The history of gambling in the United States covers gambling and gaming since the colonial period. The overall theme is one of a general lack of formal regulation (but sometimes significant religious or moral disapproval), giving way by degrees to widespread prohibition by the early 20th century, followed by a loosening of restrictions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Colonial
Games of chance came to the British-American colonies with the first settlers. Attitudes toward gambling varied greatly from community to community, but there were no large-scale restrictions on the practice at the time. Colonies with conservative religious traditions (such as Puritanism in Massachusetts) tended to frown on gambling, which was sometimes prohibited or restricted by law.
By the 1680s, an emerging upper class in Virginia cemented their economic status through an iron grip on gambling in horse racing. Heavy betters demonstrated their courage and skill while promoting a sense of shared values and consciousness among the social elite. This group of wealthy Virginian landowners made elaborate rules, established by formal codes that dictated how much to bet, and marginalized the role of the non-elite. They developed a code of honor regarding acquisitiveness, individualism, materialism, personal relationships, and the right to be rulers. Not until the mid-18th century, when Baptists and Methodists denounced gambling as sinful, was there any challenge to the social, political, and economic dominance of this Virginian over-class.Timothy H. Breen, "Horses and gentlemen: The cultural significance of gambling among the gentry of Virginia." William and Mary Quarterly (1977): 239-257. online
Historian Neal Millikan found approximately 392 lotteries that were held in the 13 colonies using newspaper advertisements in the colonial era.
Lotteries were used not only as a form of entertainment but as a source of revenue to help fund each of the original 13 colonies. The financiers of Jamestown, Virginia funded lotteries to raise money to support their colony. These lotteries often featured instant winners. In 1769, a restriction was placed on lotteries by the British Crown and became one of many issues that fueled tensions between the Colonies and Britain before the American Revolution.
Early national trends
Lotteries continued to be used at the state and federal level in pre-revolutionary America. New Orleans emerged as the nation's leading gambling center. A wave of hostility against the sinfulness of gambling emerged in the religious revivals that comprised the Second Great Awakening and the Third Great Awakening. Moralists concentrated on state legislatures, passing laws to restrict gambling, pleasure halls, horse racing, and violations of the Sabbath (working on Sundays). Despite the attempted restrictions, gambling houses grew in popularity in various communities across the colonies. Local judge Jacob Rush told men "that not all sports were banned, only those associated with gambling. Unadulterated amusement was permissible". Rush continued to condemn gambling as immoral, because "it tyrannises the people beyond their control, reducing them to poverty and wretchedness. The mind is deeply contaminated, and sentiments, the most hostile to its final peace and happiness, are harbored and indulged."J. Thomas Jable, "Aspects of Moral Reform in Early Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 102.3 (1978): 344-363. pp 346-47.
English writer Harriet Martineau described the deportment and social station of a professional gambler she encountered while traveling through modern-day West Virginia to the then-burgeoning spa town of White Sulphur Springs:One of the personages whom I referred to as low company, at the beginning of my story, declared himself in the stage-coach to be a gambler, about to visit the Springs for professional purposes. He said to another man, who looked fit company for him, that he played higher at faro than any man in the country but one. These two men slept while we were mounting to the Hawk's Nest. People who pursue their profession by night, as such people do, must sleep in the day, happen what may. They were rather self-important during the journey; it was a comfort to see how poor a figure they cut at the Springs. They seemed to sink into the deepest insignificance that could be desired. Such persons are the pests of society in the south and west; and they are apt to boast that their profession is highly profitable in the eastern cities. I fear this is no empty vaunt.Martineau, Harriet, Society in America, Vol.II, p.188 New York, 1837) (retrieved Dec. 24, 2022).
Gambling was made illegal and forced to relocate to safe havens such as New Orleans or on riverboats where the captain was the only law in force. Anti-gambling movements shut down the lotteries. As railroads replaced riverboat travel, other venues were closed. The increasing pressure of legal prohibitions on gambling created risks and opportunities for illegal operations.
Frontier From 1848 to 1855, the California Gold Rush attracted ambitious young prospectors from around the world, to prospect for gold and gamble away were two sides of their manliness.Christopher Herbert, "' Life's Prizes Are by Labor Got': Risk, Reward, and White Manliness in the California Gold Rush." Pacific Historical Review 80.3 (2011): 339-368. online By the 1850s, the influx of aspiring prospectors had made San Francisco a world-famous city. San Francisco had overtaken New Orleans as the gambling capital of the US. However, as respectability set in, California gradually strengthened its laws and its policing of gambling; the games went underground.
Gambling was popular on the frontier during the settlement of the West; nearly everyone participated in games of chance. Towns at the end of the cattle trails such as Deadwood, South Dakota or Dodge City, Kansas, and major railway hubs such as Kansas City and Denver were famous for their many lavish gambling houses. Frontier gamblers had become the local elite. At the top of the line, riverboat gamblers dressed smartly, wore expensive jewelry, and exuded refined respectability.
Late 19th century Horse racing Horse racing started as an expensive hobby for the very rich, especially in the South, but the Civil War destroyed the affluence it rested upon. The sport made a come back in the Northeast, under the leadership of elite jockey clubs that operated the most prestigious racetracks. As a spectator sport, the races attracted an affluent audience, as well as struggling, working-class gamblers. The racetracks closely controlled the situation to prevent fraud and keep the sport honest. Off-track, bookmakers relied upon communication systems such as the telegraph and a system of runners which attracted a much wider audience. However, the bookmakers paid off the odds that were set honestly at the racetrack.Steven Riess, "The Cyclical History of Horse Racing: The USA's Oldest and (Sometimes) Most Popular Spectator Sport" International Journal of the History of Sport (2014) 31#1 pp 29-54
Chicago In Chicago, like other rapidly growing industrial centers with large immigrant and migrant working-class neighborhoods, gambling was a major issue, and in some contexts a vice. The city's wealthy urban elite had private clubs and closely supervised horse racing tracks. The workers, who discovered freedom and independence in gambling, discovered a world apart from their closely supervised factory jobs. They gambled to validate the risk-taking aspect of masculinity, betting heavily on dice, card games, policy, and cockfights. Already by the 1850s, hundreds of saloons offered gambling opportunities, including off-track betting on the horses.See Christopher Thale, "Gambling" Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004)Richard C. Lindberg, Chicago by Gaslight: A History of Chicago's Netherworld: 1880-1920 (2005) excerpt Historian Mark Holler, argues that organized crime provided upward mobility to ambitious people in poverty-stricken non-white communities. The high-income, high-visibility vice lords and racketeers built their careers and profits in these low-income neighborhoods, often branching into local politics to protect their domains.Mark H. Haller, "Organized Crime in Urban Society: Chicago in the Twentieth Century" Journal of Social History (1971) 5#2 pp. 210-234 Online For example, in 1868–1888, Chicago linchpin, Michael C. McDonald—"The Gambler King of Clark Street"—kept numerous Democratic machine politicians on expense accounting to protect his gambling empire and keep the reformers at bay.
In larger cities, the exploitation, inherent in illegal gambling and prostitution, was restricted to geographically segregated red-light districts. The business owners, both legitimate and illicit, were pressured into making scheduled payments to corrupt police and politicians, which they disguised as a licensing expense. The informal rates became standardized, for example, in Chicago in 1912, in ranges of $20 a month for a cheap brothel to $1000 a month for luxurious bordellos. Reformist elements never accepted the segregated vice districts and they wanted them all permanently shut down. In large cities, an influential system of racketeers and a vicious clique of vice lords was economically, socially and politically powerful enough to keep the reformers and upright law-enforcement at bay. Finally, around 1900–1910, the reformers with the support of law enforcement and legislative backing, grew politically strong enough to shut down the destructive system of vice and the survivors went underground.Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920 (1983) pp 230-73.
20th century Numbers racket
Segregated neighborhoods in larger cities starting in the late 19th century were the scene of numerous underground "numbers games", typically controlled by criminals who paid off the local police, they operated out of inconspicuous "policy shops" usually a saloon, where bettors chose numbers. In 1875, a report of a select committee of the New York State Assembly stated that "the lowest, meanest, worst form ... [that] gambling takes in the city of New York, is what is known as policy playing". The game was also popular in Italian neighborhoods known as the Italian lottery, and it was known in Cuban communities as bolita ("little ball").Holice and Debbie, Our Police Protectors: History of New York Police Chapter 13, Part 1 . Accessed on 4/2/2005 In the early 20th century, the game was associated with big-city slums and could be played for pennies. The bookies would even extend credit, and there were no deductions for taxes. also online free to borrow Illegal gambling, which had the same organizers and support systems as illegal liquors in the 1920s, lead to powerful criminal syndicates in most large cities.John Burnham, Bad Habits (1993) pp 63-66
Reformers Reformers led by the evangelical (Protestant) Christian movement, succeeded in passing state laws that closed nearly all the race tracks by 1917. However, slot machines, gambling houses, betting parlors, and policy games flourished, just as illegal alcohol did during Prohibition. Horse-racing made their comeback in the 1920s, as state governments legalized on-track betting as a popular source for state revenue and legalized off-track betting regained its popularity.Riess, "The Cyclical History of Horse Racing."
The Great Depression saw the legalization of some forms of gambling such as bingo in some cities to allow churches and charities to raise money, but most gambling remained illegal. In the 1930s, 21 states opened race tracks.Schwartz, Cutting The Wire pp 26–27.
Localities Some cities such as Miami, the "Free State of Galveston in Texas," and Hot Springs, Arkansas, became regional gambling centers, attracting gamblers from more prudish rural areas.
New York City