How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall
more power than anyone in Kentucky breeding circles. If he felt this power in danger of slipping away soon after the war, he did not disclose this in any overt way. He seemed determined not to bow to the dictates of the new money emerging on the turf in the Northeast. Consequently, his initial reaction to challenges for a race against Kentucky was to ignore them.
Alexander’s disinterest in sending Asteroid to Saratoga began to come clear to Kentucky’s owners after their colt arrived at Saratoga— and Asteroid did not show up. Their reasons for insisting that the race take place at Saratoga and not farther west no doubt reflected the sense of power and control this group had begun to flex on the turf. Asteroid would have had to make a long journey by rail if Alexander were to send him to Saratoga. “Only he who has traveled with horses on a freight train can fully realize [the difficulties],” a Turf, Field and Farm contributor wrote during those years. “Journeys which require a day’s time on a passenger run, are of a week’s duration, and the jerkings of the inevitable stoppages and starts are enough to make every joint and muscle so sore that weeks are required to remedy the bad effects…. The animals are frequently thrown down or severely strained by their efforts to resist the shock.” Asteroid had raced in June at Cincinnati, winning twice, but no word had been heard of him since. Alexander remained aloof and silent, even as Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times initiated an assault in print on the squire of Woodburn for failing to put his horse on the train.24
The fiery and opinionated George Wilkes was as eager as Kentucky’s owners to see this race take place. He relied on all the power of his printing press to try to persuade Alexander to send Asteroid to Saratoga. Easterners had so highly anticipated this encounter that the Saratoga Race Course had sent a representative to Cincinnati during the races there in June to take advance wagers on the race. Kentucky’s owners had to save face, and in his editorials Wilkes revealed how closely aligned his interests were with these men. He began to goad, cajoling at first, then stepping up the tempo as the weeks went on.
Wilkes appealed to Alexander’s chivalry in trying to persuade him to put Asteroid on a train. “We should not like to be in Mr. Alexander’s shoes,” he wrote, “so far at least as the indignation of the ladies is concerned, if he should fail to bring his horse.” Wilkes might have intended his gentle nudge to sting more deeply than, at first glance, it would appear to, given that Alexander lived in a state bordering the South, where chivalry toward the ladies greatly mattered. Whatever his intentions, however, Wilkes failed to elicit a response from Alexander.25
Wilkes ramped up the tenor of his attack in a later edition, suggesting that Alexander “shirks the only opportunity he has ever had of measuring Asteroid against a horse of known merits and first-class reputation.” This statement might have stung even more deeply than the chivalric barb, for Western racing enthusiasts believed Asteroid to be the horse with the first-class reputation. He had never experienced defeat, while Kentucky had lost one race. So the question would have reverted to one of why Kentucky did not take a train west for a race.26
The barb with the greatest sting might have been the editor’s suggestion that Alexander simply was afraid to race Asteroid against Kentucky. Wilkes wrote that a man worth “millions of dollars, and who seems to believe in his horse should not have turned his back upon such an offer.” He added: “This is not the way to support the interests of the turf.” Alexander had profited from purchases that breeders made from his Woodburn Farm, according to Wilkes’ Spirit, and now, in turn, those breeders “are entitled to know which of these two rival stallions should be preferred as the stock horse of the future.” Wilkes was arguing that Alexander owed a debt of responsibility to the sport and, thus, needed to send Asteroid to Saratoga to meet Kentucky. By declining to race, Alexander was revealing his real intention: “to contribute nothing to racing in the North.”27
Late in July, Alexander found his voice. He sent a telegram directly to John Hunter, one of the triumvirate of Kentucky’s owners, agreeing to send out Asteroid against Kentucky—as long as Kentucky came west for two races: the first at Cincinnati and the second at Louisville, where Alexander was the leading force behind the Woodlawn Course. Like Kentucky’s owners, who operated the Saratoga course, Alexander shrewdly saw the effect on track attendance that this match would have. Thus, he insisted that one of these races take place at the track he supported, Woodlawn. He even offered to pay Kentucky’s travel expenses. “I think our tracks are as good as those in the east,” he wrote, adding: “A horse owned east of the Alleghenies will be as great a curiosity on a course in this section of country as one of my entries would be were he to appear to run for the Jersey Derby, St. Leger or Saratoga Cup.” He gave Kentucky’s owners until August 7 to respond.28
Hunter failed to respond directly, which irritated Alexander. “No doubt, he preferred to receive a proposition direct from Mr. Hunter,” remarked Alexander’s acquaintance, Sanders Bruce. Hunter’s spokesman had expressed continuing interest in this showdown taking place—although not at Louisville. A race held September 25 at Cincinnati would be acceptable—if Alexander agreed to race his colt again the following summer at Saratoga. Wilkes had not forfeited an opportunity during this time to stir the pot of controversy a little more. He suggested that Alexander’s disdain of Saratoga revealed an ugly “portion of a plan to contribute nothing to racing in the North.” Here was a barb that revealed the tension between the old and the new centers of power in the racing world as well as one playing on four years of ill feeling that had existed between North and South with Kentucky caught in the middle. Alexander’s response, sent through his intermediary, consisted of six words: “The propositions do not suit Alexander.”29
Shortly afterward, Alexander relented and agreed to the terms of Cincinnati during 1865 and Saratoga during 1866. Too much ill feeling had arisen by this time, however, and Wilkes had not helped with his ranting to keep feelings on either side on an even tone. At one point Wilkes had written: “It is plain, therefore, that Mr. Alexander will have the proposed match his own way, or he will not have it at all.” The controversy matched the old gentry against new money, and readers undoubtedly loved reading every word about this confrontation. But the central question remained: Why had Kentucky’s owners assumed that Asteroid would need to race in the Northeast to settle the championship? One of Alexander’s supporters in the Bluegrass asked: “Is the case to be made different to the East of the Alleghenies?”30
Perhaps Alexander had not wished to see nouveau money in the Northeast push him to the wall with demands for a showdown between Kentucky and Asteroid. Or perhaps, as his acquaintance explained in a lengthy letter to the sympathetic Turf, Field and Farm, he had been too preoccupied with reestablishing his own stable after the war to plan for a trip east with Asteroid. “It was Mr. Alexander’s intention to have taken his horses North this summer had they done well,” according to the letter writer, who signed his name Fair Play, “but owing to the outrages committed on him by guerillas, entailing a loss over sixty thousand dollars in stock, some that cannot be replaced, among them Nebula, the dam of Asteroid, and his own life and safety jeopardized, he had to remove all his stock from Kentucky, upwards of three hundred head, including stallions, broodmares, colts, and trotting stock…. When he got through his western engagements he had but one horse—Asteroid—fit to travel with.” The writer went on to explain that, Alexander having but one horse trainer to put in charge of all his horses, his interests would have suffered if he had sent that trainer to Saratoga with Asteroid. For those in Kentucky who had endured guerrilla raids and the theft of their horses, this explanation would have seemed quite reasonable. Apparently, it did not seem so to the new titans of the Northeastern turf.31
Sectional interests and rivalries had entered this controversy at every turn, and Bluegrass horsemen expressed their disgust with the Northeast by threatening to withdraw their subscriptions from the New York–sbased Wilkes’ Spirit of