In the game “Assassin’s Creed III”, you play as a young Native-American warrior quietly helping George Washington complete his revolution and establish the United States of America, in the misguided hope that this will save his people. The “Assassin’s Creed” series has always prided itself on fully immersing the player in a virtual world that feels as accurate to the real historical era it’s portraying as possible… Minus a couple of ancient magical artifacts, of course. But there was one thing that stood out to me – you can walk into any tavern you want and play games for in-game currency, like Twelve Men’s Morris. And that actually caught me a bit by surprise. Wasn’t America a nation of puritans that despised anything and everything they deemed impure, including gambling? Wasn’t there a huge uphill battle to have the practice legalized, with only a few states allowing gambling even today? Did the creators of “Assassin’s Creed” get it wrong? Well, I did what I do best, and I opened up the dusty old tomes (by which I mean I went to Google) and started doing some research! And believe it or not, but gambling was not only completely legal in the colonies, but also helped the growing country in a huge way!
Now, it’s very important to keep in mind that the early settlers weren’t ALL puritans. Sure, there were those that despised European values and wished to start fresh, from scratch, but there were also very traditional Englishmen, Spaniards and French people who were quite happy with the way things were going in their homeland. They also (involuntarily on both sides) shared the continent with the Native Americans, who were super into gambling. And I’m not just talking about the stereotype of Native Americans owning casinos today, I’m talking about the little-known fact of Native Americans owning casinos 800 years ago. And on top of that, you need to consider that a huge number of settlers were criminals or generally coming from the lower-class (because if you were in the upper class, why would you ever leave your cushy home to settle in some mud-infested dump?), and to them gambling was a huge part of life, legal or not.
But what if I told you that, without gambling, it’s likely that many colonies wouldn’t have taken off at all? Enter the Virginia Company of London, a stockholding company in the vein of the East India Company (which you may remember from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), decided to finance the creation and expansion of British colonies in the new world. The name Virginia comes from the newly established state of Virginia (which in turn comes from Elizabeth I, whose nickname was The Virgin Queen), where the Virginia Company was planning to build colonies and establishments. Except, uh-oh, seems like there’s a problem ahead – while the Crown was A-OK with increasing its reach, the Queen refused to pay up for it, and the Company couldn’t afford the massive costs of construction. So what did they do? They held a good, old-fashioned lottery, of course! Pay a pound, and you may win a hundred pounds! It sounds like a deal too good to pass up, and so not many did. The lotteries generated thousands, enabling the creation of several colonies in Virginia (including the famous Jamestown), right up until the Crown ordered them stopped, claiming they were draining the English capital.
The lotteries didn’t stop, though – they merely moved to the New World. Every single major colony held lotteries in order to fund construction of certain landmarks and building deemed to be important enough. For example, most huge American universities (including, but not limited to, Harvard, Yale and Columbia) were funded by lotteries. Alas, it was not meant to last – as the Puritans grew in numbers, so, too, did their ideology that the New World needed to be free of anything they perceived to be morally repugnant. As such, in the mid-1800s, gambling became a target and the lotteries needed to be put to a swift, yet decisive end. And while America would dabble in gambling a couple more times during its lifetime, like two lovers that constantly break up and get back together, the moment when President Jackson (ironically an avid gambler himself) outlawed lotteries of any kind marked the end of what’s known as the First Wave of Legal Gambling. There would be two more, the latter of which we’re currently in, but alas, it was an unfortunate end for a harmless activity that helped the growing nation so much throughout its lifetime.