MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Aaron W. Miller Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ____________________________________________ Erik N. Jensen, Director ____________________________________________ Andrew Cayton, Reader ____________________________________________ Kimberly Hamlin, Reader ____________________________________________ Kevin Armitage, Graduate School Representative ABSTRACT GLORIOUS SUMMER: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BASEBALL, 1861-1920 by Aaron W. Miller In the decades after the Civil War, Americans turned baseball, a fad from New York City, into their national obsession. Baseball’s apostles used the game’s Civil War experience to infuse it with militaristic, nationalistic, and patriotic themes. They mythologized the history of the game. Baseball’s explosive growth across the nation came with profound implications. Baseball formed a mass, united culture. Although Civil War soldiers played baseball to escape the dreariness and terror of life during war, the process of militarizing and imbuing the game with patriotic themes started even before the guns fell silent. As the sport spread nationally, it advanced a northern, middle-class vision of masculinity. Baseball shaped gender roles in the late nineteenth century. In the early days of baseball, women were important as spectators, yet the sporting culture lambasted their play. Of course, baseball also excluded racial minorities. Baseball’s promoters saw the game as a restorer of white masculinity, which many believed was atrophying. By the end of the dead-ball era, Americans thought that baseball was essential for national strength. Baseball helped reunify the nation after the sectional crisis. As Americans remembered the war, and baseball, in glorious military terms, they ignored the racial and political issues which drove the nation apart. The myth that Abner Doubleday, a Union general, invented baseball, would last for generations. Like the tenuous claims that Abraham Lincoln played baseball, the Doubleday myth continued the process of giving the national pastime a martial and patriotic ethos. As the United States marched off to fight World War I, baseball was at its peak in terms of cultural and economic power. This cultural study examines a wide variety of sources. This dissertation examines Civil War diaries and journals for the details of baseball games at the front. It also explores the print media that was so important to the sporting culture during the late nineteenth century. This dissertation also investigates the works of early baseball luminaries such as John Montgomery Ward, Henry Chadwick and Albert Spalding. Baseball’s fascinating early years provide invaluable insight into the story of America during the nineteenth century. GLORIOUS SUMMER: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BASEBALL, 1861-1920 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy History Department by Aaron W. Miller Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2012 Dissertation Director: Erik N. Jensen © Aaron W. Miller 2012 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 I. War Games: Making Meaning of Baseball's Civil War Proliferation, 1857-1870 ................ 17 II. Making Manly Muscle: Defining Gender Roles in Nineteenth-Century Baseball, 1862- 1899........................................................................................................................................... 38 III. Finding Glory in the Summers of Discontent: Building Baseball’s Warrior Mythos and Restoring the Union ................................................................................................................. 76 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 111 Annotated Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 119 iii List of Illustrations Union Prisoners at Salisbury, N.C. ................................................................................................29 Jefferson Davis as an Unprotected Female! .................................................................................. 44 The Call for Volunteers—1861 ...................................................................................................104 iv For Erin, my sunshine v Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance of Erik N. Jensen, a scholar and a true gentleman. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Erik for his encouragement, patience, thoughtfulness, and insight. Kevin Armitage, Andrew Cayton, and Kimberly Hamlin were dedicated readers that took the time to provide awesome feedback and suggestions for the future of this study. I would also like to express my appreciation to the rest of the Miami University History Department’s faculty and staff. I would like to thank my friends and family for their love and support. From an early age, my parents, Stan and Jimi Miller, taught me a love of reading, writing and understanding the past. I wish to thank my brothers, Nathaneal and Thaddeus Miller, who stand by me through thick and thin. Erin, I could not have done this without you and I would not want to. Thank you for your love, your faith in me, and proofreading. vi Introduction Research Question One persistent and bold baseball legend highlights the importance of the nineteenth century in the game’s background. The legend takes place in the grim hours after John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. According to the story, Lincoln, surrounded by grieving government officials and friends, lay dying. The mortally wounded president summoned the strength for his final words. With his dying gasp, Lincoln told Union General Abner Doubleday, the alleged inventor of baseball, “Don’t let baseball die.”1 The story is a complete fabrication; Lincoln said nothing after Booth shot him. The story was probably the invention of Bill Stern, a radio sportscaster during the 1940s.2 Although the story originates during the twentieth century, it underscores the importance of the nineteenth century to the lore of the game. The tale takes place in the waning days of the Civil War and inserts Abraham Lincoln into the history of the game. It also emphasizes Abner Doubleday’s mythical invention of the game. The Civil War, Lincoln, and Doubleday are recurring themes in baseball’s nineteenth-century mythology. Baseball is a nineteenth-century game. Americans created the modern form of baseball in the nineteenth century. It became the American national pastime during the nineteenth century. And in many ways, the game tries to remain a nineteenth-century game. It has long rejected modern advances such as a game clock, instant replay, or the use of metal bats in the major leagues. It sells itself as a relic from the pre-industrial world. But like so much of baseball, this is a myth. After all, players try to use the latest chemicals to enhance their play while management employs sophisticated statistical analysis to make personnel decisions. In baseball, however, the myth is often times more important than the facts. This dissertation’s title underscores the role baseball played during the nineteenth century. “Glorious Summer,” is from William Shakespeare’s historical play, Richard III. In the play’s opening soliloquy, Richard of Gloucester plots to take the throne. Richard’s 1 William B. Mead and Paul Dickson, Baseball: The Presidents’ Game (Washington, DC: Farragut Publishing, 1993), 9. 2 Ibid. 1 brother, Edward IV, has just taken the crown after winning a victory during the Wars of the Roses. Richard reflects, “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” In other words, with Edward’s victory, England was now enjoying peace. Of course, Richard is setting the stage for a coup. In terms of United States history, the Civil War was the American winter of discontent. In the years that followed, Americans glamorized the war and saw it as glorious. As Americans bound the nation’s wounds in the decades after the war, they ignored the war’s racial issues and glorified the combat experience. Baseball encouraged that process. After all, Americans celebrated baseball, a summer game, as a glorious pastime derived from the Civil War. Shakespeare’s reflection of the era after a civil war could have fit American history as well as British history. With baseball’s antebellum period as its spring of beginnings, my study follows baseball in its metaphorical summer, a heyday of growth and possibilities. The post-Black Sox era autumn was a resurgence, a golden age of celebrity players that captured the nation’s attention. Now professional football earns more revenue and large- market teams dominate baseball. With the sport also mired in doping scandals, perhaps the national pastime is in its winter. Baseball, the game of the nineteenth century, remains important to the American sporting culture—but it no longer stands alone in the spotlight. For the 2012 season, over 80 million spectators will attend a Major League Baseball game. Major League Baseball alone will gross over seven billion dollars in revenue, thanks largely to teams’ lucrative contracts with regional cable networks. In contrast,