Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines

Conclusion: "The Most Remarkable Case"

Conclusion "The Most Remarkable Case" When the Supreme Court convened for the 1867 winter term, two figures familiar to Myra Gaines were absent. Justice Catron had died in Nashville two years before, and Justice Wayne, Gaines's great advocate, had died of typhoid fever in the heat of the previous summer, on July 5,1867. Justices Taney and McLean were also gone. Their replacements, Noah H. Swayne of Ohio, David Davis of Illinois, Cyrus Field's brother Stephen J. Field, and the new chief justice, Salmon P. Chase, had no prior acquaintance (in a formal, legal sense) with the Gaines case. Justices Nelson, Clifford, and Grier were still on the bench. No doubt, Grier was less than pleased to see the case he had dismissed—he hoped "for the last time"—before him again. Gaines v. The City of New Orleans saw Louis Janin again representing the city and Caleb Gushing acting for Myra Gaines. The opinion of the court, written by Justice Davis, provides a summary that, for the modern reader, is the clearest explanation in any of the Supreme Court opinions of the evidence supporting Gaines's legitimacy.Davis began, as had many of his brother justices before him, by expressing his hopes that "the history of this litigation . . . will be closed by this decision." It was enough, he thought, that Myra Gaines had pursued her case through a third of a century , "with a vigor and energy hardly ever surpassed, in defiance of obstacles which would have deterred persons of ordinary mind and character."1 The key to resolving the controversy was the legitimacy of Myra i. Gaines v. City of New Orleans, 6 Wallace 641 (1868), at 643. 234 Conclusion Gaines. With the probate of the 1813 will, no court could deprive her of her father's estate if she was his legitimate daughter. Davis placed great stress on Clark's declaration of her legitimacy in his last will. He excused Clark's conduct in the last years of his life as the attempt to "repair the consequences of hisfolly." Clark had "contracted an unfortunate .. . and in many respects disreputable marriage, having married a person with whom he had previously lived improperly, who, without a divorce, had married again." The justice thought it natural that Clark, "possessed of commanding influence, and high position, and mingling in social intercourse with the best society of the country," should want to conceal his marriage to Zulime. But at the end of his life, it was also natural that he should wish to make amends to the child born of that marriage by a "deliberate acknowledgment" of her legitimacy.2 Davis pictured the "struggle in Clark's mind" after Zulime married Dr. Gardette. He could not, the justice considered, acknowledge their marriage without harming a woman "whom he had once loved and still professed to respect." Yet not to announce their marriage would "bastardize a child for whom he had great affection, and to see a large part of his estate go to others, who had no claims on his bounty." Before Clark's death, Justice Davis believed, "the better nature of this man of lofty pride and sensitive honor . . . gained the ascendency." Bypublic acknowledgment in his will and by statements to Harriet Harper Smythe, Boisfontaine , and Bellechasse, Clark had "atoned in some measure for the errors of his past life."3 Davis's opinion illustrated that Myra Gaines succeeded in developinga trial narrative that convincingly appealed to the prevailing sense of public morality. As in every trial, the Gaines case represented a conflict between two supposedly truthful narratives. The argument that succeeded with its audience—whether judge, jury, or public—corroborated the audience's experiences and validated their prejudices.The Gaines case demonstrated the anxieties and concerns that confronted its century. Myra Gaines and her attorneys used the rhetorical strategy of sentimentality to "solve" the case's central credibility problem, and their success was evident in Davis's opinion. "Courts . . . have rarely had to deal with a case of greater hardship, or more interesting character and history," than the Gaines case, Justice z. Ibid., 698. 3. Ibid., 701-1. "The Most Remarkable Case" 2.35 Davis concluded. The Louisianasupreme court had established thevalidity of the will in Myra Gaines's favor executed by her father forty-three years before. The questions of law and fact at issue in the Gaines case had been determined seven years earlier...