The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle

Early in Eisenberg's detailed, entertaining chronicle of the May 1823 race between two Thoroughbreds—one from the South, one from the North—he recounts a scene that captures his tale's central tension. In the grandstand of the National Course in Washington, D.C., slave-owning Virginia aristocrat William Ransom Johnson watches with dismay as Southern upstart Henry loses to Northern champion Eclipse. Defeated, Johnson vows to "formulate a plan for revenge.... It was time for the South to take this challenge more seriously." Baltimore Sun sports columnist Eisenberg deftly extends the metaphor of Johnson's quest for recognition to the larger conflict brewing between the industrializing North and the stubbornly agrarian South. He builds the tension relentlessly, and as race day approaches, he describes a nation on the edge of its seat. "Just as sports spectacles in ancient Greece, Rome, and England served as substitutes for real war..., the Union Course race pitted one American region against another, one way of life against another." Eisenberg succeeds in creating a gripping yarn of sporting contest, portrayal of a historical moment and smart analysis of a country headed eventually for civil war. Author tour. (May 5)