“Judge now whether such river can be found on the globe . . . which combines so many wonders with such great utility . . . and to which futurity promises such brilliant destinies.” ¹

–Giacomo Constantine Beltrami

The muddy mighty Mississippi, what the Algonquins called “the Father of Waters,” has, since the early 1800s, carried the earth’s largest inland fleet.² The first 75 years of the 19th century is considered the golden age of steamboats on the Mississippi and its tributaries.³ Well over a thousand of these majestic, whistling, smoking, paddlewheel vessels were plying the river at any time.⁴

The steamboats’ predecessors were humble flatboats and keelboats. Flatboats made one-way trips downriver to New Orleans, then were sold for lumber. The boatmen used the Natchez Trace to return north. Better made, but still small, keelboats traveled both down and upstream and poled into shallow ports.⁵

The steamboat Princess. Some boats were famed for size and luxury.

When the American scientific marvel of steam-powered crafts was explained to Napoleon, he reportedly remarked: “What sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.”⁶

Nonetheless, these wonders were real and not only transformed water transportation but also the land they touched. The large new paddle-wheelers (sternwheelers, sidewheelers and inboard wheelers) required deeper harbors than the flat and keelboats. Hence, accommodating ports like Memphis gained advantage over rival river towns.⁷

Steamboats at the busy Mississippi River landing at Memphis.

Floating Palaces of Commerce, Culture and Chance

Aside from steam cargo boats stacked high with cotton bales or packed with cattle or crates, there were showboats offering stage plays, circus acts, minstrel shows, opera and scholarly lectures. The largest and most opulent boats were devoted to first-class travel and hospitality and looked like giant wedding cakes, with paddlewheels churning up four-foot waves and conveying hundreds. These graceful, floating palaces boasted ornate carvings inside and out, panoramic murals, expensive carpets, marble top tables, walnut or rosewood paneling, grand lobbies with crystal chandeliers, spacious staterooms with double beds, bridal suites, restaurants, orchestras, bars, barbershops and ballrooms.⁸ Whilst a calliope played, wealthy travelers clad in white linen tossed coins from the upper deck to small boys in canoes performing antics.⁹

Of all the amusements, the most popular among gentlemen was gambling, engaged in by passengers who would never do so on land such as ministers and judges.¹⁰ Beginning at 10 p.m. on some boats and at breakfast on others, a wide array of private games was played.¹¹ Draw poker was favored, and huge sums were wagered.¹²

Signs that forbade gambling or warned “to play at your own risk” were ignored by passengers, captains and boat owners, who were sometimes in partnership with gamblers.¹³ Even if not partners, the owners and captains looked the other way since gamblers were good customers of the line.¹⁴ And the games were a sort of social leveler as gamblers, officers and all classes of passengers partook in the betting.¹⁵

Contrary to the Hollywood image of Mississippi River gamblers in fancy attire, the true professionals dressed as unassuming farmers, cattle buyers or salesmen.¹⁶ Working in pairs, one to bet and one to deal, they used marked or shaved cards and dealt from the bottom of the deck.¹⁷ To avoid suspicion, a “new” deck would be requested of the bartender, who was paid to deliver marked cards.¹⁸ These rogues encouraged drinking at the table as well, but they drank water tinted the color of whiskey.¹⁹ Their favorite targets were amateur cheaters, but everyone was fair game, except the boat’s captain.²⁰

There was, however, a kind of honor among these cardsharps. One gambler, who applied his trade for 40 years on the river, said if he took all a “sucker’s” money, he would pay his victim’s passage to his destination and would chivalrously return to a lady her jewelry lost by her foolish escort.²¹ And after winning big, gamblers swiftly departed for another boat.²² Yet when having divvyed up boats beforehand, many strove to avoid intruding on another gambler’s agreed vessel.²³

Steamboat captains were all-powerful.

Steamboat Justice

Despite his cunning, things could go wrong for the gambler. If caught cheating, he might be chased about the boat by a mob of angry passengers.²⁴ In one such case, the gambler jumped over the railing and landed waist deep in mud. As the boat paddled away, his pursuers shot at their immobile target who dodged bullets as best he could.²⁵ It was rare for a gambler to be turned over to local authorities on land. But it was common for the all-powerful captain, who sometimes owned the boat, to seize a discovered cheat’s money and put him on shore in the middle of nowhere. The same fate awaited those fighting.²⁶ In particularly egregious cases, such as theft or gunplay, a gambler might be left on a sandbar where he would be either picked up by another boat or drowned when the river rose.²⁷ No one, on land or water, questioned the captain’s authority and rulings.²⁸

On the steamboat City of Louisiana, a man was accused of stealing chickens shipped in coops. The captain formed a court. A prominent gambler, one of the best cheats on the river, was named judge. He then selected a 12-man jury. After hearing the evidence, including the boat’s pilot who saw the accused take the birds, the jury retired to the bar for deliberations. “They were out about as long as it would take a first-class barkeeper to make up twelve drinks.” ²⁹

Upon the jury’s return, a guilty verdict was announced. The chickens were ordered returned and a fine of six bottles of wine be paid to the court. The judge and jury then adjourned to the bar. The appointed “sheriff” retrieved three dozen chickens, but the defendant yelled that he only stole one dozen. Ultimately, it did not matter who owned which chickens. Before the night was over, the judge won every fowl onboard.³⁰

On the colossal 365 feet long riverboat Eclipse, a young gambler won $1,000 in a manner thought particularly unfair, beyond normal cheating. A makeshift court was convened, and the accused was given a choice between returning the cash or spending an hour with one end of a rope tied around his neck and the other secured to the connecting rod linking the boat’s engine to the crankshaft of the 45 feet high paddlewheel.³¹

The obstinate upstart chose to keep the money. Therefore, he was so tied, and with each stroke the piston and rod moved 10 feet. To prevent his neck being snapped, he carefully walked the 10 feet back and forth with the movement and at the correct speed. During the ordeal, when asked if he would repay the money, he replied, “Go away, I have no time to talk.” He survived and kept his ill-gotten winnings.³²

Land was not necessarily more civilized. Raucous river communities like Helena and Napoleon, Arkansas, were so dangerous even the well-armed dared not disembark. Residents “would kill him just to see him kick.”³³ Passengers boarding at Greenville, Mississippi, could be “killers.”³⁴ And with steamboats traveling upstream, criminals who had preyed on those returning north on the treacherous Natchez Trace, relocated to the river. All along its banks, bottoms, bayous and bluffs, murderous gangs laid in ambush, such as the two infamous rings led by John Murrell of Madison County, Tennessee, and Samuel “Wolfman” Mason of Missouri.³⁵

Race on the River

Before emancipation, loading and unloading cargo and serving passengers on steamboats, at all hours of day and night, was one of the few employment opportunities for free Black Americans. This was observed in 1848 by the Tennessee Supreme Court when, in a decision written by the great Judge William B. Turley, the court struck down a Memphis ordinance making it a crime for free Black people to remain out-of-doors after 10 p.m.³⁶

In African-American communities, employment on a steamboat as a steward, porter, waiter, barber or cook brought prestige. Most Black dockworkers and deckhands were also free, but some enslaved laborers performed backbreaking jobs like moving freight and perilous tasks like firing the boilers, a duty killing many. Yet the boats’ mobility and trips to free states aided abolitionist activities and escapes, and free Black boat workers earned the funds to purchase relatives’ freedom.³⁷ As steamboats navigated the Mississippi, the Cumberland and the Tennessee, it is no wonder they became symbols of hope to the enslaved.

There were frequent fights between white and free African-American roustabouts, and strict segregation was imposed.³⁸ In 1869, near Davenport, Iowa, drunken white ruffians boarded the Dubuque midriver and demanded breakfast. A Black steward calmly said breakfast was only served to first-class passengers. The invaders then attacked the steward and the other Black crew members, murdering four, and tried to set the boat afire. While a rampage engulfed the Dubuque, the captain still made his scheduled stops. The villains finally forced him to put the surviving Black crew ashore and hire themselves. But the captain secretly asked a departing passenger to send a telegram for help, and a militia regiment intercepted and retook the Dubuque.³⁹

The federal and state governments eventually brought law and order to the river, reduced the arbitrary power of captains and regulated or outlawed gambling.⁴⁰ With travelers and shippers shifting to rail (trains could go where boats could not), the gamblers tried and largely failed in transferring their wily vocation to railroad smoking cars.⁴¹ The flamboyant world of the “river queens” slowly came to a close and the sound of their sonorous, exhilarating whistles faded from the mighty Mississippi. |||

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RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written many publications on law and legal history, and is a regular columnist for the Journal. He received the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for 2023.

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NOTES

1. Giacomo Constantine Beltrami quoted in Walter Havighurst, Voices on the River: The Story of the Mississippi Waterways 15 (2005).
2. Ralph K. Andrisk, Steamboats on the Mississippi 6 (1962).
3. Id.
4. Jeannette Cooperman, “In Their Golden Age, Riverboats were Our Nightclubs, Our Theater District, Our Parade Ground” St. Louis Magazine (June 8, 2011) www.stlmag.com/history/Mississippi-River-History.
5. Id. at 23-24.
6. Quoted in Ashton Applewhite, et al., And I Quote 172 (1992).
7. Andrisk at 92-93.
8. See Cooperman, supra note 4; Andrisk at 59-61.
9. Cooperman, supra note 4.
10. See George H. Devol, Forty Years a Gambler of the Mississippi 43 (1887). B.A. Botkin, A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore 244-45 (1955).
11. Botkin at 229.
12. Botkin at 227; Devol at 71, 82.
13. Botkin at 230.
14. Devol at 89; Roger Munns, “Riverboat Gamblers of Old Were Cheats, But Still Tolerated” AP News (Mar. 6, 1989) https://apnews.com/article/471916caf41b39cf9a5551bb345e66dc.
15. See Devol at 81.
16. Andrisk at 110.
17. Botkin at 229.
18. Devol 83, 102.
19. Botkin at 231.
20. See Devol at 23, 77, 101.
21. See id. at 23, 30, 45.
22. Botkin at 229-30.
23. Id. at 231.
24. See Devol at 29-30.
25. Andrisk at 112.
26. See Andrisk at 66; Devol at 11, 23.
27. Munns, supra note 4.
28. See Andrisk at 66; Botkin at 252; Devol at 60.
29. Devol at 72.
30. Id. at 72-73.
31. Andrisk at 113; Botkin at 242.
32. Andrisk at 113; Botkin at 242.
33. Devol at 235-36.
34. See id. at 78-79.
35 Russell Fowler, “Milton Brown and the Trial of John Murrell” Tennessee Bar Journal, Vol. 50, No. 3, 22 (Mar. 2014); Andrisk at 108-09; Botkin at 203, 213-14.
36. Mayor v. Winfield, 27 Tenn. 707, 709 (1848).
37. Sasha Coles, “Work, Slavery and Freedom on the Steamboat” https://enchantedarchives.com/steamboatworkers; See Thomas C. Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World (2004).
38. See Coles, supra note 37.
39. Botkin at 245-47.
40. See Andrisk at 82; Botkin at 252-55.
41. See Andrisk at 141-42; Munns, supra note 4.