UC San Diego

This dissertation examines the relationship between sporting male culture and popular culture during the antebellum period. Sporting culture emerged in major northeastern cities in the 1830s and was mostly comprised of young, single white men. Often disconnected from families or apprentice systems, these men reveled in drinking, brothel-going, gambling and other urban exploits, and had an indelible impact on antebellum literature, print culture, reform work, and law. With their seemingly amoral attitude, individualist rhetoric, and excessive indulgence, sporting men were a source of fascination to the general public and incited marked consternation and concern from authors, reformers and politicians. By examining sporting culture I expand our understanding of the cultural responses to the intense social, political, and economic changes of the antebellum period. In this dissertation I examine popular sensational novels, newspapers, trial reports, reform work, seduction law, and the development of George Lippard’s secret society, the Brotherhood of the Union, to show how the concern over sporting culture reflected fears and anxiety that modernization might not simply breed inequality—but could potentially corrupt the moral and patriotic sensibility of young white men across the nation.

This dissertation considers why sporting culture, prostitution, the libertine, and seduction became sources of preoccupation in the northeastern city. I argue that all of these phenomena were connected: the fascination with illicit activity and the strength of the backlash against it came from the fear that capitalism and modernization might turn a class of potentially productive young white men into self-interested libertines, fracturing the potential for white male unity and cohesion.