This is backstory. I'm Brian Bala. The Kentucky Derby is the most heavily wagered horse race in the US with millions of dollars exchanging hands each year.

But in the 19th century, Americans went to the track for more than a few bets. Political candidates got in on the action.

And so they used their horses to help rally support. They would also name their horses things like Democrat or anti-democrat.

Today on backstory, we're looking at a history of gambling from the moral hazards of betting on your own life.

That life insurance industry is always kind of haunted by this element of gambling and this taint of icky-ness.

To an anti-gambling campaign that turned violent.

If people in the United States, when they have an association in their minds with the city of Vicksburg, their memory of Vicksburg is, oh, that's the place where they murdered the gamblers.

A history of gambling coming up on backstory.

Major funding for backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory with the American History Guys.

Welcome to the show. I'm Peter Onov here with Ed Ayers.

Hey, Peter and Brian Ballot.

Hey there, Peter. Today's episode is on the history of gambling in America and we're going to start with one of the most ubiquitous types of gambling.

Backstory listeners Sarah Hobbs called in to ask about it.

Hey guys, I've got a question. How long historically have we had arteries? And have pottery pumps historically always gone toward a cop?

So Sarah wants to know if we've always had lotteries. And if we have, have they all been put towards some socially constructive purpose?

You know, I always thought lotteries were invented when we invented scratch off cards.

Maybe there's a different history to this than we really know it. I think you can understand why I reached out to author Matthew Swini to answer the question.

He's written a book on the history of American lotteries.

Oh, in America lotters go back to the very beginning. The nation was founded on lottery dollars.

Swini's not kidding. He says as far back as the early 1600s, the Virginia company in London looked to a series of lotteries to save its struggling venture across the pond.

A little colony called Jamestown. The colony itself was in financial trouble. It hadn't returned profits. A lot of the financial backers were getting wary.

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