Gambling: Colonial America

Gambling has been part of American culture since the original colonies were founded.

Between 1612 and 1615, the Virginia Company conducted four lotteries in England to raise money for its founding colony in North America.

Lotteries had been used in England since the mid-1500s to raise money for public works projects, so the use of a private lottery was a familiar strategy.

In the Virginia colony itself, company officials attributed their lack of success to the 'idleness and other vices' (including particularly gambling) of the colonists.

Horse racing cockfighting, card games, dice, and lotteries were the main forms of gambling that thrived in the colonies. However, Puritans and Quakers had a very different views on gambling.

For Puritans, gambling was a double vice; it was unproductive idleness and a profaning of God. Gambling and leisure activities were seen by the Puritans as a waste of time that could, and should, be spent on productive work.

The very act of gambling was also seen as blasphemy since it implied asking God for help in bringing about a favorable (winning) outcome in a game.

Such appeals to providence were seen as frivolous and the equivalent of taking God's name in vain, since they represented an appeal for divine intervention in trivial and sinful matters.

Consequently, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a variety of (largely ineffective) laws against gambling and other leisure activities and pastimes that were regarded as a waste of time.

In Pennsylvania, Quakers shared a similar aversion to idleness and were committed establishing a colony based on religious principles. Laws passed between 1682 ans 1749 attempted to ban all forms of gambling and were fairly successful as long as the colony religiously homogeneous.

But as time went on and the colony became more diverse in terms of religion and ethnicity, gambling became more common. The colony's ban on lotteries also created friction with the English crown since English lottery tickets could not be sold in the colony.

In other colonies--- Virginia, Maryland, New York, and South Carolina--- the pro-gambling perspective common in England came to predominate.

Virginia landowners attempted to emulate the English aristocracy by developing horse racing into a major leisure activity.

The breeding and racing of horses was seen as a 'gentlemen's sport', a cultural prerogative that set the upper class apart from the common people.

This class dimension to racing can be seen in a case that came to court in York County in 1674. A planter had raced his horse against that of a tailor. The tailor was punished with a fine, and the planter was put in the stocks for one hour.

The grounds for this was that it was 'contrary to Law for a Laborer to make a race, being a sport only for Gentlemen'. In New York, Maryland, and South Carolina, horse racing was a popular pastime. In South Carolina and other southern frontier regions, cockfighting was also popular.