Civil War Officers and Cowboys - the History and Etymology of "Come Hell or High Water"

“Come hell or high water.”  It sounds like something ancient and Biblical – Old Testament Biblical.  Noah, plagues, eternal damnation.

The paper trail, however, paints a different picture.  The idiom, “come hell or high water,” may be little more than one-hundred years old; the apparent forerunner idiom, “in spite of hell or high water,” is only about forty years older.  The “high water” of the idiom may refer to seasonal flooding along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, and not The Flood.

Earliest Known Use of “Come Hell or High Water”

The earliest known appearance of the idiom in print comes from Henry Wallace Phillips’ popular “Red Saunders” series of Western stories: 

‘Do you, Kyle, take this woman, Loys, to have and keep track of, come hell or high water, her heirs and assigns for ever?’ – or such a matter – says he, all in one breath.  They both said they did.

A Red-Haired Cupid, Henry Wallace Phillips, McClure’s, Volume 17, number 4, August 1901, page 380.

The wedding scene from A Red-Haired Cupid

“Red Saunders,” a “picturesque and resourceful cowboy,”[i] was a popular Western character in the early twentieth century.  The popularity of the character persisted for at least twenty years, spawning dozens of stories, at least four collections of stories, and several films and film series produced as late as 1919.  

The “Red Saunders” stories were known for their use of the, “vernacular of the cow punchers or ranchmen and miners . . . . The speech is condensed, individual, replete with imagery and simile and full of unexpected turns and play upon words . . . and it is at all times the wildest slang.”[ii]

Within ten years, the idiom appears to have been firmly established, even in New York City:

High water time in the Mississippi valley is one of fear and danger to all that live in the lowlands along the river from Cairo to the gulf stretch, says the New York Evening Post . . . .  High water talk is the one subject of every one.  As the saying goes, it’s “come hell and high water.”

Yorkville Enquirer, May 17, 1912, page 1.

Ten years later, the idiom was still associated with cattlemen of the American West:

Belgium and France sign a military alliance.  They will get together, regardless of circumstances – “come hell or high water,” as the Old Cattleman would have put it.

The Bismark Tribune (North Dakota), May 20, 1922, page 4.

Many of the post-1902 references seem to support the idea that the idiom came from the American West.  Michael Quinion, writing on World Wide Words, for example, cites a 1939 book entitled, Trampling Herd: the Story of the Cattle Range in America and an article about old-time cattlemen that appeared in the Washington Post in 1905:

He prospered in those palmy days until he became the largest cattle owner in the territory and felt able to take his regular blowout in St Louis, until 1884, when, between the alien land law, drought and rustlers, the “hell and high water of the cattlemen,” he ... walked out of the Kansas City stock yards a few hundred thousand dollars worse off and no cattle worth putting an iron on, much less pulling grass by hand to feed.

Michael Quinion, WorldWideWords.org (quoting, The Washington Post, 1905).

But the fact that those references appeared after the use of the idiom in a “Red Saunders” story begs the question: was the idiom associated with the West because it appeared in a Red Saunders story, or was it used in a Red Saunders story precisely because it was an idiom popular out west? 

Forerunners

A forerunner to the idiom, “in spite of hell and high water,” dates to 1861.  It comes from the early American West – west of the Cumberland Gap – but not the Far West, where the Buffalo roam.  All of the earliest examples that I could find are connected with Civil War officers and come from the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys in Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas. 

The idiom eventually found its way into the American West.  Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, one form of the idiom or another appeared in newspapers from Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah; or in stories originating from western states but published in other regions.  The now more familiar form, “come hell or high water,” does not appear until the Red Saunders story in 1901; it may well be the product of Henry Wallace Phillips’ imagination and peculiar literary genius.

In Spite of Hell

The phrase, “in spite of hell,” dates to at least as early 1659:

Notwithstanding all the confusions that have happened in the world, all the fires that have been kindled, the massacres that have been executed, and the battels that have been fought against the true Christian Religion, the storehouse thereof hath continued to this day, and these Oracles of God been preserved in spite of hell.

John Arrowsmith, Armilla Catechetica, a Chain of Principles; or, an orderly concatenation of Theological Aphorismes and Exercitation; wherein, the Chief Heads of Christian Religion are asserted and improved, Cambridge, John Field, Printer to the University, 1659, page 106.

The phrase was still in use in the United States during the mid-eighteenth century:

Miles Clinton is a bright boy, who has just reached the dignity of a six-year-old. – As one of the rights of that age he goes to church on his own hook, and, last Sunday, came home in advance of the family, and announced to his sister, who had remained at home, that the minister swore dreadfully in the pulpit.

“’Why, what did he say?

“’Oh, he said he would have a revival in spite of hell!”

The Grand River Times (Grand Haven, Michigan), January 29, 1857, page 2.

Or, alternatively:

Turn him into a cornfield to fatten, and he’ll break out.  Try to stop him out of a cornfield, and he’ll break in in spite of the devil.

M’arthur Democrat (McArthur, Ohio), December 20, 1859, page 2.

If you lived along a river, your problems might be more immediate than “hell” or “the devil”:

We still live – or rather exist – here at the Rapids, in spite of winter, tight times, high water, and a general stagnation of business.

The Grand Haven (Michigan) News, December 7, 1859, page 2.

In Spite of Hell or High Water

It may have taken someone having to deal with both high water and hell to put the two together.  They say war is hell, and crossing a river during wartime may pose “high water” problems.  In 1861, during the early days of the Civil War, a report on the purported movements of the Confederate General, Simon Bolivar Buckner, used the earliest version of the idiom that I could find in print:

General Buckner has crossed Green river, at the head of a large force, swearing he will reach Lebanon junction (thirty miles behind us) by Saturday night, “in spite of Hell or high water.”

The Hancock Jeffersonian (Findlay, Ohio), November 15, 1861, page 3.

The phrase may have gained some degree of currency during the war.  Several of the earliest examples I found related to post-Civil War hostilities or were attributed to men who served as officers during the Civil War.

Seven years before General Buckner crossed the Green River, and four years after the official end of the Civil War, a state of war still raged from time to time during Reconstruction, as anti-Union terrorists continued to agitate against the extension of full voting rights to newly freed citizens.  In 1868, the Governor of Missouri called a company of militia into active service shortly after the Ku Klux Klan murdered a voter registration officer and threatened other public officials with similar treatment. 

The troops were placed under the command of Major William Monks who lived in southern Missouri along the Arkansas-Missouri border:[iii] 

It was stated that the law-abiding citizens were without arms and that the Ku-klux were raiding the whole country [(of Northern Arkansas)]; the whole country was being terrorized by said men and in God’s name asked us to come and bring men and arms to aid the civil officers to enforce the law. 

William Monks, A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, West Plains, Missouri, West Plains Journal Co., 1907 (an annotated version of Monk’s book, edited by John Bradbury and Lou Wehmer, is available from http://colonelmonks.com/).

Monks determined to lead his forces into Arkansas, “since the rebels at the commencement of the Civil war had had no regard for state lines . . . .”  Neither “hell nor high water” would stop him:

A St. Louis dispatch of the 16^th says: A speck of war exists upon our southern border.  During the canvass Governor Fletcher called into active service a company of militia, and placed them under command of Major Monks, a Radical desperado, who is now threatening to invade Arkansas to punish some alleged outrage upon loyal men by the ku-Klux.  The Radicals of this county held a meeting beseeching him not to do so, as they fear retaliation by Arkansas, pledging themselves to prevent him.  Monks, however, says he is going, and “hell nor high water can’t stop me.”

Nashville Union and American (Tennessee), November 19, 1868, page 1.

In 1872, the idiom made its way into the Congressional Record (then known as the Congressional Globe) in connection with testimony regarding a contested election in Arkansas.  The words are said to have been spoken by Governor Powell Clayton who, a decade earlier, had served as a Union General during the Civil War:

[Governor Clayton] said pledged to get Johnson out of the way, and intended to make it good; that the majority of the supreme court of the State was with him, and he had the cards in his own hands and he was going to play them.  He said that it was understood before this, between him and Senator McDonald, that he was to go to the United States Senate, and that ‘they might fight him as much as they were a mind to, but he was going there in spite of hell and high water.’”

Arkansas Contested Election – Mr. Boles, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42d Congress, February 9, 1872, page 36 (excerpt from testimony of John Agery).[iv]

In 1875, a newspaper in South Carolina used the idiom in describing a cartoon from Leslie’s Illustrated, in which President Grant is shown as a down-on-his-luck circus promoter having a difficult time drumming up support for a third term as President.  The Southern newspaper gloated about the Republicans’ loss of support and that anti-Ku Klux Klan sentiment was no longer a strong campaign draw in the North:

The last number of Frank Leslie contains an admirable cartoon by Kepler, which represents the Republican stock company returning from its New England tour. . . .  The President is astride the jaded steed that draws the wagon, and looking very sulky and very drunk. . . . The death’s head and the Kluklux mask are carried along on poles, as worthless accompaniments which have ceased to draw. . . .  He seems determined to drive on in spite of the devil and high water.  His rickety old show wagon is going to pieces, but he cares not for that.  He is too sulky to hear advice, and too drunk to appreciate it if he heard it.

The Daily Phoenix (Columbia, South Carolina), April 21, 1875, page 1.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 24, 1875, volume 40, number 1021.

Western Usage

The idiom “hell and/or high water” continued in regular use throughout the 1880s and 1890s.  Two early uses come from stories about Oklahoma land rushes:

Oklahoma or Bust

They Lost Their Wagon and Immediately Took the Cars.

Wellington, Kas., April 19.  – Two Oklahoma colonist outfits attempted this morning to cross State creek, which is greatly swollen, at Foraker’s ford, two miles south of this city.  The first horses to enter were drowned, the wagon swept away and the occupants rescued with great difficulty.  Without attempting to save the submerged wagon or contents the boomers hastily drove the other outfit to a farmhouse near by, leaving it in charge of the farmer, and the mounting horses, galloped away to the nearest railroad station to take the cars for Oklahoma.  They had traveled over 200 miles overland, and said they were determined to reach Oklahoma in spite of “hell and high water.”

Evening Star (Washington DC), April 19, 1889, page 4.

Three years and another Oklahoma land rush later, the story of a tragic drowning story appeared which, even if true, reads more like the set-up to a gallows-humor joke than an actual event:

A sensational and pathetic drowning fatality occurred in the Choctaw Nation, which has just been reported here.  A family of returning boomers, man, wife, and three children, who were disappointed in not getting a suitable claim in the newly opened territory were going back to Texas.  They tried to cross the Blue at the Cherokee ford, but the river was much swollen and the man was advised to wait.  He swore he would cross, saying, “I am going to Texas in spite of hell or high water,” and with the words whipped his team of mules into the stream.  The swift current swept them down and all were drowned before they reached the middle.  None of the bodies have been recovered.

The Dakota Farmers’ Leader (Canton, South Dakota), May 20, 1892, page 6.

Other early examples of use came from Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Texas and Utah:

Giddings will revise his speech uttered at the Opera House where he declared that “the boys know their rights, and would have them in spite of hell and high water.”  He will take it all back and vow that he never said it; that it was somebody else; not Giddings.

The Dallas Daily Herald, May 24, 1887, page 3.

We mean business, and we are not afraid of hell or high water.  There is one gentleman to whom these remarks are particularly addressed.  No more monkey business goes.

The Salt Lake Herald (Utah), July 22, 1890, page 4.

We can beat the Republicans next year “in spite of hell and high water.” Hastily yours, P. P. Elder. 

Is them words Latin?

The Saline County Journal (Salina, Kansas), December 10, 1891, page 2.

I’ve always been a dimicrat and I’m going to be to the end of time in spite of hell or high-water.

The Globe-Republican (Dodge City, Kansas), March 31, 1892, page 1.

Although the capital fight has been over two years and more, the esteemed Helena Herald cannot dispel its violent alarm that somebody it refers to as Marcus Daly has captured the Montana legislature in spite of hell and high water.

The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana), November 16, 1896, page 4.

What will Rev. Lyman Abbott do with his critics? He is somewhat like the country minister who had expressed strange views on hell and the deluge.  Before services the following Sunday a deacon approached and said: “Well, Brother Jones, whar’bouts air you at this mornin’?”  “I don’t know exactly,” replied the minister, “but I’m somewhere betwixt hell an’ high water!”  “An what air you agoin’ ter do about it?” asked the deacon.  The minister leaned toward him and whispered: “I’m a-goin’ in swimmin’!”

Omaha Daily Bee (Nebraska), August 1, 1897, page 12.

Conclusion

After forty years, the stage was set for Henry Wallace Phillips to codify the expression into its current form (if it hadn't already taken that form in an oral tradition or in undiscovered print sources).  The idiom that had been moving west from Kentucky since at least 1861 had finally touched the entire country and reached its final form.  Now, the idiom ain't gonna change,

“come hell or high water!”

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[i] The Frankfort Roundabout (Kentucky), December 24, 1904, page 11.

[ii] The Topeka State Journal, April 26, 1902, page 13.

[iii] William Monks was a third-generation American soldier.  His grandfather fought during the Revolutionary War, and his father saw action in the Seminole Wars. 

[iv] Clayton’s comments were also reported in the press: “The Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Gazette, says: “Evidence before the committee investigating the charges against Senator Clayton, exhibits a state of political affairs in Arkansas much worse than could well have been imagined before, and confirms the testimony of certain witnesses, that Clayton did as he said he would, namely, ‘go to the U. S. Senate in spite of hell and high water.’ – The investigation will not likely be concluded within two months.” The Staunton Spectator (Staunton, Virginia), March 12, 1872, page 2.

You Can’t Believe Everything You Read – the Surprisingly Early History of the First "Scheduled" Night Game of Professional Baseball – May 29, 1883

You Can’t Believe Everything You Read – the Surprisingly Early History of the First "Scheduled" Night Game of Professional Baseball – September 1, 1888

Tradition holds that the first night-game of major league baseball was played at Crosley field in Cincinnati on May 24, 1935.  The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1, under electric arc-lights switched on by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from a remote switch in the White House.  

The big-league Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League had played under electric light five years earlier, in 1930, traveling with their own portable electrical lighting system. 

But although both of those may have been night-game “firsts” of some kind, for games actually played, they were not night-game “firsts” for major league games “scheduled” to be played at night.  The first scheduled night-games involving major league teams scheduled about fifty years before actual night games were ever played in the majors.

The first known scheduled night-game involving at least one major league baseball team was scheduled to be played in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1883.  The first known scheduled night-game between two major league baseball teams was scheduled to be played in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1888.  In both cases, games were postponed, and then never played. In one case, it was the weather; in the other, technical problems.  In both cases, the management took the opportunity to play test-games to test the visibility conditions before rescheduling.  In both cases, the visibility was so unsatisfactory that the postponed games were apparently rescheduled for daytime.  The nighttime baseball experiment was postponed for about fifty years – at least for the major leaguers.

Early Night Baseball

The dream of playing baseball at night is even older than Edison’s patent on the incandescent lightbulb.  In December, 1878, more than a year before Edison’s patent issued, the New Orleans Picayune[i] declared Edison’s life not to have been in vain – if, for no other reason than, baseball could be played under his light:

The New Orleans Picayune has discovered that Edison has not lived in vain – base ball can be played under his light.

The Brenham Weekly Banner (Brenham, Texas), December 27 1878.

Although he had only just recently filed his patent application, Edison’s electric light was already big news; the most famous inventor of his day was known to have turned his attention to the most anticipated invention of the time, the light bulb; now symbolic of any brilliant idea.  The New York Sun, for example, had recently published an extensive interview with Edison, in which the main topic of discussion was his recent work on the electric light.

Chariton Courier, November 30, 1878, page 1 (reprinted from the New York Sun).

The promise of nighttime light stayed in the news.  In 1879, the New York Sun waxed futuristic (if that’s a thing) about the promise of electric lights – night baseball was one of its anticipated benefits:

The night may not be distant when a nine inning base ball game will be played under its rays.

Little Falls Transcript (Little Falls, Minnesota), August 7, 1879, page 1 (reprint of New York Sun article).

The editors of The Sun were already familiar with electric light in 1879.  They had recently installed an electric light on their building that shone on City Hall Park, from which the sounds of children playing under the lights reached the ears of “toiling editors.”  An article about their light mentions children playing nighttime leap frog and tag – it is not too difficult to imagine the same children playing a little night-baseball too; perhaps those children were actually the first ones to play baseball under the lights?

Little Falls Transcript (Little Falls, Minnesota), August 7, 1879, page 1 (reprint of New York Sun article.

The Sun was right – the day was not too far in the distant future.  The future arrived in September of 1880.

First Known Night Game

The first known game of baseball played under lights was a decidedly amateurish affair contested by the employees of Boston-based, rival mail-order retailers, R. H. White & Co., and Jordan, Marsh & Co.  The game was played in front of guests of the Sea Foam House in the Strawberry Hill neighborhood of Nantasket Beach, in Hull Massachusetts on September 2, 1880.  The lighting was not bright enough for spectators to really follow the action, and fielders found it less dangerous to just let fly balls bounce and chase them, than to catch them on the fly.  The organizers of the event even took journalists covering the event on a short field trip during the game.  But the game was only a sideshow; the main event was a demonstration to show the feasibility of lighting large areas of cities with electric light:

Lighting Towns By Electricity. 

A novel exhibition of base ball made at Strawberry Hill, Nantasket beach, last evening.  What especially attracted the three hundred spectators to the balconies of the Sea Foam House was the promise of the exceedingly novel sight of a game of base ball in the evening, long after the sun’s rays should be dispelled by natural darkness.  The real significance of the occasion, however, was the first public experiment in illustration of a new system of illuminating towns by electricity. The plan is to illuminate the streets of a city – in fact, the whole atmosphere around and above the buildings – that the use of any light whatever in the house will be rendered unnecessary.  This end is to be attained simply by placing groups of electric lamps on the summit of towers some 200 feet high, and placed at intervals, say four to the square mile, through a city. . . .

An idea of the effect produced by the illumination may be best conveyed by stating the fact that a flood of mellow light thrown upon the field enabled the ball-layers, between 8 and half-past 9 o’clock, to complete a game of nine innings.  The nines were picked from the employes of Jordan, Marsh & Co. and R. H. White & Co., and tied the game with a score of 16 to 16.  It cannot be said that the practice of such sports is likely at present to be carried on extensively by night rather than by day, for the players had to bat and throw with some caution, and the number of errors due to an imperfect light was innumerable.  Fly balls descending nearly perpendicular could be caught easily, but when batted a long distance it was much easier and saver to get the ball by chasing it after it struck the ground.  The fact, however, that a game could be played at all shows a considerable advance in the intensity of the light over that which previous experiments have disclosed.  To the spectators the game proved of little interest, since in general only the players’ movement could be discerned, while the course of the ball eluded their sight. 

During the game, by the courtesy of the managers, the representatives of the press were treated to a ride along the shore to Allerton Point, distant a mile in a straight line from the towers.  Here the light shone upon the face of a watch with sufficient brightness to disclose easily the position of the hands.  Upon the hotel plaza one could read in the full radiance of the light a newspaper at a little less than the ordinary distance for holding a book from the eyes, but turning so as to throw a shadow upon the page, the letters immediately vanished. – [Boston Advertiser, Sept. 3d.

Sacramento Daily Record-Union, October 23, 1880, page 6. 

The reference to “previous experiments” raises the question of whether this was, in fact, the first nighttime game of baseball.  Were there earlier attempts to play baseball under the lights, or was this a casual reference to earlier attempts to light large, outdoor areas? 

In any case, these amateurs had started a trend that professionals were soon to follow – or at least attempt to follow.

Nighttime Baseball in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1883

Early in the 1883 baseball season, the National League’s Indianapolis team was set to play the professional team from Fort Wayne, Indiana, which played its league games in the Northwestern League (similar to a AAA minor league today), for the "championship" of Indiana.[ii]   The game was made even more noteworthy because it was scheduled to be played at night:

Base Ball at Night.

Fort Wayne, Indiana, 28. – The experiment of playing base ball by electric light will be tried in this city, to-morrow night, when the Fort Wayne and Indianapolis clubs will contest for the championship of the state.  The grounds will be lighted with twelve lights on the four corners and sides of the grounds on poles forty feet high from the grounds.

The Salt Lake Herald, May 29, 1883, page 4.

The game never took place; the game was postponed due to bad weather.  A test of the lighting conditions also signaled a need to increase the number of lights before the game could be held:

The Fort Wayne and Indianapolis ball clubs went to play a game on the former’s grounds last night, by electric light, but a storm prevented.  A test of the lights was made but they were insufficient to well illuminate the center field, and twenty-five more Jenny lights[iii] are to be added, making thirty-six in all, and the game will come off soon.

The Daily Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), May 30, 1883, page 4.

With the addition of some new lights, the field conditions were believed to be in order:

Base Ball at Night.

Fort Wayne, 1. – The second test of lighting the base ball grounds with the Jenny electric light was made to-night with sixteen burners which proves the practicability of playing base ball at night.

The Salt Lake Herald, June 2, 1883, page 4.

If only their optimism had been justified.  Before Indianapolis and Fort Wayne could reschedule their game, two other teams played a night game on the field; a professional team from Quincy, Illinois, a member of the Northwestern League, beat up on some Methodist schoolboys from Fort Wayne College; the professionals out-scored the college boys 19 to 11.[iv]  The results of the game were predictable and the lights were less than promising:

They have had that game of base ball at Fort Wayne by electric light, but the evidence given by the wires is that it was not an enthusiastic success, especially with the fielders, who when they endeavored to take a fly found the rays of too many conflicting suns in their eyes or an unreliable mixture of suns and moons.

The Daily Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), June 3, 1883, page 4.

Although the game was played under seventeen “Jenny lights” (more than the twelve used in its original test, but far less than the planned thirty-two), the visibility was too low.  Although the “[p]laying between the pitcher and the catcher enabled them to work fairly . . . the fielding was unsatisfactory owing to the insufficient number of lights used.”  And the game was sloppy; “Passed balls, Quincy 4, College 5.  Errors, Quincy 6, College 11.” 

The Daily Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), June 3, 1883, page 5.

The Saline County Journal (Kansas), June 7, 1883, page 2.

Although one report of the game suggested that the team planned on getting more lights to play another game in the future, I was unable to find any account of another night game in Fort Wayne, Indiana during the rest of the season.

The poor results may have soured the entire baseball industry against electric lights.  It would be five years before two more professional teams scheduled a night game.

Nighttime Baseball in Indianapolis, Indiana, 1888

On August 23, 1888, the Evening Bulletin of Maysville, Kentucky printed what may be the first-ever report of a night game featuring two major league baseball teams:

Indianapolis and Detroit base ball clubs played a game of base ball by electric light Tuesday night.  The scheme worked well.

The Evening Bulletin, August 23, 1888, page 4. 

As with many things, however, you can’t believe everything you read.  And the corollary to that rule, that most things you read have at least a grain of truth in them, also holds true.  Although Indianapolis and Detroit had played a game that day – they played their game during the daytime. 

What was true, however, was that the Indianapolis team had played under the lights that day; but not in a game.  It was a test-run to prepare for a scheduled night-game against the Chicago White Stockings the following week.

The story was also false on one more score; the lights were not electric – they ran on natural gas.

The Los Angeles Herald published an optimistic account of the practice:

The Los Angeles Daily Herald, August 22, 1888, page 4.

The Indianapolis Journal published an extensive report of the practice, the effect of the lights, and the hoped-for night game to be played against Chicago; they seemed optimistic – just add a few more lights and everything would run smoothly – as if:

The first attempt ever made at playing base-ball by natural-gas light occurred last night at the ball park in this city.  It was merely a preliminary test, no regular game being attempted, and the illumination not being nearly so extensive as is contemplated when a regular game is to be played.  Only two lights were used.  They were erected in the northeast corner of the ground, about sixty feet apart, and they threw a bright light all over the ground.  Nearly all of the members of the Indianapolis team got out and practiced.  Balls were batted in the air, to the outfield, and along the ground, and the players seemed to get them as easily as in the daytime.  The ball could be seen clearly when high in the air.  A new ball was tried at first, and afterward an old one was thrown in, but it seemed to make no difference.  Manager Spence, who had all along been skeptical concerning the success of the project, said, after watching the playing last night, that he believed it would be a go.  Denny McGeachy and others thought the same thing.  Quite a crowd was out to watch the exhibit, among them nearly all the directors of the club.  President Brush was much pleased with the result, and no sooner did he see the effect of the display than he ordered sixteen lights to be put in by the natural gas companies at once.  The difference between sixteen lights and two will be very marked, and judging from last night’s display it will be an easy thing to play a regular game with that much illumination.  The club goes to Pittsburg to-night, and no night game can be played until it returns, but the attempt will be made with the Chicagos during the series here with that club the latter part of next week.  The game will probably be played on Saturday night, Sept. 1.

The Indianapolis Journal, August 22, 1888, page 7.

The stage was set for a showdown against Chicago under the lights:

But when the Chicago game rolled around, they played it during the day.  Coincidentally (or not?), the gas company took out a large advertisement just below the notice of the game:

The night game never happened because the gas-plan was snake-bit from its inception.  First, there were construction problems:

During the first inning [of the Knights of Pythias Game] the workmen who were engaged in putting up natural-gas pipe, at the east portion of the stand, let a section of the piping fall, but it was fortunately caught before striking any of the spectators.

And then, there wasn’t enough gas to fully illuminate the field.  What happens when everyone flushes the toilet at the same time? – it’s the same with natural gas.  If you add fourteen extra lights, without increasing the supply of gas, you get sixteen dim lights – instead of two bright ones.

Not Very Successful.

The workmen put in the last of the lights at the ball park yesterday afternoon, and last night all of them were lighted and an attempt was made at knocking the ball around.  The result was quite disappointing to the stockholders of the club.  It was found that the lights were by no means as brilliant as it was hoped they would be.  It seems that when the two lights were burning in the test made a couple of weeks ago they made a much more brilliant display than they did last night, when compelled to share with thirteen or fourteen other lights.  The fact that a strong wind was blowing no doubt affected the lights somewhat, but it was quite evident that the illumination was by no means sufficient to light the grounds for playing at night.  An old ball could not be seen at any distance at all, and a new ball was visible only a part of the time as it sailed through the air.  Healy and one or two others of the players suggested that if additional lights be placed back of third and first bases, and a reflector used, the light would be sufficient, as the main trouble seemed to be in seeing ground balls, but not many coincided in this opinion.  President Brush is now afraid that the experiment will not be a success, and that the expense to which the club has gone in putting the lights will be a loss.  However, it might be well to leave the lights where they are, as the park might be rented for summer evening exhibitions of some kind.

The Indianapolis Journal, September 6, 1888, page 3.

President Brush, the owner of the Indianapolis club and promotional genius behind the aborted night-game, is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  John T. Brush owned the Indiana Hoosiers during the 1880s, and later owned the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Giants.  He served as owner of the New York Giants for more than twenty years, from 1890 until his death in 1912.  He is also one of the men responsible for writing the rules that still govern the modern World Series.  But despite all of his accomplishments, he could not pull off a satisfactory night game with late-1880s technology.

Epilogue

But for two postponements, the history of major league night-games may well have been vastly different.  If the weather hadn’t been so bad in 1883, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis could have played a game under electric lights.  If the pipe-fitters hadn’t been so clumsy in 1888, Indianapolis and Chicago might have played a game under gaslight.  That’s not to say that the games would have been a success; they would likely have been plagued by the same visibility problems that affected the test-games.  But the list of “firsts” in baseball would be a lot older. 

As it is, it took nearly fifty years to realize the dream of night baseball and for another night-game to find its way onto a major league schedule.

But the first scheduled games – they were scheduled much earlier than generally believed.

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[i] The patent generally considered to be Edison’s original patent for an incandescent light bulb is US Patent Number 223, 898, Patented January 27, 1880, filed November 4, 1878.  When he filed for that patent, however, he had already received at least six patents related to the electric light; and others had made less-successful electric lights with other designs since as early as the 1840s.

[ii] It was a common practice at the time for professional baseball teams to sprinkle several non-league games throughout their season which would not count in the league standings.

[iii] “Jenny” lights were electric arc lights manufactured by the Jenny Electric Light Co. which had offices in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and may have been based there. See The Electrical World, Volume 3, page 139 (The Jenny Light in New England. – A new elecrric arc light is coming into the field here in New England . . . .  This light is known as the Jenny electric light.  It is well known in the West, where it is considered one of the best, and holds its own in competition with the Brush and Thomson-Houston Company systems.” and Volume 4, page 88 (“The outside lighting is done by the Jenny Co., Fort Wayne, Ind.; a description of that will be given hereafter.”).

[iv] Other accounts of the game list the contestants as Quincy and the M. E. Church Nine. See, Under the Lights, by Oscar Eddleton, on the Society of Baseball Research Journals Archive (research.sabr.org).  The apparent disagreement is accounted for by the fact that Fort Wayne College (now Taylor University), was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church as Fort Wayne Female College in 1846.  It went co-ed and changed its name to Fort Wayne College in 1850.  The M. E. Church Nine and “the college” in Fort Wayne are two names for the same team.

[Note: edited May 26, 2019, to reflect that the Kansas City Monarchs traveled with their own electric lighting system as early as 1930.]