How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall
were to be excluded from this race with its prize of a gold watch inlaid with diamonds. The “gentlemen” entering their saddle horses for this race were required to pledge that, if they won the watch, they intended to make it a present to a “lady,” a subtle suggestion that the presence of women at the racecourse was an integral part of the spectacle. New York planned to offer a similar gold watch, made by Tiffany, with the winner again sworn to present the watch to some lucky “lady.” Ten stables of racehorses had assembled for these short meets, with the New York Times concluding that this gave “an assurance of the best racing ever seen in the North.” The Kentuckians undoubtedly arrived pleased to find a place to race their horses, for, other than the track at Lexington, racing in the South lacked continuity during the war years.38
By 1859, New York remained without racing, although some twenty-five men were raising Thoroughbreds in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Perhaps they had planned to race these horses in the South. Or perhaps they bred them merely for the pleasure of owning them, albeit without any decent place in the Northeast to race them. These men included William Astor (destined with his brother, John Jacob Astor, to inherit an estate of some $100 million), John Hunter (an eventual partner with Travers and Osgood in the horse Kentucky), Francis Morris (whose family’s racing silks were the oldest in use in the United States), and William Bathgate (the owner of the Fordham, New York, estate that later would become Jerome Park). Belmont, Jerome, and Travers were not yet among this group but soon would be. When these three took up racing as a sport, the progress of the Northeastern turf would charge forward on a fast track.39
Despite the interest of these wealthy men, racing still had not returned to the mainstream of New York culture. In 1859, the editor of the Spirit lamented how Thoroughbred racing had slipped into such oblivion that even the rich were unfamiliar with the sport. “Very few of these gentlemen are acquainted with the details of racing, and the public have in a great measure lost their former love of it from the scarcity of close contests and repeated disappointments,” he opined. He spoke of the need of education about the sport among both breeders, “in order to resuscitate in old patrons of the Turf their almost dormant love of racing,” and the public, especially “the young,” who “must be taught to appreciate it.” Far from anticipating the sectional divisions that would come with the Civil War—and the disunity that followed—the Spirit of the Times suggested that stock certificates in a racecourse near New York be sold not only in the Northeast but also in the West and the South. The Spirit estimated that the New Yorkers would need some $60,000-$70,000 to build such a racecourse.40
Nothing came of this proposal. Whether Alexander and other Bluegrass horsemen received a direct request for help is not known. But the fact that Northerners had seen them as leaders in the sport and in the practice of breeding Thoroughbreds in 1859 was telling, given the change of perspective that New Yorkers had adopted by the end of the war. In the minds of the new breed of racehorse owners in the Northeast in 1865, the relevance of horse country had faded. Northern men felt secure in the notion that they had released the South’s stranglehold on the sport and shifted the center of Thoroughbred racing back to New York.
The war had brought changes North and South, among these a 43 percent decline in Southern wealth. Along with the closing of numerous Southern racecourses, this did not portend a strong market for racehorses in that section of the country. In contrast, new, Northern fortunes had emerged during wartime from industry and Wall Street speculation. Families flush with new money placed their wealth and status on display in a variety of ostentatious ways, not the least of which was the ownership of fabulous racing stables.41
Social leaders like Belmont were raising the profile of the sport in the Northeast, lending horse racing a cachet of legitimacy it had not known there in decades. Men of Belmont’s group also brought to the sport in the Northeast a set of practices that revealed how they planned to change the appearances of Thoroughbred racing. For example, instead of riding on horseback or traveling in buggies to the races, as Kentuckians generally had, these men arrived in magnificent heavy coaches pulled by teams of four well-matched horses. In this practice, they mimicked traditions borrowed from England.
August Belmont played perhaps the most significant role in the revival of Thoroughbred racing in New York after the Civil War. He founded the Nursery Stud on Long Island, eventually moving his breeding operation to the Bluegrass in 1885. His son, August Belmont II, was the breeder of Man o’ War, foaled at Nursery Stud in Lexington, and arguably the greatest of American Thoroughbreds. (Courtesy of the Keeneland Association.)
Belmont and Jerome both were skilled coaching men who drove their own four-in-hands, a team of four look-alike horses trained to pull these heavy, English-looking rigs. Liveried servants and guests accompanied their hosts, the guests seated inside and atop the coaches, with all appearing to enjoy a jolly good time. On reaching the racecourse, the servants pulled from each coach’s boot a well-packed, fancy picnic, in keeping with the English coaching tradition. The Coaching Club American Oaks is a Thoroughbred race in New York named in honor of the organization that Belmont and his peers supported. Quite overnight, it seemed, the rich were adding their own socially conscious, English touches to this increasingly fashionable sport.
The ownership of racehorses appeared to be the perfect choice for wealthy men and their expansive egos. Nothing bespoke the wonders of a bottomless fortune quite like a stable of sleek, fast horses that were expensive to buy, beautiful to look at, and costly to maintain. Racehorses always have served as signifiers of wealth and status. The timing also was perfect for the sport to reemerge in the Northeast: this was precisely the time when increasing numbers of men successful in the worlds of business and industry were looking for ways to spend their fortunes. These highly competitive businessmen were discovering in racing a new arena where they could transfer their rivalries from the business and social worlds. Racing was proving to be a great game of one-upmanship. Expansive egos drove these men to racing and would bring them to spend vast amounts of money in this highly expensive sport even when they had little or no hope of making their racehorses pay for themselves. The purses were not large enough to pay for the upkeep of their stables.
Typically, the majority of these powerful new men in Thoroughbred racing lived in the city of New York. This demographic marked a clear break from the antebellum status quo in the Bluegrass, where the major landowners and an elite class of moderately wealthy gentlemen farmers had ruled the sport. The ownership of the racehorse Kentucky revealed just how clearly the sport that was reviving itself in the Northeast had shifted away from previous ownership patterns: Travers, Hunter, and Osgood all were urbanites and residents of New York. Their social and business interests were centered almost entirely on the city, except when they summered at the village of Saratoga Springs, where Travers served as president of the racecourse. They had not even traveled to the Bluegrass to purchase Kentucky. John Clay, the breeder, had brought the colt to the Northeast to sell.
Travers, a lawyer who had made a fortune on Wall Street, was the most recent of the three partners to take up Thoroughbred racing. He was a dapper sort who fully appreciated life’s pleasures, taking up membership in twenty-seven social clubs. Friends and acquaintances overlooked an unfortunate impediment in his speech: he had a slight stutter. They did, however, appreciate his quick sense of humor. He loved to poke fun at everyone, even his own kind—the men of Wall Street. Once, when he and a companion passed by Manhattan’s Union Club, the companion asked him whether the men sitting in chairs by the windows were habitués of the private club. “No,” Travers replied, “some are s-s-sons of habitués.”42
On acquiring the racehorse Kentucky, Travers experienced enormous beginner’s luck. For the $6,000 it cost to purchase the horse, Travers wound up striking gold. Many more owners of racehorses have spent a lifetime throwing good money after bad horses while never acquiring a horse of this quality. Yet, just as he had on Wall Street, Travers once again exhibited