How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall
was at the same time misleading.
Kentucky’s historic moment at the edge of the Western frontier had passed decades earlier in the relentless push Americans had made from the East Coast toward the Pacific Ocean. Nonetheless, sporting men of New York continued until the twentieth century, almost one hundred years later, to refer to Kentucky horse racing as situated in the West. They had their reasons, which might have been mostly chauvinistic. New York viewed itself as superior to a rough-and-ready Kentucky situated on the fringes of American society. The terms East and West denoted power, and for decades after the war, a power struggle ensued between New Yorkers and Kentuckians over control of Thoroughbred racing. For reasons not quite clear, however, Kentuckians placidly accepted the characterization of their racing as Western and unfolding on a mythical frontier. Never during the latter part of the nineteenth century did Bluegrass Kentuckians attempt to discourage the use of this designation by insisting that their racing was Southern. So it remained Western. The Kentucky Derby, in the years following its 1875 inauguration, became known as the great race of the Western states.
Any sectional showdown between Kentucky and Asteroid consequently would carry the weight of this social and political divide. The way Northeastern patrons of horse racing regarded Asteroid illustrated precisely how they considered their side of the divide superior to the West. Although racing’s patrons in New York and New Jersey acknowledged Asteroid as the “bright star of the West,” never did they accord him the recognition they probably should have. Never did they call him the bright star of all the turf. They had planned to bestow that kingly moniker on Kentucky.12
Northeastern patrons had placed all their support with their horse, despite the irony that he bore the name of his home state, Kentucky, the same place Asteroid came from. And how they loved to watch their horse race. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, published in New York, paid homage to Kentucky as though this Thoroughbred were king of the animal kingdom. Wilkes’ Spirit and the public had fallen so deeply under his spell that they overlooked the nagging fact that he had a blemished race record while Asteroid’s record remained perfect. Obscuring reality, they thought of Kentucky as though he were the champion, when the two horses had never met.
The attention paid Kentucky by Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times was going far in boosting his popularity in the Northeast. The magazine’s editor, George Wilkes, weighted his news columns in favor of Kentucky, giving scant coverage to Asteroid. Wilkes was pro-Unionist, anti-Southern, and a chauvinistic New Yorker of the boldest stripe, all of which translated to a man suspicious of the state of Kentucky, which, although officially loyal to the United States, had sent soldiers to both sides during the war. Wilkes had more than a political ax swinging in favor of the horse Kentucky. He and Kentucky’s owners wanted to see the highly anticipated showdown between the two colts take place nowhere else but at that summer place of decadence, Saratoga Springs.13
Pleasure seekers had been coming to Saratoga Springs for decades, fondly referring to this little village as “the queen of watering places.” Since the Battle of Burgoyne during the Revolutionary War, Americans had recognized this fancy watering hole for its mineral springs, which were believed beneficial to one’s health. Saratoga Springs also proved popular for quite another reason, however, as the scene of wide-open gambling, a favorite pastime of the elite class of visitors. This elite class had turned Saratoga Springs into the social centerpiece of the summer season, deeming it the proper place for an annual reunion of the wealthy and the famous. The village was the place to see and be seen, as gamblers and social and political leaders all realized. From 1863 on, Saratoga Springs also developed into the summertime place to thrill to the sight of fast Thoroughbreds competing on the racecourse. The racetrack scenes and those along the main thoroughfare of the village stood out as ostentatious demonstrations of excessive wealth.14
John Morrissey introduced Thoroughbred racing to Saratoga Springs in 1863. The following year, William R. Travers led the group of capitalists that opened a new racecourse, the Saratoga Race Course, across the road from the old. Racing continues on that site to this day. (Harper’s Weekly 9, no. 557 [August 24, 1867]: 541.)
“Saratoga’s Broadway was a canyon flanked by magnificent elms and gargantuan hotels and jammed with men in expensive black broadcloth and women in the latest fashions,” writes Edward Hotaling, describing the nightly promenades through the heart of the village. New Yorkers who participated in this annual migration upstate by steamboat or rail brought their servants, their children, their fancy dogs, and their racing stables to escape the oppressive heat and foul odors that they had no wish to endure in the sweltering city of New York. As these folk saw it, Saratoga existed as their private garden, their escape from the worrisome burdens of urban life.15
The carefree lifestyle in Saratoga reflected the prevailing mood among the Springs’s summer residents during those months when the United States emerged from its civil war. No longer obliged to consider even remotely the dour topic of battles fought and Americans dying, summer visitors in 1865 turned their full attention to the training progress of Kentucky and Asteroid. Although the intended race was not to occur until August, advance betting had begun at the Cincinnati, Ohio, races in June.16
The race for the Saratoga Cup decidedly was building into much more than a showdown between these horses. As June turned into July, the event did, indeed, appear to be turning into a power struggle between New Yorkers and the old guard of rural Bluegrass Kentucky. A racing periodical would editorialize two years later that “the American turf—at least so far as New York, the capital, is concerned—has ceased to be provincial and has become metropolitan.” Contemporaries could see this beginning to unfold in 1865. The result would greatly affect the position of the Bluegrass in the new, postwar world of horse racing, for it compromised the stranglehold that Kentucky landowners once had held over the sport.17
The war years had altered much about power relations in the United States, and now, it seemed, horse racing was poised to take its turn at this wheel of change. Racing in the Northeastern cities was experiencing a resurgence because men of old money along with those whose wealth had grown exponentially during the Civil War had taken control of the sport. They did so by default, the sport having collapsed in much of the South. And they did so simply by exerting the power of their wealth, building their own racecourses in New York. People referred deferentially to this elite class as “the substantial men of the day … some of the most respectable men,” as though paying obeisance to their wealth and social standing.18
The wheel of change did not stop at the new racecourses constructed in the Northeast. In a short while, horse breeders in New York and New Jersey would challenge the claim of Bluegrass Kentucky as the cradle of the racehorse. Hanging in the balance was the livelihood of Bluegrass horsemen and, with this, the economy of central Kentucky. If the breeding of racehorses no longer centered in full strength on the Bluegrass, Kentuckians would lose the full potential of this livelihood, and all in the local community would feel the effects. And horse breeding was emerging as a livelihood: few breeders in Kentucky possessed the wealth of Robert Aitcheson Alexander, owner of Woodburn Farm. Alexander alone could stand on a par with the new money coming into the sport because he was not dependent on farming or horse breeding for a living. Like many in the Northeast, his money came from outside the realm of agriculture, from his ironworks in Scotland and Kentucky.19
The power struggle emerging in Thoroughbred racing did, in fact, mirror the shifts in power occurring at all levels of American economy and life. More people were moving to the Northern cities. More immigrants were arriving on American shores. Increasing industrialization was bringing expanded wealth to the elite class among industrialists and financial brokers living in these Northern cities. Industrialization