1835: Five professional gamblers lynched at Vicksburg

ExecutedToday.com ^ | July 6, 2017 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1835, five professional gamblers were strung up in Vicksburg.

It was an event more adjacent to than constituent of the slave rebellion panic shaking Mississippi, for the men were neither slaves nor their confederates and they were not struck down for threatening the Slave Power; at best, the uneasiness of possible insurrectionary stirrings abroad informed the tense background, or offered the post hoc justification — but these lynchings were a different thing that inhabited by chance the same time and place.

A Mississippi River boomtown “created by the easy credit of the Jacksonian ‘flush times’ and the scramble for wealth coincidental to Indian removal,” wrote Joshua Rothman,* Vicksburg had become a haven for faro players and other imps. The reports of this date’s events run thick with moralizing but as Rothman observes,

The merchants, doctors, lawyers, and planters who constituted Vicksburg’s budding elite may have believed professional gamblers threatened their moral integrity, but most people in Vicksburg were essentially speculators who had risked migration to the Southwest for the allure of fast profits almost unimaginable everywhere else in the country. In a very real sense, nearly everyone in Vicksburg was a gambler.

Then as now the high rollers at the tables of casino capitalism make free to snort at their louche progenitors and their marked cards and cathouse molls; gambling was a top-shelf moral hazard throughout 19th century America.....

[Veto!]

Gambling is so controversial. My father’s father was one, that’s how he made his living. Not a good enough living, so my dear little grandmother and her sisters moved away, from Missouri to the snows of Idaho.

Decades later, When that grandfather came to visit us, my dad, who’d achieved financial success by working, had a hard time concealing his scorn. But as a seven-year-old I found him fascinating, especially the rabbit’s foot he always had tucked into his vest.

[Dr. Sivana]

Gee, and I thought those guys were all like Bret Maverick.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Wow, can somebody untangle that mess of a second paragraph?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I am a river gambler
I make a living dealing cards
My clothes are smooth and honest
My heart is cold and hard
I was shuffling for some delta boys
On a boat for New Orleans
I was the greatest shark they’d ever seen
But the captain bumped a sandbar
And an ace fell from my sleeve
They threw me overboard
As I swore I didn’t cheat
But I could swim
And I’ll ride again

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

They want to blame it on the "slave rebellion" or racism or politics or anything besides that the men in question never learned the lessons Kenny Rogers laid out in "The Gambler".

Know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and know when to run....

People do not like it when you take their money consistently. Even if it is an honest game and you are just a better player. They get up feeling vaguely cheated. And then they start impugning your honesty. Once that builds to the boiling point if you have not made a graceful exit already you will be making a swift and involuntary one.

[chud]

But as a seven-year-old I found him fascinating, especially the rabbit’s foot he always had tucked into his vest.

I bet the old guy had some fascinating stories...

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for the summary. Much better written!

I watch a lot of old western movies from the 30s to 1960 or so and see that play out all the time.

[Pilsner]

and their marked cards

I’ve read that in the Mexican-American War, US Soldiers in Mexico became enamored of Mexican card games, such as Monte.. American professional gamblers, who had followed the Army on its campaigns, had to offer Montegames to compete with the local gambling houses.

They began discrete inquiries into how the “other” sort of Monte cards, and card banks, could be obtained, but apparently could not get the language barrier. They finally resorted to plainly asking where the marked cards and rigged card banks could be bought, and when the Mexicans proved reticent, offered large sums to purchase them. All to no avail. Eventually the American professional gamblers accepted the to them astonishing fact that Mexican professional gamblers didn’t have access to marked cards, or rigged card banks.