasped the strategic importance of moving fast, and he dashed off a note to Gen. Meade. "I will fight them inch by inch," Reynolds vowed, "and if driven into the town I will barricade the streets and hold him aback as long as possible."
As he realized that Reynolds' infantry had beaten the Confederates in the race to Seminary Ridge, John Buford was finally able to exhale. "Now," he said, "we can hold the place."
I've told that part of the story in this newsletter before. But there was obviously a lot more to it. Occupying the high ground was one thing. Holding it against Lee's fierce fighters was another. So, south of an unfinished railroad line bisecting the battlefield, Reynolds told Gen. Doubleday to lead his troops in defense of the position.
Officially, this was the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of 1st Army Corps, but they were known as the "Iron Brigade" or the "black hats." The unit was comprised of citizen-soldiers from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan -- states then considered being from "the West." Here is how Bruce Catton described their approach into battle that day:
"As this brigade approached Gettysburg … the fife-and-drum corps playing at the head of the column … the Westerners fell into step and came swinging up the road, their black hats tilted over their eyes, rifle barrels sparkling in the morning sun. There were eighteen hundred fighting men in this brigade, and the men were cocky."
Like his fellow generals Buford and Reynolds, Abner Doubleday knew that the unit's self-confidence had been hard-earned. Nonetheless, like a 20th century football coach, this man who did not invent baseball felt the impulse to exhort his men with words of encouragement, calling out to them that this ground was the key to the entire battle -- one both sides knew was going to be decisive in the entire war -- and he urged them to hold it "to the last extremity."
The combat-hardened troops of the Iron Brigade yelled back to their commanding officer, "If we can't hold it, where will you find men who can?"
And that's our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.