How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall
persons who viewed this and other racing matters in terms that were “sectional between the West and East.” Fine, Wilkes said in his own defense. If readers wished to withdraw their subscriptions, so be it; the Spirit would survive on the patronage of “true patrons of this paper.” However, this did not relieve Alexander of his responsibility to race Asteroid, according to Wilkes. Because Alexander possessed the finest breeding stallion in the United States—the sire named Lexington—people in the North believed that he was able to manipulate bloodstock prices nationwide with this one horse. Therefore, he owed the sport an opportunity to see Asteroid race against Kentucky. “The side we represent,” the editor intoned in his chauvinistic vein, “desires to promote the interests of the turf, by having the colt Asteroid come on and run; the other side, which seems to be composed mainly of those who are the natural followers of close rich men, have sprung forward to defend Mr. Alexander’s personal right to keep his colt to himself, though the general interest should suffer.” East versus West, folks were lining up in opposition. It seemed so long ago, not just four months, that the lineup had been North versus South.32
The summer’s outcome disappointed all. The Saratoga Cup went off as scheduled but without Asteroid. With the talented Irishman Gilbert Patrick, better known by his nickname, Gilpatrick, riding Kentucky, that colt easily defeated the only other two horses to start: Captain Moore, who finished second, and a horse from the Bluegrass named Rhinodyne. The renowned Abe Hawkins, the dean of black jockeys and a former slave whose riding fame would span the antebellum and postwar eras, rode Rhinodyne. The horses raced in the new style, going a lengthy two and a quarter miles but not returning for multiple heats.
A breezy, sunny day greeted the crowd of spectators for the Saratoga Cup, a good number of them women wearing the latest fashions, a touch that added a pleasant aspect to the spectacle. “No clouds gathered to darken the blue of the sky,” reads a report of the race. The same could not be said of Alexander’s standing with the Northeastern racing community, which had longed to see Asteroid in this race. Alexander’s aloofness had cost him respect in the Northeast. Clouds of a similar nature were beginning to darken the relevance of Bluegrass horse country and its place at the center of power in Thoroughbred racing. Folks in the Northeast were no longer looking to the Bluegrass for leadership in this sport. They were making over the sport to suit themselves whether or not Alexander chose to participate.33
So much had changed since the late 1850s, when New Yorkers had looked to Bluegrass Kentuckians as Thoroughbred racing’s leaders, seeking their help in resurrecting the sport in the Northeast. That situation, too, had represented quite a change from previous decades, when New York racing had been quite in vogue. But Thoroughbred racing had operated cyclically for so long in New York, depending on whether antiracing interests held power, that no one there could breed and raise Thoroughbreds with any assurance that there would be tracks where these horses could race.
From 1821 to the later 1830s, New York racing had existed as the epicenter of Thoroughbred racing and had hosted widely anticipated match races between Northern and Southern horses like Eclipse and Sir Henry. These races, some fifty of them, had taken on national import in the 1820s and especially in the 1830s following the Missouri Compromise. Adelman has suggested that these races assumed symbolic connotations for their Northern and Southern audiences, given the hardening feelings between North and South. Despite the increasing sectional animosities and the difficulty of travel, Southerners had brought their best horses north for these showdowns, which took place at the Union Course on Long Island. New York, with its large population base, provided the largest audiences and the greatest number of wagering opportunities, with the betting playing a significant role in these races. Some sixty thousand persons might have witnessed the Eclipse–Sir Henry match in 1823, although these estimates taken from contemporary press accounts may have been exaggerated. Eclipse defeated Sir Henry. The North and New York won that round.34
The economic collapse of 1837 hit the gentry class of horse breeders hard, particularly in New York, where the financial base of elites was grounded in industry and commerce, both sectors that were suffering in the depression. The final North-South race of any consequence was the Fashion-Peytona match in 1843; quality racing was in a free fall and virtually died out in New York by middecade. New York racing had hit the bottom again in another of those seemingly endless cycles that witnessed the sport rise and fall in this state through the decades.
The sport had been banned entirely in New York in 1802 with an antiracing law brought on by social reformers who disliked the gambling aspect; it had returned only two years prior to the Eclipse–Sir Henry match of 1823 after legislators changed the 1802 law. Eclipse’s owner brought the horse out of retirement on the legislative change—he had been at stud and would be nine years old by the time of his race with Sir Henry, the Southern horse he defeated.
Two decades later, following the Fashion-Peytona match in 1843, sectional feelings between North and South had become so hardened that no further matches of consequence in New York occurred, although match races of similar import were taking place in New Orleans among horses representing various Southern states. Meanwhile, the Union Course in New York suffered from the twin blows of depressed economic times and mismanagement. Trotting horses and racing mules soon replaced the Thoroughbreds. Both were less expensive to maintain than the sleek racehorses that had formerly thrilled huge audiences.35
Economics aside, John Dizikes has suggested that cycles of expansion and contraction in New York horse racing paralleled periods of unrestrained gambling and fraud followed by social revulsion and alarm, the latter resulting in periods of prohibition of gambling. In hindsight, these cyclic swings throughout the nineteenth century foretold the future for racing in New York when Progressive reformers managed to shut down racing once more in the state, from 1910 to 1912: a situation that greatly affected the Bluegrass. With each waning cycle of the sport on the racecourse came a parallel decline in the breeding of Thoroughbreds in New York, to the point at which only a single Thoroughbred stallion stood at stud on Long Island prior to the Civil War. At the same time that New Yorkers sought the aid of Bluegrass breeders in the late 1850s to revive their sport, the Spirit of the Times equated the paucity of breeding in New York to the poor quality and insufficient number of horses racing on the track, a situation obvious to everyone “because we had no horses in this section of the Union fit to contend with even second- or third-rate Virginia horses.”36
The Spirit described the situation as deplorable, noting: “Our Race course has fallen into disuse from want of Northern horses to compete successfully for the prizes, and we have witnessed numerous attempts to revive racing before the public in our vicinity were prepared for it, all of which have failed.” The solution seemed to be to invite the racing men of Kentucky—“the Dukes, Vileys, Alexanders, Richards, Hamptons, Bradleys, Hunters, and Clays”—to combine with wealthy Northern sportsmen in rebuilding the sport in New York. As this sporting periodical made its case, it reminded Bluegrass horsemen than they would be able to expand the market for their horses this way since, of 1,200 Thoroughbreds born annually in the United States, “Kentucky alone contributed 450 thoroughbred foals this year.” The New Yorkers realized that they could not interest Kentuckians simply with an altruistic motive; they would have to appeal to their business needs.37
No record can be found of what the Dukes, the Vileys, Alexander, or John Clay thought of this plea for help. But some of the betterknown Kentucky horsemen had accompanied their racing stables to Philadelphia in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, to compete on a circuit that temporarily sprang up between that city, New York, and Boston. Zeb Ward and Captain T. Moore were the first to arrive; expected within a short time were the stables of Dr. Weldon, John Clay, and R. A. Alexander. The organizers acknowledged the superiority of Kentucky horses and advised that, for the opening race at Philadelphia, “horses that have won in Kentucky, at the Spring meeting, will be excluded from starting for this purse.” Another race at Philadelphia was open only to white riders mounted on saddle horses.