While good horses have probably always been status symbols, I would argue that the belief that the horse in general is inherently a status symbol is an oversimplification. The broad landscape of the horse has undergone multiple episodes of democratization, wherein horses, or traditionally state-sponsored or aristocratic equine traditions, abruptly became more accessible to larger swaths of a population.

One very visible episode occurred in early modern England. Before 1500, the horse in England was an unabashed symbol of wealth. Henry VIII’s 16th Century campaigns in Scotland and France had however exhausted the supply of horses first at home -- the crown purchased 2,566 adult horses from England’s southeastern counties in 1513 -- and then abroad, as the English military vacuumed up nearly 10,000 from the Netherlands in 1544 alone. The British horse was not comparable in size, strength, or stamina to horses bred in the Low Countries, and the rising costs of importing horses forced Henry VIII to instigate attempts to improve the English horse for war. Domestic breeding became official policy. The export of horses from England was banned in 1531, and the sale of horses to Scotland was banned the following year. Noblemen, clergymen, and other members of the gentry were ordered to keep breeding stock, and were constantly reminded of their duties by royal propaganda. And in 1540 a measure was passed that regulated the height of horses kept on lands where breeding could not strictly controlled.

The stock of English horses began to recover by the turn of the 17th Century. However, since not every animal bred by the gentry was fit for service, the English equine market was forced to differentiate for the first time. The diversification of stock intersected with the increased demand for horsepower as the population increased and standards of living rose. The gentry continued to pay top dollar for their coach and high school horses. A fine colt in the mid 1600s could cost 12 or 13 pounds. However, the price of an ordinary colt was only one, two, or three pounds. Yeomen could afford horses not just for work, but for simply riding as well. In 1590, one fifth of the households in the dairying village of Yetminster, Dorset, which was populated by smallholdings, had horses. By the 1660s, three fifths of the households in Yetminster owned horses. Since the farmers in this town did not have large acreages to plow, many of these horses must have been used exclusively as personal transportation. Indeed, one could even determine the class of a traveler on the 17th Century English roads not by whether or not he had a horse, but by whether or not he was riding in a coach or riding the horse itself.

The horse trade became a business that everyone could participate in. For particularly lucky smallholders who managed to breed an exemplary horse, the business of breeding could provide an unexpected boon. The writer William Gilpin noted the demand for the fashionable New Forest Pony, often driven in light harness:

It is a little fortune to a poor cottager if he happens to possess three or four colts that are tolerably handsome and match well.

The accessibility of the horse carried over to Colonial America and the early United States, whereby trotters -- the precursors to the American Standardbred -- became symbols of republican ideals and democracy in sport. Thoroughbred racing had been dealt a severe blow in New England and the Mid Atlantic by anti-racing laws passed both before and after the American Revolution. While colonial anti-racing legislation was aimed at controlling gambling, legislation after the American Revolution was couched in religious and egalitarian skepticism. The trotter was exempted from the anti-racing laws on technicality. By precedent, racing constituted horses competing against each other at the gallop. Further, no law forbade the horseman from pitting his trotter against the clock on an open highway. Contests between trotters could even be justified as a vital necessity. A running horse was a luxury, but a roadster was one’s transportation:

Without tests of speed and endurance in the white hot crucible of competition, how...could breeders determine which stock was best?

By the time the anti-racing laws were finally repealed, the trotter had become a fixture in the northern states, while the thoroughbred remained a fixture in the South. An attempt was made in New York to build a race course that would revitalize thoroughbred racing. However, the purses weren’t large enough to draw thoroughbreds from the South, and the ordinary citizen of the North found it to be poor entertainment. Trotting was something innovative and aggressive. Improvements in the technology of wagons and sulkies led to records being shattered seemingly as soon as they were set, and because trotters raced over one mile heats, horses were able to quickly recover from a race, which allowed them to race day after day. The spectator could pick out his favorite horse and follow the highs and lows of its career like a soap opera, unlike thoroughbreds, who only raced a handful of times a year. New stars rose with each season, capturing the hearts of the crowd with not just their speed, but their personas.

The owners of horses and the proprietors of trotting tracks were largely drawn from the middle class, giving the sport a broad base of appeal, free from the exclusivity of the aristocratic trappings of thoroughbred racing. The causes of flat racing’s failure to thrive in New York, and in the North more broadly, were clear even to the sportsmen of the day. An 1856 column published in the sporting journal Spirit of the Times stated:

Racing will never succeed in New York until it and its attended arrangements are put on a more democratic basis -- something approaching the order of the first class trotting racing. Then, like the trots, it will get the support of the people.

New York City’s new racecourse was quickly turned over to the trotters to save it from financial ruin.

The republican image of trot racing was buoyed by the democracy of the trotter itself. Performance drove the breeding of the early trotter. One did not need proof of pedigree, one only needed a good-gaited, fast horse. The best blood diffused around the nation instead of concentrating in the stables of a handful of wealthy breeders. Some early trotting stars had rags to riches origins that fit neatly into the American narrative. Foaled in 1833, Lady Suffolk, who trotted 162 races over 16 years, drew an oyster wagon and was rented out at a livery stable for five years before her gait was noticed by a customer. She became the first horse to trot a mile in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Similarly, Dutchman, who first broke the eight minute record for a three mile trot, pulled a wagon for a bricklayer. Neither was Dutchman a particularly attractive animal. The sports writer Frank Forester described him as a:

[Great], ugly brown horse with a short hog-neck, a fearful borer when going, with his head down and his neck thrust out obstinately before him, and was in all respects the most ungainly goer and the most unpleasant horse to drive I ever sat behind.

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