1862.22

Crowd of 40,000 Said to Watch Christmas Day Game on SC Coast

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	Civil War, Holidays, MilitaryCivil War, Holidays, Military
Location	South CarolinaSouth Carolina
City/State/Country:	Hilton Head, SC, United States
Modern Address
Game	Base BallBase Ball
Immediacy of Report	Retrospective
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	"In Hilton Head, South Carolina, on Christmas Day in 1862, recalled Colonel A. G. Mills in 1923, his regiment, the 165^th New York Infantry, Second Duryea's Zouaves, [engaged a?] picked nine from the other New York regiments in that vicinity.' Supposedly, the game was cheered on by a congregation of 40,000!" Mills eventually served as President of the National League and chair of the Mills Commission on the origins of baseball.
Sources	Patricia Millen, From Pastime to Passion: Baseball and the Civil War (Heritage Books, 2001), pp 21-22. Millen cites A. G. Mills, "The Evening World's Baseball Panorama." Mills Papers, Giamatti Center, Baseball HOF. The account also appears in A. Spalding, Americas' National Game (American Sports Publishing, 1911), pp 95.96. PBall file -- CW-30
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Query	Is this crowd estimate reasonable? Are other contemporary or reflective accounts available? The crowd estimate is exaggerated. There weren't anywhere near 40,000 troops on the island at that time. [ba] Edit with form to add a query
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