As the South Carolina Jockey Club’s biographer put it in 1857, horses were “the impersonation of Carolina chivalry—the embodied spirit of Carolina blood and Carolina honor.” The planters were knights engaged in chivalric contests. Winning mattered. Observing the effect of a loss on the backers of one racehorse, a Carolina writer noted in 1859 how it made these “manly men” feel restless and dissatisfied. “Their cavalier blood is stirred—they cannot brook such defeat—they cannot go home thus shorn, stripped of their trophies, bankrupt of applause—not a green leaf of all their laurels, now only a
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