June 13, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
(From the Richmond Examiner.)
The war has proved the degeneracy of Virginia horse-flesh. We still have as fine horses in Virginia as ever, or as are to be found in any country under the sun; but they are few. At one time in the history of our Commonwealth, first rate horses only were bred; but the general practice has long ago ceased; and our stock of horses has become mixed almost universally with base blood.
Accordingly, that which should be the strong arm of the Southern service, the cavalry, is the weakest and most contemptible. A band of Yankee buggy drivers and teamsters, mounted on Pennsylvania Conestogas, intermingled with cold blooded Morgans and trotters, have swept leisurely through that part of the Confederacy which should have been alive with fleet, ubiquitous and irresistible cavalry. Chase was made in one instance, and the enemy overtaken and chastised; but he rode away after his beating, and our cavalry were unable to follow; the horses being broken down and broken winded. The celerity of Lee’s Legion, and the partisan corps of Sumter, Marion and Hampton in the Southern campaign of the Revolution, was due, in great part, to the excellence of their thoroughbred steeds, which were very fleet, had great bottom, and possessed withal, in some degree, the gift of Fortunio’s horse, which fed but once a week.
The thoroughbred Arabian horse was cherished in Virginia and the Carolinas, as early as in England herself; and such was the enterprise of our good ancestors in this respect, that the first celebrities of the English studbook were purchased at enormous prices, and brought away from England, to become founders of an institution that has scarcely a rival in the world, [….] Virginia race horse.’ It was upon descendants of the Godolphin and Darley Arabians, Flying Childers, the Royal Mares, King Herod, English Eclipse, Matchless, Rachael, Prunella, Crab, Trentham, and the various Turks and Barbs of the old English studbook – begotten on American shores by such horses as Fearnought, the two Januses, MortonTraveller, Regulus, Jolly Roger, Oscar Flunnah and Toby – that Lee’s and Hampton’s men were mounted.
We have no such cavalry now; not because we have not equally as good horsemen and as brave warriors, but because we have allowed our race of horses to become a mongrel abortion, possessing not one good quality of any of the dozen species of which they are a hybrid mixture. The practice of thorough breeding has ceased to be general among our planters. The Virginia and English race horse has been bred from approved sires and dams for three hundred years, originating at the beginning of our own recorded knowledge of them with the Eastern progenitors, who were descendants of races that had been bred in Asia and Northern Africa for twenty or thirty centuries. It is impossible but that a stock of horses thus carefully bred from remote antiquity, should not possess all – all – the qualities of the animal in the highest perfection. And yet, many sensible Virginia planters have allowed themselves to be persuaded into a preference for cold blood Cleveland or Yankee Morgan, whose history cannot be traced more than a dozen or two years back, and only thus traced upon the testimony of horse jockies, notorious for their brazen mendacity.
The result of this degeneracy of taste and perversion of judgment, has been deplorable in the war. There cannot be found a company of cavalry in the whole Confederate service which can perform hard dragoon duty for a day, without half a dozen or so of its horses breaking down. Our horses are all hybrids and mongrels, with all the bad qualities appertaining to horse flesh. They are a sorry race, that can stand no service, and can be made merely to look well, by high feeding, at a cost each month equivalent to their value.
Thorough breeding is the only remedy for our defective cavalry. Our young men are unsurpassed in horsemanship; but what avails their skill in the saddle, if the steed is unworthy of his rider? Our planters should discard the cold blooded Yankee and English horses that have recently engrossed their attention, and return to thoroughbreds. We have still in the South some of the best horses in the world. If we have lost Revenue to the Yankees, yet we have Planet and a dozen other animals of rare excellence and beauty. There can be no doubt, after his performances on the turf, that Red Eye, though a Shakespeare, is thoroughbred; and he has the excellence, rare with the Arabian stock, of being one of the largest horses living. Besides Red Eye, there are a great many other offsprings extant of that most noble of Virginia horses, Old Boston. Let it not be supposed that this greatest horse ever bred in Virginia or America, was misnamed. There is no Puritanic odor or Yankee taint about that name. The money with which he was purchased of Mr. Wickham, when a two year old colt, was won at the game of high stakes and deep playing at cards, called Boston; and his purchaser very appropriately called him after the game in which Fortune had showered her smiles upon him.
Besides many immediate descendants of Boston, we have also those of imported Trustee, Priam, and many other horses and mares native and imported, from which our Commonwealth can soon again be filled with a race of thoroughbreds worthy of her fame in that department of enterprise. Virginia is still rich in the blood of such early horses as Sir Archy, Bertrand, James, Eclipse, Florizel, Levinthan, Bedford, Medley, Seagull, Wildair, and of many others more recent and scarcely less celebrated. We have the horses and the mares to begin with; all that is required is a general system of thorough-breeding. Oxen and mules are better for draft than horses; let this plodding work be left for them. But for every purpose for which the horse is best adapted, the thoroughbred is better than any other horse. Let the baser business of breeding scrubs and cold bloods be left to the Yankees; and let Virginia planters and farmers resume the practice of their ancestors, headed by such men as Washington, Jefferson and Randolph, and devote their attention to the thoroughbred Virginia race horse.
One of the more effective means of promoting this important business would be the encouragement and reformation of the Turf. Let the racing clubs be composed exclusively of gentlemen, and let the arts and frauds of gamblers and jockies be frowned down and banished from the Turf. Let the noble art of racing be conducted on the highest principles of honor, with single reference to bringing out and perpetuating the highest qualities of the noblest animals. When such men as John Randolph of Roanoke shall again be installed governors of the Turf – men who would scorn the practice of any act tending to secure unfair victory to inferior over superior animals, though the former be their own – racing will then really promote and secure its only legitimate object, the discovery and perpetuation of the finest races of horses; and the best Virginia pedigrees will continue to be esteemed as highly all over the world as the best English.