Portal:American Civil War/Selected biography/17

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Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893), was a career U.S. Army officer and Union general. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg might have been his finest hour, but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men. In San Francisco, California, after the war, Doubleday obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. In his final years in New Jersey, he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society. Doubleday published two important works on the Civil War: Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie (1876), and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882), the latter being a volume of the series Campaigns of the Civil War.

Doubleday's most lasting claim to fame is that some believe he should be credited with the invention of baseball, although he himself made no such claim. Doubleday Field is a minor league baseball stadium named for Abner Doubleday, located in Cooperstown near the Baseball Hall of Fame. It hosts the annual Hall of Fame Game, originally between "old-timers" teams, but currently an exhibition game between two major league teams.