Great Outdoor Fight 1886

From The Great Outdoor Fight

1886 is remembered chiefly for the one-sided conflict between the armies. Hubert's Railsplitters, the army of the victorious Hubert Mortland, had brawn on their side from the beginning. It was suspected that Clarence's Cudgels, the opposing army, would make up for this with tactics or politics. The Cudgels consisted overwhelmingly of the monied contestants- gentleman sporters.

The strict code of honor that Clarence (and thus, his army) held to proved to be their downfall. Not only did they refuse to double-team an opponent, or to strike against a weak or distracted opponent as the railsplitters did, they would even refuse to aid one of their own teammates being double-teamed, with the rationalization that this would be, in some sense, cheating.

This gentlemanly attitude did not serve them well during the fight that year. Indeed, while the first day saw the weeding out of the obviously unfit and the gradual separation into two armies, the second day saw the systematic eradication of Clarence's Cudgles. So fully were they destroyed that the third day devolved into an anarchy resembling day one, as the Railsplitters lacked an organizing principle to fight against and instead spent the day fighting each other.