Stories about riverboat gambling and gamblers persist to this day. Why? In this episode, I talk with historian and author Thomas Ruys Smith about the pre-Civil War gambling scene on the Mississippi River. We peel off the patina of romanticism and go deep into the realities of gambling on the Mississippi River. We talk about the presence of gambling on the river before steamboats plied the Mississippi and how the destruction of the red-light district in Vicksburg reorganized gambling activities. We then go deeper into the world of riverboat gambling, touching on which games of chance were common, the background of gamblers, the role of the ship’s crew in supporting or tolerating gamblers, the consequences of getting caught cheating, some common myths about gamblers. We wrap up with a discussion about the eventual decline of riverboat gambling, how and when the image of riverboat gamblers got a makeover into mythic heroes, and the thread in American history of turning outlaws and rule breakers into heroes.

Show Notes

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Transcript

Wed, Sep 16, 2026 3:27PM • 1:04:09

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Mississippi River, riverboat gambling, steamboats, card sharps, confidence men, Vicksburg riot, George Devol, Faro, poker, social history, Mark Twain, nineteenth century, gambling culture, river towns, American history

SPEAKERS

Thomas Ruys Smith, Dean Klinkenberg

Thomas Ruys Smith 00:00

George Devol is probably the most famous figure from this era because of his very kind of carnival-esque biography that he published in the late 19th century, which contains a lot of the kind of most iconic information we have about riverboat gambling. Yeah, he definitely framed it in a slightly kind of class war fashion. He has this, you know, wonderful account of his early years when he’s apprenticing to a trade, and one day he just kicks his tools in the river. And when challenged about, you know, what on earth he’s doing and how he’s going to make his living, he says, “I’m going to make money rain by by conning fools and suckers.” And and that that was that was in a sense, then what he set out to do.

Dean Klinkenberg 01:01

Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at mississippivalleytraveler.com. Let’s get going.

Dean Klinkenberg 01:34

Welcome to episode 84 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. In this episode today, I have the pleasure of going deep into the world of 19th-century riverboat gambling with historian and author Thomas Ruys Smith. He has written several books on Mississippi River history, including some on Mark Twain. But in this episode, we focus mostly on his 2010 book, “Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men: Nineteenth-Century Mississippi River Gambling Stories.” So we cover a wide range of topics about riverboat gamblers, beginning with some of the early history. Riverboat gambling existed long before there were steamboats plying the river. So we cover a little bit of that early history, and then we move into some of the events that shifted gambling from the vice districts or the infamous districts of river towns, like Natchez Under-the-Hill, from land onto the boats, with a fair amount of time talking about the 1835. Let’s call it a riot in Vicksburg, Mississippi, that rooted out much of the red light district and led to five men being hanged.

Dean Klinkenberg 02:48

And then we get into the nuts and bolts of gambling on the river itself, talking about the different kinds of games of chance and confidence games that that were common. Who some of the gamblers were, how they operated, and then the lucrative market they had on those steamboats, with people often traveling with large sums of money on them.

Dean Klinkenberg 03:11

We talk a little bit about the culture of riverboat gamblers and what happens to a person if they got caught cheating. Some common myths, including one that I was that caught me by surprise a little bit, and then what sort of led to the eventual decline of riverboat gambling, and how did we manage to transform riverboat gamblers from scoundrels into romanticized hero figures?

Dean Klinkenberg 03:36

So we cover a lot of that stuff as I said, it’s a really entertaining conversation. I feel like we could have gone on for quite some time, continuing to talk about all that. I think you’ll enjoy the conversation.

Dean Klinkenberg 03:49

Thanks to all of you who continue to show me some love through Patreon. If you want to join that world for as little as $1 a month, you can do so, and you get early access to all the episodes. To join the Patreon community, go to Patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If Patreon isn’t your thing, then hey, you can buy me a coffee. To find out how to do so, go to mississipyvalleytraveler.com/podcast, and there you will find instructions on how to buy me a coffee, and at that same address, mississippivalleytraveler.com/podcast, you’ll find links to all previous 83 episodes. If you click on one of those episodes, such as the link to this one, you’ll also see the show notes for this episode. There will be some show notes on a couple of book recommendations, as well as how to keep up with the work of Thomas Roy Smith.

Dean Klinkenberg 04:47

All right, then let’s get on with the interview. Thomas Ruys Smith is professor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He specializes in 19th-century transatlantic literary and cultural history, with particular interests in the history of Christmas, children’s literature, and, of course, the social and cultural history of the Mississippi River. He’s the author and editor of a wide range of books, including “Deep Water”, “The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain”, and “Searching for Santa Claus: An Anthology of the Poems, Stories, and Illustrations That Shaped a Global Icon.” Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Thomas Ruys Smith 05:38

Hi there. Great to be here.

Dean Klinkenberg 05:40

It’s a pleasure to talk with you. Like as as we were chatting about earlier, I’ve followed your work for quite some time. We’re here mostly to talk about your other book, an earlier anthology. Yeah, let’s read the title: “Black Legs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men: Nineteenth-Century Mississippi River Gambling Stories.” Gambling is always a topic that river rats are interested in, so I think we’ll have a lot of fun with that. Well, I’m just sort of curious, like, how did an Englishman get so interested in Mississippi River history?

Thomas Ruys Smith 06:07

Well, yeah, it’s a good question. I guess Mark Twain is the is the obvious answer. I think he was probably probably my gateway into thinking about the Mississippi, and you know, really wanting to know more about the kind of deep context for that’s what really propelled all of my all of my Mississippi research thus far. Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s amazing how early he’s a global icon, and yeah, if if it sounds incongruous, you’ve got to remember that you know there were Londoners in the 1870s who were who were obsessing over Mark Twain and rushing to see him lecture and poring over his river books. So, so I guess there’s there’s there’s a good precedence for for my particular arc of interest in in him and the river. It’s not maybe it’s not quite as idiosyncratic as it might might first appear.

Dean Klinkenberg 06:57

Interesting, yeah. Because I in American schools we get exposed to Mark Twain pretty early, like you know, Tom Sawyer in particular is probably a book we get exposed to in grade school. So, do you remember like when you first sort of got exposed to Mark Twain’s stories, and what which stories kind of opened that world for you?

Thomas Ruys Smith 07:16

I mean, it would have been when I was a child. I mean, and I think it probably would have been Huck Finn. I think I think that that that would have been my first exposure when I was when I was still pretty young in one way or another. But also, I just think through pop culture. I mean, you know, if I’m honest, it might have been Star Trek, whichever episode Mark Twain pops up in there. You know, there’s a good chance it was via comic book or television as much as it was through through the books themselves to begin with.

Dean Klinkenberg 07:46

Right, Mark Twain showed up in the Next Generation in a two part…

Thomas Ruys Smith 07:49

Yeah, that’s it.

Dean Klinkenberg 07:50

Yeah.

Thomas Ruys Smith 07:52

So I was always I was always at Americaphile in terms of my cultural cultural diet as a child so so I think he just I just kind of absorbed absorbed the sense of him through that.

Dean Klinkenberg 08:04

Have you had much of a chance to travel along the Mississippi yourself, or you know, get out in a canoe and paddle on it, or any of that kind of thing?

Thomas Ruys Smith 08:11

I’ve always resisted the the canoe option, but but yeah, yes, I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time in Hannibal, so see the the boyhood home and museum and and and see the river there and also a bit more time in New Orleans as well. So so seen the river down there as well. So so yeah, I’d be never never done the whole length of it probably should have done at some point, but but but I’ve seen it in in snippets anyway.

Dean Klinkenberg 08:46

Yeah, well, if you ever decide you want to try the canoe portion, you know, let me know because I can help with that too. So I’m, yeah, I work with some organizations who focus as.

Thomas Ruys Smith 08:56

I will bear that in mind.

Dean Klinkenberg 08:57

Yeah, yeah, we work with folks and try to get them comfortable paddling on on big rivers, especially the Mississippi. So it’s it’s a it’s it completely changes the perception of that world. So yeah, as much as I would love to you know talk about paddling and all that too, we are here to talk about gambling. So why don’t yeah? One of the things I think that’s easy for us to forget about you know because there’s so much of an association between gambling and steamboats, it’s easy to forget that there was a gambling culture well before steamboats were regular you know sites on the Mississippi. So can you tell us a little bit about sort of the pre-steamboat history of gambling on the river?

Thomas Ruys Smith 09:40

Yes, certainly. I mean, obviously, first steamboat on the Mississippi is 1811, and there are plenty of decades of river travel before that, in one way or another. So, flatboat men, keelboat men taking cargoes downriver, slogging their way back upriver. They they had from what we can tell quite a healthy gambling culture as well. You know various stories of of people losing you know months wages at a gambling table in New Orleans in in the space of an hour and then having to sadly make their way back up back up river again to repeat the process,. So yeah, so so certainly there was a kind of a culture of gambling amongst boat hands in the years before steam, as far as we can tell, and there were also the prevalence of of what we might call vice districts, I guess, in river towns. So you know, the famous Natchez Under-the-Hill, for example, that was already kind of up and running as a as a den of iniquity for river travelers before the advent of steam. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that even if we associate you know gambling on the river with the steamboat in a kind of iconic fashion, the steamboat didn’t invent gambling culture on the river, but it certainly gave it a new a new dimension and a new a new home.

Dean Klinkenberg 11:06

So it seems like maybe one of those turning points was the infamous sort of I don’t know if you want to call it a riot, but the crackdown in Vicksburg in 1835. Can you kind of take us through what happened in Vicksburg at that time?

Thomas Ruys Smith 11:20

Yes, sure. So this is 1835, as you say. It’s in Vicksburg, one of the towns that had quite a healthy kind of gambling red light district at this point, catering to river travelers predominantly. And it’s the Fourth of July, and there’s a kind of militia picnic underway, and essentially things turn ugly. There’s a brawl, probably involving a gambler or someone who’s associated with gamblers, called Francis Cabler. After that, the militia then head to the gambling district and form an anti-gambling committee, start raiding shops, burning gambling paraphernalia, and give the town’s resident gamblers 24 hours’ notice. They’ve got to leave town. The deadline passes. The militia turn turn up in the waterfront district. End up in a in a fight with a with with a number of gamblers in a coffee house. Shots get exchanged. One man gets killed, and then five men who it’s claimed are gamblers are seized by the militia and lynched. And this is this is a major a major moment of river history. And and even actually, again, is is an international moment as well. It’s reported in the London Times. It really, it’s it’s a moment which which seems to exemplify something about America at this point, and and it it kind of goes goes down the decades in river lore as well. So Mark Twain mentions it in “Life on the Mississippi” briefly as a little aside, as as a piece of river history that he, as a riverman, would have been well familiar with. So yeah, so it’s it’s a big explosive moment, creates lots of debate about you know law and order along the river. Might be seen as a watershed moment in some senses, moving from one kind of you know frontier economy and society to to to another era in the life of the river. But I suppose, as you say as well, as far as you can tell, in some of the records, seems to help move the heart of gambling on the river from these kind of river towns and their and their vice districts onto the steamboats, onto these mobile spaces which aren’t really under anyone’s jurisdiction, in one, you know, to a certain degree, allow for a lot more mobility, anonymity, and and and an ability to to get out of trouble if you’re a gambler than being stuck in one place. I guess.

Dean Klinkenberg 11:20

So, what do you suppose? So you said that that that that that event in Vicksburg seemed to exemplify something about America at that time. Like, what did what did exactly exemplify it? What did it say about America at that time?

Thomas Ruys Smith 12:59

Well, I think probably from observers across the Atlantic, so for those who came across it in the Times, this would have been used as evidence that America was, in some sense, is still a kind of lawless, a lawless place that was characterized by these kind of moments of sensational violence and and and people behaving outside the boundaries of of polite society. On the other hand, I think you know within America itself, at least you know. Some people do find it a kind of shocking example of vigilante justice. Others see it as okay., here we have actually a new era of law and order coming to what what we have previously thought of as a kind of lawless frontier. That you know behavior is going to be patrolled, and this might have been a moment of kind of vigilante justice, but it’s a kind of herald of a new era of law and order that’s going to be enforced along the river. So I think it kind of meant a lot of things to different different things to different people, if you if if you like. But it certainly was headline news.

Dean Klinkenberg 15:35

And as you say, like it repeated in other river towns just without the lynchings. Yeah, Natchez.

Thomas Ruys Smith 15:41

Apparently so yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 15:43

Within a few years at least a lot of those vice districts disappeared in both river towns. New Orleans of course has always been the exception that’s maintained a vice absolutely yeah yeah a long time.

Thomas Ruys Smith 15:54

Yes I don’t think yeah that didn’t see any diminution of of business I don’t think.

Dean Klinkenberg 16:00

So let’s talk a little bit about the culture of gambling on the boats themselves, and I just want to kind of start with some simple questions too. And so, what what were the most common games of chance, like, what were people actually doing as gamblers?

Thomas Ruys Smith 16:14

Sure. Yeah, good question. You might say they broke down into three different categories, broadly speaking. So we might think of social card games. So you can see the scene in a steamboat cabin, men gathered around a card table, cigars, smoking, cards in hand, playing variations of poker, brag, euchre, whist, so games like that, and you know, a card game as we might imagine it. Then you have another order of games which were also enormously popular, which were what we call banking games. So where you have a bank, a house, if you like, run by a professional gambler, challenging people to come and stake their claims in various ways. So we might think of roulette as an obvious example of that. Probably the most famous version of that game, though, was Faro, F-A-R-O. Faro, Pharoah. Have any of us seen it written down actually, now I’m saying it out loud. But but which which was a game which involved this situation where you have a bank, you have a gambler who’s running the bank, and you you’re in essentially wagering on certain things happening against the house rather than against other players necessarily. That one, of course, is very easily gameable by gamblers, so it’s very popular for them because they were far more in control of the of the odds and the and the way the game rolled out.

Thomas Ruys Smith 17:51

And the final order and of games that people might have played, and this is perhaps the most iconic one, were what were really just confident tricks, confidence tricks dressed up as games. And the most famous would there be three-card monte or thimble rig, as it was called, which is essentially shell and pee. So find find the ball under the cups, three-card monte, turn over the queen of hearts. Let’s say. Now this was obviously all a matter of sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors, right? The confidence tricks like three-card monte were not honest games in any way, and I think you could probably go through the spectrum there. That maybe you could have got an honest game of poker on a steamboat if you were sure you weren’t playing with a professional, but you know there are plenty of ways to cheat, cheat, and and guarantee victory there. If you’re playing against a bank with a professional gambler, you know the odds were definitely got to be in their favor. And if you’re playing a confidence trick like three-card monte, you you had no chance really. There was the whole thing was designed as as a way to fleece you and and separate you from your money.

Thomas Ruys Smith 19:09

And I think you know I think I think that’s an important thing to remember that when we’re talking about the iconic figures who went up and down the river making money as gamblers, there wasn’t much gambling at work there. You know, their their whole was to kind of guarantee as far as possible that they were going to take your money, and they would find any way possible to do that. And their only concern was not getting caught by some nominal authority, or and not having acts of violence enacted upon them when it was became clear that they had just conned someone out of X amount of money. But that’s that’s the kind of the the the ladder, if you like, of of games of chance that that would have been played along the river.

Dean Klinkenberg 19:58

So really, like the. We romanticize poker, especially as you know, so strongly associated with that gambling culture. But it may not have even been the most common form of gambling taking place at that time. Interesting.

Thomas Ruys Smith 20:11

No, I think pokers probably did have a place in the in the pantheon at that point as a as a kind of iconic game on the river then. But but yes, whether or not it’s the most common game that was played, especially by these professional gamblers. Then, yeah, that’s a different question.

Dean Klinkenberg 20:27

So, who were these professional gamblers? What can you tell us about their background or who they were? It seems like it’s mostly white men, but maybe that’s just because that’s all we heard about later. But tell us a little bit about who the gamblers were.

Thomas Ruys Smith 20:43

Yeah, I mean, predominantly white men, I think, is a seems a fair characterization. But again, given the the record that we have, which is obviously a very partial one, which is in a sense why I put the anthology together in the first place to try and bring as many of the different accounts of of these gamblers from you know memoir and fiction together to see what what what comes out of the mix there, but I guess the the most famous gamblers that we have the memoirs of were broadly speaking kind of working class white men who took up gambling as a as a way to make some easy money, but often did so with interesting you know associations attached as well. I mean, George Devol is probably the most famous figure from this era because of his very kind of carnival-esque biography that he published in the late 19th century, which contains a lot of the kind of most iconic information we have about riverboat gambling. Yeah, he definitely framed it in a slightly kind of class war fashion. He has this you know wonderful account of his early years when he’s apprenticing to a trade, and one day he just kicks his tools in the river, and when challenged about you know what on earth he’s doing and how he’s going to make his living, he says I’m going to make money rain by by conning fools and suckers, and and that that was that was in a sense then what he set out to do. So that’s an interesting way of framing it.

Thomas Ruys Smith 22:17

And there are also there are other figures who have similar beginnings in one way or another. I suppose you know romantically you have this vision of of people from higher up the class spectrum taking part in these in these games and even potentially working as professional gamblers. But I think, by and large, that’s probably fictional in some senses. In terms of of women, yes, there were definitely well, women were associated with with the trade in one way or another. But they are pretty invisible from the historical record. So you’ve got a figure like Lottie Deno, who is more famous for kind of gambling in the West, in the in the in the far West later, but it seems like she might have been working the river right near the beginning of the Civil War. So there’s there’s some tantalized suggestion there that that women might have had a place in the gambling economy, and there’s a great example from the WPA narratives from formerly enslaved river worker who talks about working up and down the river with a kind of side hustle in gambling. So again, that suggests that gambling, you know, crossed over racial lines as well. But again, there’s very little that’s recorded about that, comparatively speaking.

Thomas Ruys Smith 23:53

So in the main historical record, focuses on people like George Devol, who indeed were white men who who worked the river in itinerant fashion, and one of the one of the most interesting ironies about those figures as well, I always think, is that almost to almost to a man, the professional gamblers who left a record of their of their exploits on the river, and who spend you know, long long details trying to tell you about the way that they very purposefully conned other people. All of them lost most of the the money they made by gambling themselves, losing it to other gamblers who were conning them out of their money. So there, there, there, there was a kind of compulsive element to it as well as a kind of pragmatic one. It’s it’s incredible to see that that so for example George Devol’s partner “Canada Bill”, who who becomes a kind of iconic figure in his biography, you know would would make X amount of money playing the three-card monte, the specialty, and then would sit right down at a table and lose it to someone. That even even if he knew that person was a professional gambler who was going to cull him out of it, he just couldn’t help himself. So the there’s some sobering kind of messages about gambling and addiction in there, which I think are interesting in our present era as well.

Dean Klinkenberg 25:16

Yeah, there’s a certain timelessness to that to that.

Thomas Ruys Smith 25:20

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s that’s one thing that’s interesting about what’s happened since I since I put this book together because I think it was 2010 when this came out. I think I gestured in the introduction to the fact that that gambling was on the rise, but I don’t think even then it would have been possible to imagine just things how extraordinarily how how much gambling has proliferated in well certainly in American culture I think over here as well in the UK but but but particularly in America how how much gambling has exploded as a force in society and popular culture what with the you know poly markets and those kind of things, as well as rise and rise of sports betting. So yes, so there is a kind of interesting prescience to to what’s what’s in this collection to some extent, and yes, some interesting messages as well for for today’s gambling culture.

Dean Klinkenberg 26:16

Right, I yeah. Well, some things just yeah, we seem to keep repeating over and over, it seems. So it’s it’s fascinating that like even amongst these professional gamblers, though, like they probably knew they were going to be cheated sitting at a table with somebody, and they would they just couldn’t stop themselves from going ahead and doing it anyway. Like there’s always that maybe it’s that that hubris to think, well, this time I’m going to catch, I’m gonna get him.

Thomas Ruys Smith 26:42

Yeah, I think that’s it. I think that’s it.

Dean Klinkenberg 26:45

Yeah. So a little bit more about the context too. So steamboat travel, especially on the Lower Mississippi, was seasonal for the most part. There were definite peaks during certain times of year, and usually the water was high enough to for the a lot of traffic to run up and down the river, and you also tended to have like on these boats people carrying a lot of money, right? Like you would have planters who would solve a crop. You might have immigrants with every all of their worldly possessions on them. So it was kind of a a ripe market if you were you know a confidence man or a gambler.

Thomas Ruys Smith 27:22

Yeah, absolutely. That’s part of the the yeah the the the fascination of this world. I think that yeah, you had you had people who were apparently you know flush with cash, as you say, for various reasons. You also have you also something really compellingly new in in social terms about what’s going on in the steamboat cabin. And you know, you get plenty of people commenting on this at the time. You know, this is this is like a new space in the world, a space which isn’t is is not rooted in any particular community, as we’ve said. So you have an enormous amount of people passing through. So transient people, you could ride up and down the river, remain relatively anonymous, and you could take on whatever persona you wanted.

Thomas Ruys Smith 28:08

I think that’s also one of the fascinating things about this space, and that’s one of the things the gamblers recognize early on, and one of the things they exploit. That when you’re detached from a specific place or a specific community in this way, when you’re in this space which is liminal, which which has people coming and going, which allows a certain kind of modern anonymity, you can pretend to be whoever you want to be, and that’s exactly what they did. So they they they took the fact that this space allowed for anonymity, and they also took the face took the fact that this was a space that brought people together in a new way as well. That you had people from different parts of society, from different parts of the country, from different parts of the globe, even coming up against each other in this enclosed space for an extended period of time, again in a way that wouldn’t have happened in other, you know, before the steamboat exists as a space. So it’s we have to think that the steamboat is not just a revolution in terms of the way that it gets people from A to B, but also that it’s a kind of social and cultural revolution in terms of the way that it brings people together in a new in a new and unfamiliar way. And the gamblers are right on that; they fully understand the potential of that before anyone else. To their advantage, and at least according to their own memoirs, that’s exactly what they do.

Dean Klinkenberg 29:47

The steamboats themselves could be, let’s say, highly segregated, or you know, separate the the the deck passengers from the upper class. Upper classes were physically separated from each other, but at a gambling table you could have all kinds of mixing as you’re alluding to. So where physically on the boat would they maybe have a gambling table or a gambling room?

Thomas Ruys Smith 30:14

Generally in the in the cabin, in the the kind of main saloon, if you like. I think that’s that’s so so yeah so so yeah. You’re right. That that’s important to say. That there’s still a there’s still a class stratification and a racial stratification at work on the steamboats, of course. So when we say that there’s an interesting amount of you know social mixing that takes place in these in these cabins in a way that the gamblers use it to their advantage. You’re right to say that’s still not bring everyone to the table, as it were. It’s still within a kind of quite defined a quite defined socio-economic class, which is another thing that the gamblers exploit, of course, because if they’re if they’re able to pay enough money to access this part of the boat, then that helps their their sense of credibility and gives them a you know immediately a kind of veneer of of having been you know filtered out to some extent you know the away from the deck passages. Although interesting, there are accounts as well of gamblers working in teams that would have worked all parts of the boats. So you know, someone would have gone to see what they could pick up from the deck passengers. You know, a less lucrative part of the trade, but nonetheless, you know, still a source of revenue. Whilst another team was was was working in the in the cabin itself, and you know, seeing who was present there. So so yeah. So I think it’s that’s a good point, actually. That that whilst this is a new kind of mixing, social mixing that takes place in these spaces, it’s not entirely kind of a free for all in that sense.

Dean Klinkenberg 31:53

Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself. Just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guidebooks for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also wrote “The Wild Mississippi,” a guide that goes deep into the complex ecosystems supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them, and where you can go to experience it all. If you like fiction, check out my Frank Dodge mystery series. Each book is set in places along the Mississippi River. My newest book is a travel memoir called “Better Safe Than Sorry: Slowboats, Chicken Busses, and the Radical Choice to Trust the World.” The book explores a simple question: What happens when you stop asking “What if something goes wrong, and start asking “What if everything goes right? Find out more at deanklinkenberg.com/bettersafethansorry.

Dean Klinkenberg 32:54

There’s some really interesting stories. You know, so many interesting stories in the book from the different accounts, and one of the things that maybe it was heartbreaking to read these, but everything associated with with slavery was heartbreaking. But especially like the the rich planters might travel with enslaved people, and they could you know at times they would bet their their enslaved people would become part of the bet. So an enslaved person might board the boat with one owner and leave under some complete stranger. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Thomas Ruys Smith 33:30

Yeah, I mean that’s certainly one of the the kind of most popular stories that’s that’s told about the relationship between gambling and enslavement in this period, and I think you know, not least because I think it’s a really it’s a useful story for abolitionists as much as anyone else to be able to you know emphasize the way in which Southerners were thinking about these people as as property that was kind of you know to be transacted rather than rather than human beings. So so almost as it’s almost as much of a kind of a myth that’s that’s that’s used to good effect by abolitionists as it is necessarily a statement of fact about what was going on on the on the western rivers. Which is not to say it didn’t happen. I mean, it’s certainly possible, and it’s certainly a story that’s told enough times that in various different formats that that suggest there may well have been some truth to it.

Thomas Ruys Smith 34:27

But yes, the whole once you start really looking into into these accounts of of life on the river and gambling on the river and its relationship to to slavery, it does feel really kind of connected in an intimate way in a whole host of senses. So you’ve got, you as you say, you’ve got that kind of showcase moment, which involves you know staking actual human beings in in games. Abolitionists also saw the riverboat gambling itself as evidence that the South was ultimately a corrupted society, because the only reason you have this whole kind of well immoral, I guess you could say, if you’re if you’re an anti-gambling campaigner as as you might have been, but also kind of chaotic sense of life in this place was because you had far too many people and too much money with nothing else to do with it, and too much leisure time because they were kind of reaping the the wealth of slavery. So it’s only because you have this feckless planter class that you’ve got any possibility for professional gamblers to make their living fleecing people out of out of 1000s of dollars going up and down the river, so this the whole enterprise was seen as evidence of of kind of the corruption of the South, if you like, in the antebellum years. Certainly amongst some commentators and especially anti-slavery commentators.

Thomas Ruys Smith 35:56

On the other hand, it was also part and parcel of the performance of gambling as well. So if you read about George Devol, you know he would work in concert with with black riverboat workers sometimes, and get them to pretend to be enslaved people who belonged to him in order to help manufacture this veneer of wealth and social standing. So it became a game to play, in a sense, which allowed people on all parts of that social status, you know, in terms of race and class, to challenge, at least in a small way, the social hierarchy by working together to use that kind of social presentation to it’s that aspect too, and I suppose also that that degree to which also feeds into that kind of antebellum Southern honor code. You know that sense of what what what makes a gentleman you know within the South a gentleman, and that sense of being willing to gamble, being willing to step up and risk everything with kind of insouciance and without apparent regard for material wealth in that in that kind of crass sense, that’s certainly tied into the South’s sense of itself as well, the idea that you know honor was more important than money, all that kind of you know romantic self assertion of the South, and I think you know you can you can see the way that lingers because the way it feeds into a text like “Gone with the Wind,” for example, the fact like that that Rhett Butler is in the book. There’s a suggestion that he’s a kind of gambler. There’s just a kind of a smaller side, so the fact that this feeds into, in a sense, the greatest text of the the kind of the plantation myth and the romanticized old South doesn’t seem coincidental because it’s perhaps already feeding into it in the antebellum years, even. So you see, so it’s quite a complicated matrix of things at work, where slavery is such a you know a kind of an all-encompassing fact of life in the antebellum South, and gambling feeds feeds into and from that in a whole host of ways.

Dean Klinkenberg 38:24

So one of the things that surprised me. Before thanks for clearing that up. I thought that was you know I didn’t know that that was more myth than reality about you know enslaved people being tokens to bet. But yeah, I’m sure, like you said, probably I’m sure it must have happened at some point. But probably it was more useful as a story than than what actually the frequency of it. What what other kinds of myths about gambling did you discover didn’t really hold up under closer scrutiny? Can you think of any others that just turned out not to really be all that true?

Thomas Ruys Smith 38:56

Well, that’s interesting. I mean, in a sense, I guess you could say, in a way, the myths that we have, because it’s it’s difficult. It’s difficult to actually get behind the myth. You know, so much of what what we’re drawing from, we’re talking here, and what’s in the anthology is stuff that’s it’s either secondhand or from kind of sensation fiction or from the memoirs of men who made a living by being dishonest, so might not necessarily be be the most reliable witnesses. So I guess you could say it’s all myth. I mean, you know, who knows how much money, for example, was was was was was was gambled and won. You know, there are so many stories of thousands of dollars, you know, being being staked on on card games. I guess that’s possible. I mean, people do bet a lot of money on things still, so you know, people don’t necessarily make the best best life choices. As far as you can tell, there’s a lot of drinking going on on these steamboats as well, to some extent. So again, you know, it’s possible that people were making bad decisions, but it’s it’s kind of impossible for us to verify any one particular game of chance that took place and and and work out what was won or lost on it. So so I think yeah, in some ways it’s not so much what myths we can debunk, but that we just have to the myth is all we have to work with to some extent, and and maybe that’s I don’t think that’s a problem in a sense because the myth is-is what’s so powerful as well, and the myth is what keeps this kind of place and time alive in the popular imagination for the decades that follow.

Dean Klinkenberg 40:36

Absolutely, and we’ll come back to that in a minute too. I have a couple of thoughts about that. I’m curious what you think of. One of the other things I was thinking about was yeah obviously you know there’s no Facebook or social media we assume that communication was well obviously it was more limited, there was still communication that happened. Word still got around about things maybe took a little longer. So if you’re boarding a steamboat in the 1840s or so. Did people must have known that they were likely to face gamblers, or there must have been some frame they were entering the boat with, knowing that this culture existed. And what do you suppose they would have? What understanding of gambling might they have taken themselves onto those boats do you suppose?

Thomas Ruys Smith 41:21

Yeah, it’s a great point. Yeah, so there are certainly kind of conduct manuals from the period, you know, trying to teach, let’s say, a young man how to behave, that would absolutely warn you about setting foot on a on a riverboat and gambling with someone. And there were professional gamblers who had turned kind of poacher turned gamekeeper, who who had written like Jonathan Green, most famously probably in this era in the antebellum era, who had written kind of exposes of gambling and you know tell-alls and that were meant to serve as a warning to anyone who wanted to gamble. So yeah, so so I think there would have been a clear framework for for for having a sense that maybe sitting down to a game of cards on a steamboat wasn’t the best life choice you could make. But yeah, again, you know, people don’t always make sensible choices in life. And I think one other thing to think is that often, and again, as far as we can tell, again, you know, I think this is appears in enough steamboat memoirs to to seem right that the gamblers wouldn’t wouldn’t have been working completely solo, but they would have been working with with the awareness of some of the boat staff around them. So often the bartender was felt to be implicated in in the way that professional gamblers work. So let’s say you know they’re trying to encourage you to sit down to a game of cards. They’ll say, “Well, look, look, don’t worry. We’re going to use a new deck. We’ll get a deck from the bartender. You you can see it’s going to be unopened. You can trust him. He’s a he’s an employee of the boat.” But of course, you know the bartender was on the payroll, and he was going to provide them with the marked cards that they use. And even the the the pilot or the captain of the boat, as far as we can tell, may have been involved in kind of implicitly allowing gamblers to work on the boat in exchange for a certain amount of kickback to to allow them to carry on their trade. So, so yes, on the one hand, I think it would have been easy to think you would you know you would you would be silly to to start gambling your family’s fortune on a Mississippi River boat, but on the other hand, there was perhaps sometimes a kind of almost institutional support network for what these professional gamblers were doing, even though it wasn’t official. Nonetheless, there was some kind of veneer of of probity given to what they were doing.

Dean Klinkenberg 44:02

that that thought had occurred to me as well, in part after reading your book too. But like, yeah, if these gamblers have to be riding on the same boats over and over, so even if they’re like changing their costumes or their appearance a little bit, the the boat crew are going to know who they are. So there’s some sort of at least implicit consent.

Thomas Ruys Smith 44:21

Yeah, I think I think that that would be fair to say. Yeah, yeah, and presumably the boats that didn’t want them, they wouldn’t have they wouldn’t have traveled them. Yeah,

Dean Klinkenberg 44:31

Yeah. So occasionally they did screw up and they got caught. And again, I’m I’m questioning like whether these were just great myths or how much of these were actual facts. But can you tell us a little bit about like the consequences a gambler might face if they got caught cheating?

Thomas Ruys Smith 44:49

Yes, certainly in terms of the stories. I mean, I suppose in a sense the most immediate concern was was was physical violence because you know, there’s a good chance that that people were armed, traveling on these boats in one way or another, and again, possibly drinking, possibly losing large amounts of money. So I think I think immediate physical violence was probably the most the the biggest concern for gamblers, and there’s plenty of stories of of gamblers having to make very hasty exits from boats, either did literally jumping off the side, or or making their way out in disguise to try and avoid angry angry customers, if you like. So, so I think that’s probably the first the first and most significant fear you would face for actually kind of being uncovered,. And otherwise, I suppose there’s the kind of justice system at work. Let’s say you you know you’re working on a boat where the captain or a pilot doesn’t approve of what you’re doing doesn’t want to take a kickback from you to let you work. In a sense, they could certainly they could chuck you off the boat in the middle of nowhere, which probably would have been an inconvenience, if not if not worse, to suddenly be deposited on somewhere on the Lower Mississippi,. So I think yeah, often just simply getting thrown off the boat was was was was a typical punishment as far as we can tell. Sometimes they’re a bit more baroque. The captain might have devised his own particular punishment for you. I think I think it’s George Devol tied to the piston rod of a steamboat at some point and has to move very carefully to make sure he doesn’t get crushed or strangled by the rope that he’s attached to it with. So, so they could get creative by the sounds of it. But I think that’s that’s broadly speaking. I think those are the the two areas of of concern if you’re a gambler.

Dean Klinkenberg 46:58

Yeah, I was beginning to wonder now if that story about being tied to a piston was again a more fable than reality, but it’s a good story. It was a very good story.

Thomas Ruys Smith 47:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the problem you see. They’re good with stories. These gamblers, yeah, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 47:11

You note in the book that Mark Twain had very little to say about riverboat gambling, and you’ve had a lot more time to research him. You know, during these years too. What what do you think is behind that? Why do you suppose he had so little to say about riverboat gambling?

Thomas Ruys Smith 47:29

Yeah, it’s a good question, really. I mean, I guess you could say maybe it’s it’s proof that there it wasn’t as endemic as some of these accounts may count, And that he, you know, it simply didn’t occur as much as as myth would suggest. So he didn’t necessarily come into contact with it as much. You know, I think with Twain, there’s always that interesting line between respectability and and comedy. And is it something that he didn’t necessarily want to be associated with in in print in that sense? Let’s say perhaps it it came under that banner of things that that might not have been proper to talk about in some senses. And you know, as I say, he’s always kind of interested in he’s treading that line, right? That he’s he’s interested in in in in provoking and you know shocking to some extent, but on the other hand, isn’t necessarily going to want to delve too deeply into into subjects that are going to going to be too beyond the pale, and probably professional gambling is disreputable enough to to come under that heading. I don’t know. That’s that might be a stretch, but but yes, he he really does not talk about it a large amount. That doesn’t really cover it in ‘Life on the Mississippi, though. He does say he does gesture to the Vicksburg gamblers being lynched. So so he was certainly aware of that anyway.

Dean Klinkenberg 49:00

It’s curious. His this is probably just a coincidence, but his career was really near the end of when Steamboat was at its peak. True. And when did gambling, riverboat gambling, begin to really decline do you suppose? Did it was it going robustly right until the Civil War, or was it starting to decline even before then?

Thomas Ruys Smith 49:23

Some some some people around at the time I think seem to think it was probably declining by the time of the war. So that’s good point for Twain. You know he was there just before the Civil War, so it’s possible that there had already been at a certain amount of decline there. Broadly speaking, it’s a kind of slow process of the railroad taking passenger traffic from the river over the last half of the 19th century, and the river being far less important ultimately as a as a as a highway that people are traveling along. The railroad just simply kind of takes that passage, and yet some of the most important gambling memoirs we have are people who are working into the into the 1870s and 1880s apparently. So they push back on the idea that it’s actually disappeared entirely at that point. Probably, I think you can say by the turn of the 20th century, there’s probably not a meaningful trade going on. I’m sure that men who worked along the river still gambled amongst each other and in in other places along the river, but that sense that there was enough of a world there to actually sustain a whole class of professional gamblers who made their living traveling up and down the river in itinerant fashion, earning money all along the way from various new passengers who arrived and departed. Yeah, that’s probably gone long gone by that point. So, you know, probably peak in the 1840s and 50s, and a kind of slow decline thereafter, helped along by the closing of the river during the Civil War.

Dean Klinkenberg 51:12

So I forgot to ask this earlier, but do you have a like a, I know there’s almost no way to know this for sure, but like a ballpark guess is like how many people were working as gamblers on these steamboats? Like, was there one at least one in every boat? If you got on a boat, was there going to be somebody there who was a gambler or a conman?

Thomas Ruys Smith 51:31

That’s a great question, isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, if you if you listen to some people, then yes, every boat would have had someone on it who was who was working the boat in some in some capacity, and some of the professional gamblers themselves would have would have put the trade at that level. Certainly not on the upper river. You know, trade seems to definitely been quieter there, but but on the lower river, At least, at least in memory, in old in old gamblers’ memories, there were times when yes, there was a healthy class of of professional gambler and and a healthy class of of passenger who was who was who was available for trade, and yeah, it maybe not each boat, but certainly a lot of boats would have had a gambler of of some variety or other on board, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 52:32

So I suppose like if we went around and we asked a bunch of random people today what they thought of riverboat gamblers of the 19th century, most of them would probably have a pretty positive view of them. This romanticized image of you know these entrepreneurs going up down the river making a living, highly romanticized. Obviously, that did not seem to match the reality based on the stories that you know we’ve covered today. What you write about in your book. When did they when did they get an image makeover, and how did that happen?

Thomas Ruys Smith 53:06

Yes. Yes. I mean, it’s it’s one of those things, isn’t it? That pretty much at the same time they start kind of disappearing from the actual river. That’s the time at which they start to get enshrined in popular culture. It’s it’s in a sense that I think a really good analog is the Highwayman in Britain. The Highwayman is still has a kind of you know mythic place in the British imagination. You know, in real life they wouldn’t have been great guys either, but but they seem to exemplify something at a certain moment that that found popular appeal. And I do think that the the same process is true for for riverboat gamblers. In a sense, they’re very similar figures, and so yes, what what happens is in the 1880s, particularly, they start being picked up by dime novelists as the dime novels booming as a form, and they start to shift from villain to kind of hero, antihero, slightly kind of rakish hero, and then, as I say, the the gamblers who spent you know their lives actually working the river, they start recording their memories in a series of autobiographies, which also really help to kind of romanticize their own their own trade, and and those in a sense are the texts that that enter into into popular fiction.

Thomas Ruys Smith 54:30

And then you get, as I said before, you know you’ve got something like “Gone with the Wind” attaching that to kind of the old South showboat, a bit of riverboat gambling in there, and then into characters like Maverick in the 20th century. Yes, it just it it that that kind of iconography develops around the gambler as someone who who who isn’t playing a crooked game, who who might be living on the edge of polite society, but is essentially honest and brave, and and is an individual, you know, refusing to conform to society or whatever whatever we might want to, you know, a chance a an outlaw, but um, but not the kind of tawdry conmen that that reality seems to suggest were really working along the river.

Dean Klinkenberg 55:20

Yeah, yeah. As somebody, so I was thinking about this too. I we we definitely I haven’t really studied all this nearly to the degree that you have. So I’m curious about your take on this. Yeah, we definitely have a thread in American culture of idolizing outlaws and rule breakers to some degree. Yeah, from the riverboat gamblers to Jesse James, even the gangsters of the 1930s, to some degree. There is a certain romanticization of that those folks. As somebody who has the advantage of not having grown up steeped in American culture, living in America, what what is your view? What’s going on with us? Why why are we idolizing these folks so much? What does it represent to us?

Thomas Ruys Smith 56:01

I guess it also goes back further than that if you think to to river characters like Mike Fink, even Davy Crockett, that that yeah, the river gamblers are kind of another another wave of of of that kind of of ambiguous figure. I suppose it taps into those those ideas of self-reliance, independence. You know, refusal to to go along with the herd in some senses, but also taps into I suppose, you know, what we might think of as American fascination with with getting rich quick. That’s that’s also a kind of a theme, and also in America has has long had a soft spot for for con men of various varieties, in a way that that kind of flows through society and dare dare one say politics as well. That that that there is that that element of of American culture where what there’s that phrase from one of the early southwestern humor texts that it’s good to be shifty in a new country. That sense that identity is perhaps more fluid in America, less fixed, and is therefore more liable to kind of manipulation and and self presentation in one way or another,

Dean Klinkenberg 57:27

Reinvention.

Thomas Ruys Smith 57:28

And reinvention. Yes, that’s true. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So there’s lots of there’s lots of interesting myth making at work in there I think on a on a national level. But also I think that sense that that sense as well, of being willing to risk it all in one way or another, whether that you know started the whole the whole endeavor. You know, if you think about the beginning of colonialism of of setting up life in a in a whole new continent, is is a risky endeavor. It’s you’re not the kind of person who stays put. You know, that’s if you you know you either stayed put in your English village, or you got on a boat, made a horrendously perilous crossing, turned up somewhere where either disease or hunger was going to get you probably. So there’s there’s you know maybe there’s some risk taking built into that kind of endeavor as well. That that those of us who stayed stayed at home in the UK, let’s say were were less eager for.

Dean Klinkenberg 58:24

Right. Well, and different people had different opportunities to hop on those boats too. It wasn’t widely available to everybody or easily available to everybody. So I’m mindful of the time. I’ve got I’ve got one more question for you that’s slightly off topic, but I’m just sort of curious your take on this. There are a lot of travel logs about the Mississippi, you know, from early early I say pre Civil War antebellum travel logs from people who wrote about their impressions of the Mississippi in America, Frances Trollope and others.

Thomas Ruys Smith 58:54

Oh yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 58:55

Do you have like one or two particular favorites that are that you would highly recommend folks take a look at?

Thomas Ruys Smith 59:03

Yeah, good question. I mean, you mentioned Frances Trollope, and I suppose she is one of my one of my favorites, really, because she’s so early, you know, within like 1820s. So she’s she’s already doing something kind of unbelievable there, really, that she’s kind of decamped from from Britain to at that point going to set up a new life in the new world. She’s there for quite a while. I probably have a personal prejudice for that as well because she actually lived for a while about five minutes from where I’m sitting here. So so she feels like you know an interesting local connection to to the Mississippi over there. And yes, and and she’s you know also because her account was so such a sensation, so infamous, so rude in a sense to what she found in America.

Dean Klinkenberg 59:49

She got a little cranky.

Thomas Ruys Smith 59:49

Defined, she certainly did. Yeah, yeah. It kind of defined a popular image of America for a while, and also defined the the travelogue as well. At least the European kind of that classic European turning up in in America and writing about what they found in that era. Most of them are from Europeans, actually, because you know that’s the kind of biggest biggest literary genre at that point. It’s interesting to see that flip after the Civil War to some extent, but but yes, let’s let’s say Francis Trollope. I’d also put in a note for another great Victorian called Harriet Martineau, who is who’s much more excited by what she sees on the Mississippi River than Frances Trollope, and she also she she was she came from the the place that I was born, so I got another another personal connection there. I’m afraid to say that I’m that I’m exploiting here, but she was amazing. She was she was partly deaf from a childhood illness, but she was absolutely a kind of formidable world traveler, as well as being a kind of political essayist, fiction writer, journalist, correspondent with many of the the big big Victorians, and yes, so she also came over to spend quite a large chunk of time observing America in the 1830s, and she and she was far more open to what she found on the river. She was far more of a kind of intrinsic Democrat than than Fanny Trollope was, who has had much more kind of aristocratic pretensions. And so, yes, yes, she she found plenty to admire in the Mississippi. So I say let’s let’s juxtapose those two those two Victorians.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:01:38

Fantastic. I haven’t read hers, so I think I have a book to put on my list now.

Thomas Ruys Smith 1:01:44

Yeah, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:01:45

Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. This has been a lot of fun. I feel like we could probably go on for another hour or two easily and continue to chat about all this stuff. But we all have other things we need to get on to do. If people are interested in following your work, finding out more about you, where’s the best place for them to go?

Thomas Ruys Smith 1:02:05

Well, I have a website actually. If you just it’s just thomasruyssmith.com, I think. Books are available in all the usual places. And yeah, that should that should do it. I’m not that hard to find.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:15

Do you have any new projects in the in the hopper right now?

Thomas Ruys Smith 1:02:22

Well, I’ve got a I’ve got a book coming out hopefully next year, I think, with the University of Alabama Press, which is about and it’s an edited collection of about Victoria transatlantic Victorian Christmas literature. So yeah, more more more Christmas cultural history, which is another great topic that I could spend too long talking about.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:48

All right, well, fantastic. If I ever start a Christmas podcast, I’ll know who to reach out to first.

Thomas Ruys Smith 1:02:52

Yes, absolutely, I’ll be there. Yeah, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:02:56

Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And we managed to to bridge the six hour time gap, and everything seems fine.

Thomas Ruys Smith 1:03:06

Brilliant! Thanks for having me.

Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:09

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon you help keep the program going. Just go to Patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guidebooks for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge Mystery Series that’s set in places along the river, find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original music by Noah Fence. See you next time.