Respectable and Disreputable: Leisure Time in Antebellum Montgomery

Respectable and Disreputable describes how Montgomerians spent their increasing leisure time during the four decades preceding the Civil War. Everyday activities included gambling, drinking, sporting, hunting, and voluntary associations—military, literary, self-improvement, fraternal, and civic. The book also includes seasonal activities—religious and national holidays, fairs, balls, horse racing, and summering at mineral springs. Commercial entertainment, which became more prominent in the...