Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines

X. Victory at Last

XVictory at Last At the midpoint of the nineteenth century New Orleans was a bustling, brawling, sprawling port city—the fourth largest in the United States. Boom time came to the Cotton South, and New Orleans boomed along with it. Steamboats plied the Mississippi River, and newspaper reports of the accidents and explosions that made river traffic dangerous did little to deter the mobility of the populace. The population of New Orleans had doubled since 1840,fillingthe new houses and stores that appeared everywhere almost overnight. "Carnival" embodied the robust spirit of the thriving city, and both Creole and American residents enthusiastically embraced the annual revelry. New Orleans kept its European atmosphere, but the old faubourgs coalesced into "the City," the antagonism between old and new districts gradually subsiding as all benefitted from the prosperous economy. After the Supreme Court's decision in Gaines v. Relf, Chew, and Others, owners of the old Clark estate property relaxed, believing their titles no longer shadowed by litigation. The property sold and sold again as the building craze continued and various owners enjoyed their new prosperity.1 As the Gaines case moved into its third decade, the numbers of those who could remember Daniel Clark and Zulime Carriere slowly dwindled. Boisfontaine and Bellechassehad died during the 18405, but the chevalier Delacroix, although approaching ninety, remained. Harriet Harper Smythe and Myra Gaines's two aunts passed away early in the 18508. Zuli . Kendall, History of New Orleans, ^•. ioz, 113-4. Victory at Last 2.15 ime died in 1853, and Colonel Davis in 1854. Of the two executors, only Richard Relf still lived.2 Defeat in the Supreme Court meant that the attorneys scattered. John R. Grymes died soon after the conclusion of the appeal of Gaines v. Relf, Chew, and Others. Walter Jones retired. Isaac Preston, whose speech in 1850 helped sway the Louisiana court, lost his life in a steamboat explosion on Lake Pontchartrain in 1851. ReverdyJohnson became a Maryland senator, then accepted an appointment as solicitor general from President Franklin Pierce. Daniel Webster died, but not before he charged the defendants in Games v. Relf a fee of fifty thousand dollars for his successful defense and brought suit in New Orleans to collect it. John Campbell moved onto the Supreme Court in 1853. His arguments in the Gaines case, though unsuccessful, had so impressed the justices that when a vacancy occurred on the court, they recommended to President Pierce that Campbell be named to fill it.3 Myra Gaines had spent the last twenty years of her life caught in the shadow of the law. Mathew Brady's photograph of her at forty-seven reveals a middle-aged woman with shadowed eyes and firmly set mouth. Her loss before the Supreme Court and Justice Catron's designation of her suit as a "colossal fraud," had had little effect on her legions of supporters. Particularly in the North, her friends continued to exhibit a degree of partisanship that amounted to wild enthusiasm for her cause. Daniel Webster ruefully noted that "she has a band of sympathizers throughout the land that is more powerful than an army arranged with banners." The Southern Quarterly Review declared that the Gaines case "attracted a larger share of public attention and has inspired a stronger feeling of interest, than any other in all the records of the American courts." Putnam's Magazine featured a summary of the litigation favorable to Gaines and concluded that "nobody could listen to her for fifteen minutes without sharing in her enthusiasm and perfect conviction of ultimate success."4 z. Harmon, Famous Case of Myra Clark Gaines, 368;John S. Kendall, "The Strange Case of Myra Clark Gaines," Louisiana Historical Quarterly zo (1937): 36. Beverly Chew died Jan. 13, 1851. 3. Connor,John Archibald Campbell, 17; Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, Jan. 31, 1855, p. 3. 4. Daniel Webster,Opening Speech, Gaines v. Relf, Chew, and Others, quoted in Argument of George M. Paschau before C. Delano, Secretary of the Interior . . . , Nov. 4, 1870 (Washington City, 1870), n; S., "The Gaines Case," Southern Quarterly Review 9 (Apr. 1854): 174; "The Romanceof the Great Gaines Case," zio. 2.16 Notorious Woman Myra Clark Gaines continued to be a fixture on the Washington social circuit. Invited to the Pierce White House, she met Mrs. McNeill Potter, a niece of the president, and the women established a friendship that lasted for the rest...