The “First & Goal” Volunteer Infantry Regiment?

The Civil War was the bloodiest and deadliest conflict of this nation’s history. Military action claimed roughly 2% of the lives of the entire American population…but do you know the most tragic part of the whole affair? The soldiers weren’t football players!

Or at least, that’s the (presumbaly) sarcastic point being made in the paragraph below.

Although the recent Super Bowl drew a viewing audience of roughly 120 million, in the sport’s infancy the supposed barbaric and brutal nature of the game earned it harsh criticism.

Front Page News Briefs – Stillwater Messenger – February 10, 1906

Scorn for the claim that football makes hardy citizens reached its climax in this passage in a speech to the alumni of the Univeristy of Pennslyvania by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell: “Alas for the generation which ventured into the war of the sixties without the training of modern athletics! Let us reflect with sorrow on how much more splendid might have been Round Top or the fight at the Bloody Angle or at the bridge at Antietam if Lee and Grant had played football.”

Red Wing’s Rival Rowers

by Brent Peterson

In the 1870s, there were many boat clubs throughout Minnesota. Stillwater had the St. Croix Boat Club; there was one in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and in Red Wing. The clubs were devoted to sculling, which is a type of boat racing, either on the Mississippi or St. Croix Rivers. People in St. Paul and Stillwater didn’t think too much about the boat club in Red Wing, but Stillwater decided to make a challenge to them anyway.

The date for the race was set at June 28, 1875. The two boat clubs both bragged on what they would do to the other. The Red Wing club took a photograph of a very large muscular man stripped to the waist, and sent it to Stillwater. The Red Wing group claimed this was the type of man that rowed on their squad. The man in the photograph however, was a local blacksmith. The Stillwater group took it seriously and sent a spy down to Red Wing to watch their group practice. This backfired on Stillwater, for someone had recognized the spy, and the Red Wing oarsman performed very poorly that day. The spy then came back to Stillwater, and told the local people to bet as much money as possible on Stillwater, because they were sure to win.

The Red Wing crew did another thing to almost seal their victory in the long awaited rowing match. There was a new member on the Red Wing Boat Club. The Stillwater team was told his name was “John B. Fox,” but his real identity was world champion rower, Ellis Ward. In 1879, Ward would become the first (and most successful) crew coach for the University of Pennsylvania. The photograph to the right shows Ward (center) around 1885 with one of the many trophies his teams captured over the years.

The day of the race came, and in mid-afternoon, the four-oared race was to begin. The Stillwater crew consisted of T. Scully, J. Morarity, John McGrath, and Ole Staples. For Red Wing, they had Charles Lent, Joseph Harrison, E.B. Philleo, and “John B. Fox.”

According to an account in the Red Wing Argus, “almost at the first stroke some member of the Stillwater club ‘caught a crab,’ and the result was that the spray was thrown in such quantities as to completely hide the crew from the spectators on the wharf opposite.”

The Stillwater crew never caught up to the Red Wing boat. They continued to lose ground, and did not come back to the starting point. Instead, the Stillwater crew conceded the race and just rowed back to the waiting steamboat to go home.

However, the Stillwater crowd and boat crew were broke from a day of heavy wagering. There was no food on the steamer to feed the hungry passengers or enough coal to make it back to Stillwater. So the Stillwater people choked down their pride and borrowed $1,500 for coal and food, and finally made their way back home.

The yelling of foul play went on for years. The Red Wing people would only say that Stillwater or St. Paul would have hired Ward if they had the chance. The following year, Stillwater again challenged Red Wing in a four oarsmen race, but this time the race was held in a neutral site, that being Prescott, Wisconsin. The Stillwater crew, who were still hurting from the previous years loss, won the race in 1876. Ellis Ward did not participate in this rematch.