Pam Keyes

This is a very intriguing event in American history, and I enjoyed learning more about it from your article. I had not realized that Jackson even knew Claiborne personally prior to the Battle of New Orleans. As for who it was who really cast the deciding vote, it seems a rather difficult technical question. If the gentleman from Vermont doubly abstained from voting either for President or VP, then presumably the votes were tied once again. I suppose that if Claiborne was the last to cast his vote, and he abstained from voting for the VP while casting one vote for Jefferson, that is what put Jefferson one up over Burr. But it seems that even in such an event, it was the act of -not- voting for the VP which would have put Jefferson in as president, and not the act of voting for Jefferson per se. Because what seems to have led to the tie in the first place was that the Democratic-Republicans forgot to tell one of their members not to vote for a VP — and that’s how both Jefferson and Burr got the same number of votes.

This is a very significant discovery. I think the entire Laffite Collection is something that John A. Laffite could not have forged. Each item contains a clue as to the true owner, and the Gros portrait, being genuine, points at a single provenance for all the items.

Yes, it is compelling evidence for authentication of the Laffite journal. Even so, there always will be those who believe the journal is a forgery.

Thank you for your interesting comment. The Beverly Chew listed in 1914 was likely the New Orleans Beverly Chew’s grandson, who was famous in his own right as a rare book collector. The Pilgrims Society sounds quite fascinating indeed, I wonder if they were a branch of the Masons or Scottish Rite. Re whether or not the banker/customs collector Chew really died broke, on paper in the archives it looks that way, but I suspect he had managed to squirrel away savings which aren’t reflected in the accounts, particularly given the messiness of the Myra Clark Gaines ongoing court battles.

Thank you for the compliment about the Chew article. I did not know that Crawford’s instructions for revenue officers had originated with Hamilton.

Re the Le Brave case, no, I have never seen anything that Chew has written concerning that particular ship and/or trial. It is frustrating that the details about the trial have been lost, even the federal archives at Fort Worth have little about it. The Le Brave case is, of course, highly significant to a study of Jean Laffite as it is the only time one of his ships and crews was successfully prosecuted for piracy. One of the intriguing aspects of it is the fact that an extremely notorious pirate, William Mitchell, had been tried in New Orleans only three years earlier for piracy and walked free. (Mitchell is the subject of my next article for Historia Obscura, to be published soon).

I did not know that Capt. Loomis had taken the Le Brave’s prize specie for himself, nor that he had embezzled the pay of the Louisiana’s crew. By the way, his second lieutenant at the time, William B. G. Taylor, was the revenue officer who gave the wannabe pirate Capt. Daniel F. Putron such a hard time in 1841.

I would be interested in hearing more about your planned article about the Le Brave and Loomis, and would love to read it when you get it finished and published.

The Chew portrait was posted online at Ancestry.com by a descendant. Chew was in New Orleans at least as early as 1798 (with William Clark, no less!) His mission to Bilbao is still shrouded in mystery, but appears at this point in my research to be connected with political intrigue. It was not a simple merchant mission. More information about this, and other persons behind the scenes in early New Orleans will be presented in forthcoming articles this year in Historia Obscura.