The Setting for Nineteenth-Century Sports

Improvements in communication and transportation, as well as the growth of cities, fostered a vast expansion of American sports in the nineteenth century. The pattern of sporting developments also reflected social divisions in the emerging society. Early in the century, the rise of strait-laced Victorian culture among members of the rising middle class limited their physical activity to “rational recreation.” In contrast, the clubs of the elite avidly supported horse races and other sporting activities, and the saloons patronized by working-class men developed “oppositional” forms of sport that incorporated many of the boisterous elements of the older, festive culture. By the end of the century, however, competitive athletics had become an integral component of an urbanizing, industrializing society. Sports teams and athletic heroes had become a major way to bring together the polyglot peoples of the nation’s urban centers. Sports was seen as a way to develop the abilities required for success in a modern world. It also became an arena where marginalized groups such as Native Americans, African Americans, and women sought to demonstrate their fitness for social equality.