The Winter Olympics are fully underway in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, and Team USA is chasing gold on snow and ice. But here's a fact that might surprise you: the First Continental Congress tried to ban sports.
How did a nation that outlawed "every Species of Extravagance and Dissipation" become one of the world's great Olympic powers?
The answer lies in a founding-era debate about virtue, the body, and what it meant to be a good citizen of a republic.
🖼️ The Big Picture
What's happening: The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are currently underway across Northern Italy. They run from February 6 to 22. More than 3,500 athletes from 93 countries are competing in 16 sports, from figure skating and ice hockey to alpine skiing and speed skating. As of February 12, Team USA has racked up 13 medals, placing it third in the medal count behind Norway and Italy.[1]
Why it matters: The Olympics represent the world's largest stage for international athletic competition, and the United States has long been one of its dominant forces. But Americans' relationship with organized sport didn't begin with national pride. It began with suspicion.
What history reveals: The Founders feared sports would corrupt republican virtue, yet they also believed that physical fitness was essential to self-governance. This tension between sport as vice and exercise as civic duty shaped the United States' relationship with athletics from its earliest days.
🔍 Historical Deep Dive
The Congressional Ban: Sports as a Threat to the Republic
Just weeks into its first meeting, the First Continental Congress passed the Articles of Association on October 20, 1774. Congress designed this sweeping set of fourteen resolutions to unite the colonies against British policy. Tucked into Article 8, the delegates resolved to "discountenance and discourage every Species of Extravagance and Dissipation, especially all Horse-racing, and all Kinds of Gaming, Cock-fighting, Exhibitions of Shows, Plays, and other expensive Diversions and Entertainments." [2]
This inclusion of sports in the Articles of Association reflects the Founders' belief that sports distracted Americans' virtuous behavior. Virtue came from being disciplined, frugal, and devoted to the common good. Sports were seen as dividing people, leading to gambling, and creating a focus on individual gain and achievement.
This logic ran deep.
Inherited from classical antiquity and refined by Enlightenment thinkers, eighteenth-century republican political theory held that self-governing citizens must be capable of self-restraint. As John Adams baldly stated: "Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." [3]
Horse racing, gambling, and cock-fighting threatened to damage private and public virtue. They represented the kind of aristocratic excess that the Founders felt had corrupted Great Britain. If Americans wanted to govern themselves, the thinking went, they had to prove they could resist the temptations that had corrupted monarchies from within. As historian Kenneth Cohen has written, the Founders' bans expressed "a republican asceticism intended to keep citizens engaged in civic affairs and willing to sacrifice self-indulgence for the common good." [4]
Neither the First nor the Second Continental Congresses, nor the first congresses under the Articles of Confederation or the U.S. Constitution, were able to enforce the prohibition on sports consistently. But the principle that sports posed a danger to virtue lingered well into the Early Republic United States, where it shaped laws and attitudes about recreation for decades.
Benjamin Franklin: America's First Athlete-Intellectual
As Congress banned sports, one of its more prominent members stood as living proof that physical culture and intellectual achievement could go hand in hand.
Benjamin Franklin has been an athlete since childhood. Growing up in Boston near the Mill Pond, Franklin taught himself how to swim and quickly became obsessed with the water. As a child, Franklin invented the first pair of swim fins--oval, wooden pallets, about ten inches long, with thumb holes to hold each against his palms. Franklin reported, "They much resembled a painter's [pallets]. In swimming, I pushed the edges of these forward and I struck the water with their flat surfaces as I drew them back. I remember I swam faster by means of thes [pallets], but they fatigued my wrists." [5]
In 1726, Franklin demonstrated his swimming skills with a "splash." Living in London, Franklin jumped from a boat into the Thames River and swam from Chelsea to Blackfriars, a distance of roughly three and a half miles. Franklin reported performing "many feats of activity, both upon and under the water, that surprised and pleased those to whom they were novelties." His display impressed the prominent English politician Sir William Wyndham, who asked Franklin to teach his two sons how to swim. Franklin considered staying in England to start a swimming school, reflecting, "If I were to remain in England and open a Swimming School, I might get a good deal of Money." But Franklin decided to return to Philadelphia. [6]
Franklin may have also been an avid ice skater. The Penn Museum notes that Franklin "had been expert at both skating and swimming from his Boston childhood"--although Franklin does not mention ice skating in his autobiography. What is certain is that Franklin continued to swim throughout his life. In Philadelphia, he swam in the Schuylkill River, and he swam in the Seine while serving as the Second Continental Congress's diplomat to France. [7]
Franklin advocated for swimming as a form of education and physical development. He promoted universal learn-to-swim classes for children and advised on water safety and lifeboat rescue. His philosophy around the sport presaged the Olympic ideal of cultivating body and mind together in service of a complete human being.
In 1968, the International Swimming Hall of Fame inducted Benjamin Franklin. [8]
Thomas Jefferson and the Case for Exercise
Benjamin Franklin wasn't alone in valuing physical fitness. Thomas Jefferson also advocated for exercise as essential to both personal health and civic capacity.
While in Paris in 1785, Jefferson wrote to his nephew Peter Carr. In his letter, Jefferson laid out a philosophy that wouldn't be out of place in a modern Olympic training manual:
"Give about two of [your hours] every day to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong."
Jefferson gave specifics about the exercise he meant. He told Carr that "Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind." He recommended walking as "walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue."
This wasn't idle advice. Jefferson practiced what he preached. He took daily walks around his Monticello estate, calculated his pace and kept track of "winter" and "summer" walking speeds, and he rode his horse three to four hours each day into his late seventies. In 1812, Jefferson wrote to John Adams: "I am on horseback. three or four hours every day." Jefferson was 68 years old. [9]
Jefferson believed in the connection between physical activity and civic virtue. He advocated that a strong body produced the independent minds necessary for self-governance. His emphasis on walking over team sports also reflected a broader early American preference for individual exercise over organized competition. The new republic valued personal self-improvement but did not want it to be seen as a spectacle.
Winter Sports in the Colonies
While the Founding Fathers debated the morality of organized sports, ordinary early Americans were building a tradition of winter recreation that connects to the events unfolding in the Winter Olympics.
Dutch and Swedish settlers brought ice skating and sleigh racing to North America in the seventeenth century. In New Netherland, skating and sleighing were ubiquitous.
During the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), hard, cold winters froze major North American rivers. In 1659, Jeremias van Rensselaer wrote to his Dutch brother Jan Baptist van Rensselaer from his home near present-day Albany, New York. Jeremias reported that during the winter, the Hudson River had frozen "so hard as within the memory of Christians it has ever done, so that with the sleigh one could use the river everywhere, without danger for the races, in which we now indulge a good deal." [10]
Unlike most sports in early America, skating was an activity pursued by both men and women. Dutch women skated alongside Dutch men — something English visitors always noted, as English women generally did not skate. When English military clergyman Charles Wolley lived in New York in 1678, he marvled at the sight of "Men and Women as it were flying upon their Skates from place to place, with Markets upon their Heads and Backs."
The ice skates skaters used evolved along with the colonies. Early colonial skates featured sharpened animal bones attached to shoes. By the eighteenth century, metal blades mounted on wooden platforms became the standard. In a world without great roads, skating served as both a recreational activity and a means of travel.
Philadelphia lawyer Alexander Graydon wrote that "with respect to skating, though the Philadelphians have never reduced it to rules like the Londoners, nor connected it with their business like Dutchmen, I will hazard the opinion, that they were the best & most elegant skaters in the world."[11]
💬 Final Thought: From Vice to Virtue
The tension the Founders identified between sport as a moral danger and physical culture as a civic necessity was never fully resolved. It simply evolved.
After the Revolution, Americans began developing their own culture distinct from British traditions. This new American culture included sports. While the popularity of cricket faded after the War of 1812, Americans developed a new "American" ballgame that evolved into baseball.
This pattern of sport as an expression of national identity is a point of origin that drives Americans in the modern-day Olympic Games. When Team USA takes the ice in Milan, they are participating in a tradition dating back to the republic's earliest days, and rooted in the belief that athletic achievement reflects something essential about a nation's character.
The Founding Fathers would have been ambivalent about the spectacle of the modern Olympics. They would have distrusted the gambling, commercialism, and cult of celebrity that accompany the Games. But they may have recognized something familiar in the underlying ideal that cultivating the body is inseparable from cultivating the mind, and that a people need both to ensure their freedom.
🎧 Go Deeper
Curious about the history behind this newsletter? Explore these Ben Franklin's World episodes on winter and sport in early America.
Episode 187: Sport in Early America
When did the United States become a place filled with sports nuts? Investigate the origins of sport in early America.
Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin
Discover the world that shaped Ben Franklin's early years, including the Boston waterfront where he first learned to swim.
Episode 267: Snowshoe Country
How did the people of early America experience and feel about winter? Explore how Indigenous peoples taught English settlers how to live and thrive in North America's winters.
Episode 412: The Franklin Stove
Benjamin Franklin didn't just invent the first pair of swim fins, he also invented a stove to help early Americans stay warm in winter.
Episode 428: The Founding Father of American Medicine: Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Rush believed a healthy body was the foundation of a healthy republic.
💬 What Do You Think?
The Continental Congress tried to ban sport in the name of republican virtue. Thomas Jefferson insisted that "a strong body makes the mind strong."
As you watch athletes from around the world compete in Milan, consider this: The Founders may not have agreed on whether sport was a vice or a virtue, but they all understood that the question mattered for the future of the American republic.
What do you think they would make of the Olympics?
📩 Hit Reply to share your thoughts.
Have a great weekend,
Liz Covart
Host, Ben Franklin’s World
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P.S.
You may have noticed there was no newsletter last week. I'm traveling quite a bit this year for America 250 celebrations and events. Last week, I was in New Rochelle, New York, working with the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University. During my visit, we filmed Thomas Paine's cottage, explored the Paine special collections at Iona, and I spoke with students about history work in digital media.
It was a wonderful visit, and I'm excited to share what's coming: new content from this trip, and from the trip Joe and I took to Lewes, England, last month. The podcasts and videos we create from these adventures will help you better understand Thomas Paine, his work, and the world he lived in. This is part of our ongoing collaboration between Clio Digital Media and the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University. I can't wait for you to see and hear it, so please stay tuned.
📝 End Notes
[1] "Winter Olympics 2026 Medal Count: Team USA up to 12 after Jordan Stoltz's gold, ice dance silver," February 11, 2026, accessed February 12, 2026, https://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/article/winter-olympics-2026-medal-count-team-usa-up-to-12-after-jordan-stolzs-gold-ice-dance-silver-010830694.html; "Milano Cortina 2026," Olympics.com, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.olympics.com/en/milano-cortina-2026; "Winter Olympics 101: What to know about Milan Cortina Games," ESPN.com, February 11, 2026, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/47778572/winter-olympics-101-know-milan-cortina-games.
[2] First Continental Congress, "Continental Association," October 20, 1774, Founders Online, U.S. National Archives, accessed February 12, 2026, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0094; Also see, First Continental Congress, "The Articles of Association," October 20, 1774, Yale Law School, Avalon Project, accessed February 12, 2026, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_10-20-74.asp.
[3] John Adams, "To Mercy Otis Warren," April 16, 1776, Papers of John Adams, vol 4., Adams Papers Digital Edition, Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-04-02-0044#sn=1; Joerg Knipprath, "America's Founders on Virtue as Fundamental to Republican Government," Constituting America, accessed February 12, 2026, https://constitutingamerica.org/90day-aer-americas-founders-on-virtue-as-fundamental-to-republican-government-guest-essayist-joerg-knipprath/.
[4] Kenneth Cohen, "The Manly Sport of American Politics: Or, How We Came to Call Elections "Races,"" Commonplace.online, April 2012, accessed February 12, 2026, https://commonplace.online/article/manly-sport-american-politics/; Kenneth Cohen, They Will Have Their Game: Sporting Culture and the Making of the Early American Republic, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020).
[5] The Franklin Institute, "Benjamin Franklin's Inventions," The Franklin Institute, accessed February 12, 2026, https://fi.edu/en/science-and-education/benjamin-franklin/inventions; Steven Munatones, "The Art of Swimming, A Perspective By Ben Franklin," Open Water Swimming Association, March 23, 2019, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.openwaterswimming.com/the-art-of-swimming-perspective-by-ben/.
[6] Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part 1; Frank Woodworth Pine, ed., 1916, Project Gutenberg, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm#I; Eric Herman, "Fins of the Father," WaterShapes, accessed February 12, 2026, https://watershapes.com/fins-of-the-father/.
[7] John L. Cotter, "The history of Sporting America: Philadelphia Pastimes, Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum, Vol. 27. No. 2, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-history-of-sporting-america/; Frank Deford, "Swimming Ben, or How a New Nation Kept Afloat," Sports Illustrated, November 18, 1968, 72-84.
[8] International Swimming Hall of Fame, "Benjamin Franklin," ishof.org, accessed February 12, 2026, https://ishof.org/honoree/honoree-benjamin-franklin/.
[9] “Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed February 12, 2026, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0319. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 8, 25 February–31 October 1785, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 405–408.]; “Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 21 January 1812,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed February 12, 2026, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-04-02-0334. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 4, 18 June 1811 to 30 April 1812, ed. J. Jefferson Looney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 428–430.]; "Thomas Jefferson's Health Habits," Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, June 7, 2024, YouTube, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ef4MM_vTc.
[10] Jeremias van Rensselaer, "To Jan Baptist van Rensselaer," May 11, 1659, A.J.F. van Laer translator and editor, (Albany, NY: The University of the State of New York, 1932), pgs 158-160, I have the book edition, but you can see the online edition posted by the New Netherland Institute: https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/application/files/2416/8372/5019/JeremiasvanRensselaercorrespondence.pdf.
[11] Caitlin Shaffer, "Ice Skating Through the Ages," December 2015, Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, accessed February 12, 2026, https://jefpat.maryland.gov/Pages/mac-lab/curators-choice/2015-curators-choice/2015-12-ice-skating-through-the-ages.aspx; "Sports and Recreation," Encyclopedia.com, accessed February 12, 2026, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sports-and-recreation.
📖 Further Reading
Kenneth Cohen, They Will Have Their Game: Sporting Culture and the Making of the Early American Republic, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020)
Elliot J. Gorn & Warren Goldstein, A Brief History of American Sports, (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
Gerald R. Gems, Linda J. Borish, and Gertrud Pfister, Sports in American History, (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 2022).
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer: An Illustrated History, (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2021).
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