THE TURF AND THE TROTTING HORSE. 531 



Passing over colonial times, and the period immediately follow- 

 ing the Revolution, we come upon the period when racing reached 

 the highest point of popularity. For a period of over twenty-five 

 years every city and considerable town, from New York to Florida, 

 from Cairo to Balize, and all through the valley of the Mississippi, 

 had biennial meetings, in which the most distinguished men of the 

 time took part. The leading politicians of the South were fore- 

 most in patronizing the turf. The efforts of General Jackson to 

 improve the stock of Kentucky, and his fondness for racing, are 

 fully set forth in his biography by Mr. Parton. The names of 

 Sir Henry, American Eclipse, Ariel, Black Maria, Gray Eagle, 

 Boston, and Fashion will render this period in American turf- 

 annals for ever illustrious. 



But racing had its origin in the Southern States. Virginia and 

 Kentucky were the great nurseries of the running horse. The 

 principal race-courses were near Southern capitals; and although, 

 in the great race on Union Course, Long Island, in 1823, between 

 Sir Henry and American Eclipse, the North was successful, in 

 the main the greatest success in breeding running horses, as well 

 as the greatest popularity of the sport, was at the South. 



If the English love of the horse was shared by the Puritan 

 settlers of New England at all, it did not show itself in patronage 

 of the turf. On the contrary, they regarded racing and all its 

 accompaniments with peculiar aversion. Their creed and lives, 

 indeed their very expatriation, formed a protest against the habits 

 and principles of those of their countrymen at home with whom 

 the maintenance of the turf was the first object of life. Nor was 

 the exhilarating ride in the saddle in harmony with the Puritan 

 temper. It was tainted with incitements whose direct tendency 

 was the race-course. Their settlements covered a narrower field, 

 and consequently there was not the same demand for the horse 

 for use in travelling as at the South. It was as an assistant in 

 the labors of agriculture that they found him principally service-" 

 able. His decorous use before the rude vehicles which carried 

 their families to meeting was the nearest approach which they 

 made to modern pleasure-driving. Harnessed before their " one- 

 horse shays," a horse possessing the speed of Flora Temple or 

 Dexter, would be brought down to an orthodox amble. Thus it 

 came that driving the horse before vehicles of varying degrees of 

 clumsiness generally prevailed in New England ; whence it has 

 gradually spread over the country, displacing the use of the horse 

 under the saddle, and furnishing another evidence of the complete 

 predominance of Puritan influence in the country. The habit of 

 driving led naturally to the cultivation of trotting; that gait being 

 the easiest for the horse in harness, and the most unobtrusive and 

 agreeable to the driver. 



