On a sun-soaked field at Gettysburg last week, 149 years and a day after this country’s costliest battle began, our guide spoke of Wisconsin soldiers who, for the sake of the Union, soaked that same field with blood.
They were in the 6th Wisconsin Regiment, part of the famed Iron Brigade, and their sacrifice is memorialized with a red granite monument from Montello, Wis. And not far from that monument stands another to the man from New York who helped lead them into the fray.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Abner Doubleday?
Yes, before he became the mythological inventor of baseball, he was Gen. Doubleday. Historians credit him with being instrumental in the first day’s fighting of the Civil War’s three-day turning point. Taking over for a slain superior, his staunch actions delayed the Rebels long enough so the main Union army could arrange defenses that would eventually carry the cause.
Two other Wisconsin regiments, the 2nd and 7th, joined the 6th and other troops during the Day 1 struggle. They also played crucial roles and have monuments near Doubleday’s. A 2nd Wisconsin private, Patrick Maloney, even captured a Confederate general during the early hours of Gettysburg.
The things you learn on summer road trips.
I hadn’t planned to do a Doubleday double, and yet, several days later, that same road trip wound its way to Doubleday’s more familiar stomping grounds of Cooperstown, N.Y. Contrary to popular belief, Cooperstown is a place where he merely attended school, not where he invented baseball, because he didn’t really invent baseball. A man named Alexander Cartwright gets the credit.
Doubleday, mind you, had nothing to do with such baseball mythmaking. He was long dead by the time others were crafting the story in the early 1900s. And it turns out that in 1839, when Doubleday was supposedly in Cooperstown setting down the rules for baseball, he was really setting up shop in West Point and learning to be a soldier.
And thank goodness, as Gettysburg proved, for that.
Still, generations grew up believing the baseball legend, and the Baseball Hall of Fame grew up in Cooperstown. So did Doubleday Field, where they still play ballgames two blocks from the Hall.
I strolled through the Hall’s cozy halls, soaking in the riches of its history.
I strolled through the Field’s wooden grandstands, soaking in the richness of its simplicity.
And I thought back to that other field, where strands of baseball history and Badger State history so unexpectedly intertwined, and how only Civil War buffs know the story of Doubleday and those Wisconsin regiments.
And I thought a few more people should know.
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