1890 Benjamin Harrison - Louisiana State Lottery

In 1890, Benjamin Harrison made a push against many forms of gambling from lotteries to bookmaking to pool-selling.  After a sordid history in the early 1800's Lotteries were making a comeback.   One very successful lottery was the Louisiana state lottery, where out of state sales of the lottery topped $5 million.  While earlier lotteries were confined to local regions, lotteries like the one in Louisiana state took on a national scope.  By the late 1880's, almost half of the US postal mail coming into New Orleans was connected to the lottery.   President Harrison urged congress to take action to curb all lottery activity and asked congress to pass legislation that would forbid the use of federal mail to request or deliver lottery tickets.  Late in 1890, congress banned the use of federal mails for lottery sales and congress appointed a postmaster in New Orleans and seized thousands of pieces of mail.  As expected, the case went to the supreme court where it was upheld, "We cannot regard the right to operate a lottery as a fundamental right infringed by the legislation in question; nor are we able to see that Congress can be held, in its enactment, to have abridged the freedom of the press. The circulation of newspapers is not prohibited, but the government declines itself to become an agent in the circulation of printed matter which it regard as injurious to the people."

In his 1890 address to congress President Harrison declared early victory against the Lotteries:

"The passage of the act to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes relating to lotteries, approved September 19, 1890, has been received with great and deserved popular favor. The Post-Office Department and the Department of Justice at once entered upon the enforcement of the law with sympathetic vigor, and already the public mails have been largely freed from the fraudulent and demoralizing appeals and literature emanating from the lottery companies."

Also in the same address, Harrison stated his over-all objective of ridding America of the evils of gambling:

"At the last session I returned without my approval a bill entitled "An act to prohibit bookmaking and pool selling in the District of Columbia," and stated my objection to be that it did not prohibit but in fact licensed what it purported to prohibit. An effort will be made under existing laws to suppress this evil, though it is not certain that they will be found adequate."

Bookmaking is the betting at sporting events at an agreed upon odds.
Pool-Selling - is the Selling or distribution of chances in a betting pool or Lottery.

References

Presidency.ucsb.edu. (2018). Benjamin Harrison: Second Annual Message. [online] Available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29531 [Accessed 22 Jan. 2018].

Blakely, G. and Kurland, H. (1978). Development of the Federal Law of Gambling. Cornell Law Review, [online] Volume 63(6, August 1978). Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4158&context=clr.

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Louisiana State Lottery Company. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Lottery_Company [Accessed 22 Jan. 2018].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Lottery_Company#/media/File:Official_drawing_of_the_Louisiana_State_lottery.jpg

Washington Lottery Scandal

It wasn't hard to convince Washington that lotteries were evil.   About 70 years earlier in 1823, Congress authorized a Grand National lottery in order to pay for improvements to the city. Tickets were sold and the drawing took place, but before anyone could collect their winnings, the private agent who organized the lottery for DC fled town. While the majority of winners accepted their fate with resignation, the winner of the $100,000 grand prize sued the government of District of Columbia and the Supreme Court ruled that DC had to pay the winner.