The Fight for America February 7, 1849: How an Illegal Outdoor Boxing Match Changed Sports, Media and American Immigration Forever
The media called it the “Fight for America” and like almost every single major prize fight ever since with high stakes involved, and even higher public interest, the bout was dubbed “The Fight of the Century”--the Fight of the 19th Century that is!
Ten thousand dollars and some would say the future of what it even meant to be called an “American” were on the line that day when on February 7, 1849 at a farm in Maryland, located forty miles from Baltimore on a desolate snow covered island, what the press called “The Fight for America” and what the public referred to as “The Fight of the Century” took place in front of less than 200 spectators, mostly gamblers and former fighters themselves, because at that time boxing despite its underground popularity, and its popularity as a legitimate sport in the United Kingdom, was illegal almost everywhere in the United States of America.
It was definitely not an auspicious place or time of year to hold an outdoor boxing match that was being followed in the papers by the entire country. In fact, when the fighters, their seconds and assembled spectators travelled through Maryland they were chased by police almost the whole way, but due to a lack of clear jurisdiction in the state’s waterways, the authorities were unable to forcibly break up the fight and arrest everyone for illegal assembly.
When the Fight for America was over enterprising gamblers and people with political and journalistic connections back in places like New York City and Boston who were among the 200 or so spectators standing by ringside in the cold and the snow--all of whom were wishing to make a quick buck by cashing in on their winnings or by being the first to break the big story in their local newspaper--rushed to telegraph stations in and around Baltimore to almost instantaneously spread news of what had happened in the fight. This boxing match was the first sporting event in American history to be reported on in the press within twenty-four hours of when it happened. Every major newspaper in the country ran a frontpage article about the prizefight between James “Yankee” Sullivan and Thomas “Young America” Hyer.
The Boston Pilot, one of the northeast’s most major daily newspapers in 1849 led with the headline: AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT of the PRIZEFIGHT between TOM HYER and YANKEE SULLIVAN. The Pilot America’s leading Irish-American daily sought to cash in as the first paper in America to lead with a first-hand, blow by blow account of the fight that gripped the nation. Spoiler alert, but the Boston Pilot went on to recount: “The fight, the preliminaries of which had been set some six months since came off at the appointed time…at Rock Point mouth of Steel Pond, Kent County Maryland….about 40 miles from Batltimore. The fight was won by Hyer in 15 rounds, the time being about 16 minutes. (Each bare knuckle round was one minute long.) The day was intensely cold and the snow lay on the ground to about the depth of a foot….”
It was the most widely reported on sixteen minutes in American sports history, and perhaps, in American history in general up to that moment. The Fight for America on February 7, 1849 was more than just an outdoor bare knuckles brawl. It changed the nature of sports, media and even the way people perceived immigration itself in America forever. In an article entitled “The Birth of National Sports Coverage: An Examination of the New York Herald’s use of the Telegraph to Report America’s First Championship Boxing Match in 1849” written by historian Mike Sowell and published in The Journal of Sports Media in Spring of 2008, he says, “An unusual event occurred on February 7, 1849 and it had implications far beyond the event itself…Hyer had made history by becoming America’s first officially recognized Heavyweight Champion, but less noticed and even more important was the creation of modern sports media in the United States.”
The contest was between James “Yankee” Sullivan an Irish immigrant born in County Cork, who had grown up in England and Australia, become a prizefighter and a part time criminal while still a child, and eventually after becoming a bare knuckle boxing champion in England had brought his fame, and reputation for toughness to New York City at the age of thirty in 1841.
In addition to boxing at underground clubs, saloons and back-alleys away from the prying eyes of police, while in America James “Yankee” Sullivan worked as an enforcer for the Democratic political machine known in Manhattan as Tamanany Hall. In the rough and tumble world of 19th century politics in New York City, if somebody in the Irish-American community stepped out of line either at the ballot box, or in the newspapers they were more than likely to have their nose broken, or worse, by James “Yankee” Sullivan. His so-called “work in politics” enabled Sullivan by the end of the 1840’s to open a bar known as the Sawdust House which was the scene of many of his illicit boxing matches.
His opponent that day was a fellow New Yorker and a butcher by trade, an enormous man with prodigious strength, named Tom “Young America” Hyer. In 1849 Tom Hyer was just over thirty years old and almost a full decade younger than his adversary. Tom Hyer was the darling of the American sporting press, a man who had entered the illicit world of early 19th century bare knuckle boxing in America to support his family (supposedly) while continuing to work by day slaughtering animals and cutting meat. He would become the American boxing champion and would also earn prodigious sums of money through his fighting prowess in the ring. Eventually, Hyer too earned enough money to open his own bar, just down the street from Yankee Sullivan’s place, where he would hold his own illegal fights.
Hyer became a political force to reckon with in New York City as well. He became a leader in the burgeoning anti-immigrant nativist “Know-Nothing-Party”. The Know-Nothing’s were for America first, and native born Americans only, and they took their name from the nickname the media had derisively given their anti-immigration political platform in the newspapers. Tom “Young America” Hyer wasn’t adverse to breaking the nose of a Tammany Hall supporter, or giving a beatdown to some unsuspecting Irish immigrant who happened to walk into his bar and spoke with a brogue.
So the stage was set in early February of 1849 for the first boxing match in American history that the whole country seemed interested in--immigrant vs. American; Catholic vs. Protestant; tradition vs. progress; age vs. youth; and even liberal vs. conservative--Sullivan vs. Hyer had every storyline imaginable, but there was one huge problem and one other very interesting aspect to the “Fight for America” on February 7, 1849.
For one thing the fight itself was entirely illegal! Despite being written about and publicized in every state of the union--boxing whether bare-knuckle or otherwise--was completely illegal within the borders of the United States of America. Most religious Americans, at the time, considered anyone’s participation in a boxing match, whether as a fighter, corner-man, gambler or mere spectator, to be more akin to participation in an organized crime ring rather than in a legitimate competition. In fact, both Sullivan and Hyer had been jailed in the past for boxing and for gambling! And, not only was boxing illegal, but the so-called “Fight for America” between James “Yankee” Sullivan and Thomas “Young America” Hyer wasn’t even the first time that these two guys started punching one another!
The first Sullivan vs. Hyer fight, the one that nobody knew about outside of New York City and that rather than being the “Fight for America” was more the “Fight for Control of the Dirty World of New York City Politics and Immigration Policy” was a barroom brawl (either planned or unplanned the debate rages to this day!) between the two men and their supporters.
With the “Know-Nothing” political party gaining power in New York City and Tammany Hall desperately trying to keep its stranglehold on the City’s political levers of power and both men’s reputation as expert prizefighters growing, Hyer and Sullivan were destined to come to blows either inside or outside the boxing ring.
It’s unclear whether this event was planned as a political and/or boxing publicity stunt, but around New Year’s Day 1849 Sullivan (whose real name was James Ambrose he used the name Sullivan to protect himself from criminal prosecution as a boxer) happened to meet Hyer at a New York Oyster Bar located on the corner of Broadway and Park Place.
It seems like Sullivan was the aggressor as there were reports that he wanted to meet up with Hyer for a brawl either because of political leanings with him being the immigrant champion and Hyer a “Know-Nothing” American born champion, or because he wanted to generate publicity for a formal boxing match that he was sure would generate a lot of gambling money.
Anyway, the motivations remain cloudy, but the two men either intentionally or inadvertently met up at a bar and Hyer was said to have won the fight using his superior size but then fearing for his safety he loaded a pistol and threatened to shoot either Sullivan or his supporters if they didn’t leave him alone.
The publicity stunt worked! The so-called “official” fight between Hyer and Sullivan was set for the following month, February 7, 1849, and the winner’s purse for the prizefight was set at $10,000--or roughly $4 million in today’s money!
A neutral site had to be chosen because the political climate in New York City was too divisive and supporters feared a riot. Also, after the barroom brawl in early January, newspapers across the northeast United States picked up the story of the upcoming “Fight for America” and law enforcement was hot on the trail of the two fighters.
The sides needed to choose a site with railroad access that was readily accessible to telegraph communication for gambling purposes, but that was also still rural enough for them to hide and escape from the police where no one would recognize the fighters or their trainers as they traveled. Eventually, a site called Pooles Island in Maryland was agreed upon by Sullivan and Hyer’s camps.
Even with these precautions being taken very few people felt safe enough to make the trip to Maryland to witness the fight. And Hyer’s trainer, a man named George Thompson, was arrested when he went down to scout out the area on Pooles Island where the fight would take place and, although he was normally Hyer’s cornerman as well, he was forced to miss the fight while in jail.
The Attorney General of Maryland called out the state militia and threatened to have his soldiers both break up the fight and arrest anyone caught participating in a boxing match on Maryland’s soil. It was reported that the Maryland State Militia was waiting in boats around Pooles Island as the fight was being conducted, but as it were, somehow probably with law enforcement authorities having been bribed to allow the match to take place, at 4 pm on February 7, 1849 “The Fight for America” took place as planned in frigid temperatures with a light snow falling, and it lasted for all of sixteen minutes.
The ring was constructed of planks of wood and ropes from ships rigging. Hyer walked into the ring wrapped in the stars and stripes of the United States of America, while Sullivan walked wrapped in the green and white colors of Ireland. It was the first recorded instance of boxers carrying national colors into the ring prior to a fight.
It went about as well for John “Yankee” Sullivan as the barroom brawl between the two men had just over a month before.
Despite being the substantially smaller of the two men, Sullivan had been the betting favorite based on his prior boxing experience, but it appears that the younger Hyer was able to dance around the hastily constructed boxing ring and tire out the older fighter. Then, in the fifteenth round the newspapers reported that Hyer grabbed Sullivan around the neck and repeatedly punched him in the head until he was knocked out cold.
With Sullivan lying on the ground knocked out cold some papers reported that Hyer lifted up the Irish flag and tore it to shreds. As could be imagined, in the immediate aftermath of the fight, both men were rushed to the hospital where they were treated for broken hands, arms and fractured eye-sockets and facial bones, but both men were hurriedly released the following day from Mt. Hope hospital in Baltimore because they had to outrun the authorities.
Hyer was celebrated as a champion and lavish crowds greeted him both in Philadelphia and upon his return to New York City. He went out on a public speaking tour and spoke before crowds in sold out theaters while Sullivan retreated to running his New York bar and recovering from the injuries that he sustained in the fight. Oddly enough, despite later comeback attempts, after the “Fight for America” Tom Hyer retired from boxing and pursued a more legitimate and clean-cut political career, while Sullivan, with the title having been vacated by Hyer in 1851 claimed to once again be the rightful Heavyweight Champion of the United States of America and fought many other publicized bouts as champion, this time with himself wrapped in the American flag, throughout the first half of the 1850’s.
The Fight for America was more than just a sixteen minute brawl. Seeing the money that it could generate, many states including New York, legalized boxing as a sport and also controlled the rules to make the sport itself, if not safer, at least more fair to bettors.
Also, as a result of the publicity of the Fight for America, most major newspapers across the country began to carry designated sports sections, which led to a rise in popularity for not only boxing, but also for baseball, horse-racing and even competitive walking during the late nineteenth century in the United States.
And finally, the fight unfortunately tended to harden the attitudes of many Americans against the place of immigrants in American sports, and instead, American’s themselves (particularly those in the north) began to associate excellence in sport and competition with national pride and achievement. It would take the heroic exploits of Irish immigrant soldiers during the American Civil War in the 1860’s, and not excellence in the boxing ring, for Irish-Americans to gain acceptance and even a certain degree of admiration for their public service from the majority of the mainstream American press.
James “Yankee” Sullivan would die in 1856 only a few short years after “The Fight for America” after having lived a very hard life. Before the end of his life he went out to California to try and strike it rich as a gold miner. He had one wife and family in New York when he died and one wife and family in California. At first, he would be buried in an unmarked grave, but two years later his fans and supporters led by a former fighter named Tom Malloy would erect a marker on his burial site with a touching epitaph, “Remember not, O Lord our offenses nor those of our parents. Neither take thou vengeance of our sins. Thou shalt bring forth my soul out of tribulation and in thy mercy thou shall destroy mine enemies.”
Tom Hyer would receive a political appointment from the State of New York in 1857 and work as a sutler selling items to the Union Army during the Civil War. He too, would die an early death in 1864 from heart ailments that some said were exacerbated by injuries he suffered in the boxing ring while others attributed his cause of death to excessive drinking.
A large monument marks his burial site in Greenwood-Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York to this day and in 1954, over a century after the fight for America, Tom Hyer was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame and officially recognized as America’s first Heavyweight Champion.
Comments
Post a Comment