The Search for Stability: Baseball and the Voluntary Association as a Cultural Organizing Principle in the Trans-Appalachian West
by Jeffrey Kittel
There are a myriad of ideas and hypothesis about how the New York game of baseball spread across the United States during the middle part of the 19th century. While the game may have spread as a result of cultural diffusion or through the impact of the Civil War or by the advancement of new information and transportation technologies or by sheer randomness, one thing that is often overlooked and may shed some light on the successful spread of the game is why the game was so successful in establishing itself in the cities and towns of the United States.
The few attempts that have been made to answer this question have focused on the unique qualities of the game itself. Some have argued, for example, that baseball’s use of foul territory decreased the size of the grounds needed to play the game and, therefore, allowed the game to be played in a more densely, urban setting. Foul territory, it is also argued, allowed for spectators to have a more intimate view of the game, increasing the popularity of the sport among non-players. Others have suggested that rule changes regarding how outs were made increased the popularity of the game. The elimination of soaking removed what could have been seen as a childish aspect of the game, creating a game more appealing to adult players. The acceptance of the fly rule, some argue, created a game that required more athletic skill to play, again pushing the game away from its more childish form towards a more adult game. These arguments have merit, should be taken seriously and deserve to be looked at more closely.
However, the idea that the rule changes that created the unique New York game and separated it from other baseball variants were the reason the game became popular, spread across the United States and took root in American communities is not a particularly satisfying answer. The answer seems to boil down to the idea that baseball spread across the United States because it was a good game and a better game than the baseball variants that had been played across the country for two centuries. That may very well be true but it seems simplistic and not particularly provable.
To discover a more satisfying answer to the question of why baseball spread popularly across the United States (separately from the question of how it spread), it is important to look at the role that baseball, including proto-baseball games, played culturally in the emerging American nation of the 19th century. We have a great deal of information about how new towns and cities developed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier in the first half of the century and the ways in which these new societies organized themselves culturally. When one combines this with information regarding how, at the same time, proto-baseball games spread in the region, a picture emerges of a new American society that used baseball as a cultural tool to help organize the new society, to promote social stability and order and to integrate new members into the society. While baseball can be seen as a cultural organizing principle used by the new American society of the Trans-Appalachian west to promote stability within the community, the game was also used by individuals – new members of the society – as a tool to culturally integrate themselves in a society in which they had no roots. Just as the society used the game to promote stability within the larger community, individuals were able to establish stability within in there own lives by taking part in the game. Both the society and the individual benefited by the playing of the game within a community and, as the game was beneficial to all, the game spread and grew in popularity.
The Trans-Appalachian west offers a unique opportunity when looking at the development of American culture because of its limited history. Unlike the eastern seaboard of the United States, the settlement of which began at the beginning of the 17th century, the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier did not begin in earnest until the very end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. By the time the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier began, places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston were already mature societies with a rich and complicated history. The 19th century frontier communities of the new American west, however, offer the historian a clean slate upon which can be observed the development of a new society and a new culture. We have documented evidence of not only the origins of these new communities but also of specific aspects of its culture, such as the establishment of the first baseball clubs. It is much easier to document cultural causality in these new communities of the Trans-Appalachian west than it is, for instance, in the more established society of New York.
While we have neither time nor space to detail the settlement of the entire Trans-Appalachian west, we can quickly look at the settlement of one area of that frontier region.1 After Illinois gained entry into the Union in 1818, European-American settlers poured into the central part of the state. Within a generation, an area that had been bereft of European settlements was dotted with new American towns and communities. The Sangamon River valley, which includes the Springfield, Illinois region, went from having less than two people per square mile in 1820 to having eighteen people per square mile in 1840 and some areas of the region had a popularity density of forty-five people per square mile. In twenty years, hundreds of towns sprang up on the central Illinois plains and hundreds of thousands of people moved into the area, creating, overnight, new societies and communities. The population of the state exploded from 55,000 in 1820 to almost 500,000 in 1840 as people from western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana moved westward.
Great migrations of people have, throughout history, created societal upheaval and the European-American migration into the Trans-Appalachian west was no different. One of the most important problems the new communities of the west had to address was how to create a stable social order from a diffuse, migratory group of individuals.2 There was a predominant sense of chaos and instability in these new communities as they saw a continuous movement of individuals in and out of the area. New individuals would move to a given town and stay for a short period before moving on. Some would settle down permanently and communicate to their friends and family in the east, encouraging them to move to the area. If a town was successful in developing a robust economic system, it might see its population double and then double again in less than a decade. The demographics of these new frontier societies were constantly in flux and often saw a disproportionate number of young, single males moving into or through the community. The search for stability and order in the Trans-Appalachian west was a by-product of these newly established communities dealing with the question of what to do with these new members of the society and how best to integrate peacefully into the fabric of the society.
To quickly illustrate the nature of this problem, imagine the population of the town where you live doubling in the next five years. Imagine, also, that the vast majority of this new population was single men in their twenties. How would your community deal with this? What kind of stresses would this growth place on your community? Where would these people live? Where would they work? Would the community’s physical infrastructure – the sewers, the electrical grid – be able to handle the increase in population? How would these new people fit into the social fabric of the community? Would they intermarry? Would there be an increase in crime? If there were linguistic or religious differences, how would the dominant culture react? These were the problems facing the new communities of the Trans-Appalachian west in the first half of the 19th century and, being relatively new communities, they lacked a developed social or cultural infrastructure to deal with it. A new way had to be found.
Alex de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, identified one way in which American communities uniquely organized themselves in an attempt to establish social order and stability. Visiting the United States in 1831, de Tocqueville observed first-hand the situation in the Trans-Appalachian frontier and the quest of these new communities to organize themselves into a civil society. He noted that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools…As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found one another out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men…Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve…”3 While it is highly doubtful that de Tocqueville had baseball in mind when he wrote his famous passages about voluntary associations in America, the playing of baseball games and the formation of baseball clubs in the Trans-Appalachian frontier during the first half of the 19th century certainly had the same effect on social stability and order as did the formation of other clubs, be they political, religious, or social.
De Tocqueville believed that voluntary associations promoted social stability and order in the new American communities that lacked older forms of social institutions that served the same effect. In a community with a large number of single males and small families, lacking the stability of the extended family or clan and with a populace constantly in flux, voluntary associations that formed around the playing of baseball variants can be seen as a new form of social institution, encouraged by a community in order to promote stability and order within the society. Just as political, religious and philanthropic associations were encouraged, so to would be athletic associations. All of these associations, including the baseball clubs, brought together divergent individuals for a common purpose, creating a sense of commonality and community that tied the members together and rooted them in the society. They created an institutional structure within the community in which the community could absorb new members and install in them the common values and culture of the society. The voluntary association was one of the most important ways in which a community structured itself amidst the chaotic demographic and social upheaval of the first half of the 19th century. The culture surrounding the playing of proto-baseball played the same role in the Trans-Appalachian frontier as did culture surrounding the local church or political party.
And there can be no doubt that a ball-playing culture existed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier throughout the first half of the 19th century. Based on best evidence, it is apparent that a baseball culture developed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier at the same time as the European-Americans moved into the region. The Yankees who moved to central Illinois in 1820 brought their ball games with them and proto-baseball games appear to have been played by all ages, sexes and classes. Ball-playing was an important part of the culture and it was used as a way for these new societies to organize themselves and subsume new members. Ball-playing, in the Trans-Appalachian frontier, played the exact same cultural role as did religion. The ball club had the same role as the church –albeit without the expectation of any heavenly reward. The new communities organized themselves through voluntary associations and ball-playing culture was a part of that.
From an individual standpoint, the voluntary association inherent within a ball-playing culture was extremely useful and was a way for a new member of a community to integrate himself within the society. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were moving through central Illinois between 1820 and 1840, some settling down and many staying for only a limited time. They often were single, young males and lacked family in the area. They had no means of support or any ties within the community. They were strangers with little in common with their new neighbors. It must have been a rather difficult, frightening and lonely transition to make, going from an eastern town where you were born, had family and friends, and shared common values to the frontier where you were alone or had only your immediate family to depend on. In the 1830s, a teenaged girl named Sarah Aiken moved from New York to central Illinois with her family and, writing to a friend back east, called the Trans-Appalachian frontier a “far distant country” and desired just “for one friend...”4 The young Miss Aiken was hardly alone in her feelings and there are numerous accounts in letters and diaries that speak to the loneliness and isolation that an individual could experience on the frontier.
By participating in the local ball-playing culture and joining in the voluntary association of a baseball club, the individual could alleviate their sense of isolation and integrate themselves into the society. They could use the baseball club, regardless of their level of athletic skill, to become a member of the community. Of course, superior feats of athletic skill were admired in the frontier community and a good player, participating in the culture and proving himself on the field, could raise his social standing among other members of society. The player could use the association to forge friendships and find business opportunities. They could prove that they shared common values and become less alien to the community. The voluntary association allowed a new member of the community to adopt the culture of the community that they wished to join. It was an opportunity that the community presented to them and whether or not they took the opportunity told the community a great deal about the individual. If an individual moved to a small Illinois town in 1830 and played baseball, went to the local church, joined the local Whig club and helped raise funds for a town hall, they would be accepted as member of the community. If they choose not to do these things, the individual would be seen as odd, at best, and possibly ostracized. The voluntary association inherent in a ball-playing culture offered an individual entry into community and society he wished to join. Just as it was a way for the community to establish social stability and order, it was a way for the community to offer the same to the individual.
As the New York game of baseball spread across the United States in the later part of the 1850s and exploded in popularity after the end of the Civil War, these same forces still existed. The communities of the Trans-Appalachian west were still being settled in the post-war era, there was still an ongoing western migration and there was a vast frontier west of the Mississippi River that would be settled in the second half of the 19th century. New communities, in the face of this western migration, still searched to create a stable and ordered society. Individuals still searched for stability and order in their life. The baseball clubs of the 19th century were one of the associations that communities used to organize and order their culture and it was an entryway for new members of the community into that culture, at least if you were male. As the proto-baseball games of the Trans-Appalachian frontier were replaced by the New York game, the new game also assumed their function as a cultural organizing principle. It is entirely arguable that the popularity of the New York game, as it drove out other baseball games, and one of the reasons it spread as it did was because it assumed one of the functions of proto-baseball games in the American west. By the late 1850s, the New York game was becoming, as the proto-baseball games had been before it, a way for a new community to organize itself and for an isolated individual to become a member of a frontier community. Baseball’s popularity and spread can be seen, in this light, as a function of the desire of communities and individuals for stability and order.
1 Malcolm J. Rohrbough’s Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 is probably the definitive history on the subject. Also, the various editions of the History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier series, published by Indiana University Press and edited by Rohrbough and Walter Nugent, offer a closer look at specific regions of the frontier.
2 Dan Harrison Doyle’s The Social Order of a Frontier Community looks at the problems new frontier towns faced in creating a stable community.
3 Democracy in America; Penguin Books; Translated by Gerald Bevan; 2003; pp 596-600.
4 Davis, James; Frontier Illinois, pp1-3.
The few attempts that have been made to answer this question have focused on the unique qualities of the game itself. Some have argued, for example, that baseball’s use of foul territory decreased the size of the grounds needed to play the game and, therefore, allowed the game to be played in a more densely, urban setting. Foul territory, it is also argued, allowed for spectators to have a more intimate view of the game, increasing the popularity of the sport among non-players. Others have suggested that rule changes regarding how outs were made increased the popularity of the game. The elimination of soaking removed what could have been seen as a childish aspect of the game, creating a game more appealing to adult players. The acceptance of the fly rule, some argue, created a game that required more athletic skill to play, again pushing the game away from its more childish form towards a more adult game. These arguments have merit, should be taken seriously and deserve to be looked at more closely.
However, the idea that the rule changes that created the unique New York game and separated it from other baseball variants were the reason the game became popular, spread across the United States and took root in American communities is not a particularly satisfying answer. The answer seems to boil down to the idea that baseball spread across the United States because it was a good game and a better game than the baseball variants that had been played across the country for two centuries. That may very well be true but it seems simplistic and not particularly provable.
To discover a more satisfying answer to the question of why baseball spread popularly across the United States (separately from the question of how it spread), it is important to look at the role that baseball, including proto-baseball games, played culturally in the emerging American nation of the 19th century. We have a great deal of information about how new towns and cities developed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier in the first half of the century and the ways in which these new societies organized themselves culturally. When one combines this with information regarding how, at the same time, proto-baseball games spread in the region, a picture emerges of a new American society that used baseball as a cultural tool to help organize the new society, to promote social stability and order and to integrate new members into the society. While baseball can be seen as a cultural organizing principle used by the new American society of the Trans-Appalachian west to promote stability within the community, the game was also used by individuals – new members of the society – as a tool to culturally integrate themselves in a society in which they had no roots. Just as the society used the game to promote stability within the larger community, individuals were able to establish stability within in there own lives by taking part in the game. Both the society and the individual benefited by the playing of the game within a community and, as the game was beneficial to all, the game spread and grew in popularity.
The Trans-Appalachian west offers a unique opportunity when looking at the development of American culture because of its limited history. Unlike the eastern seaboard of the United States, the settlement of which began at the beginning of the 17th century, the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier did not begin in earnest until the very end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. By the time the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier began, places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston were already mature societies with a rich and complicated history. The 19th century frontier communities of the new American west, however, offer the historian a clean slate upon which can be observed the development of a new society and a new culture. We have documented evidence of not only the origins of these new communities but also of specific aspects of its culture, such as the establishment of the first baseball clubs. It is much easier to document cultural causality in these new communities of the Trans-Appalachian west than it is, for instance, in the more established society of New York.
While we have neither time nor space to detail the settlement of the entire Trans-Appalachian west, we can quickly look at the settlement of one area of that frontier region.1 After Illinois gained entry into the Union in 1818, European-American settlers poured into the central part of the state. Within a generation, an area that had been bereft of European settlements was dotted with new American towns and communities. The Sangamon River valley, which includes the Springfield, Illinois region, went from having less than two people per square mile in 1820 to having eighteen people per square mile in 1840 and some areas of the region had a popularity density of forty-five people per square mile. In twenty years, hundreds of towns sprang up on the central Illinois plains and hundreds of thousands of people moved into the area, creating, overnight, new societies and communities. The population of the state exploded from 55,000 in 1820 to almost 500,000 in 1840 as people from western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana moved westward.
Great migrations of people have, throughout history, created societal upheaval and the European-American migration into the Trans-Appalachian west was no different. One of the most important problems the new communities of the west had to address was how to create a stable social order from a diffuse, migratory group of individuals.2 There was a predominant sense of chaos and instability in these new communities as they saw a continuous movement of individuals in and out of the area. New individuals would move to a given town and stay for a short period before moving on. Some would settle down permanently and communicate to their friends and family in the east, encouraging them to move to the area. If a town was successful in developing a robust economic system, it might see its population double and then double again in less than a decade. The demographics of these new frontier societies were constantly in flux and often saw a disproportionate number of young, single males moving into or through the community. The search for stability and order in the Trans-Appalachian west was a by-product of these newly established communities dealing with the question of what to do with these new members of the society and how best to integrate peacefully into the fabric of the society.
To quickly illustrate the nature of this problem, imagine the population of the town where you live doubling in the next five years. Imagine, also, that the vast majority of this new population was single men in their twenties. How would your community deal with this? What kind of stresses would this growth place on your community? Where would these people live? Where would they work? Would the community’s physical infrastructure – the sewers, the electrical grid – be able to handle the increase in population? How would these new people fit into the social fabric of the community? Would they intermarry? Would there be an increase in crime? If there were linguistic or religious differences, how would the dominant culture react? These were the problems facing the new communities of the Trans-Appalachian west in the first half of the 19th century and, being relatively new communities, they lacked a developed social or cultural infrastructure to deal with it. A new way had to be found.
Alex de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, identified one way in which American communities uniquely organized themselves in an attempt to establish social order and stability. Visiting the United States in 1831, de Tocqueville observed first-hand the situation in the Trans-Appalachian frontier and the quest of these new communities to organize themselves into a civil society. He noted that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools…As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found one another out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men…Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve…”3 While it is highly doubtful that de Tocqueville had baseball in mind when he wrote his famous passages about voluntary associations in America, the playing of baseball games and the formation of baseball clubs in the Trans-Appalachian frontier during the first half of the 19th century certainly had the same effect on social stability and order as did the formation of other clubs, be they political, religious, or social.
De Tocqueville believed that voluntary associations promoted social stability and order in the new American communities that lacked older forms of social institutions that served the same effect. In a community with a large number of single males and small families, lacking the stability of the extended family or clan and with a populace constantly in flux, voluntary associations that formed around the playing of baseball variants can be seen as a new form of social institution, encouraged by a community in order to promote stability and order within the society. Just as political, religious and philanthropic associations were encouraged, so to would be athletic associations. All of these associations, including the baseball clubs, brought together divergent individuals for a common purpose, creating a sense of commonality and community that tied the members together and rooted them in the society. They created an institutional structure within the community in which the community could absorb new members and install in them the common values and culture of the society. The voluntary association was one of the most important ways in which a community structured itself amidst the chaotic demographic and social upheaval of the first half of the 19th century. The culture surrounding the playing of proto-baseball played the same role in the Trans-Appalachian frontier as did culture surrounding the local church or political party.
And there can be no doubt that a ball-playing culture existed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier throughout the first half of the 19th century. Based on best evidence, it is apparent that a baseball culture developed in the Trans-Appalachian frontier at the same time as the European-Americans moved into the region. The Yankees who moved to central Illinois in 1820 brought their ball games with them and proto-baseball games appear to have been played by all ages, sexes and classes. Ball-playing was an important part of the culture and it was used as a way for these new societies to organize themselves and subsume new members. Ball-playing, in the Trans-Appalachian frontier, played the exact same cultural role as did religion. The ball club had the same role as the church –albeit without the expectation of any heavenly reward. The new communities organized themselves through voluntary associations and ball-playing culture was a part of that.
From an individual standpoint, the voluntary association inherent within a ball-playing culture was extremely useful and was a way for a new member of a community to integrate himself within the society. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were moving through central Illinois between 1820 and 1840, some settling down and many staying for only a limited time. They often were single, young males and lacked family in the area. They had no means of support or any ties within the community. They were strangers with little in common with their new neighbors. It must have been a rather difficult, frightening and lonely transition to make, going from an eastern town where you were born, had family and friends, and shared common values to the frontier where you were alone or had only your immediate family to depend on. In the 1830s, a teenaged girl named Sarah Aiken moved from New York to central Illinois with her family and, writing to a friend back east, called the Trans-Appalachian frontier a “far distant country” and desired just “for one friend...”4 The young Miss Aiken was hardly alone in her feelings and there are numerous accounts in letters and diaries that speak to the loneliness and isolation that an individual could experience on the frontier.
By participating in the local ball-playing culture and joining in the voluntary association of a baseball club, the individual could alleviate their sense of isolation and integrate themselves into the society. They could use the baseball club, regardless of their level of athletic skill, to become a member of the community. Of course, superior feats of athletic skill were admired in the frontier community and a good player, participating in the culture and proving himself on the field, could raise his social standing among other members of society. The player could use the association to forge friendships and find business opportunities. They could prove that they shared common values and become less alien to the community. The voluntary association allowed a new member of the community to adopt the culture of the community that they wished to join. It was an opportunity that the community presented to them and whether or not they took the opportunity told the community a great deal about the individual. If an individual moved to a small Illinois town in 1830 and played baseball, went to the local church, joined the local Whig club and helped raise funds for a town hall, they would be accepted as member of the community. If they choose not to do these things, the individual would be seen as odd, at best, and possibly ostracized. The voluntary association inherent in a ball-playing culture offered an individual entry into community and society he wished to join. Just as it was a way for the community to establish social stability and order, it was a way for the community to offer the same to the individual.
As the New York game of baseball spread across the United States in the later part of the 1850s and exploded in popularity after the end of the Civil War, these same forces still existed. The communities of the Trans-Appalachian west were still being settled in the post-war era, there was still an ongoing western migration and there was a vast frontier west of the Mississippi River that would be settled in the second half of the 19th century. New communities, in the face of this western migration, still searched to create a stable and ordered society. Individuals still searched for stability and order in their life. The baseball clubs of the 19th century were one of the associations that communities used to organize and order their culture and it was an entryway for new members of the community into that culture, at least if you were male. As the proto-baseball games of the Trans-Appalachian frontier were replaced by the New York game, the new game also assumed their function as a cultural organizing principle. It is entirely arguable that the popularity of the New York game, as it drove out other baseball games, and one of the reasons it spread as it did was because it assumed one of the functions of proto-baseball games in the American west. By the late 1850s, the New York game was becoming, as the proto-baseball games had been before it, a way for a new community to organize itself and for an isolated individual to become a member of a frontier community. Baseball’s popularity and spread can be seen, in this light, as a function of the desire of communities and individuals for stability and order.
1 Malcolm J. Rohrbough’s Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 is probably the definitive history on the subject. Also, the various editions of the History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier series, published by Indiana University Press and edited by Rohrbough and Walter Nugent, offer a closer look at specific regions of the frontier.
2 Dan Harrison Doyle’s The Social Order of a Frontier Community looks at the problems new frontier towns faced in creating a stable community.
3 Democracy in America; Penguin Books; Translated by Gerald Bevan; 2003; pp 596-600.
4 Davis, James; Frontier Illinois, pp1-3.
