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#640 – Engulfed by Biloxi #10 – The Road to Ruin, Part IV
GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI
I brought some reading materials with me to the Last-Chance Mega. I wanted to affect a patient, almost uninterested presence, both for table image and to keep myself under control in the early going. Also, I hadn’t finished reading this stuff and didn’t know when I would if not while here in Mississippi.
Mississippi, I learned, is much more than the cradle of the Blues. It also played a vital role in the formative years of gambling in the United States. The jumping-off point in most histories of gambling is New Orleans in 1803. At that time, the Louisiana Purchase vastly expanded American territory. Because New Orleans was at the mouth of the Mississippi River, by far the best means of traveling with the development of the steamboat, New Orleans became a large, wealthy, and influential city. Its French customs and culture, which included gambling, spread through the Republic, especially along the Mississippi River.
James McManus, in a Card Player article that will become part of Cowboys Full, a history of American poker, put it best when he referred to “Mississippi steamboats, the internet cardrooms of 1811.” Gambling was either legal or tolerated in passenger boats along the Mississippi and gambling houses in the port cities that mushroomed along the River after the Louisiana Purchase. Vicksburg and Natchez sprang up as gambling havens.
According to David Schwartz’s Roll the Bones, this was far from the 19th century version of hosting a WPT event. “From New Orleans, professional gamblers fanned the length of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and nearly every river town had a red-light district where gamblers, thieves, assassins, and prostitutes waited to entertain – and, if necessary, intimidate or even murder – gullible travelers for profit.”
An incident in Vicksburg in 1836 was decisive in killing off the acceptability of land-based gambling dens in Mississippi that didn’t abate for 150 years. (This all comes from Schwartz’s book, which I highly recommend. Added with McManus’s upcoming book, gamblers and poker players in particular will finally have documentation of their lively history.) A group of gamblers and ruffians formed an organization known as the Clan of the Mystic Confederation.
The organization was actually a giant con job. It purported to be an underground group promoting a slave revolt on Christmas Day 1835. Mimicking the attempted revolt of Denmark Vesey (who bought his freedom after having won a lottery and, for his part in encouraging slaves to rebel, was executed), the group actually wanted to use a slave insurrection as a diversion. While citizens were fighting the revolt, the Clan would attack and loot Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans.
Word of the plot leaked out and several black leaders were executed – but not the con-men behind the enterprise. The date of the revolt was changed to July 4, 1836. At this point, slavery ceases to be part of the story. Everybody in Vicksburg was on edge on the 4th of July, and gamblers were simultaneously rambunctious and paranoid.
Six notorious gamblers interrupted a celebration being held by a local militia named the Vicksburg Volunteers. Francis Cabler, drunk and violent, wandered around yelling, overturning tables, and threatening everyone around. He was ejected but staggered around the town square brandishing a pistol and a knife. The Volunteers disarmed him, tied him to a tree, gave him 32 lashes, tarred and feathered him, and ordered him to leave town within 48 hours.
The gamblers then marched around threatening retaliation, leading to an ordinance giving all professional gamblers 24 hours to leave town. The Vicksburg Volunteers conducted an exhaustive search and found several gamblers holed up in a tavern. Shots were fired, killing a local physician. The Volunteers stormed the tavern, captured five men, and hanged them on the spot.
Mississippi had suddenly become very inhospitable toward gamblers. So there’s another reason not to rent a car when you visit the Beau Rivage. No need to mingle with the locals. Just stay in the casino where they are happy to see you 24/7.
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