More than $1.4bn has been staked on prediction markets for this week’s US midterm elections, according to CNN. Though a lot of people are about to win – or lose – a lot of money, it’s hard to imagine any wagers as consequential as the election bet that birthed a sporting craze spearheaded by a chancer who walked and talked his way into becoming one of the greatest athletic stars of the 19th century. Before ultrarunning, there was ultrawalking: pedestrianism.
The Victorian-era fad started with laddish banter that got out of hand. A 21-year-old door-to-door bookseller named Edward Payson Weston made a wager with a friend that if Abraham Lincoln were elected president in 1860, Weston would walk 478 miles from the Massachusetts state capitol in Boston to the US Capitol in Washington. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Weston was sacked from his job with a traveling circus because he was unable to perform as he recovered from being struck by lightning.
He then worked as a copy boy for the New York Herald and discovered he had “great locomotive powers” while rushing across Manhattan. A slim 5ft 7in, he had average speed but exceptional stamina. The New York Times would later describe his “elastic, swinging stride and legs that never seemed to tire”.
Lincoln won the presidential election on 6 November 1860. On Christmas Day, Weston decided to stick to his word. Seeking to monetize his side hustle (as he put it, “I bethought myself to devise some means to defray my expenses”), he assembled a support team to accompany him in a horse-drawn carriage and secured sponsors who would pay him to deliver circulars to homes he passed on his route.
He set off on 22 February. His media blitz seemed to have backfired when he arrived in front of a crowd at the Massachusetts state house to start his walk to Washington: he was accosted by a constable who arrested him for an unpaid debt. After negotiating his way out of trouble, Weston arrived in Washington on 4 March, narrowly missing his 10-day goal by a few hours after taking a wrong turn.
That night he attended Lincoln’s inauguration ball. A couple of days later a member of Congress introduced him to the president, “who seemed much surprised that he should possess such great powers of endurance” and offered to pay his fare home. (Weston refused, insisting he would walk back.) So began the long career of a man dubbed the “Wily Wobbler” for his distinctive gait, albeit that it was soon interrupted by the civil war. Weston put his ability to traverse great distances to use as a Union spy and dispatch-bearer.
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