Racing to War: Antebellum Match Races between the North and the South

In the New York Evening Post of October 12, 1822, Virginian James Harrison, owner of the race horse Sir Charles, issued a “Bold Challenge” to the owner of American Eclipse, New Yorker Cornelius Van Ranst. This colorfully worded challenge, to meet on the Washington race course on “the 15th or 20th November next, for Five or Ten Thousand Dollars,” precipitated a sequence of sectional horse races which proved vastly entertaining; it also inflamed sectional allegiances and emotions. The challenge appealed to both racing and political rivalries. In the years preceding the race, the halls of Congress resounded to the fiercely sectional debates over the admission of Missouri as a slave state. North-South antagonism on the slavery question was so intense that Savannah rejected a gift of $10,000 from New York City to help alleviate the sufferings caused by a terrible fire: New York City had stipulated that the gift be distributed without regard to race. These tensions were reflected on the race track.

As the challenge implied, American Eclipse had already earned a lofty reputation. A year before when New York became the first Northern state since the Revolution to permit horse racing, American Eclipse had been withdrawn from stud to participate in the opening of the new Union Course near fashionable Jamaica, Long Island. The principal contest of that afternoon in November, 1821, matched Eclipse with Lady Lightfoot, the undefeated champion of Virginia and the South. 

Attendance was good, and the New York Evening Post exclaimed, “Expectations had never been raised so highly, or rather I should say, solicitude, for on the event hung the sporting honor of New York and of the Southern States.” After Eclipse’s victory, “The air resounded with New York Forever!” In a spring meeting, Eclipse was again to prove too fast for the opposition. 

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Sir Charles was putting together a string of victories which prompted Harrison to make his public challenge. The 1822 match race generated an enormous degree of interest, drawing over 10,000 spectators including President James Monroe and three of his cabinet members. Betting was substantial. But, alas, the race itself proved disappointing. Sir Charles became lame shortly before the race date, and Harrison was forced to forfeit; he did agree to run a single heat for a separate purse of $1,500, and Eclipse was an easy winner. 

Despite its anti-climactic outcome, the match provoked quite a stir among journalists who recognized its importance beyond the world of sports. Not all approved of the proceedings. In Baltimore, Niles Weekly Register was disturbed because, during this period of widespread economic hardship, vast sums were being laid out in risky bets. The National Intelligencer, published in Washington, agreed but argued it was better “to witness a contest of this nature between the horses of Virginia and New York than any kind of political strife between the citizens of the two states.” The reference could not have been lost on any of the paper’s readers since the bitter Missouri Crisis of 1820 had pitted New York’s Congressional delegation, led by anti-slavery champion Senator Rufus King, against the Virginia legislators, who assumed the mantle of Southern leadership normally worn in debates about slavery by representatives of South Carolina and Georgia. 

Not surprisingly, when a group of Virginia sportsmen issued a new challenge to race a Southern horse against Eclipse on the Union Course the following year, Eclipse’s backers quickly accepted. From a sporting point of view, Sir Charles vs. Eclipse had proved a false start. The events which followed quickly erased the memory of that first race: its sequel — for a staggering purse of $20,000 — was to be one of the greatest races in nineteenth-century America — and its most political. 

Because of the size of the purse, the second race was promoted by a group of backers, although two individuals dominated the proceedings. The Southern lead was taken by Colonel William Ransom Johnson, a planter and state legislator from Chesterfield County, Virginia. Johnson’s dedication to racing had earned him the nickname “Napoleon of the Turf.” For the North the leading figure was John C. Stevens, a member of the famous Hoboken, New Jersey, engineering and steamship family. Equally committed to sport, Stevens’ interests ranged more widely than those of Johnson; he eventually switched his loyalties to yachting, setting in motion the events which led to the establishment of the America Cup.

The match races followed an unusual format. Years after they had been abandoned in England, long races continued to dominate the racing calendar in the United States. The races paired two horses in events of increasing distance over several days, climaxing on four-mile heats on the last day. The horse which first won two heats won the match. The schedule was demanding, with a rest period of only 30 minutes allowed between four-mile heats. The rules made it impossible for a trailing horse to seek to conserve energy by dropping out or finishing slowly: if the winner of a heat led by over 185 yards at the finish, he was declared the overall winner. When the racing was good, this format provided an excellent spectacle; but with only two horses to a race, should one forfeit a match, or be distanced in the first heat, the day’s racing was an anti-climax. Interest stayed high in the sectional races partly because, with the exception of the one between Sir Charles and Eclipse, all the races were fiercely contested. 

Given the task of preparing a new Southern challenger, Colonel Johnson maintained a number of possible contenders in training until the very last moment, naming Sir Henry as his entry just before the race itself. Eclipse and Henry were closely related, sharing the same great grandsire in Diomed, winner of the first English Derby in 1780, and three of the same grandparents. The sectional character of the races attached to the owners and backers of the horses, not to the horses themselves. 

The suspense surrounding Colonel Johnson’s choice no doubt heightened interest in the race. But there were also political factors at work. Sectional and regional rivalries, allied to states’ rights controversies, had been stimulated by the debates leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and by recurrent squabbles over tariffs and banks. The forthcoming presidential election was already assuming clear sectional overtones, with newspapers stressing the analogy between horse races and presidential races. The most explicit comparison appeared in the Nashville Gazette, and, according to the practice of the times, the statement was soon reprinted in other papers. It characterized the participants in the “political sweepstakes” (John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and William Henry Crawford) as horses and described their points in equine terms. 

When the great day dawned, on May 27, 1823, vastly expanded ferry services to Brooklyn were unable to cope with the demand. As many as 20,000 Southerners had made the journey; their numbers alone were sufficient to swamp the facilities in the city. The road to the Union Course, some eight miles from the ferry terminals, was thronged by more than 1,000 carriages and innumerable pedestrians. New York businessman John Pintard wrote to his daughter 8 describing the conditions: 

“Literally the city of N York that is the gay, the idle, & the curious, has poured out its population on L. Island. I went to the 2 ferries at 6, to witness the carriages, who thronged the avenues to the Ferry houses. At 10,1 went again, and Fulton to Pearl Street was blocked up with coaches, stages, double & single horse wagons, stages, Barouches, & Gigs, 4 & 8 abreast all filled with Ladies & Dandies, high & low life, waiting their turns for 2 Steam Boats & 2 Horse Boats, incessantly plying across the Ferry, with row boats of all sorts & sizes, carrying over foot pads innumerable.” 

Rumors circulated of vast bets being laid; a relay system of horses and signal flags was established to transmit the news of the result rapidly from the course to the city. Business in New York City came to a standstill, while in Washington race news overshadowed the President’s messages to Congress and his transmission of papers on foreign policy. 

Though estimates differ, probably more than 50,000 people attended in all, at a time when the city’s entire population was no more than 200,000. Spectators crowded the start so closely that the commencement of the race was delayed, and during the race they formed a narrow channel through which the horses had to plunge. The enormous size of the crowd gives the lie to historians who insist that mass spectator sports developed only after the middle of the century. 

At last, the excitement came to a head. The tap of a drum set the first heat in motion, and Henry immediately plunged to the front and set a furious pace, with Eclipse closely contesting the lead throughout. Henry won by half a length; the time — 7 minutes, 37 seconds — was considerably faster than any previously recorded in America for a four-mile heat. Punters, as bettors were then called, had previously favored Eclipse, but now they switched their allegiance and made Henry a three-to-one favorite. The New York contingent grew silent and apprehensive, but its mood lightened when it was announced that Eclipse’s jockey would give way to the horse’s regular rider, Mr. Purdy. Under Purdy’s control the horse had never before lost a heat; he had declined initially to ride the horse on this occasion because of an argument with the owner. 

Henry again took the lead in the second heat but was compelled by Eclipse’s intense pressure to set a searing pace. By the end of the third mile the younger horse began to flag, and Eclipse led throughout the final mile, winning by about 30 feet: the time was 7 minutes, 49 seconds, a remarkable pace for a second heat. Now it was Henry who got a new rider: Arthur Taylor, a famous senior jockey and trainer from Virginia. But the switch accomplished nothing. In the final heat, Eclipse took the lead from the drum and maintained it throughout, winning in 8 minutes, 24 seconds. Eclipse was declared the victor, and his backers claimed the $20,000. 

The race was reported everywhere, usually in the form of reprinted articles from New York and Virginia papers. It received generous allotments of space in papers from Vermont to Louisiana; New York to Cincinnati; Richmond to Little Rock — even though Arkansas was not to achieve statehood for another decade. 

For many years to come, debate raged as to whether the race was fairly conducted. Southerners argued that the New York Jockey Club’s rules regarding weights were biased against younger horses. (Henry was four years old and Eclipse nine.) They charged that Henry was alarmed and put off by crowds which hemmed in the course so closely on the approach to the finish line. They also pointed out that Henry had been less well managed than might have been expected, because Colonel Johnson, suffering from food poisoning contracted at a banquet on the eve of the race, could not attend. Lastly, Southerners were piqued that Eclipse’s owners refused further challenges. Eclipse was returned to stud, to enjoy a career as successful as his first. 

The occasion seemed to inflame sectional feelings so much that many lamented that the race had taken place at all. The New York National Advertiser stated that, “These contests of North against South lay the foundation of sectional jealousies, and create a spirit of rivalry when there should be union.” A writer to the Baltimore Patriot expressed the “hope that this is the last sectional race we shall ever have of any kind in this country — and this view I am much pleased to find is very generally expressed here. Horses may run — and candidates for office will appear on the political turf — but let not the contest be between the men and horses of the south, of the east and west — but between merit and talents. We Marylanders, placed in the centre, wish to cherish union.” 

Other writers suggested their relief that things had gone peacefully by stressing the good humor and sportsmanship that had prevailed among the principals. Indeed, the protagonists enjoyed a friendly dinner on the evening following the race. On the other hand, it was hard to discount the economic aspects of the race. It appears that probably $100,000 in wagers changed hands on the occasion, and great sums were spent on travel, accommodations and food. Even if Eclipse had lost, New York City would have won.

Over the next 20-odd years, there were a number of sectional horse races. One observer calculated in 1835, for instance, that there had been 131 sectional horse races since Sir Charles vs. Eclipse. Although most carried no explicit political overtones, there were, nevertheless, a number of match races for $20,000 purses which were widely promoted as North vs. South affairs and which attracted great followings and much newspaper comment. In an 1825 race, Flirtilla, the Southern horse, “eclipsed” Ariel, the Northern. In 1836 it was Post Boy vs. Boscombe; in 1842 Boston vs. Fashion and in 1845 Peytona vs. Fashion, all run on the same — perhaps ill-named — Union Course. Of these four races, the South won three and the North one. Many people argued that sporting events such as these created and cemented friendships, while others maintained that they sharpened sectional rivalries. 

Peytona vs. Fashion, run in 1845, was the last of the major North-South match races. It was a politically tense time with the annexation of Texas, where slavery was legal, foremost on the political agenda. The Texas debate gave rise to fierce antagonisms in Congress over the so-called Wilmot Proviso, aimed at preventing the spread of slavery into any territories acquired as a result of the war with Mexico. Strong sectional feelings generated a surge of support in town after town as Peytona walked all the way from her stables in Alabama to the famous Union Course. 

This was the last such trek. After 1845, the mounting national rivalry would be tested and acted out in other ways, but contemporaries took note of the role which horse racing had already played in dramatizing and exacerbating sectional tensions. Such awareness was summarized by the fiery editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, James Watson Webb. Writing in the summer of 1847, on the occasion of the death of Eclipse, and in the midst of the war with Mexico, Webb suggested: 

“There is no one who witnessed the great Eclipse race on Long Island in the year 1823 . . . who will ever forget the clear and distinct manifestation of a feeling known before to exist, but called forth and embodied by that contest, in a manner quite as unmistakable as unprecedented — of North and South. The agitation over the Missouri question, and of the discussion relative to slavery, had indeed often and after provoked, as well among philanthropists as among politicians, the expression of earnest and conflicting views; but the horse race — this match between a Southern and a Northern champion of the Turf, took the popular fancy — and the hurra which rang through the air, as Purdy, the favorite rider of Eclipse, mounted him for the second heat . . . attested at once the depth and intensity of the feeling with which the race was watched, and the confidence that the North, properly guided at least, could not be beat.” 

Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts later drew other parallels. With the Civil War already come and gone, Quincy commented in his memoirs on the race he himself had observed: “It seems to have foreshadowed the sterner conflict that occurred forty years afterwards. The victory resulted in both cases from the same cause — the power of endurance. It was, in the language of the turf, bottom against speed. The North had no braver men than were found in the Confederate ranks; it had no abler generals than Lee and Jackson. It had only greater resources.” 

Sources:  In addition to a large quantity of daily newspapers, the major sources consulted for this article were the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, which began its life in Baltimore in 1829 under the editorship of J. S. Skinner, and Spirit of the Times and Life in New York, which was started in New York in 1832 under the editorship of William T. Porter. Fairfax Harrison, doyen of writers on American turf history, described Trotter of the Spirit of the Times as “a reporter of racing none has ever surpassed.” The Turf Register came eventually under the control of the Spirit of the Times, which, by the way, had its major circulation in the South. The Turf Register printed in September, 1830, a long and detailed account of Henry vs. Eclipse, written by Cadwallader Colden, which is a classic piece of sports reporting. 

For additional material on early Southern horseracing, see Allen E. Begnaud, “Hoofbeats in Colonial Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 65 (Fall, 1970), 207-238; Laura D.S. Harrell, “Horse Racing in the Old Natchez District, 1783-1830,” Journal of Mississippi History, 13 (July, 1951), 123- 127; Henry W. Lewis, “Horses and Horsemen in Northampton Before 1900,” North Carolina Historical Review, 51 (Spring, 1974), 125-148; W.G.S., “Racing in Colonial Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 2 (January, 1895), 293-305. See also the unpublished M.A. theses of Arville Taylor, “Horse Racing in the Lower Mississippi Valley Prior to 1860” (Univ. of Texas, 1953), and Alexander Young, “Pre-Civil War Horseracing in Maryland” (Univ. of Maryland, 1963).