1863.58
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Ballplaying on the Lines at the Siege of Vicksburg
| Salience | Peripheral |
|---|---|
| Tags | Civil War, MilitaryCivil War, Military |
| Location | MississippiMississippi |
| City/State/Country: | Vicksburg, MS, United States |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | Base BallBase Ball |
| Immediacy of Report | Retrospective |
| Age of Players | AdultAdult |
| Holiday | |
| Notables | |
| Text | “The civil war, however, arrested the development of the new game [base ball] for a time. It was played during the war in camps all over the south. Regiments and companies having their teams. Sergeant Dryden, of an Iowa regiment, relates that during the long waits in the trenches before Vicksburg, the Union and Confederate soldiers jokingly challenged each other to play baseball, and that during the brief truces the men of his company and the enemy played catch from line to line. “’We were throwing and catching the ball belonging to our company ne day,’ he relates, ‘when firing commenced afresh and the men dived into their holes. There was a big fellow named Holleran who, after we got to cover, wanted to go over and whip the ‘Johnny Reb’ who hd stolen our ball. The next morning during a lull in the firing, that ‘Reb’ yelled to us and in a minute the baseball came flying over the works, so we played a game on our next relief.’” The siege of Vicksburg MS occurred from late May to July 4 1863. Many Iowa regiments participated. |
| Sources | J. Evers and H. Fullerton, Touching Second: The Science of Baseball (Reilly and Britton, Chicago, 1910), pages 21-22. Accessed 6/28 on Google Books via “touching second” search. This book provides no source for the Dryden passage. |
| Warning | |
| Comment | Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Note: can we locate an original source for the Dryden data? I can't find a mention of this in any online newspaper. A Carlton Dryden, Sgt. in the 10th Iowa, is the likeliest candidate for the "Sgt. Dryden" mentioned. Edit with form to add a query |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| External Number | 136 |
| Submitted by | |
| Submission Note | |
| Has Supplemental Text |
1863.58 Ballplaying on the Lines at the Siege of Vicksburg"
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