On January 20, 2024, New Orleans’s Fair Grounds Race Course will run the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes, a preparatory race for the Kentucky Derby, in honor of the only horse who ever defeated the mighty Lexington. To beat him, Lecomte shattered an American speed record for the fastest four miles — a record that had stood unassailable for twelve years. Back then, the Fair Grounds had yet to exist. The two sons of Boston rivaled each other, breaking records, and mesmerizing a torn nation while running on the bayou silt sands of the Metairie Race Course, one of the premier race tracks in the antebellum era.
The Metairie ultimately fell to a fate embroiled by greed and vindictiveness. Charles T. Howard was the “Lottery King” of Louisiana. He had spearheaded the Louisiana State Lottery Company for years as its president, much to his financial benefit. His fleet of yachts was just one of his many hobbies. In late 1870, he added the Jennie Bonnie to his collection, a thirty-six-foot vessel that had notably sailed 6,000 nautical miles along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. But aside from providing Howard with cash to live life to its fullest, the lottery business was not one 1870s Louisiana citizens unanimously embraced. Some Louisianans called the lottery “evil.” Bishop Taylor, New Orleans’ reigning cleric, went as far as to castigate the lottery as an “illness and wantonness providing games for the lazy and useless people of the world.” The Daily Picayune wrote that the lottery “corrupts the youth of our city and State…robs honorable toil of its fruit…and saps the very morals of society.”
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