As long as a strict version of republicanism informed American civic culture, sport was not a viable metaphor for electoral politics. However, starting at the end of the eighteenth century, the pursuit of commercial and political opportunity loosened the interpretation of republican dictums and resurrected the sporting metaphor. First, by the end of the 1790s, organized sporting events began to resurface. Horse racing was justified in terms of “improving the breed” and raising the commercial value of bloodlines. Billiard tables were permitted in taverns, with the payment of a tax. Tavernkeepers also staged cockfights, “making sure that the atrocious winners drink up their winnings in the company of the vanquished.” In effect, sport’s commercial value helped it sidestep the moral objections against it. Indeed, in almost every major American city in the first half of the nineteenth century, city directories reveal a growing number of sporting venues (and their growing legitimacy, since more of them were being listed publicly).
Second, changes in the electoral system over the course of the early nineteenth century similarly opened up participation in ways the republic originally had not allowed. The number of candidates swelled as the old two-party system of Democratic-Republicans and Federalists crumbled in the 1820s. Federalist opposition to the War of 1812 isolated and reduced the party’s influence outside of New England, and a weak opposition made it harder for Democratic-Republican leaders to maintain party discipline and restrict candidacy to the party’s caucus nominees. Larger fields and a reduction of party vetting turned elections into something much more like horse races in which multiple competitors entered the contest.
Yet change was afoot even before 1812, as more and more states repealed property qualifications and extended suffrage to all white male adults. This process started in the west, where settlers wanted to create the largest number of citizens possible in order to reach statehood faster. Eastern states soon followed suit, for fear of losing poor white men eager to claim full citizenship elsewhere. While white men of all ranks increasingly shared citizenship, they united to protect their status by raising ever-stronger barriers against the voting rights of women and African Americans. As a result, white manhood overcame property as the defining trait of citizenship in the early republic. The creation of a polity nominally defined less by property than by race and gender also led many states to allow a popular vote to determine gubernatorial and presidential elections, rather than having state legislatures select these officers. In sum, the links between sport and politics reappeared when legitimate sporting events returned alongside a new electoral system that fomented unprecedented competition for votes from a larger—if more rigidly—white male electorate.