Poker & Pop Culture: The Card Playing of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb

The story of poker in America begins in the south and west, but by April 12, 1861 — the day Confederate forces fired on a Union garrison at Fort Sumter in South Carolina to launch the first battle of the Civil War — the game had already found its way both north and east via steamboats, trains, and by other means.

The war itself would hasten the spread of the game even more, both during the four years of fighting and afterwards. Many thousands of young men on both sides would be first introduced to poker (and other gambling games) during those years.

“Union Deck” cards produced by the American Card Company in 1862

As the war turned in the North’s favor, their advantage in numbers and resources would also be realized in their access to playing cards. In fact the American Card Company produced a special “Union deck” supplied to soldiers that instead of using spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs featured eagles, shields, stars, and flags for the four suits. The king was a colonel, the queen the goddess of liberty, and the jack a major, with the backs also featuring patriotic imagery.

An excellent source of information about the daily lives of both Union and Confederate soliders is the Civil War historian Bell I. Wiley whose books The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (1943) and The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (1952) draw heavily from soldiers’ diaries and letters to present a thorough, detailed understanding of the day-to-day thoughts and activities of the “rank-and-file.”

The books describe various recreations pursued by those on both sides during the sometimes lengthy down times of the war. They read newspapers, novels, and, of course, the Bible. They engaged in various sports including wrestling and boxing, as well as cricket and an early version of baseball. Some sang and a few even created small theater groups to perform plays.

But gambling and card playing proved the most favored between-battle activity explains Wiley, providing a much desired escape from the pressures of more injurious forms of combat. Additionally — like the war itself — the betting of money on cards significantly challenged some soldiers’ moral sensibilities, prompting them to reconsider individually their own judgments of what was permissible and what was not.

The Betting by the Blue

In The Life of Billy Jack, Wiley writes persuasively about the war introducing many Union soldiers to activities and behaviors in which they wouldn’t otherwise participate like swearing, smoking, drinking, and, of course, card playing.

“The degeneration came from the removal of accustomed restraints and associations, the urge to experiment with the forbidden, the desire to escape boredom and the utter inadequacy of religious and recreational facilities for soldiers of the sixties,” explains Wiley.

Their leader Ulysses S. Grant enjoyed poker before, during, and after the war, and many of those who served likewise embraced the game. But not everyone was as enthusiastic about the prevalence of gambling in the ranks. Some described in their diaries and in letters feelings of unease over the seeming moral laxity among their fellow soldiers.

Wiley quotes one Union soldier writing home in October 1864 and reflecting with a kind of awe just how widespread gambling on card games had become among his fellow soldiers.

“So far as my observation goes, nine out of ten play cards for money,” writes the soldier.

Predictably gambling picked up shortly after …

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