The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

Mr. J. F. D. Smith made an extended tour of the colonies, especially of Virginia, before the Revolutionary war, and he suffered some of the inconveniences growing out of the rising hostility to the mother country. In speaking of quarter racing, he says:

“In the southern part of the colony and in North Carolina, they are much attached to Quarter Racing, which is always a match between two horses to run one quarter of a mile, straight out, being merely an exertion of speed; and they have a breed that perform it with astonishing velocity, beating every other for that distance with great ease, but they have no bottom. However, I am confident that there is not a horse in England, nor perhaps in the whole world, that can excel them in rapid speed; and these likewise make excellent saddle horses for the road.”

It will be observed that Mr. Smith speaks of these heavily muscled horses as a breed, which expression, I suppose, is intended to be used in a restricted sense. In the many generations of horses that would necessarily succeed each other in a century, in the hands of a people so devotedly fond of racing, it is merely an exercise of common sense, among barbarous as well as civilized people all over the world, to “breed to the winner.” In this way, and without any infusion of outside blood, there would be improvement in the strength and fleetness of all animals bred for the quarter path. He remarks further that “these likewise make excellent saddle horses for the road.” In that day nothing was accepted as a “saddle horse” that could not take the pacing gait and its various modifications. This was true of Virginians of that day, and it is still true of their descendants who have built up new States further west.

In the early days, as already intimated, it was the habit of Virginians to brand their horses and then turn out all not in daily use to “hustle” for their own living. As a matter of course these animals would often stray long distances away, and not a few never were found. In due time, legislation provided for the recovery of estrays, embracing all kinds of domestic animals as well as negro slaves. Fortunately this enables me to reach what may be considered “original data,” in determining the size and habits of action of the early Virginian horses. As the field of my examination, I have taken the Virginia Gazette, for the years 1751 and 1752, published at Williamsburgh, and in these volumes I find a great many advertisements of “Strayed or Stolen” animals scattered through the pages; and in the second especially a great many “Taken Up” advertisements appear. In a very large proportion of these notices, perhaps a majority of them, all the description that is given is the color, sex and brand, with occasionally some natural mark. As a matter of course these are of no value for the object in view. In some cases the size is given without the gait, and in others the gait is given without the size, in a few both size and gait are given. The range of size is from one of fifteen hands down to one of twelve hands, with more of thirteen hands than any other size, either above or below. The true average of the whole number is a little over thirteen hands and one inch, and none of them are called ponies. As further evidence of the small size of the colonial Virginia horses we find that in 1686 the legislature of Virginia passed an act providing for the forfeiture of all stallions under thirteen and a half hands high found running at large. It provided that any person might take up such stallion and carry him before a justice of the peace, and if he measured less than thirteen and a half hands, the justice was required to certify to the measurement and the facts, and the horse passed legally to his new owner.

As to the gaits I find just twice as many pacers as trotters. Double-gaited animals, of which there were a few, I have here classed with the pacers. That many of these little fellows were very stout and tough is fully demonstrated by the fact that they could run heats of four miles with a hundred and forty pounds on their backs. This closes the first epoch in the history of the Virginia horse. The fleet and compact little horse of thirteen to fourteen hands had had his day, and he was now about to be overshadowed by a greater in speed and a greater in stature. Much of the blood of the little fellow that could run four miles and pace “at a prodigious rate,” was commingled with the blood of the English race horse, but whatever its triumphs, the lately arrived “foreigner” took the credit. A man would have been pronounced “clean daft” if at that time he had dreamed that one hundred and forty years later the blood of this little pacer would stand at the head of the great trotting interest of the world. The tough little fellow has retained his qualities through all the generations in which he has been neglected, despised and forgotten, until he was taken up twenty odd years ago, and now the names and achievements of the great pacers are as familiar to the whole American people as ever were the name of the greatest running horses. It is not known how long he continued to be a factor in the racing affairs of Virginia, but probably not later than about 1760.

From about 1750 to 1770 seems to have been a period of great prosperity in Virginia and, notwithstanding the general improvidence of the times, many of the large landholders and planters were getting rich from their fine crops of tobacco and their negroes. This prosperity manifested itself strongly in the direction of the popular sport of horse racing and improving the size, quality, and fleetness of the running horse. England had then been selecting, importing Eastern blood, and “breeding to the winner” for a hundred years, with more or less intelligence and success, while the colonists had rested content with the descendants of the first importations from the mother country. Doubtless progress had been made here too, but it was as the progress of a poor man against another with great wealth and backed by the encouragements of royalty. The English horse could then run clear away from the Saracenic horse, his so-called progenitor, and he was very much larger than that “progenitor.” We can understand how the speed might be increased by its development in a series of generations and by always breeding to the fastest, but the increase of size can hardly be accounted for as the result of climatic causes—but we are getting away from the thought before us. When the Virginia planter found he had a handsome balance in London, subject to his draft, he at once ordered his factor to send him over the best racing stallion he could find. The action of one planter stirred up half a dozen others who felt they could not afford to be behind in the matter of improvement, but more especially that they could not afford to be behind in the finish at the fall and spring race meetings of the future. These importations went on continuously for about twelve years, and until they were interrupted by the excited relations and feelings between the colonies and the mother country and the preparations for the War of the Revolution, which was then imminent. After the close of the Revolution a perfect avalanche of race horses was poured upon us, some of which were good, but a great majority of them were never heard of after their arrival, on the race course or elsewhere. But up to the close of the century they had not succeeded in exterminating the pacer—the saddle horse of a hundred generations.

As a specimen of how absurdly a man can talk and even write on subjects of which he knows nothing, I cannot refrain from giving the following from what an Englishman had to say in 1796 about the horses and horsemanship of Virginia:

“The horses in common use in Virginia are all of a light description, chiefly adapted for the saddle; some of them are handsome, but are for the most part spoiled by the false gaits which they are taught. The Virginians are wretched horsemen, as indeed are all the Americans I have met with, excepting some few in the neighborhood of New York. They ride with their toes just under the horse’s nose, and their stirrup straps left extremely long, and the saddle being put three or four inches on the mane. As for the management of the reins, it is what they have no conception of. A trot is odious to them, and they express the utmost astonishment at a person who can like that uneasy gait, as they call it. The favorite gaits which all their horses are taught are a pace and a wrack. In the first the animal moves his two feet on one side at the same time and gets on with a sort of a shuffling motion, being unable to spring from the ground on these two feet, as in a trot. We should call this an unnatural gait, as none of our horses would ever move in that manner without a rider; but the Americans insist upon it that it is otherwise, because many of their colts pace as soon as born. These kind of horses are called “natural pacers” and it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to make them move in any other manner. But it is not one horse in five hundred that would pace without being taught.”

There can hardly be a doubt that our English friend in his “Travels Through the States” noted and wrote down just what he thought he saw, and when he saw anything that he never had seen in England, he was ready to either deny its existence altogether or to insist that there was some mistake about it. Poor man, he could not understand how there could be anything outside of England that could not be found in England. His vision, mental and physical, seems to have been restricted to the shores of his own island home, and he was probably a descendant of a very good man we once heard of. As you sail up the Firth of Clyde you pass an island of three or four miles in extent, called Cumbrae. At the head of ecclesiastical affairs in the island was a very pious man, some generations back, and every Sunday morning he prayed that the Lord would bless the “kingdom of Cumbrae and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.” The author of “Travels Through the States” was evidently one of the very numerous descendants of this good man, as they are scattered all over England, and as I am a strong believer in the laws of heredity, I can hardly avoid this conclusion. Indeed, some of the numerous tribe, tracing their genealogy through many generations back to “The kingdom of Cumbrae,” have found their way across the water, and at another place I will pay my respects to them. But to return to our traveler: there can be no doubt about his never having seen a pacer in England, for the last one had disappeared before his day, unless an occasional one might have been found in the old province of Galloway, in the southern part of Scotland. If he had known the history of the horses of his own country he would have known that from the time of King John down to that of James I., the pacer was the most popular and fashionable horse in England, and that the nobility and gentry used no other kind for the saddle. He was always of “a mean stature,” but he was compact, hardy and strong, and could carry his burden a long journey in a day with great ease and comfort to his rider. In the reign of Elizabeth, he was kept separate from others, and bred as a breed on account of his easy, gliding motion, which he transmitted to his progeny. At the time of the plantation of the English colonies in this country the pacers were very numerous, and as they were just the type of horse suited to wilderness life, a very large proportion of those selected were pacers. The pacers our traveler saw in Virginia were the lineal descendants of the original English stock brought over by the adventurers, and the awkward riding charged upon the Virginians, with some evident exaggerations, was wisely and sensibly adapted to the action of the horses they were riding. The criticism of the long stirrups is wholly unjust, as they are just the right length for the “military” seat, and nobody in this country when mounted on a real saddle horse would ever think of taking any other. The Englishman, when mounted on his “bonesetter,” is compelled to have his stirrups short so that he can rise and fall with every revolution the horse makes on the trot to save himself from being shaken to death. This up and down, up and down, tilt-hammer seat, if it can be called “a seat” at all, is one of the most ungraceful things, especially for a lady, that can be conceived of in all the displays of good and bad equestrianism. The English have been compelled to adopt it because they have no trained saddle horses, and a lot of brainless imitators about our American cities have followed them because “it is English, you know.” If the English had pacers and horses trained to the “saddle gaits,” they never would have anything else, and the tilt-hammer “seat” would disappear from Rotten Row and everywhere else.