How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall

      Iconic to Bluegrass Kentucky are images of well-bred horses, well-bred women, and Southern mansions. (Undated postcard from the collection of the author.)

      Chapter 1 shows how Kentucky racehorse breeders got left behind in the new expansion of the sport even before the Civil War had ended. Racing shifted to the Northeast, Bluegrass breeders lost valuable horses to both armies as well as to guerrillas and outlaws, and the only plan of action for a productive future resided with Robert Aitcheson Alexander, the owner of Woodburn Farm, and his handpicked associates. However, not even Alexander could foresee the future faultlessly. He forfeited an opportunity to immediately align the interests of Kentucky horsemen with those in the Northeast when he ignored their requests to send his brilliant racehorse Asteroid to Saratoga Race Course. This apparent snub of the outsiders, new to Thoroughbred racing, turned out to haunt Kentucky’s breeding business. The New Yorkers eventually retired their brilliant racehorse, called Kentucky, to stand in New York. This portended a shift in horse breeding to the Northeast, following the sport of racing.

      Chapter 2 describes the competition that breeders in central Kentucky faced in trying to join the expansion of Thoroughbred racing. Lavish, ultramodern horse farms began arising in New York and New Jersey. As well, Tennessee horse breeders quickly reestablished their business, giving Kentucky competition from the South. Bluegrass horsemen also faced major labor shortages after the war. Had they not found a way to lure labor back to the farms—by creating rural hamlets for the labor force—the horse business might never have progressed. The greatest assist to Kentucky’s horsemen, however, was in the voice they acquired in the publishing world of New York through Alexander’s associates, Sanders and Benjamin Bruce. The two brothers initiated marketing techniques that helped bring attention to Bluegrass farm country. These two set about trying to show how the natural advantages in Kentucky Bluegrass soil and water resulted in superior racehorses. However much attention their marketing efforts brought to the Bluegrass, these efforts still failed to bring the capitalists. The reputation for violence in the Bluegrass had stamped the region as too unstable for capital investment.

      Chapter 3 demonstrates how the culture of violence and lawlessness made the Bluegrass region as unsafe for the wealthy landowner as it was for all others, including African Americans. It also reveals how even the wealthy landowners manipulated the culture of violence, going outside the law when it suited their purposes. The gentry class in the Bluegrass manipulated the Ku Klux Klan, according to the New York press. Events at Nantura Farm in Woodford County, adjacent to the famed Woodburn Farm, demonstrated the extent to which landowners went in following or mimicking KKK practices. Every lawless event, however, stacked up against the Bluegrass, making it that much harder for the region to regain its central position in horse breeding.

      Chapter 4 brings to light the success and accomplishments of the African American horsemen who, in turn, brought recognition to Kentucky’s horse business. Recognition boosted the fragmented reputation of Kentucky as the cradle of the racehorse. African American jockeys and horse trainers were iconic to Kentucky’s horse country, and some of the most talented competed successfully against white riders in the Northeast. Black horsemen appeared to live protected lives apart from the violence raging against blacks in Kentucky. The most talented black jockey, Isaac Murphy, lived a lifestyle parallel to that of whites in Lexington and entertained with elaborate parties given at his mansion. But the recognition of their talent and way with horses given to black jockeys and trainers was never enough to bring the big money to the Bluegrass and to centralize the growing industry in the commonwealth. The business remained fragmented, with the majority of the largest, most productive farms lost to the Bluegrass.

      Chapter 5 illuminates the tensions arising between Northeastern and Kentucky racing interests at the very time the sport underwent a nationwide expansion. This power struggle further fragmented the sport, with racing leaders in New York doing whatever they pleased to minimize the significance of competing interests in Kentucky. Nonetheless, the face of the sport was changing from the small sphere of the New York banker August Belmont and his acquaintances from industry and Wall Street. The sport had grown far beyond the vision they had held, to draw in mining kings and railroad industrialists of the West and Midwest. This expansion began to see increasing numbers of horse owners reaching down into the Bluegrass for stock to replenish their racing stables. Their object was to find a winning edge over an expanding competition base. However, with violence continuing unabated in the Bluegrass, none of these wealthy men moved their operations to the region. Consequently, only a few of the most fortunate Bluegrass horse breeders experienced financial wealth; the industry remained fragmented throughout a variety of states. A critical turn was August Belmont’s decision to move his breeding operation from Long Island to Lexington. Kentucky’s reputation for violence shone an unflattering spotlight on this move, for Belmont’s manager arrived in Lexington fully armed. With the reputation and the reality of violence continuing unabated in central Kentucky, Belmont’s move failed to initiate a run of capitalists on Bluegrass land.

      Chapter 6 illuminates how the campaign of social reformers to shut down Thoroughbred racing throughout the United States would eventually tie in to Kentucky helping save and centralize the industry by manipulating the Southern myth. By the 1890s, the expansion of racing had brought fraudulent practices to the sport, drawing the attention of antigambling forces. By the early twentieth century, social reformers had persuaded various state legislatures to shut down racing in many jurisdictions, most notably in New York. A number of the wealthiest in racing sent their stables to Europe to race. But some held out the possibility that racing might return to New York. One was a Bluegrass entrepreneur named John Madden, whose life story was partly Horatio Alger and partly that of the physically fit, natural man that President Theodore Roosevelt believed was the only type that could return order and supremacy to white America. Madden began to draw the interest of wealthy men in racing. He sold them horses at fantastic prices, gaining their trust, not only because of his expert horsemanship, but also because he represented the pristine, natural, white American. He projected this popular image onto the Bluegrass region, helping create a notion that vied successfully with the debilitating picture that the antigambling forces had projected onto the sport. The image Madden projected also might have diminished somewhat the lawless reputation of the Bluegrass.

      Chapter 7 concludes this study by demonstrating how the rising popularity of the plantation myth created a Southern identity for the Bluegrass; this new identity elevated Kentucky horse country into a place that America’s wealthy desired to own. Consequently, the wealthy bought Kentucky farms, and the industry became centered in the Bluegrass. Madden, Murphy, and others had laid the building blocks; the plantation myth corralled the free-floating images these men had evoked into a nostalgic notion of the antebellum South that white Americans now were eager to embrace. Wealthy capitalists began purchasing Bluegrass horse farms, bringing into the region the big money that enabled the industry to grow. The plantation myth caused these capitalists to overlook and ignore the ongoing violence and lawlessness that continued in the region. It also dashed all future possibilities for African American jockeys and horse trainers in the sport. They simply disappeared even though they had once been iconic to Kentucky racing. However, Northeastern turfmen who now were combining with Bluegrass interests to change the identity of the region looked on African Americans with repugnance. In this instance, big money trumped racial possibilities. A lily-white sport emerged even as the Bluegrass regained its centrality to racehorse breeding. The stamp of approval was the Confederate memorial to General John Hunt Morgan erected at the courthouse in Lexington with major help from families in the horse business.

      This story is not told in the published histories of the sport. The narratives popular in Thoroughbred racing