5/13/2023 Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Vir... by Carlton McCarthyRead Now![]() ![]() The Confederates were a somewhat different breed. The claim that Union General Abner Doubleday invented baseball is sketchy, but there's no doubt his game was the most popular pastime among his boys in blue. Lonely and far from home, Yankee soldiers enjoyed playing baseball. A wonderfully entertaining but obscure book called Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia by Carlton McCarthy, first published in 1882, recounts that Confederate soldiers enjoyed playing football to relieve the boredom of camp life. ESPN proclaimed 2019 the 150th year of football.īut the real origins of the game may be found earlier, and further south of New Jersey. Such is Google's long reach that they have retroactively awarded the first college football National Co-Championships to both Princeton and Rutgers on the basis that each team won one of the first two games constituting the entirety of that first season in 1869. ![]() ![]() ![]() That first "season" was to consist of three games between those two teams, however the third game was cancelled because professors from both colleges complained about football's disputative effect on academics. Therefore, it is written that the first football game was played in New Jersey between Rutgers and Princeton four years after the end of the Civil War. It is said that history is written by the winners. ![]()
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