Back in 1812, Louisiana legislators sanctioned public and commercial gambling in New Orleans by permitting it at the outset of statehood.
While reformers succeeded in outlawing the activity on a few occasions, gambling in the Crescent City flourished during the nineteenth century whether legal or not.
Westerners accepted these imports quickly because they appreciated their entrepreneurial character and found them suited to frontier tastes.
The Panic of 1837 drove some gambling houses out of business by reducing the supply of currency, but by the mid-1840s, the steady flow of soldiers through the town to the Mexican War had revitalized the industry.
At the end of the decade, between four and five hundred gaming dens were operating.
Furthermore, in the 1850s, the metropolis became known as the 'horse racing capital of the nation', with no than five tracks open every winter season.
The unprecedented extent of betting on thoroughbreds confirmed visitors' claim that New Orleans stood alone as the principal focus of American gambling.
The city's reputation as a 'modern Sodom' derived not only from the extent of its gambling but also from the new styles of play that made their American debut there.
New Orleans served as the nation's port of entry for such European games as poker, craps, and faro, and for the Mexican game of three-card Monte.
In that metropolis and up the Mississippi Valley, each of these diversions appealed to American tastes.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, these new forms of betting emerged as the most popular gambling games in the Unites States.
Faro, craps, Monte, and poker became popular in large part because a certain class of entrepreneurs promoted them, and because they corresponded to the increasingly commercial and public character of American betting and recreation.
The newly-arrived styles of play were tailored to the professional sharper who pursued gambling as a profitable line of work, because they could be operated either as banking games in which the dealer's income resulted from odds or percentages fixed in his favor.
Or either way, as ostensibly private games in which the gambler's slippery skills assured a steady profit through deceit.
Sharpers consequently made the novel games their livelihood and spread among them quickly to the great valley above New Orleans and, later, to other parts of the country.
In 1827, John Davis opened one Crescent City house that was perhaps the first full-blown American gaming casino. The club provided public halls for betting at the more commercial games, including faro, roulette, and vingt-et-un, as well as secluded rooms where more illustrious citizens played such private games as brag, ecarte, and Boston.
All gambling took place in a rich and ornate setting, yet the club was open virtually any white male bettor who wanted to play .
Davis had arrived at a popular American formula that combined aristocratic appearance with democratic participation in casino play.
