Southern Queen: New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century

SOUTHERN QUEEN

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Southern Queen New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century

Thomas Ruys Smith

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © Thomas Ruys Smith 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2011 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-8472-5193-0

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed and bound in India

Contents

Illustrations Introduction: A Bend in the River

vii 1

1 “A very difficult people to manage”: The Battles for New Orleans

13

2 “Eternal bustle”: The Making of an American City

45

3 “Prima donna”: The Queen of the South

71

4 “Oh, weep for New Orleans!”: Civil War and Reconstruction

103

5 “A colossal white elephant”: New Orleans, the New South, and the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition

133

6 “Par excellence a city of fun”: Segregation and Sex at the End of a Century

159

Acknowledgements

191

Notes

193

Bibliography

225

Index

242

For Arianna and Delilah

Illustrations

1

John L. Boqueta de Woiseri, A View of New Orleans Taken From The Plantation of Marigny (1803)

20

Interview between Lafitte, General Jackson, and Governor Claiborne, from Charles Ellms, The Pirates Own Book

39

British Redcoats and Kentucky Hunters at the Battle of New Orleans, from John Frost, A Pictorial Biography of Andrew Jackson

42

Plan of the City and Suburbs of New Orleans from an Actual Survey Made in 1815 by I. Tanesse, City Surveyor (1817)

46

Jackson at New Orleans, from Benson J. Lossing, A History of the United States for Families and Libraries

48

Jacob A. Dallas, A flatboat in the path of a steamboat, from “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine and Putnam’s Monthly

59

Jacob A. Dallas, The Levee at New Orleans, from “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine and Putnam’s Monthly

75

Alfred Waud, Cock-Fighting, from “Sunday in New Orleans,” Every Saturday

82

Slaves for Sale; A Scene in New Orleans, from the Illustrated London News

96

10

The Slave Auction, from The White Slave

97

11

Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans, from James Silk Buckingham, The Slave States of America

98

William Waud, Landing of Captain Bailey and Lieutenant Perkins on the Levee, New Orleans [. . .] to Demand the Surrender of the City, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated History of the Civil War

108

Women of New Orleans Insulting Federal Officers, from Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major General Benj. F. Butler, Butler’s Book

112

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4 5 6

7 8 9

12

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viii 14

I L LU S T R AT I O N S

The Ladies of New Orleans, before and after General Butler’s Proclamation, from Harper’s Weekly

114

Negro Schools of New Orleans, from Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour

117

16

The Riot in New Orleans, from Harper’s Weekly

119

17

J. Wells Champney, The Carnival, from Edward King, The Great South

122

J. Wells Champney, “The joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor,” from Edward King, The Great South

123

Alfred Waud, New Orleans, from William Cullen Bryant ed., Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In

127

J. Wells Champney, “When Rex and his train enter the queer old streets, the balconies are crowded with spectators,” from Edward King, The Great South

129

The Centennial Cotton Exposition Buildings at New Orleans, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

145

The New Orleans Exposition — The Genius of the Industrial Arts Awakened in the South, from Harper’s Weekly

149

The New Orleans Exposition — Arrivals at the Levee, from Harper’s Weekly

150

Madame Delphine’s, from William H. Coleman, ed., Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans

153

The City of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River. Lake Pontchartrain in Distance

158

Jack Tars in a French Market District Dive, from J. W. Buel, Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities

166

15

18

19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

The Bamboula, from George Washington Cable, “Creole Slave Dances: The Dance in Place Congo,” Century Magazine 180

28

In the Old French Quarter, from Julian Ralph, “New Orleans, Our Southern Capital,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine

186

Introduction: A Bend in the River

In my early youth I thought New Orleans was the whole world. I could speak only French at that time. I had been to Shell Beach, Lake Pontchartrain, Spanish Fort, Milneburg, Algiers, Gretna, all considered New Orleans suburbs, and I was convinced this was the whole world: the names on the map, such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Hong Kong, etcetera, were just there to fill the map out. JELLY ROLL MORTON 1

It is not an easy thing to describe one’s first impression of New Orleans; for while it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth, yet it recalls vague memories of a hundred cities [. . .] Whencesoever the traveler may have come, he may find in the Crescent City some memory of his home — some recollection of his Fatherland — some remembrance of something he loves. LAFCADIO HEARN 2

This is a book about nineteenth-century New Orleans — about the people, events, and stories that shaped, and were shaped by, one of America’s most individual cities during a turbulent and peculiarly formative period in its history. Though established in 1718, it was during the nineteenth century that New Orleans developed its most characteristic poses. Beginning the century as a small colonial backwater on the banks of the Mississippi, valued largely for its strategic location, New Orleans soon became one of the richest and most powerful cities in the Union. By mid-century it was, as E. D. E. N. Southworth described it in 1859, the unrivaled “Southern Queen of Cities.”3 Though a variety of hardships soon followed, New Orleans never really gave up that crown. And for good and ill — out of a potent mix of two wars, various riots, numerous epidemics, countless population shifts, extraordinary growth and precipitous decline, slavery, emancipation and Reconstruction, business and pleasure, hard truths and comfortable myths, Old World and New World — modern New Orleans was born. Through it all, the port city near the mouth of the Mississippi developed a profound romantic allure that proved irresistible to an extraordinary variety of travelers, but anathema to others. It was, in short, a remarkable time in the life of a remarkable place. But to say that this is a book about nineteenth-century New Orleans is also to say, inevitably, that this is a book about the New Orleans of today — and of tomorrow. As Belle Hunt realized when she visited the city in the 1890s, “[t]he past clings to the present in New Orleans [. . .] it locks hands with the future

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until everything is pregnant with triple significance.”4 That is as true now as it ever was; New Orleans has always had more than its fair share of ghosts. In the 1870s, Lafcadio Hearn described New Orleans as a city of “delightful phantoms.”5 In 2003, Joshua Clark declared that New Orleanians “live in the haunted ruins of a long lost Garden of Eden.”6 Echoes of the nineteenth century are never far away in New Orleans — not least because, late in the 1890s, it started to become apparent that the city’s past was one of its most valuable assets. Still today, the tourist industry on which the city is economically dependent remains predicated on marketing very particular visions of times gone by. French Quarter romance and antebellum Garden District grandeur blend with the promise of illicit pleasures to form the core of the city’s abiding appeal to visitors. In such ways, the past has served as a protective patina, masking the less picturesque realities of city life with, in Louise McKinney’s words, “the ‘deadening’ clichés of tourism’s ad reductio promotion.”7 Or, as J. Mark Souther has noted, less condemningly, in New Orleans, “tourism preserved cultural distinctiveness even as it simplified it into a more salable package.”8 Either way, it kept a sense of nineteenth-century New Orleans alive in the modern city. And yet, behind the carnival mask presented to the public, there are many other ways in which the past still holds sway in the city that care was supposed to forget. New Orleans has a history punctuated by disaster, and, in uncanny ways, modern traumas indelibly call up the ghosts of ancient catastrophes. The Reverend Theodore Clapp wrote a lament for the vicissitudes of life in New Orleans in the wake of multiple yellow fever epidemics that killed tens of thousands in the antebellum period: “Not unfrequently the alternations of health and sickness, joy and sorrow, commercial prosperity and misfortune, sweep over the Crescent City with the suddenness and fury of those autumnal hurricanes which occasionally visit it.”9 To modern readers, images of Hurricane Katrina’s ravages, of Super Bowl victories, of Gulf of Mexico oil spills immediately provide their own narratives of “health and sickness, joy and sorrow, commercial prosperity and misfortune.” One of the many things that Katrina revealed about New Orleans was the degree to which patterns established in the nineteenth century — social, political, economic, cultural — still dictated life in the twenty-first-century city. That certain places and people within the fabric of New Orleans seemed to be adversely disadvantaged in the wake of disaster was neither coincidence nor conspiracy; it was the result of long-standing inequalities that can be traced back to events in the nineteenth century. As Craig Colten has highlighted, in New Orleans “the history of class and racial segregation created an uneven landscape in terms of vulnerability.”10 Exploring the present through the lens of the nineteenth century, therefore, it is common to feel a profound sense of déjà vu. In the wake of the American Civil War — perhaps the moment most comparable with modern disasters, given its wholesale reorientation of city life — Mark Twain recorded that for New Orleanians, “the war is what a.d. is elsewhere: they date from it. All day long you hear things ‘placed’ as having happened since the waw; or, du’in’ the waw; or befo’ the waw; or right aftah the waw [. . .] It shows how intimately every individual was visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.”11 Today,

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it is no exaggeration to say that New Orleanians date life similarly from Katrina. The fifth anniversary of the tragedy was referred to simply as K+5, or 5 a.d. — for, as Josh Neufeld’s graphic novel made clear, in New Orleans a.d. now stands for After the Deluge.12 At times, too, knowledge of the city’s turbulent past can give rise to moments of sardonic humor. Faced with the prospect of a fresh assault on its tourist trade in the shape of the apparently unstoppable BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau planned a promotional campaign that evoked the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. A photograph of the statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square was accompanied by the slogan, “This isn’t the first time New Orleans has survived the British.”13 So as William Faulkner — himself a sometime New Orleans resident — might have put it, the past is not dead in New Orleans. It is not even past. It is present when the good times roll, and it is unmissable when the hard times inevitably come again. What happened to New Orleans and its motley inhabitants in the nineteenth century is still happening. There is a further irony, therefore, in the other significant similarity that can be drawn between New Orleans in the wake of the Civil War and New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Both traumatic events spurred on a profound revitalization of interest in the city and its distinctive local cultures. As Richard Kennedy has put it, in nineteenthcentury New Orleans, “[l]iterary expression emerged only after the ordeals of conquest, occupation, and Reconstruction.”14 Writers like George Washington Cable, Grace King, and Lafcadio Hearn delved into the fabric of a changed and changing society, exploring its inner workings, noting what had been lost and gained. As they did so, first commentators, then tourists, came flocking. In the wake of Katrina, there has been a similar outpouring of cultural production both by and about New Orleans and New Orleanians. Novelists, documentary makers, directors, musicians, and graphic artists of all varieties have returned to the city in an attempt to capture the joys and inequities of a world that seemed to be on the brink of disappearing for good. From Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke (2006), to Dave Eggers’s novel Zeitoun (2009), to David Simon’s television series Treme (2010) — and all those in between — not since the Gilded Age has New Orleans had such a prominent place in the national consciousness. The same reinvigoration can be found in scholarly circles. As Peirce Lewis rightly complained, pre-Katrina, “published works about New Orleans too often tend to be narrow in scope, esoteric in topic, or dripping in saccharine — sometimes all three.” In Lewis’s terms, the “literary treacle which oozed over New Orleans [. . .] drowned most serious efforts to understand the city.”15 Happily, that situation has altered. As the Bibliography of this volume attests, this is a highwater mark for scholarship about New Orleans. In recent years, to name but a few, Christopher Benfey, Thomas Brothers, Craig Colten, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Kevin Fox Gotham, Thomas Ingersoll, Ari Kelman, Alecia Long, Judith Kelleher Schafer, J. Mark Souther, Anthony Stanonis, and Ned Sublette have all pushed forward our understanding of the city and the development of its distinctive tenor in profound ways. And yet, it is also arguable that the nineteenth century, the source of so much that is peculiar about New Orleans, remains relatively understudied, particularly in comparison with the city’s colonial period. Certainly, before

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now, no other volume has attempted to give a detailed account of the social and cultural history of New Orleans across the nineteenth century as a whole. This is a profound lack: the significance of the people and events that shaped the city in this period can best be understood only in a wider context, and as parts of a connected process that pushed the transformation of a colony to a modern city. Moments from the history of nineteenth-century New Orleans might have been studied in depth, but, previously, the larger framework has been lacking. Hopefully avoiding the pitfalls that Lewis outlines, therefore, this volume is an attempt to fill that gap in a way that is both accessible and rigorous. Working to reevaluate what Joshua Clark terms “the standard clichés that ‘N’awlins’ evokes — Mardi Gras, voodoo, swamp, jazz, etc.,” it does not seek to dismiss them out of hand — because who could deny that all of those elements, and more, have been vital parts of the life in this uncanny city?16 Rather, it is my intention to root the characteristic props of nineteenth-century city life in the people and places that gave birth to them, and to frame them in the circumstances from which they emerged — to consider not just the carnival mask but also the remarkable moments of tension, conflict, hardship, and destruction that were its necessary counterpoints. For one thing is evident: throughout the nineteenth century New Orleans was a truly astonishing place — vibrant, cosmopolitan, and not quite like anywhere else in America. The pages that follow, then, are an interdisciplinary exploration of this extraordinary environment — a portrait, a panorama, that is rooted firmly in a wealth of primary material from and about the city. For above all, this book can boast a star-studded dramatis personae: alongside its uniquely diverse population, New Orleans attracted many of the most significant figures from the world of nineteenth-century culture — travelers, writers, artists, and musicians of every variety. Though it has been necessary, inevitably, to be selective with their accounts of the city, a multitude of voices emerge in this account. As on the streets of New Orleans, insiders, like jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton, for whom “New Orleans was the whole world,” mingle with outsiders, like Lafcadio Hearn, who encountered a place that seemed like “no other city upon the face of the earth.” Each of the following chapters considers, chronologically, a different period in the life and culture of nineteenth-century New Orleans. Throughout, the development of the bricks-and-mortar city is juxtaposed with the emergence of an imaginary city — the New Orleans that grew from the words of travel writers, novelists, poets, and other kinds of mythmakers — that was its constant shadow. The first chapter begins at the moment just before New Orleans became part of America, and looks at the ways in which the animating tensions of this formative period combined in the crucible of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Chapter 2 examines the profound growth of the city in the wake of the War of 1812, a time when the character and identity of the city were shifting significantly. Chapter 3 explores New Orleans in its antebellum apotheosis as the imperious Queen of the South, consort of King Cotton — a moment when it was as notorious for its slave market as it was infamous for its status as a modern Babylon. Chapter 4 analyzes the city’s experience of Civil War, occupation, and Reconstruction, as slavery gave way to emancipation before the violent reassertion of white supremacy. Chapter 5 focuses on the city’s (unsuccessful) attempts to reestablish its fortunes in a New

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South mould with the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884. Chapter 6 draws the century to a close with a consideration of the opening of scandalous red-light district Storyville, the foundations of jazz, and the city’s inexorable transformation into an environment dedicated to tourism — a recognizably modern New Orleans. For all the extraordinary changes that are encapsulated in this period, some themes remained relatively constant — and, indeed, still have contemporary resonance. Perhaps above all, the story of nineteenth-century New Orleans is a story driven by the relationship between black and white New Orleanians — though those terms are far too simple to encompass the city’s complicated racial tapestry. From slavery to segregation, in ways too numerous to count, nineteenth-century New Orleans was shaped by its racial dynamics. An equally important preoccupation can be seen in the tensions that developed elsewhere in the city’s diverse population — the strife that often bubbled up between the city’s founding Creoles, the Americans who arrived in the early nineteenth century, and the immigrant peoples — Irish, German, Italian — who arrived at various intervals thereafter. No less invigorating was the persistent dialogue between native New Orleanians — of every stripe — and the innumerable visitors who descended on the city throughout the period. However insular it might seem at times, the presence and opinion of outsiders has never been incidental in New Orleans, and travel accounts helped shape the city from the very start. Little wonder, then, that so many people described nineteenth-century New Orleans as a cacophonous Babel. For some, it was more akin to Sodom: a reputation for illicit pleasure and immorality developed early and stayed with the city throughout the century — though, as Jelly Roll Morton put it, in New Orleans, “Fun” has always been “a money-making word.”17 In their own way, each of these persistent tropes contributed to the equally tenacious sense that New Orleans was intrinsically, genetically, different from other cities. In 1833, Scottish traveler James Edward Alexander declared in no uncertain terms, “let no one judge of America from New Orleans, for it is altogether sui generis.”18 At the end of the nineteenth century, Julian Ralph was equally adamant that New Orleanians “are not like the rest of us.”19 As Anthony Stanonis notes, that abiding sense of otherness remained with the city until Katrina and its aftermath revealed just how like the rest of us New Orleanians really are: “Only after several days did the nation awaken to the extent of the crisis [. . .] How could anything serious happen in New Orleans? How important, after all, is a tourist town?”20 At the time of writing, the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is days away. It is clear that the new New Orleans, still taking shape, will inevitably be different from the city that died in August 2005. For many reasons — above all, the diaspora of New Orleanians that will never be fully reversed — this is reason for sadness. That there have been profound problems with the rebuilding effort is clear for all to see. That those problems have been unfairly spread is equally evident. Just before the fifth anniversary of Katrina, a federal judge decided “the Louisiana Road Home program’s method of calculating grants discriminates against black homeowners.”21 Tourists, though they still arrive in their millions, do not come to New Orleans in the same numbers as they did before Katrina. But there is also cause for optimism. The New Orleans

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Index at Five, produced jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, found that the city has bounced back to roughly 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population, its economy is starting to diversify, and poverty levels are falling. Just as significantly, the report notes the “new spirit of reform and enhanced self-reliance in the city that have been borne out of these crises.”22 In that vein, the city has witnessed significant, and hopefully lasting, improvements in the provision of education, health care, and justice. When New Orleans sought to rebuild itself after the cataclysm of the American Civil War, it did so in a culture of oppression, division, and violence, making wounds in civil life that are still discernible. Now, more than ever, the city is clinging tight to many of its traditions — traditions, frequently, that were forged in the nineteenth century. Mardi Gras, brass bands, second lines, and other loci for community organization and participation have taken on a renewed significance. At this crucial juncture, looking backwards to the nineteenth century can help with the necessary process of remembering and forgetting. Going forward, it can help to protect those unique aspects of life and culture in New Orleans, detailed in this book, that have helped make it a city without compare. But, equally, understanding the past might help the city finally escape from some of its less benign traditions — the corrosive social and economic patterns that were also established in the nineteenth century, and which, too, can be found in abundance in the pages that follow.

“THIS FAMOUS CITY OF NOUVELLE ORLEANS” In order to understand the developing fortunes of New Orleans as it entered the nineteenth century it is necessary to have a sense of the colonial city that formed — and still forms — its physical and social footprint. After all, in 1800 the city was a story in medias res: in the 80 years following its foundation in 1718 it served a variety of masters. Buffeted by the winds of geopolitical conflict almost as regularly as it was battered by the periodic hurricanes that blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, nascent New Orleans was, in many respects, a relatively minor piece of an ever-shifting colonial puzzle. It developed, however, its own distinctive local culture, and even a degree of the notoriety that would become its trademark in the coming decades. At the moment of its foundation, New Orleans was part of France’s plans for a New World empire that would stretch from Canada, down the Mississippi, and across the Gulf of Mexico into the Caribbean. The territory of Louisiana, incorporating the drainage basin of the Mississippi Valley, had been claimed for France by the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, following his pioneering voyage down the Mississippi in 1682. At first, colonization efforts in Louisiana were slow and haphazard. As Shannon Lee Dawdy describes, until well into the eighteenth century “the colony continued to be little more than a small outpost in search of a decent mooring.”23 New Orleans, in its own way, would provide that mooring. As Peirce Lewis puts it, “it is obvious that there had to be a city at the mouth of the Mississippi River [. . .] The situation guaranteed prosperity.” But the

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necessity of its location did not come without problems, since it also “guaranteed that the city would be plagued by incessant trouble: yellow fever, floods, and unbearable summer heat.”24 The city, after all, was surrounded by water, from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, and much of its site was below sea level. But as Tristram Kidder has highlighted, the exact spot chosen for New Orleans by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville was not random; it was already a work in progress: “[N]ative peoples played a vital part in shaping the local ecology of what would become New Orleans, providing added incentive for colonizing this specific location [. . .] The geographic knowledge of the existing inhabitants of the region was transmitted to the colonists who were quick to absorb the lesson of their native tutors.”25 New Orleans would have a small but significant population of Native Americans, particularly Choctaws, well into the nineteenth century. The city drew much of its early — and, in many ways, abiding — character from the particular context of its foundation. The still familiar street plan of the French Quarter began to be carved out of a bend in the Mississippi at a significant moment in the history of France. Louis XIV had died in 1715, when his great-grandson Louis XV was only five years old. Until 1723, therefore, his granduncle the Duc d’Orléans — for whom New Orleans would be named — served as regent. He formed a close bond with the Scottish economist (and gambler) John Law. After convincing the duke to introduce paper currency to France and creating the first French national bank, Law turned his attention to Louisiana, where he felt there was money to be made. As John Clark describes, “Law recognized an economic potential in Louisiana that required the channeling of much material into the colony.”26 To that end, he formed the Mississippi Company in 1717, an entity that was to have “the exclusive privilege of trading to the great river Mississippi and the province of Louisiana.”27 Wildly exaggerating the colony’s potential for wealth generation, Law began issuing stock in his company. Speculation in France became frantic, forming an extraordinary financial bubble that would soon burst disastrously, ruining many. A bemused and amused Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, arriving in what he described as “this famous city of Nouvelle Orleans” in 1722, compared “the eight hundred fine houses and the five parishes” conjured up by Law’s advertisements in the French newspapers with the “hundred barracks, placed in no very good order” that actually existed on the ground.28 But while Law’s bubble lasted it brought about the establishment and early development of New Orleans. The city was made colonial capital in 1722. Law drove colonization to Louisiana through a number of mechanisms, pushing and pulling people to the New World in relatively large numbers (roughly 7,000 from Europe) to try to support his financial schemes. Not all went willingly: as Albert Phelps describes, “the government went boldly to the task of ransacking the jails and hospitals. Disorderly soldiers, black sheep of distinguished families, paupers, prostitutes, political suspects, friendless strangers, unsophisticated peasants [. . .] all were kidnapped, herded, and shipped under guard to fill the emptiness of Louisiana.”29 So, too, were the slaves who started to arrive in New Orleans in large numbers: “The company [. . .] carried nineteen hundred African slaves before the bubble burst [. . .] and was to bring in roughly thirty-five hundred more before its exclusive tenure ended a decade

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later.”30 From the start, New Orleans was a city that was as black as it was white. So, many came — but many died. Louisiana had a fearful attrition rate for its colonists. Tainted by the circumstances of its birth, New Orleans gained an indelible reputation as a place of death and corruption. As Shannon Lee Dawdy describes, “[w]ithin ten years of its founding, New Orleans began to appear in literary descriptions as a dark, primitive, and abandoned place, governed by immoral pleasures rather than by rationality and law.”31 Not all was degeneracy: in 1727, a party of 12 Ursuline nuns arrived in the colony, founding a convent which remains the oldest building in New Orleans, the only standing French construction in the French Quarter. As Emily Clark explains, the nuns “educated women and girls of European, Indian, and African descent, enslaved and free, throughout Louisiana’s colonial period.”32 But that was not the dominant story of colonial New Orleans. In 1731, Abbé Prévost enshrined the city as an equivocal place of the imagination in his popular and notorious Manon Lescaut. The novel detailed the doomed love affair between its hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and its corrupt titular heroine, who is transported to New Orleans as a prostitute. In the New World, the couple achieve a moment of happiness: “People should come to New Orleans, I often said to Manon,” declares Des Grieux, “who wish to enjoy the real rapture of love! It is here that love is divested of all selfishness, all jealousy, all inconstancy. Our countrymen come here in search of gold; they little think that we have discovered treasures of inestimably greater value.”33 But their paradise is momentary and illusory; the couple are forced to flee into the desolate wilderness of Louisiana, where Manon dies. Such visions provided a stark counterpoint to Law’s dreams of prosperity. In the wake of the collapse of Law’s Mississippi Bubble, New Orleans and its surrounding territory was not only stigmatized by its mother country but also it was neglected: “Virtually abandoned by France in 1731, Louisiana saw no significant new immigration from Europe or Africa until the beginning of Spanish rule thirty-five years later.”34 Essentially left to their own devices, the founding New Orleanians set about establishing plantations in the city’s hinterlands, concentrating their efforts on a number of key crops: “Tobacco was the most popular cash crop; indigo the most valuable; rice was the principal food staple; lumber, pitch, and tar were significant products for export.”35 The slaves who worked the plantations also attempted to forge new lives in the New World under the rule of the French Code Noir. As Thomas Ingersoll describes, they were obliged “to create a community out of the bare roots of traditional knowledge,” keeping alive, at least, elements of African music and religion.36 On the one hand, they “undoubtedly achieved a greater measure of social stability in their quarters than the slaves in, say, South Carolina, because the African slave trade to Louisiana all but ceased in 1733.”37 On the other, at least in the early years of the colony, slaves repeatedly attempted to escape their bondage, planning rebellions or running away. It would be a mistake, however, to think of the black and white worlds of French colonial Louisiana as entirely separate: in the words of Caryn Bell, “[b]y the middle of the eighteenth century, interracial liaisons were commonplace.”38 At the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Louisiana experienced one of its periodic convulsions. Ownership of the colony was transferred from France to

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Spain. At first, used to relative independence, New Orleanians bristled at the idea of receiving new Spanish overlords. In open insurrection, they expelled the first administrator sent to govern them. Then, in 1769, the Irish-born general Alejandro O’Reilly arrived in town, fresh from Havana, with a sizable military force. He swiftly executed six prominent New Orleans rebels, and firmly established Spanish rule. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, the change of management turned out to give a new impetus to city life. Indeed, in Ned Sublette’s words, “[i]t was during Louisiana’s time as a Spanish colony that New Orleans became a city.”39 This was true in concrete terms: after devastating fires in 1788 and 1794, New Orleans required extensive rebuilding. As James Pitot explained in 1802, before then it had been “a town largely of frame construction [. . .] but experience and more prosperous circumstances led to the replacement of the traces of the 1794 conflagration with brick buildings.”40 The city that emerged from this destruction still forms the core of today’s French Quarter. But there were other, equally significant, changes that swept through New Orleans in its Spanish period. The foundations of the colony’s economy were transformed: the cultivation of tobacco and indigo were replaced by cotton and sugar, both of which required an influx of slaves. That, too, the Spanish were able to supply, since they reopened the African slave trade into Louisiana. For that and other reasons Spanish rule was a mixed blessing for black Louisianans. On the one hand, in Ingersoll’s words, the period of Spanish rule generally, and the development of sugar cultivation in particular, had “negative effects” for the region’s slaves: “[I]t is reasonable to conjecture that the effect of the great influx of African slaves was an increase in both the inclination of the white minority to intimidate blacks into submission and to have less care for their well-being when they could by easily replaced in the marketplace.”41 But on the other hand, Spanish slave laws were more liberal than the French in one significant regard: they allowed slaves the right to purchase their freedom. The city’s demographics were transformed. Free people of color grew from 3.1 percent of the population in 1771 to 19 percent in 1805.42 As Kimberly Hanger highlights, it was during the period of Spanish colonial rule “that the libre population grew to assume the ‘critical mass’ needed to establish a distinct sense of identity.”43 Frequently, they became established as skilled artisans, and even formed a prominent part of the city’s militia. Their increased presence in city life confirmed its characteristic tripartite social structure: white Louisianans, free people of color, and slaves each forged their own distinctive cultural traditions which, though distinct, inevitably and indelibly butted up against one another. Despite a growth in prosperity, events beyond the city’s provincial boundaries could still have far-reaching consequences for life in New Orleans. In 1789, the French Revolution sent shockwaves around the globe. In 1791, the slave rebellion in the wealthy French colony of Saint-Domingue was no less epochal. Both events had an effect on life in New Orleans. The former was marked by the rise of a Jacobin spirit in Louisiana that alarmed the Spanish authorities. The latter had more concrete ramifications. Most of the displaced French colonists from SaintDomingue decamped to Cuba, but a significant number of refugees made their way to Louisiana, even though Spanish authorities forbade the importation of

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their potentially troublesome slaves. Events in the Caribbean also brought other, more profound, changes to the city. For one, they stimulated the local economy, pushing the move towards sugar production. The rich Saint-Dominguans’ loss was Louisiana’s gain: as Lachance notes, sugar’s “high price on the international market” was largely “due to the decline in exports from Saint-Domingue during the revolution.”44 And yet, the example of Saint-Domingue also served to destabilize the institution of slavery in Louisiana. If rebellion had happened there, Louisiana slaveholders felt, it could also happen here. For a time, it looked more than likely: “[T]he abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1793, confirmed by the French Convention and extended to all French colonies in 1794, inspired several rebellions by Louisiana slaves in the 1790s.”45 Most revealing was the abortive slave uprising that took place on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe Coupee. An event that was inspired by both the French and Saint-Dominguan revolutions, it included, as Gwendolyn Hall highlights, “slaves of all colors and nations, free people of African descent, and poor whites”; once uncovered, it was met with swift and savage reprisals.46 And then, of course, there was the other vital ingredient in the makeup of New Orleans as it stood poised on the verge of a new century: Americans. In the wake of the American War of Independence, American settlers started to flood into the frontier, blazing trails into Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio Territory. Access to New Orleans was going to be vital to their future fortunes. Transportation of their produce back East across the Appalachians was an impossibility; instead, they would need to float their goods down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to market in New Orleans. At the same time, Spanish authorities viewed the prospect of an invasion of American frontiersmen with horror. They closed the Mississippi and the city to all non-Spanish river traffic in 1784. Tensions in the interior threatened to boil over. Robbed of their only access to market, American settlers protested loudly. There was talk of war; secret plots aimed at wresting Louisiana from Spain — French, British, American — seemed to proliferate. Wrote one anonymous inhabitant of Louisville, as early as 1786: We can raise twenty thousand troops this side the Alleghany and Appalachian mountains [. . .] Preparations are now making here (if necessary) to drive the Spaniards from their settlements at the mouth of the Mississippi. In case we are not countenanced and succored by the United States (if we need it) our allegiance will be thrown off, and some other power applied to.47

It wasn’t until Pinckney’s Treaty in 1795 that the Spanish restrictions were finally removed. In truth, even before the official embargo was lifted, some produce made its way to market in New Orleans; as Bruce Tyler notes, “there was a good deal of smuggling and indirect trade.”48 After 1795, a vibrant culture of legitimate river trade developed, complete with its own distinctive features that had a concomitant effect on city life. From across the early West, farmers entrusted their produce to the western river system. In 1799, Isaac Weld succinctly described the way the trade worked:

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From Pittsburgh to New Orleans the distance is two thousand one hundred and eightythree miles. On an average it takes about twenty-eight days to go down there with the stream; but to return by water it takes from sixty days to three months. The passage back is very laborious as well as tedious; on which account they seldom think of bringing back boats which are sent down from Pittsburgh, but on arriving at New Orleans they are broken up and the plank sold. These boats are built on the cheapest construction, and expressly for the purpose of going down stream. The men get back the best way they can.49

Explorer André Michaux described what it was that they shipped: “Grain, hams, and bacon, are the principal articles which are sent to New Orleans [. . .] Bar-iron, coarse linen cloths, bottles made at Pittsburgh, brandy, whiskey, and butter in casks, are also exported for the consumption of Louisiana.”50 It was, evidently, difficult work. The journey downriver had its own difficulties and dangers. As early as 1801 in Pittsburgh, Zadok Cramer produced the first of many editions of his The Navigator, a book intended to help boatmen from all points of the western river system make their way to New Orleans. He offered the traveler guidance at every part of the “irksome passage of between five and six weeks” until, as Cramer put it, “at the grand mart of business, the Alexandria of America, he leaps upon shore with ecstacy.”51 Perhaps unsurprisingly, American boatmen soon gained a bad reputation in New Orleans for the exuberant celebrations that marked the conclusion of a successful voyage. Their journey home was no less epic. Alexander Wilson, traveling out of Nashville along the Natchez Trace, the great boatman’s highway, “met several parties of boatmen returning from [. . .] New-Orleans; who gave me such an account of the road, and the difficulties they had met with, as served to stiffen my resolution to be prepared for every thing.” For Wilson, the men were an extraordinary sight: “[A]s dirty as Hottentots; their dress a shirt and trowsers of canvass, black, greasy, and sometimes in tatters; the skin burnt wherever exposed to the sun [. . .] their beards, eighteen days old, added to the singularity of their appearance, which was altogether savage.” The nature of their journey was just as incredible: “Some had upwards of eight hundred miles to travel.”52 And, most importantly, their numbers were plentiful: “On an average I met from forty to sixty boatmen every day returning from [. . .] New Orleans.”53 The pieces were in place; the nineteenth century beckoned. For New Orleans, the Southern Queen, it would be a memorable hundred years.

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“A very difficult people to manage”: The Battles for New Orleans LOUISIANA, an immense country, along the banks of the Mississippi, the limits of which are undetermined. The only place of note is the small town New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi. ALEXANDER ADAM1

Had Orleans fallen — alas! what woe had been, Had Orleans fallen — how many a horrid scene. The enemy talk’d of plunder — wealth and spoil, Of beauty’s charms to recompense their toil [. . .] But oh! what words can speak, what tongue can tell, The sweet sensation you remember well, When from the south the joyful tidings came, Of JACKSON’s vict’ry — JACKSON great in fame. THOMAS KENNEDY 2

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, New Orleans was a small colonial backwater that was also one of the most coveted spots on the globe. Already a place unlike any other in the continental United States, the city was a vital lynchpin around which a variety of forces circulated. At heart, as Malcolm Rohrbough put it, New Orleans in 1800 “was a potpourri of peoples on the trans-Appalachian frontier, brought together in the search for wealth through trade.”3 Though still under Spanish control at the beginning of the century, New Orleans looked a tantalizing — and eminently snatchable — prospect for a variety of nations. France, Britain, and America all looked greedily at the place that was already seen as the key to the interior of the continent. Soon enough, New Orleans would be under new ownership. But the turbulence that the city experienced in the early years of the nineteenth century — driven by internal and external tensions — would reverberate for some time. As New Orleans entered the nineteenth century, travel writers helped to fuel a new fascination with the city, both revealing and reinforcing their separate nations’ imperial desires for the place. American commentators weren’t shy about expressing their profound interest in the city. As early as 1778, American explorer Jonathan Carver evangelized that settlers along the Mississippi “will find the country towards the south almost spontaneously producing silk, cotton, indigo, and tobacco.” Even better, the river presented itself as a natural highway: “These articles [. . .] may be transported to the Ocean through this river.” The only problem, of course, was that the Spanish were “in possession of the mouth

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of it,” and thus “may obstruct the passage of it, and greatly dishearten those who make the first attempts” at shipping goods down the river. But that could only be a temporary situation, even though its solution would come at a certain price: “[W]hen the advantages that will certainly arise to settlers are known, multitudes of adventurers, allured by the prospect of such abundant riches, will flock to it, and establish themselves, though at the expense of rivers of blood.”4 Less ominous, though no less telling, was the 1799 description of the city by a traveler who had voyaged down the western waters from Pittsburgh. The account pictured a Sunday afternoon in New Orleans that was marked by its cosmopolitan vibrancy: [T]he stalls in the streets covered with merchandize, the mechanicks engaged at their work [. . .] vast numbers of negro slaves, men, women, and children, assembled together on the levee, drumming, fifing, and dancing [. . .] gentlemen playing at billiards [. . .] an Indian encampment of the Choctaw nation [. . .] We traversed round the whole city, which afforded me much amusement.5

At the same moment, Andrew Ellicott, an American surveyor attempting to determine the boundary between the United States and Spanish-controlled territories in the late eighteenth century, was also adamant that “New Orleans has now become a place of very considerable importance, both on account of its population and commerce, and some gentlemen of respectable talents are looking forward with pleasure to a period, which they conceive not distant, when it will be annexed to the United States.” As Ellicott put it, “No place upon this continent, and perhaps in the world, can command the trade of an equal extent of fertile country as that of New Orleans; and as that vast country increases in population, so must that city in magnitude, wealth and commerce.” However, Ellicott himself could not “see any advantage we could derive from the possession of it at present [. . .] The United States are already in a great degree possessed of its commerce, and draw from it annually a very large sum in specie, and that probably, with much more ease than if it was in our possession.” But he also made it clear that this was only the case “while it is in the possession of his Catholic Majesty.” If it should end up in the hands of any other “power in Europe,” Ellicott judged, “I should think it our interest to possess it.”6 While Americans looked longingly at the growing city at the end of one of their most significant commercial arteries, British observers were no less avaricious. In town in 1797, English astronomer Francis Baily was disapproving of the city’s morality. “Scarcely had the priest pronounced his benediction,” he complained, “ere the violin or the fife struck up at the door, and the lower classes of the people indulged themselves in the gaiety and mirth of juvenile diversions. Singing, dancing, and all kinds of sports were seen in every street; and in the evening the play-house and assembly-room were thrown open, to crown this scene of dissipation.” He was equally critical that the inhabitants seemed to demonstrate an “unconquerable disposition towards indolence and a love of ease, united to its never-failing attendant, — slavery.” But he, too, was convinced of the city’s political and economic desirability, and went as far as making detailed “observations on the fortifications of this place [. . .] at the extreme hazard of my person.” Having

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documented the various redoubts and counted the cannons, Baily’s conclusion was clear: “Upon the whole, I think this a place which might easily be taken [. . .] I would recommend the landing of a body of men under cover of the night on the open levée, or marching them round to the back of the town, (which is quite defenceless,) to carry the place by assault.” Not only would either of these plans “have the desired effect” but also they would be welcomed, since the inhabitants “are heartily tired of the Spanish yoke” and would welcome “the Americans or British.”7 American and British concerns aside, perhaps the most keenly interested travelers to reach the city at this point were the French. Their desire to reclaim New Orleans and its territories was immediately evident. As Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières proclaimed imperiously, “Nous allons rentrer en possession de la Louisiane” — We will reclaim possession of Louisiana.8 James Pitot complained, significantly, “The errors of the Spanish government are those that perpetuate the mediocrity of a country [. . .] Such an administration restrains commerce, restricts populations, and does not encourage agriculture.”9 And the Duke De La Rochefoucault-Liancourt declared enthusiastically, and tellingly, “The commercial advantages, which Louisiana holds out to an active and intelligent nation, are uncommonly great.” Working Louisiana into a vision of a resurgent French empire, he embellished his assertion: “The depôt to be formed at New Orleans of all these products of the western states of America would necessarily secure the supply to the islands; and the barter carried on with these states, which should furnish themselves with European goods at New Orleans, would form a political connexion, which no nation, to which Louisiana belonged, ought to neglect.” There would be other tactical benefits: “[T]he possession of Louisiana by the French would set bounds to the childish avarice of the Americans, who wish to grasp at every thing.” “France, therefore,” he concluded, “is in the most favourable situation of any country in the world, to obtain Louisiana from Spain.”10 In 1800, they, and many other French commentators, got their wish: in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, Napoleon convinced Spain to retrocede possession of Louisiana to France, not least because, as Jon Kukla describes, “France could do a better job of defending Louisiana from the United States or Great Britain than could Spain.”11 New Orleans was, once again, a French city (even though for the time being it would remain under the day-to-day control of the Spanish authorities). But it is important to note that Napoleon’s desire for Louisiana, as Peter Kastor highlights, was less to do with its own potential than its value as part of a clear imperial plan that would bind New Orleans to France’s other New World holdings: “[H]e knew that Louisiana had been an unprofitable colony — but he believed it would provide vital raw materials and foodstuffs to France’s immensely lucrative holdings in the Caribbean” — namely, Saint-Domingue, which Napoleon also planned to recover from the slave rebels.12 Such sudden shifts of ownership were nothing new in Louisiana’s turbulent history. This time, however, it would set off a chain of events that would bring the issue of its ownership to a head. But, before then, there was still time for the city to sit for another portrait. This one, however, was less than flattering. Pierre-Louis Berquin-Duvallon arrived in the city in 1802 as an exile from the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue. Embittered

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by what he considered to be “the hideous [. . .] proceedings of the Louisianans towards the unfortunate colonists of St. Domingo” — namely, their refusal to admit Saint-Dominguan slaves — he snobbishly scorned Louisiana and its inhabitants.13 According to his American translator, his account of the city “acquired great notoriety at Paris.”14 Little wonder: Berquin-Duvallon had little that was pleasant to say about a place which, he felt, “deserves rather the name of a great straggling town, than of a city; though even to merit that title, it would be required to be longer.” Ferociously prejudicial, his comments nonetheless give a pungent sense of the city as it entered the nineteenth century. He complained about the proliferation of wooden houses. He lamented the condition of the streets: “[D]uring a great part of the year, they are a common sewer; a sink of nastiness, dirt, and corruption.” He mocked the city’s carnival balls: “[T]he ensemble is so wretched, that every emulation of embellishment would be ridiculous.” He felt that Fort St. Charles “would provoke the risibility of an engineer.”15 The people fared little better. In his judgment, “The society of New-Orleans is not desirable.” For Berquin-Duvallon, the city lacked “delicacy”: “All is grossness, and noise, and uproar. Wine, not conversation is sought.” Lying was endemic: “No people in the world have such a tendency to hyperbolic amplification.” There was no concern for education, merely profit: “A librarian would starve in the midst of his books, unless he could teach his reader the art of doubling his capital at the end of the year.” The inhabitants were, he felt, “devoid of moral energy.” But then, none of this was really surprising, since their ancestors were “all of base extraction [. . .] illiterate, ignorant and rude.” “In fact,” he asserted, “the mind can, I think, scarcely image to itself a more disagreeable place on the face of the whole globe; it is disgusting in whatever point of view it be contemplated, both as a whole, separately, and the wild, brutish aspects of its suburbs.” And yet, he marveled, “it is the only town in the whole colony, and, in the ardour of admiration, it is called by the inhabitants the capital, the city!” But still, cutting through even BerquinDuvallon’s prejudices, was one salient fact: “It must however be acknowledged that New-Orleans is destined by nature to become one of the principal cities of North America, and perhaps the most important place of commerce in the new world.” And, too, there was something to be said for its cosmopolitan population: “[T]here is, perhaps, no place in the globe, where the human species may be seen in greater diversity than at New-Orleans, in the months of January, February and March; it is then interest assembles this motley crew in the city.” Even BerquinDuvallon could not deny the sense of excitement, of potential, embodied in this ramshackle colonial town.16

“INFINITE SPACE” When news of the restoration of Louisiana to the French became common knowledge, it caused consternation throughout America. In April 1802, Thomas Jefferson warned his friend Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours ominously, “[T]his little event, of France’s possessing herself of Louisiana [. . .] is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic, and

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involve in its effect their highest destinies.”17 Then, in October 1802, the situation worsened: the Spanish authorities who were still officially in charge of the city decided to once again suspend the American right of deposit at New Orleans, closing the city to American trade. Panic ensued. The Monthly Magazine reported, “Anglo-Americans behold with alarm the cession of Louisiana to France, and the exclusion, at the same time, of their ships trading on the Mississippi from the benefits of a free port at New Orleans.”18 A concerned William Claiborne, then governor of the Mississippi territory, asserted, “This late act of the Spanish government at New Orleans has excited considerable agitation.”19 The most pressing fears of the West had been realized. What was to be done? The renewed clamor for war was profound. Gothic novelist Charles Brockden Brown, despairing that “New-Orleans is shut against us,” urged immediate, decisive action from Thomas Jefferson to rectify that situation: The merchant, the artizan, the planter, comprehend with equal clearness, in what manner, and to what extent, the obstruction of the river will affect their private interests. They are eager to act in this cause, for the same reasons which would prompt them to act against the midnight robber. They lay their hands already on their musquets, and look with one accord, to the general government for orders to march.20

The Kentucky House of Representatives agreed, and felt the matter important enough to “pledge ourselves to support, at the expense of our lives and fortunes, such measures as the honour and integrity of the United States may require.”21 Senator James Ross declared that the right of deposit “would never be secure, while the mouth of the Mississippi was exclusively in the hands of the Spaniards.” And so, he asked, “[w]hy not expel the wrongdoers? [. . .] Plant yourselves on the river, fortify the banks, invite those who have an interest at stake to defend it [. . .] and leave the event to him who controls the fate of nations.”22 Little wonder that, by March 1803, Cobbett’s Register could note with some surprise, “New Orleans has not been attacked, as some persons expected it would, by the western settlers, who, though their flour has fallen in value from five dollars and a half per barrel to one dollar per barrel, are patiently waiting.”23 While the rest of America was waiting, patiently and otherwise, Jefferson was taking measures to find a solution to the New Orleans problem that would avoid war. He dispatched Robert Livingston to Paris in order to lead negotiations with France. In April 1802, even before Spanish authorities removed the right of deposit, Jefferson wrote to his minister with a clear and pressing message: There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three eights of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants.

While “Spain might have retained it quietly for years,” France’s reclamation of the territory “assumes to us the attitude of defiance.“Indeed, in Jefferson’s judgment,

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French possession of New Orleans would “render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends.” The political consequences would be severe: “From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation [. . .] This is not a state of things we desire.” As a result, Jefferson was at pains to remind Livingston of the importance of his negotiations: “Every eye in the United States is now fixed on the affairs of Louisiana.”24 He was also formulating a plan. As Kukla highlights, “without mentioning the idea anywhere in his letter to Livingston,” Jefferson had “a tentative idea”: “[P]erhaps the United States could buy New Orleans.”25 And he was not the only one: on Christmas Day 1802, Thomas Paine wrote to Jefferson informing him, “The french treasury is not only empty, but the Government has consumed by anticipation a great part of the next year’s revenue.” “Suppose then,” he suggested, “the Government begin by making a proposal to france to repurchase the cession, made to her by Spain, of Louisiana.”26 And so they did. If nothing else, the initial American plan to purchase New Orleans, leaving the rest of France’s Louisiana empire intact, highlights the city’s central significance at this junction. At first, the plan fell on deaf ears; war still seemed likely. Writing to James Monroe in January 1803, when he was appointed as “minister extraordinary [. . .] with discretionary powers” to help Livingston push negotiations forward, Jefferson reasserted the urgency of their task: “The agitation of the public mind on occasion of the late suspension of our right of deposite at New Orleans is extreme.” And he also made clear the consequence of failure: “If we cannot by a purchase of the country, insure to ourselves a course of perpetual peace [. . .] war cannot be distant.”27 But then, once again, events in Saint-Domingue altered irrevocably the destiny of Louisiana. As Paul Lachance outlines, “Napoleon would never have sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803 if he had succeeded in reimposing French rule over Saint-Domingue.”28 But by April 1803 it had become clear that the large military expedition that he had sent to reclaim Saint-Domingue in 1802, lead by his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, had failed, broken by disease and sustained rebel resistance. The independence of Saint-Domingue, now called Haiti, would be proclaimed at the beginning of 1804. As Kastor concludes, “without SaintDomingue, there was no reason to keep Louisiana.”29 One of Napoleon’s ministers argued strenuously against this logic, demonstrating a profound understanding of what the city signified: “There does not exist on the globe a single port, a single city susceptible of becoming as important as New Orleans, and the neighbourhood of the American states already makes it one of the most commercial in the world [. . .] If we must abandon St. Domingo, Louisiana will take its place.” Even so, Napoleon had made up his mind: “I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without reservation [. . .] I renounce it with the greatest regret.” Other needs were more pressing: “I require money,” Napoleon declared, “to make war on the richest nation of the world.”30 Fighting the British was more important than possession of a colony that had never, yet, amounted to much. Napoleon agreed to sell. All that remained was to come to terms. By the end of June the news was out: American had purchased Louisiana from France at the

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cost of roughly 80 million francs, somewhere in the order of 15 million dollars. New Orleans was now, in name at least, an American city. Celebrations began in time for Independence Day. As the Annual Register rightly judged, it had been a close call: “Had Bonaparte completely succeeded in St. Domingo, then the armaments he would have constantly kept up in that island and Louisiana, would have protected New Orleans for ever against any American force.” At the same time, it asserted that the success of the Louisiana Purchase “will hence-forward be deemed to have marked the most important epoch of American independency.”31 In some quarters, reaction was mixed. Federalist Fisher Ames noted the regional variation: “The merchants at the southward look with eyes of favor to the opening of the port of New Orleans. The western settlers also like the thing, and care not [. . .] how many millions it costs.” But in New England, news of the purchase had not “gained applause.” As Ames himself famously lamented, “Now [. . .] we rush like a comet into infinite space. In our wild career, we may jostle some other world out of it orbit, but we shall, in every event, quench the light of our own.”32 In the West, at least, there were no such misgivings — and few were more exhortatory about the safeguarding of New Orleans than Zadok Cramer: What a reverse in the situation of a trader, since the banks of the Mississippi have become the soil of the United States — since a governour of a republican people has been happily placed in the chair of not only one but many tyrants — since in fact he trafficks with those to whom he looks up as friends, instead of those whose every glance was dire jealousy and suspicion [. . .] What a reverse in the situation of you, western Americans! What a conquest gained! a conquest equal to a second revolution!33

The formal proceedings of the handover took a little time to effect. Not until November 1803 did Pierre Clément de Laussat finally take possession of Louisiana for France, knowing full well that he would soon be passing it on again to the Americans. He reassured the citizens about their fate: You will be incorporated with a nation already numerous and powerful, renowned besides for its industry, its patriotism, and the degree of civilization and knowledge it possesses, and which by its rapid progress seems destined to the most brilliant rank that a people ever enjoyed on the face of the earth.

As for the material well-being of New Orleans and its inhabitants, of that Laussat had no doubts: [Y]our country will become an immense warehouse, or place of deposit, affording you countless profits. The Nile of America, the Mississippi, which flows, not through parched deserts of sand, but through the most extensive and the most fertile plains of the new world, will soon see its bosom darkened with a thousand ships belonging to all the nations of the earth, and mooring at the quays of another Alexandria.34

William Claiborne — appointed governor of the Territory of Orleans, as Louisiana would now be known — accompanied by General James Wilkinson and a troop

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of soldiers, finally marched into town on December 20, 1803, to formally take possession of America’s new territory. It was, for some, an emotional moment. Laussat declared, “The memory of that event will never leave me.”35 French traveler C. C. Robin, in town at the time, was also moved by the prospect facing Louisianans: “I was overcome by unexpected thoughts and emotions.” Would it be possible, he wondered, to sever all attachments to a “country that I have so loved [. . .] Could I break the ties that unite it to me and all at once become indifferent, or perhaps even its enemy?” It was a question that would be asked many times in the coming years. And, clearly, it was a question that was being asked by the crowds who gathered to witness the transfer of power to the Americans. As the French flag came down and the American flag rose up, Robin recorded that “an uneasy silence reigned.” Then, “piercing ‘huzzas’ arose from a certain group of spectators who, at the same time, threw their hats into the air.” But this exuberance only served to highlight what Robin described as “the lugubriousness of the silence and immobility of the rest of the crowd. These were the French and Spanish, all heavy-hearted, mingling their sighs and tears.”36

“INCREASE” To begin with, American ownership hardly brought stability to the city. One of the immediate effects of the Louisiana Purchase for New Orleans, beyond its establishment as a secure marketplace for western produce, was an influx of newcomers. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “The rage for going to that country seems universal.”37 Governor Claiborne, sizing up the task ahead of him, made it clear that this could be a mixed blessing for the city: “Every Boat from the Western

1. John L. Boqueta de Woiseri, A View of New Orleans taken from the Plantation of Marigny (1803) — produced to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase. Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1958.42.

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Country, and every vessel from the Atlantic States, bring hither adventurers, among them, are many valuable Emigrants but there are others of desperate fortunes, and well calculated to encrease the dissipation which is fostered in New Orleans.”38 And not just dissipation. These new American arrivals brought an additional set of tensions to a city that already contained multitudes. For the existing French and Spanish inhabitants, they were not always welcome additions to city life. As George Dargo describes, “[e]thnic conflict took shape at the very start of American rule in Louisiana”; a “Kulturkampf between the ancienne population and the Anglo-Americans” was initiated almost immediately.39 In Joseph Tregle’s terms, the new arrivals were “derived from a democratic republic, children of English common law and the language of Shakespeare, heirs of the Protestant Reformation. In almost every conceivable way they represented a tradition utterly unknown to the indigenous population.”40 A growing realization of these stresses is evident in Claiborne’s letters to James Madison. On January 2, 1804, he assured the secretary of state, “The tranquility in which I found this Province is uninterrupted, and every appearance promises a continuation of it.” Just over a week later, on January 10, he was telling a different story: “The harmony of Society here has experienced some interruptions.” He was less certain, too, about the loyalty of some of America’s new citizens: “I have discovered with regret that a strong partiality for the French Government still exists among many of the inhabitants [. . .] I have learned that in some circles a Sentiment is cherished, that at the close of the War between England and France, the great Buonaparte will again raise his standard in this country.”41 Tensions among different factions made themselves evident, as they often do, during carnival season, even then a compelling microcosm of city life: “A Fracas also took place at a Public Ball, on Thursday last, which altho’ it arose from trifling causes, has occasioned some warmth. It originated in a contest between some young Americans and Frenchmen, whether the American or French Dances should have a preference.” By January 31 the picture was no rosier: “I am sorry to inform you that a few of the French Officers and Citizens who are here, continue to evidence a disorderly disposition; they are mortified at the loss of this delightful Country and seem to foster great hatred to the Americans who are here.” By February 4 Claiborne was moved to describe New Orleans as “somewhat insecure,” filled with a combustible mixture of people and amply supplied with the “materials for a mob.” “There are in this Port,” he explained to Madison, “American, French and Spanish Sailors, among whom their exists no cordiality. We have also, American, French, and Spanish Officers and Soldiers who possess a great Share of National Pride, and whose jealousies and resentments might easily be excited.” Though Claiborne remained committed to “justice” and “Moderation” — “in a word the Principles of the American Government” — some of his fellow Americans were encouraging him “to suppress by the force of Terror even a tumultuous thought.”42 In recompense for the developing animosity between American arrivistes and established Creoles, this was a period of expansion for New Orleans, commercial and physical. In turn, taking stock of America’s new possession became a preoccupation; fresh accounts of the city proliferated and circulated widely,

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embellishing some myths about the city and inventing others. In the main, they did little to paper over the cracks that were opening up in New Orleans society. In particular, post-Purchase accounts of the city and its pre-Purchase inhabitants emphasized the difference between Americans and Creoles, and dwelt heavily on the apparently exotic aspects of life in New Orleans, establishing themes that would extend throughout the century. Prudish Protestants rushed to condemn what they felt to be an unacceptable degree of moral laxity in their new Catholic countrymen. In this regard, Thomas Ashe’s account of the city, published in 1808, was particularly influential. Even in his own time, as Otto Rothert describes, Ashe was pronounced to be “a literary thief ” and his work was “ridiculed [. . .] on the ground that it was filled with incredible stories grafted onto authentic incidents and actual facts.” Certainly, his account of New Orleans contained numerous exaggerations. Nevertheless, the “general condemnation” that met Ashe’s book also ensured it “a wide circulation for a few years.”43 His description of the city was largely complimentary: “I have every reason to believe that it will rival every other in America, in wealth, power, and prosperity” — even “in spite of the diseases by which it is periodically ravaged.”44 He attempted to outline the clear differences that he felt existed in the city between American and Creole. According to Ashe, they differed in their business activities: “The influx of American speculators was so great in the first instance, that the character of commerce instantaneously changed, and violence and competition, which in America means contention, reigned triumphantly.”45 And they also differed in their attitudes to leisure: “The Americans, since their arrival here, have been so occupied by politics and legislation, that their minds have never been sufficiently unbent to form a course of pleasures for themselves; therefore the indulgence of the table, cards and billiards, are the principal fountain of the enjoyments of the men.” The “French gentlemen,” however, diverted themselves with “pleasures [. . .] ever varied, and of a nature to be participated by the most delicate of the female sex.” And even “some old Spanish recreations” were discernible: “I have more than once heard the guitar under the windows of a sleeping beauty.”46 While such accounts of city life were relatively standard, Ashe then pushed the reputation of New Orleans as a city of pleasure to extraordinary lengths. He described, in detail, the process by which “ladies of colour” became “mistresses of the Whites”: The Levée, at sun-set, is the principal market for all this traffic de coeur. There all the beauties assemble, and there all those who need the kind companion, joyfully repair: all walk up and down for a considerable time, or sit under orange-trees occasionally, with the objects of their separate choice [. . .] The mothers always regulate the terms and make the bargain. The terms allowed the parents are generally fifty dollars a month; during which time the lover has the exclusive right to the house, where fruit, coffee, and refreshments may at any time be had, or where he may entirely live with the utmost safety and tranquility. Many do live in this manner, notwithstanding which, I have never heard a complaint against these interesting females.47

Such stories went a long way to establishing New Orleans’ reputation as an apparently irredeemable city of sin that was further marked out by its complicated racial

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dynamics. Ashe’s account of the city’s love practices was, for example, reprinted without comment in Theophilus Moore’s book of Marriage Customs and Modes of Courtship of the Various Nations of the Universe (1820).48 Certainly, Amos Stoddard’s account of the city seems to have taken inspiration from Ashe. Taking stock of Louisiana in 1812, Stoddard noted that the city was “the great mart of all the wealth of the western world.”49 But he also declared, without hesitation, “The Creole French are at least a century behind other civilized nations in the arts and sciences, if not in the amenities of life.” As Stoddard saw it, this was because colonial Louisiana had been “in a manner insulated from the rest of the world; the inhabitants seldom mixed with strangers.” Yet Stoddard was also happy to admit that “some of the Creoles possess real intelligence.” And all were imbued with “native vivacity,” a trait that particularly demonstrated itself in their attachment “to the exercise of dancing.” That said, Stoddard also found them to be “temperate; they mostly limit their desires to vegetables, soups and coffee [. . .] Great economy is displayed in their family meals.” They were generous hosts: “[T]heir tables are covered with a great variety of dishes; almost every sort of food dressed in all manner of ways, is exhibited in profusion.” But they also had their faults. One was “their fondness for games of hazard.” This meant that gambling in New Orleans was “reduced to a profession, where members of the fraternity from the United States rendezvous in great numbers.” And worse were their sexual proclivities: “Most of the married men lavish their attentions on dissolute females [. . .] These, in most instances, are selected from the mixed breeds.” In a similar vein, Stoddard dwelt on the “dancing assemblies of the Quarterons, or free people of color, in New-Orleans.” Establishing another trope that would echo down the years, he noted that “the females possess the most beautiful forms and features.”50 By 1812, it is little wonder that Jedidiah Morse’s The American Universal Geography could declare unwaveringly, “New-Orleans in the licentiousness of its morals rivals the corruption of the old world.”51 When members of the Connecticut and Massachusetts missionary societies traveled to New Orleans in 1813, they “were soon acquainted with a few religious people” — though they also noted, “The number of those possessing this character, in this place, we are constrained to believe is small.”52 Thus the sense of New Orleans as an exotic other, inhabited by a strange, un-American, immoral, and irreligious people, was already well established. And in connection with its propensity for sin, the city also became famed for its susceptibility to disease. Henry Ker arrived in New Orleans in December 1808 — “after encountering many difficulties,” he complained, “on a strange river, and frequent insults from my men.” After selling his “little cargo to unexpected advantage,” Ker felt “released from a world of care and anxiety.” But the city brought its own perils. The streets emitted “a very nauseous smell.” Worse, Ker felt that “[t]he nightly air in this vicinity is very injurious and often proves fatal [. . .] a thick vapour every where prevails.” In particular, he noted that new arrivals who were “of loose habits, and inclined to dissipation” weren’t long for this world: “the scorching sun” and “the use of ardent liquors [. . .] soon sweeps them off the stage of action.” As such, the city had developed “the name of sure death.”53

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But for Ker, and for many others, none of this diminished the city’s possibilities: “Upon the whole, I conclude that the wealth of New Orleans will, in no distant time, equal that of any other American city, and that Louisiana will ultimately be the garden spot of the western continent.”54 John Melish, too, predicted that New Orleans “will increase, probably, to a greater extent than any sea-port in America.”55 Commentators could cavil about the city’s behavior, but no one could deny its value to America — or its growth. One correspondent in the American Register noted enthusiastically in 1810, “There are some very elegant buildings in the Fauxbourgs.”56 Arriving in New Orleans in 1812 after an absence of “more than four and a half years,” Vincent Nolte also noticed that “there had been a great deal of new building, and it was much improved.”57 Indeed, accommodating the city’s newcomers required fresh development outside of the old quarter — the colonial footprint that had largely contained the city during French and Spanish rule. Americans congregated in the neighborhood known as the Faubourg St. Mary, carved out of Beltram Gravier’s plantation, across Canal Street from the city’s original site. Gravier had started developing the land in the wake of the 1788 city fire, but the Louisiana Purchase gave the area a new impetus. Canal Street itself would soon come to be seen, in Samuel Wilson’s description, as something of a “neutral ground” that “separated the hostile French segment of the population in the Vieux Carré from the rapidly increasing American segment.” More pragmatically, it also became “the principal business street of the city.”58 Other areas of development sprang up: Bernard Marigny’s plantation, on the other side of the French Quarter from the Faubourg St. Mary, would soon undergo residential development, and in 1810, as Richard Campanella describes, “the Tremé plantation was subdivided for development across the old fortifications of Rampart Street, exploiting the farther reaches of the natural levee behind the French Quarter.”59 It would prove a popular neighborhood with the city’s free people of colour.

“A REVOLUTION PARTY” As the city started to expand, the tensions — and suspicions — that rippled through New Orleans society would not die down. Indeed, alongside the building work, the other thing that Vincent Nolte noticed on his return to the city was that the relationship between Creoles and Americans “had rather been impaired than improved.”60 In the decade following the American occupation of the city, New Orleans had to face a wide variety of pressing threats — internal and external — from conspirators to slave rebels to pirates. On a basic level, America had to work hard to hold on to its new possession. As James Dormon notes, this “was a period and a place chronically beset with a variety of forms of ‘rebellion’ or ‘insurrection’ or ‘revolution.’”61 Many people seemed unconvinced that the Louisiana Purchase would be the final word on the city’s destiny. Indeed, not everyone believed that the Louisiana Purchase had even occurred. As a fine example of the paranoia that filtered through city life at this moment, John Lambert was convinced that “the United States have nothing more than a sort of commercial agency at New

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Orleans; for the city does not belong to them [. . .] though the money has been paid to Buonoparte.”62 The concerns about the security of America’s possession of Louisiana reached a crisis point in 1806, and crystallized around the figure of Aaron Burr. Former vice-president Burr arrived in the West in 1805, on the run after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. His political career in ruins, he was eager for new prospects. He traveled down the Ohio and the Mississippi, visiting a variety of significant individuals (including Andrew Jackson), receiving a warm welcome wherever he traveled. Frontier Americans were excited by the arrival of such a dignitary, however tarnished, in regions where the great and the good generally feared to tread. As Buckner Melton highlights, “[n]o one there thought any less of Burr for defending his personal honor in any way that he wished, especially against a Federalist, a hated name in the Western Country.”63 Burr arrived in New Orleans in June 1805 and, as Claiborne described to Thomas Jefferson, “continued in this City ten or twelve days, and was received with polite attention.”64 His visit was probably more significant than Claiborne suggested. In Melton’s words, “he started to woo New Orleans,” attempting to involve certain individuals (not least, General James Wilkinson) in the scheme that he was currently formulating.65 Whatever he was planning, New Orleans, the lynchpin of the Mississippi Valley, was key. But what exactly were Burr’s intentions? Then, as now, no one was quite sure. Regardless, rumors quickly spread around the nation. In August, the United States’ Gazette engaged in speculations that were reprinted widely: How long will it be before we shall hear of Col. Burr being at the head of a revolution party on the western waters? Is it a fact that Col. Burr has formed a plan to engage the adventurous and enterprizing young men from the Atlantic states to come into Louisiana? Is it one of the inducements that an immediate convention will be called from the States bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi, to form a separate government? [. . .] How soon will the forts and magazines and all the military posts at New Orleans and on Mississippi be in the hands of Col. Burr’s revolution party? How soon will Col. Burr engage in the reduction of Mexico, by granting liberty to its inhabitants and seizing on its treasures, aided by British ships and forces?66

Certainly, it seems very plausible that Burr was keen to tap into a growing movement in New Orleans that looked eagerly towards the possible conquest of Mexico. In the years to come, the city would have significant involvements in that direction. Either way, for now, many began to pay credence to the Gazette’s rumors. As Kastor describes, “[o]bservers throughout the United States were convinced Burr was at the center of a broad conspiracy to launch a separatist movement in Louisiana, creating a separate republic that would probably include New Orleans and might extend as far west as Spanish Texas.”67 Events began to reach a climax in October 1806. General Wilkinson — seemingly losing faith in the conspiracy in which he had apparently become involved and seeking to save himself — wrote to Jefferson with a sensational claim: “A numerous and powerful association, extending from New-York through the

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Western states, to the territory bordering on the Mississippi, has been formed with the design to levy and rendezvous eight or ten thousand men in New Orleans, at a very near period: and from thence, with the co-operation of a naval armament, to carry an expedition against Vera Cruz.”68 Though greatly exaggerated, Wilkinson’s reported threats precipitated significant panic, not least in New Orleans. On December 5, 1806, Claiborne warned the governors of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana: “I have every reason to believe, that an armed association is forming in the Western Country, under the direction of Colonel Aaron Burr.” At the same time, to James Madison, Claiborne shared his pressing concerns for the city: “I have had so many proofs of the influence of unprincipled men, and the prudence of wicked political principles, that I know not in what portion of the Militia to confide, I cannot however, but cherish a hope, that the Battalion of Orleans Volunteers will in any event be faithful to the United States.”69 The next day he asserted, “I have no doubt that there are in this City Persons who would accompany him in all measures, however wicked they may be.”70 Andrew Jackson warned him directly that there was “something rotten in the State of Denmark — you have enemies within your own City.”71 However, Burr’s attack on New Orleans never materialized. Whatever the truth of Wilkinson’s claims, and whatever the true nature of Burr’s conspiracy, his plans unraveled swiftly and he was soon on the run again. The city figured prominently in the (unsuccessful) charges brought against Burr in his subsequent trial for treason, which accused him of “assembling an armed force, with a design to seize the city of New-Orleans, to revolutionize the territory attached to it, and separate the western from the Atlantic states.” His defense team, on the other hand, claimed that Burr was simply mustering a number of men to take legal possession of a land grant in Texas, and argued that “the terrible alarm at New-Orleans was imputable to the conduct of general Wilkinson, whose arbitrary and violent proceedings, and magnifying accounts of danger, were calculated to make the people tremble for their personal safety.”72 Even after the immediate (and perhaps illusory) danger from Burr and his conspirators had passed, Claiborne was still concerned “that there are many disaffected persons in this City [. . .] some persons here (from whom standing in society a contrary course was expected) meditated much mischief.”73 It would certainly not be the last time that New Orleans would be used as a staging post for illicit international endeavors; nor would it be the last time that the security of Louisiana was threatened. Indeed, in the subsequent years there were still pressing worries about the safety, and loyalty, of New Orleans and its inhabitants. Thomas Jefferson certainly had his concerns. He reported the events surrounding Burr’s conspiracy, as he saw them, to the Marquis de Lafayette (who would himself soon make a voyage to New Orleans): “He meant to separate the western States from us, to add Mexico to them, place himself at their head, establish what he would deem an energetic government, and thus provide an example and an instrument for the subversion of our freedom [. . .] His first enterprise was to have been to seize New Orleans.” But to Lafayette, at least, Jefferson was also at pains to point out that “not a single native Creole, and but one American of those settled there before we received the place, took any part with him.”74 In a letter to James Brown he was more candid,

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and freely admitted that Burr had only highlighted a number of preexisting uncertainties about the security of New Orleans: “I think there is sufficient evidence of there being a set of foreign adventurers, and native malcontents, who would concur in any enterprise to separate that country from this.” He doubted, too, the loyalty of the “Orleanese Creoles,” and suspected that they harbored a loyalty to France. And yet, tellingly, in one regard Jefferson had no concerns: “I have no doubt of their attachment to us in preference of the English.”75 That loyalty would be tested in the coming years. Claiborne’s correspondence makes it clear that his concerns did not die down quickly either. In May 1808, for example, Claiborne noted to Madison, “There was the other day, a report in circulation, that our neighbors the Spaniards, entertained some designs hostile to New-Orleans.”76 In August 1808 the city was plagued by a series of riots “between the American and foreign Sailors, which were with difficulty suppressed by the civil authority [. . .] the public mind, was in a State of much agitation and alarm.” Even though a “tavern dispute” was felt to be the root cause of the disruptions, the international constituency of the combatants left people uneasy.77 On New Year’s Day 1809, almost six years after the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, Claiborne was clearly in a reflective mood. Drawing on his experience, he provided Madison with a detailed breakdown of “the very heterogeneous mass of which the society in New Orleans is composed,” highlighting the motley nature of city life during this turbulent, churning, formative period: “England has her partisans; Ferdinand the seventh some faithful subjects; Bonaparte his admirers; & there is a fourth description of Men, commonly called Burrites, who would join any standard, which would promise Rapine & plunder.” “There are nevertheless,” he concluded, “many virtuous Citizens, in whose honesty & patriotism I fully confide.”78 And yet, just as Claiborne had the different elements of New Orleans life — or, rather, New Orleans strife — lined up so neatly, international events created another revolution in the makeup of the city.

“AN ENCREASE OF POPULATION” In 1809, the French refugees from Saint-Domingue who had settled in Cuba were on the move again, displaced anew as a result of further geopolitical upheavals. In March, following Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, all French settlers were expelled from the island. Refugee ships started arriving in Louisiana in May. Claiborne wrote to the secretary of state on May 14, “Of the French exiled from Cuba, about forty have reached the City [. . .] these unfortunate People are for the most part without resources, and must depend upon the Benevolence of this society for the means of present support.”79 They were the tip of an extraordinary iceberg, made larger when, this time, Congress allowed the displaced Saint-Dominguans to bring their slaves into Louisiana. All told, roughly 10,000 refugees arrived in New Orleans over the coming months. By January 1810 the mayor had counted precisely 9,059 arrivals. In real terms, as Lachance highlights, the “immediate effect” of this significant influx “was to double the population of New Orleans

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proper.”80 In the 1810 census, New Orleans ranked as the seventh-largest city in the union.81 Beyond the sheer number of new arrivals absorbed by the city, their demographic breakdown was highly significant: white Saint-Dominguans accounted for only 2,731 of the refugees; slaves totaled 3,226, and free people of color numbered 3,102.82 This echoed the tripartite social structure that had already developed in New Orleans, emphasizing the city’s difference to the rest of the South, where a much sharper distinction between black and white could be found. As Ned Sublette notes, these statistics also “confirmed New Orleans as a black town. In the 1810 census, 37 percent of the approximately seventeen thousand residents were white; the rest were free people of colour or slaves. No other U.S. city came close to that.”83 The effect of the new arrivals on city life was immediately significant. Early in the migration, Claiborne shared his concerns with Thomas Jefferson: “I fear [. . .] that the misfortunes of Spain and her Colonies will give to this Territory an encrease of population, which may retard the growth of the true American Principles.”84 He echoed and expanded those sentiments to the secretary of state: “I regret to see a space in our Society filled with a foreign Population, which I had hoped would have been occupied by native Citizens of the U. States.”85 He was not alone. In July 1809 Claiborne noted, “The native americans, and the English part of our society [. . .] appear to be prejudiced against these Strangers, and express great dissatisfaction that an Asylum in this Territory was afforded them.”86 As for the free people of colour, by August Claiborne was complaining, “We have already a much greater proportion of that population, than comports with the general Interest.”87 And, too, in an era of potential revolution, suspicions hovered over the political fidelity of the new arrivals: “[M]any are of doubtful character and desperat fortunes, and may (probably) become willing instruments in the hands of those unprincipled, intriguing individuals who would wish to disturb the peace, and Union of the American States.”88 Certainly, the 1809 arrivals represented an important reassertion of French culture in New Orleans at a time of increasing and encroaching Americanization. While there may have been some tensions between French speakers — because, perhaps, of what Thomas Ingersoll terms “the wounded pride of the [. . .] newcomers in being Saint Domingans rather than hick Louisianans” — on the whole, the immigrants seem to have been welcomed by their Gallic counterparts.89 At a basic linguistic level, as Nathalie Dessens highlights, “the migration from Saint-Domingue favored the persistence of French for at least two generations.”90 Like the Saint-Dominguans who had arrived before them in the late eighteenth century, the refugees filtered into all areas of New Orleans, intermarrying with the preexisting Creole population. In particular, they were prominent in the development of the city’s cultural life, promoting French theatrical entertainments and founding a number of French-language newspapers. As Dessens notes, “[i]n the New Orleans artistic fields, their predominance is obvious [. . .] the refugees probably did more than just stimulate or reinforce; they pioneered.”91 There was one cultural field where the Saint-Dominguans clearly made their mark. Some form of voodoo — a syncretic combination of African and Catholic religious practices — would clearly have been present in Louisiana before the

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arrival of the refugees in 1809. The mass arrival of Saint-Dominguan slaves, with their own religious practices, clearly had a profound effect on its development. As Sublette asserts, “[t]he newly arrived Domingans’ vodou that came en masse from eastern Cuba had to coexist, and merge, with a solidly established AfroLouisianan spiritual practice that had grown up with a distinct set of African roots as well as influences from the Choctaws, the Natchez, the Houmas, and other Indian groups.”92 It was a potent mixture, and it is clear that Saint-Dominguans gave it a new impetus. Dessens highlights the fact that “the important figures of New Orleans voodoo had refugee origins, like Dr. John [. . .] Sanité Dédé and the two Marie Laveaus (mother and daughter).”93 Such figures flourished throughout the nineteenth century, maintaining an influence at all levels of city life. Their legacy remains the most visible reminder of the Saint-Dominguan influx.

“DREADFUL INSURRECTION” In 1809, however, the most pressing concern posed by the Saint-Dominguan arrivals was the fear that their presence would destabilize the institution of slavery anew. As Dormon describes, while “the memory of the great Santo Domingan insurrection” was “burned indelibly on the consciousness of slaveowners everywhere,” it was a more immediate and pressing concern in Louisiana: “[T]he white refugees from that holocaust were available in numbers to remind the nervous Louisianans of their potential powder-keg.”94 What’s more, the Louisiana Purchase had indelibly shifted the nature of slavery in and around Louisiana. As Ingersoll neatly summarizes, “American government was no boon to blacks.” After 1803, “[s]lavery became a much bigger enterprise involving many more slaves because of the continuing sugar boom and the inauguration of free trade for Louisiana producers.”95 Once again, rumors of slave insurrections arose periodically — particularly in the early days of American occupation. In November 1804, Claiborne was informed that “the Negroes of one or two plantations [in Natchitoches] had formed a scheme to desert to Nacogdoches [. . .] stealing a quantity of powder and Lead Arms.”96 In the same month, there was talk of “a general Spirit of insubordination” among the slaves of Pointe Coupee.97 In October 1805, Claiborne recorded “some little alarm in consequence of an attempt made by a Frenchman [notably, a Saint-Dominguan] to excite the Negros to Insurrection.”98 There was suspicion, too, of the free people of color. When, in 1804, Congress tried to stop the importation of African slaves into Louisiana, inflamed New Orleanians, as Claiborne put it, “assembled for the purpose of considering a memorial to congress previously drawn up by a committee.”99 But the free people of color (many of whom were slaveholders with a vested interest in the matter) were excluded from the meeting. When the possibility arose, as Claiborne put it, that “they might consult together as to their rights,” the prospect “excited some alarm among the white citizens.”100 It alarmed Claiborne too: “I remembered,” he wrote to Madison, “that the events which have Spread blood and desolation in St. Domingo, originated in a dispute between the white and Mulatto inhabitants.” Though he managed to calm the

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waters this time, he feared what was over the horizon: “[A]t some future period,” he predicted, “this quarter of the Union must (I fear) experience in some degree, the Misfortunes of St. Domingo.”101 The new influx of Saint-Dominguans in 1809 only highlighted such fears. In January 1811, Claiborne’s prophecy was fulfilled. In a region of Louisiana known as the German Coast, named for a group of pioneer immigrants from Germany who were encouraged to settle in the area by John Law in the early eighteenth century, a slave insurrection broke out on the plantation of Colonel Manuel Andry (or Andre). Rebels wounded him and killed his son. Under the leadership of Charles Deslondes — reputedly Andry’s slave driver — the slaves seized a cache of weapons that Andry had stashed on his plantation and headed out along the River Road. They gathered new rebels, including a number of slaves already living as runaways, burning and looting plantations as they traveled. At the time, Claiborne informed the secretary of state that “their numbers are variously stated from 180 to 500.”102 As Dormon makes clear, even using Claiborne’s lowest estimate, this was “the largest slave uprising in the history of the United States” — at least double the size of Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia 20 years later.103 And, to increase the terror further, the ultimate destination of the insurrectionists was evident: as they marched, they took as their motto, “On to Orleans!”104 They were heading straight for the city, roughly 30 miles away. As plantation owners began to flood into the city, panic spread. Claiborne noted, “We are all in New Orleans on the alert.”105 Captain John Shaw, naval commander of New Orleans, was less circumspect: “The whole city [. . .] was convulsed, and the confusion which prevailed was general [. . .] I have never before been witness to such general confusion and disarray.”106 As with Burr’s conspiracy before it, Deslondes’s rebellion dissolved before it reached the city. Unfortunately for Deslondes, his uprising had coincided with the annexation of West Florida by the United States. This should have worked to his advantage, since events to the east had drawn away a large number of the troops who would otherwise have moved to put down the rebellion; but as Kastor explains, “General Wade Hampton, who had missed the annexation altogether as a result of numerous delays on his passage to the Southwest, conveniently reached New Orleans on January 6.”107 Commanding a combination of militia and federal troops, Hampton marched out of the city along the River Road to confront the insurrectionists. At the same time, Deslondes was being pursued by what Claiborne described as “a party of armed Citizens, under the Command of Col. Andre” — looking for revenge.108 Attempting to avoid Hampton, the rebels encountered Andry and his men; the result, in Dormon’s description, “was more in the nature of a massacre.”109 Soon, over 60 slaves were dead and the rebellion was over. Its ramifications, however, were only beginning. In Ingersoll’s judgment, “the effect of the Deslondes Uprising on New Orleans was profound. Slave rebellion had always occurred so far away from the town in the raw interior that the townspeople had minimal cause for concern. This time they believed that savage horde was descending upon them from a position of less than two hours distant.”110 A connection to Saint-Domingue was assumed immediately: it was widely reported that Charles Deslondes himself had been born there — a claim for

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which, as Lacy Ford highlights, there was “scant evidence.”111 A widely reprinted letter described the insurrection as “a miniature representation of the horrors of St. Domingo.”112 The direct result was that slaveholding New Orleanians began to scrutinize the behavior of the city’s enslaved population far more vigilantly. Life also became more uncomfortable for the city’s free black population. New legislation was brought forward making manumission more difficult, in an effort to limit the numbers of free people of color, while their legal freedoms were curtailed in a sustained campaign that would continue in the coming years. For the surviving rebels, retribution was swift and brutal: Samuel Hambleton, naval agent in the Port of New Orleans, related that slaves believed to be involved in the uprising “were hung for the sake of their heads, which decorate our levee”; Deslondes himself, Hambleton described, “had his hands chopped off, then shot in one thigh and then in the other, until they were both broken — Then shot in the body and before he expired was put into a bundle of straw and roasted!”113 As Claiborne put it, “The example which has been made of the guilty actors in the late insurrection will I hope produce the desired effect. Justice, policy, our future safety required that the guilty should suffer [. . .] I hope this dreadful Insurrection is at an end and I pray God! we may never see another.”114 The Louisiana House of Representatives had their own interpretation: “The Blacks have been taught an important lesson — their weakness.”115 And for Claiborne, events had another silver lining: the unified white response to the crisis seems to have encouraged his faith in the loyalty of Louisianans. “My opinion is,” he declared, “that the Mississippi will cease to flow, before the Territory of Orleans in its present extent will cease to be a part of the American Union.”116 In April 1812 those ties were made even more secure: Louisiana was admitted as the eighteenth state in the Union.

“FAMED AND FEARED” In the wake of Charles Deslondes’s insurrection, New Orleans faced a different kind of threat — one that would enshrine another semi-mythical figure in the city’s romantic pantheon. As a result of the political and military turbulence of the period, piracy and privateering (essentially state-sanctioned piracy) flourished on the high seas. As Ned Sublette notes, “[a]n enormous business in smuggling appeared all around the nation’s ports, but it had a considerable head start in the Gulf of Mexico.”117 Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807 stopped all American ships from engaging in international trade in an attempt to avoid war with the British, who had been seizing American craft and press-ganging American sailors. In its wake, pirates and privateers were often welcome figures in Louisiana, not least because “[s]ugar and cotton producers were desperate to get their goods to market and acquire more slaves.”118 One man came to dominate the field: the fabled Jean Lafitte, aided and abetted by his brother Pierre. William Davis has traced their roots to a small village near Bordeaux, though neither brother lingered there long. Sometime in the late eighteenth century both men left the Old World for the New. Pierre spent time in Saint-Domingue, turned up in New Orleans just as

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it was being transferred from France to America, and became involved in illicit slave trading. At the same time, there are some clues that Jean was operating as a privateer: as Davis explains, in the wake of the loss of Saint-Domingue, “Napoleon’s agents commisioned virtually all who applied out of the French colonies Guadeloupe and Martinique.”119 One thing is clear: both brothers were reunited in Louisiana at the same time that New Orleans took in the refugees from Saint-Domingue in 1809, developing the careers that they had already begun. Their base of operations was the secluded Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast, and its islands Grand Terre and Grand Isle, already home to a small number of privateers. Innovation and business acumen marked the Lafitte brothers’ operations from the start. At first, they operated as middlemen, receiving goods (including illegally imported slaves) from pirates and privateers at their Baratarian base before selling them on for profit to buyers based in New Orleans. In the main, the brothers divided business responsibilities, Jean taking care of operations in Barataria and Pierre dealing with their business interests in the city. They were successful enough that, in Davis’s words, “by the fall of 1809 men in New Orleans knew that a man seeking slaves could get them fresh from Africa at a good price at Grand Terre.”120 After war broke out with Britain in 1812, they extended their operations, forming a fleet in order to control all aspects of their illicit trade: “Never before had the same individuals controlled the acquisition of prize goods through piracy or privateering, their delivery to the market vicinity, subsequent smuggling or transport of the goods to the waiting market, and then their wholesale or retail sale.”121 Arsène Latour admittedly sheepishly in 1816 that, at least for the inhabitants of New Orleans, the presence of the Baratarians had not been entirely unwelcome. Indeed, the “contraband” with which they supplied the city could be “considered as tacitly tolerated.” As Latour explained, “it is a fact no less true than painful for me to assert, that [. . .] the privateers publicly made sale, by auction, of the cargoes of their prizes. From all parts of Lower Louisiana people resorted to Barataria without being at all solicitous to conceal the object of their journey.” The same openness was evident in the city: “In the streets of New Orleans it was usual for traders to give and receive orders for purchasing goods at Barataria, with as little secrecy as similar orders are given for Philadelphia or New York.” Even the “most respectable [. . .] were in the habit of purchasing smuggled goods coming from Barataria.”122 By 1810 both brothers were familiar faces in the city. For a time, Pierre sold their smuggled goods, as Davis put it, “with impunity out of their reputed warehouse on Chartres Street.” Jean, on the other hand, developed a “taste for expensive living and entertainment, which earned him the sobriquet ‘Gentleman Lafitte’ in New Orleans.”123 Perhaps unsurprisingly, in spite of their popular — predominantly French — support within the city, their activities soon started to attract significant attention from the authorities, particularly after Louisiana achieved statehood. As Davis notes, “[i]t was an embarrassment to the Union’s newest state to be known as a haven for freebooters.”124 Governor Claiborne offered a reward of $500 for the capture of Jean Laffite, and issued a proclamation, reprinted nationally in Niles’ Weekly Register, in which he directly addressed the “banditti” of Barataria:

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I order all those individuals who participate in such criminal actions to cease from them, to disperse and instantly separate [. . .] to remove from Louisiana the shameful reproach that will be attached to her character if her shores should become the assylum, or her citizens the protectors of an association of individuals, whose practices are subversive of all laws divine and human, and whose ill-gotten riches cannot become the share of any man without marking upon him an eternal dishonour.125

In response, a poster went up around New Orleans offering a $1,000 for the capture and delivery of Governor Claiborne to Barataria. But the net was closing. First, Pierre was arrested, escaping soon after. Then, a fleet of ships under the command of Commodore Daniel Patterson attacked Barataria in September 1814. The Lafitte brothers fled, abandoning their merchandise and escaping successfully. Patterson sailed back to New Orleans with a large number of prisoners, seven privateer ships, a wide variety of goods (from silk stockings to cigars to window glass), and cash. Significantly, the only thing that Patterson’s raid missed was a large cache of gunflints. The raid was reported widely. Niles’ Weekly Register reproduced a letter from John K. Smith, secretary of the navy, detailing the expedition “against Barrataria”: “He has been completely successful in breaking up the nest of pirates at that place [. . .] The breaking up of this piratical establishment is of great importance to this country.”126 Back in the Old World, the Scots Magazine picked up the story, describing the “expedition [. . .] from New Orleans, against the piratical establishment at Barrataria,” and reporting excitedly, “Lafite escaped.”127 Though Patterson’s raid marked the end of Lafitte’s operations in Barataria, it was not the end of Lafitte, as events in the coming months would prove. Moreover, his notoriety grew. In November 1814, Hezekiah Niles helped fan the flames of his fame and proclaimed that “the celebrated pirate Lafitte” had “for about two years past [. . .] been famous for crimes that the civilized world wars against — who is supposed to have captured one hundred vessels, of all nations, and certainly murdered the crews of all that he took, for no one has ever escaped him.” In short, he was “of a character [. . .] infamous and detestable.”128 If such accounts spread Lafitte’s name, another unexpected source helped to burnish its reputation. It’s unlikely that Byron had Lafitte in mind when he composed The Corsair late in 1813, before the pirate’s name had traveled much beyond Louisiana. In the first edition, published in 1814, there was certainly no mention of him. But by the time of the ninth edition, published in 1815, it is clear that Lafitte’s fame had spread. Byron appended a new note to his poem that drew a direct connection between the Baratarian pirate and his romantic hero, Conrad. Asserting that “the point of honour which is represented in one instance of Conrad’s character has not been carried beyond the bounds of probability,” Byron presented an “ANECDOTE of a BROTHER BUCCANEER” as proof. The story he appended, clipped from an American newspaper, told of “a band of pirates, under the command of one Monsieur La Fitte [. . .] well known to the inhabitants of the city of New Orleans.”129 The association was forged, Lafitte’s romantic reputation was secured, and his notoriety spread round the globe. Others picked up his legend, embellishing it at each turn, making sure that, like Byron’s Conrad, “his

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name on every shore / Is famed and feared.”130 As Joseph Holt Ingraham admitted in his popular novel Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf (1836), though his account was “chiefly historical,” it was, at heart, “a web of fact and fiction.” In truth, his Lafitte, and most of those that came after him, was a fully formed Byronic-hero transplanted to Barataria: “[C]an he be Lafitte? that dreadful man! proscribed among men [. . .] Yet, how very noble looking he is, and so humane! And his eyes, how dark and piercing. He is certainly, very handsome!”131

“A CHEAP AND QUICK CONVEYANCE” At the same time that Deslondes and Lafitte were presenting their distinct challenges to the status quo in Louisiana, another revolution — indeed, an industrial revolution — was approaching the city. Fittingly, the roots of the age of steam on the Mississippi were closely entwined with the negotiations surrounding the Louisiana Purchase. Robert Fulton, the man who would successfully bring to fruition the long-held desire to apply steam to water travel, arrived in France in the late eighteenth century, joining a number of influential American expatriates in Revolutionary Paris. Fulton had already pursued a variety of career paths — artist, canal builder, prolific inventor — and was currently attempting to develop a submarine armed with torpedoes. Then, in 1802, at a party hosted by Joel and Ruth Barlow, he met none other than Robert Livingston. The ramifications for New Orleans would be profound. Livingston himself, though busy negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, had long fostered the dream of developing a successful steamboat. Indeed, he had already gained a monopoly for steam travel along New York’s waterways. All he needed was a viable steamboat. And in Fulton, Livingston felt that he had finally found, in his words, the “ingenious young man” who would make that dream a reality.132 The two men formed a partnership that soon bore fruit: as early as August 1803, Fulton successfully piloted a craft of his own design along the Seine. In 1807, he brought his invention to America, steaming 110 miles along the Hudson to Livingston’s estate in Albany. “The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved,” Fulton wrote to his friend Barlow, before making it clear that his eyes remained focused on a much larger prize: “It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to merchandise on the Mississippi and Missouri, and other great rivers, which are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen.”133 The task of proving the viability of Fulton’s steamboat on the western waters fell to Nicholas Roosevelt, another inventor who Fulton and Livingston involved in the Mississippi Steamboat Navigation Company. The trio had obtained a monopoly for steam navigation on the Lower Mississippi from the Territory of Orleans (a process that was aided by the efforts of Edward Livingston, brother to Robert, practicing law in New Orleans). In 1809, Roosevelt set about his work. First, to gain a full appreciation of the task at hand, he was required to travel down the length of the Ohio and Mississippi by flatboat. The world was watching. The American Register eagerly reported, “Mr. Roosevelt is now on a tour of observation from Pittsburgh to New Orleans [. . .] he is an intelligent gentleman, fully

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competent [. . .] to extend the utility of this invention to the waters of the Ohio and Mississippi.”134 But Roosevelt was not alone in his endeavors. Accompanying him on his pioneering voyages was his wife Lydia, daughter of Capitol architect Benjamin Latrobe. As she remembered, their flatboat was better appointed than most: it boasted “a huge box containing a comfortable bed room, dining room, pantry, and a room in front for the crew, with a fire-place where the cooking was done [. . .] We had on board a pilot, three hands and man cook.”135 The journey took six months. When it was over, they prepared to do it again — but this time, by steamboat. Roosevelt began construction of his pioneering craft in Pittsburgh in 1811. He named it, in a mood of optimism and ambition, New Orleans. As the boat slowly took shape, nervous Pittsburghers approached the now pregnant Lydia, as her nephew John Latrobe recorded, “endeavoring to dissuade her from what they regarded as utter folly, if not absolute madness.” Others warned Roosevelt himself that “he had no right to peril his wife’s life, however reckless he might be of his own.” Undeterred, the couple set out for New Orleans in September 1811. It was a suitably eventful journey. Little wonder that Latrobe could assert, “Its events were the stories I listened to in my childhood. The impressions then made have never been effaced.” At first, things went well. When they departed, the inhabitants of Pittsburgh “turned out in mass [. . .] shout after shout rent the air, and handkerchiefs were waived.” The New Orleans seemed to be performing as desired; she “inspired at last a confidence that quieted the nervous apprehension of the travellers.” While the boat was detained at Louisville, waiting for a rise in the river before attempting to pass the Falls of the Ohio, Lydia gave birth. Still she refused to abandon the journey. And after they had successfully run the Falls, “it was believed that there would now, be nothing but plain sailing to the port of destination.” Such hopes were soon dashed. On the horizon were what Lydia termed “days of horror.”136 What Roosevelt could not have planned for was the New Madrid earthquakes. As Jay Feldman explains, “[b]etween December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, the Mississippi River Valley was rocked by a chain of catastrophic earthquakes. Of the more than two thousand tremors that hit during this time, three would have measured near or over 8.0 on the later-devised magnitude scales, ranking them among the severest earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States in recorded history.”137 Though centered in Missouri, shocks were even felt in New Orleans, 500 miles along the Mississippi. In James Lal Penick’s description, “[p]eople were disturbed at the theater, clocks stopped, crockery rattled.”138 On board the New Orleans they were certainly noticeable: “The effect was as though the vessel had been in motion and had suddenly grounded.” While the boat weathered the unusual conditions well, the sights along the riverbank were more traumatic: “[T]error stricken people had begged to be taken on board, while others dreading the steamboat, even more than the earthquake, hid themselves as she approached [. . .] Painful as it was, there was no choice but to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the terrified.” Other unexpected, and suggestive, events followed. “On one occasion, a large canoe, fully manned, came out of the woods abreast of the steamboat. The Indians, outnumbering the crew of the vessel, paddled after

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it” — though steam “had the advantage of endurance.” Then, fire broke out, and was “making rapid headway” before significant exertions extinguished it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a “silence [. . .] prevailed on board. No one seemed disposed to talk.”139 And yet, slowly but surely, in spite of all obstacles, the New Orleans progressed towards New Orleans, finally reaching the city in January 1812. Even in an era of tumult and excitement, it was a remarkable arrival. According to Henry Edward Chambers, “The arrival of the boat at New Orleans occasioned much excitement and rejoicing. The inhabitants were given several opportunities to take short excursions about the harbor,” and an excursion was undertaken to English Turn. Indeed, as late as the 1890s, aged New Orleanian Mr. Thibault “was wont to graphically recount the arrival of the New Orleans and his good fortune in being taken upon the first excursion.”140 The event was marked in another way: “[T]he Captain of the boat, falling in love with Mrs. Roosevelt’s maid, prosecuted his suit so successfully [. . .] a wedding marked the arrival of the boat at the chief city of the Mississippi.”141 The New Orleans ran from Natchez to her namesake for a number of years. And as Louis Hunter outlines, she was but the first of many: “Within the next several years three more steamboats of substantial tonnage were built and placed in operation by the eastern group: the Vesuvius (340 tons, 1814), the Aetna (360 tons, 1815), and the second New Orleans (324 tons, 1815).”142 But as Ari Kelman also notes, the arrival of steam on the western waters initially “remained a local phenomenon, improving the lives of only a few people along the New Orleans-to-Natchez route.”143 The Fulton–Livingston monopoly would need to be overturned before steamboats truly proliferated on the Mississippi. Still, the revolution had begun. As steamboats began to appear along the western rivers, the extraordinary developments in trade and transportation that followed in their wake would transform the fortunes of the interior. Above all others, New Orleans would be the prime beneficiary. But for now, the glorious prospects of steam were eclipsed by a more pressing concern: invasion.

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS The War of 1812 would come to serve as a perfect summation of the city’s turbulent fortunes since the turn of the nineteenth century. In the main, the conflict was a disappointing affair — in Jeanne and David Heidler’s description, “Complex diplomatic controversies about free trade seem to veil its real causes, which some have claimed had more to do with territorial expansionism. Once the war got under way, both America and Great Britain waged it in great confusion and finally concluded it inconclusively.”144 Though it gained popular support in the South and West, the war was condemned in the Northeast. A series of disappointing American defeats was capped by the burning of Washington in August 1814. And in New Orleans, as merchant Vincent Nolte was only too swift to highlight, war was bad for business. The Embargo Act of 1807 had been difficult, but now, as he described in his memoirs, “[t]he Mississippi was blockaded and narrowly watched by two English vessels of war [. . .] It was like a dead calm to the mariner,

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but with this difference, that the latter continues only for days or weeks, while the termination of my stagnant inactivity could not be calculated, but might extend for years.” In a town like New Orleans, this “made life wearisome.” Excitement came a little later in the year. In August, New Orleans was struck by a devastating hurricane. As Nolte remembered, “[e]ighteen of the vessels lying in the harbor were thrown on the left bank of the Mississippi, where they remained completely wrecked; many houses, and half-finished buildings were blown down, and most of the roofs in the city were torn away to the last shingle.”145 According to another eyewitness, “[t]he market-house, a large and solid building, was entirely demolished; its brick columns, of two feet diameter, swept down as though their weighty construction presented no obstacle whatever to the elements.” And the human cost was equally profound: “here and there” could be found “a mangled corpse.”146 It was a prelude of the violence to come. That the war would reach New Orleans sooner or later was held as a truism. Having gained the city under the extraordinary circumstances of the Louisiana Purchase, weathered the storms of Burr, Deslondes, Lafitte, and others, and adapted to the changes brought on by Saint-Domingue and steam, there was still a chance that New Orleans might be torn from American hands. As Junius Rodriguez notes, “[b]eing both remote and sparsely populated, the state faced immediate danger not only from defending itself against foreign attack but also from maintaining itself against internal revolt. This dual threat made Louisiana the most vulnerable point in the United States.”147 As ever, the value of its location was obvious to all. French diplomat Le Chevalier Felix de Beaujour asserted in 1814, “the entrance of the Mississippi” was one of the locations “most essential to be defended,” since it would protect “New Orleans, and all the course of the river, of such vital consequence to the commerce and prosperity of the United States.”148 The British, too, were well aware of its significance. As Robin Reilly outlines, “[a]n expedition against New Orleans had been planned before the end of the war in Europe. The British had cast envious eyes upon New Orleans during the eighteenth century when it was owned by France, and the Secretary of War had received many suggestions for the capture of the city and of the Floridas.”149 Admiral Cochrane, who began planning the British invasion early in 1814, was adamant about his plans: “I have it much at heart to give them a complete drubbing before Peace is made [. . .] and the Command of the Mississippi wrested from them.”150 But Americans, too, recognized the absolute necessity of protecting the city. Addressing the Tennessee volunteers who were to accompany him to New Orleans early in the war, Andrew Jackson declared that the city was “interesting to them in every point of view,” and outlined the importance of their duty: Every man of the western country turns his eyes intuitively upon the mouth of the Mississippi. He there beholds the only outlet by which his produce can reach the markets of foreign nations or of the Atlantic States. Blocked up, all the fruits of his industry rot upon his hands; open, and he carries on a commerce with all the nations of the earth. To the people of the western country is then peculiarly committed, by nature herself, the defense of the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans. At the approach of an enemy

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in that quarter the whole western world should pour forth its sons to meet the invader and drive him back into the sea.151

In the city itself, the old and persistent worries about the potential political and social instability of Louisiana were intensified. When rumors about the planned British invasion started circulating in the middle of 1814, Claiborne wrote to Andrew Jackson explaining his fears: “I have reason to calculate upon the patriotism of the interior and western countries of the state” — that much at least was clear. “I know also that there are many faithful citizens in New Orleans” — at least, that’s what Claiborne hoped. But “there are others whose attachment to the United States I ought not to confide [. . .] much devoted to the interest of Spain, and whose partiality to the English is not less observable than their dislike to the American government.” While pledging to “put myself at the head of such of my militia as will follow me to the field,” Claiborne was also at pains to point out, “I have a very difficult people to manage [. . .] I am not at the head of a willing and united people; native Americans, native Louisianans, Frenchmen and Spaniards (with some Englishmen) compose the mass of the population — among them there exists much jealousy, as great differences in political sentiment as in their language and habits.” There was in New Orleans, he lamented to Jackson, “a despondency which palsies all my preparations [. . .] At this moment we are in a very unprepared and defenceless condition: several important points of defence remain unoccupied, and in case of a sudden attack this capital would, I fear, fall an easy sacrifice.”152 In short, he needed Jackson. On December 1, 1814, he got his wish: Jackson rode into town to take charge of the city’s defenses, fresh from fighting the Creek War and driving the British out of Pensacola. With him came a force of roughly 1,500 Tennessee and Kentucky militiamen. As Nolte witnessed, they were a motley bunch, kin to the boatmen who had been coming down the river for decades: “[T]hey had no idea whatever of military organization and discipline.” But they were marked out by one vital attribute: “[T]hey paid attention only to the more important part of their calling, which, according to their notions, was quietly to pick out their man, fix him in their aim, and ‘bring him down.’”153 They joined an equally motley collection of uniformed volunteers in New Orleans. Soon, more troops from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi would reach the city. And they would be joined by others from an unlikely source. Even before Patterson’s raid on Barataria, the Lafitte brothers were becoming embroiled in the coming fight. The British had tried to woo them, offering land grants and other valuable rewards for their assistance in the coming assault on New Orleans. But, playing the odds, they had demurred, and sent warning of the British offer to the authorities in the city, proclaiming loyalty to their “adoptive country.”154 Indeed, in a letter to Claiborne the pirates pictured themselves as “stray sheep, wishing to return to the sheepfold.”155 In short, they offered to help defend New Orleans in return for full pardons for their previous activities. At first, the Baratarian offers of assistance fell on deaf ears. Jackson, in particular, loathed the idea of working alongside pirates; he lambasted Claiborne for allowing “those wretches, the refugees from Barataria and its dependencies,” to “find an asylum in your city,” and

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2. Interview between Lafitte, General Jackson, and Governor Claiborne, from Charles Ellms, The Pirates Own Book (Portland: Sanborn & Carter, 1837).

recommended that they be “arrested and detained.”156 But the privateers still had supporters within the city — Edward Livingston, in particular. They had a detailed knowledge of the approaches to the city, and, perhaps more importantly, they possessed valuable materiel, including the gunflints that had escaped Patterson’s raid. Jackson relented. A pardon was offered to all Baratarians who would help to protect the city from the British. In Davis’s account, “as many as four hundred of them took the oath.”157 All told, Robert Remini tallies that “Jackson ultimately had between 4,000 and 5,000 men in and around New Orleans,” drawn from all aspects of New Orleans society.158 Completing the battle’s role as a crucible for the forces that were shaping New Orleans at this juncture, steam had also had a role to play: Henry Shreve, the man who would later challenge the Fulton–Livingston monopoly of the Mississippi, helped provide the city with supplies and transported weaponry to the front line in his steamboat Enterprise. Jackson worked quickly to strengthen the city’s defenses, attempting to block off as many of the approaches to New Orleans as possible; controversially, he imposed martial law. He also set about the extraordinary task of forging the city’s disparate and fractious elements into an effective fighting unit. On the one hand,

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he tacitly acknowledged the crazing that ran through New Orleans society; pragmatically, he “gave volunteer appointments on his staff to representatives of virtually every faction in New Orleans.”159 But on the other hand, at a military review held at the Place D’Armes on December 18, he directly addressed the fault lines that divided his miscellaneous troops in an effort to overcome them. In so doing, he highlighted the degree to which the Battle of New Orleans was a perfect encapsulation of the era, bringing together not only the city’s extraordinarily diverse inhabitants — French and Spanish Creole, Saint-Dominguan, American, Choctaws, and more — but also the men of the West who relied so heavily on the city, and the pirates who had been living parasitically alongside it. “Inhabitants of an opulent and commercial town,” Jackson began, helped in his rhetoric by Edward Livingston, “you have by a spontaneous effort shaken off the habits which are created by wealth, and shewn that you are resolved to deserve the blessings of fortune.” He rejoiced, “you have forgotten the difference of language and prejudices of national pride, and united with a cordiality that does honor to your understandings as well as to your patriotism.” Then, he addressed them in turn, inflaming all against the deprivations of the British: Natives of the United States! They are the oppressors of your infant political existence, with whom you are to contend — they are the men your fathers conquered whom you are to oppose. Descendants of Frenchmen! natives of France! they are English, the hereditary, the eternal enemies of your ancient country [. . .] Spaniards! remember the conduct of your allies at St. Sebastian, and recently at Pensacola, and rejoice that you have an opportunity of avenging the brutal injuries inflicted by men who dishonor the human race.

If self-preservation was not enough to motivate his troops, then a mutual hatred of the British might help forge the bonds of primary group loyalty. There was more: he picked out the “Men of Color” for particular mention, asserting, “you surpass my hopes. I have found in you [. . .] that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.” And, just in case anyone felt left out, Jackson exhorted, “Fellow citizens, of every description! remember for what and against whom you contend.”160 His words seem to have had the desired effect: “My voice is too weak to speak of these addresses in adequate terms,” remembered Arsène Latour, “General Jackson had electrified all hearts.”161 The clock was ticking. The British fleet left Jamaica late in November 1814, eager for their mission: Scottish soldier George Robert Gleig remembered, “it was soon known throughout the fleet, that the conquest of New Orleans was the object in view.”162 They finally made landfall in Louisiana on December 23, moving up Bayou Bienvenue to the plantation of General Jacques Villeré, roughly seven miles from the city. The British mood was still buoyant. One New Orleanian, in a letter reprinted in Niles’ Weekly Register, noted, “Admiral Cochrane has sent us word that he not only intends eating his Christmas dinner in New Orleans, but to spend the carnival here.”163 Back in the Old World, a peace between Britain and America had nearly been negotiated, and would be signed on Christmas Eve. A few miles downriver from New Orleans, the fighting was just beginning. Learning of the arrival of the British, Jackson was ready for action. As Nolte put it, “[t]he general was burning

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with impatience to come to close quarters with the red coats [. . .] He wanted to fight.”164 And fight he did, in a surprise nighttime attack on the British lines, with supporting artillery bombardment from the Baratarians, that, while inconclusive, proved to all concerned that Jackson’s motley troops would fight. As Nolte remembered vividly, “it was by the flash of the muskets that we, for the first time, got a sight of the red coats of the English.”165 As both armies set up defensive positions, Jackson pulled his men back to Rodriguez Canal — as Remini describes, “an old millrace [. . .] between the Macarty and Chalmette plantations.”166 American troops reinforced their position as best they could, widening the canal and building mud ramparts in front of their positions. Then, they waited. For over a week the two forces remained ensconced in a tense standoff. The British batteries traded volleys with the Baratarian pirates. American sharpshooters picked off British sentinels. Then, on January 8, the wait was over. “A little before daybreak two rockets were sent up from the British camp,” Nolte remembered dramatically, “Then as the mist arose we saw the British host.”167 Roughly 3,000 redcoats faced off against the defenders of New Orleans. The British — perhaps everyone — still expected a rout; and they got one, but just not in the way they had anticipated. The British attack was chaotic from the start. As George Robert Gleig remembered ruefully, the signal to attack was given when one section of Sir Edward Pakenham’s troops “were yet four miles from the batteries, which ought hours ago to have been taken.” The main body of his attack gave Pakenham more problems: “Instead of perceiving every thing in readiness for the assault, he saw his troops in battle array, indeed, but not a ladder or fascine upon the field.” Without fascines, British troops would have no way of crossing the canal in front of the Americans; without ladders, they would not be able to storm their positions. By the time their lack was noticed Pakenham’s men were already on display to the enemy. As Gleig remembered, “A dreadful fire was accordingly opened upon them, and they were mowed down by hundreds, while they stood waiting for orders.”168 When the British finally began their advance, the American fire intensified. “I called it the field of slaughter,” Nolte asserted, “for it really was slaughter, and not battle as on an open plain where foe meets foe; for here the British troops were perfectly exposed to the deadly and accurate bullets of our riflemen.”169 Twenty years after the event, British soldier Captain John Henry Cooke remembered the experience all too vividly: Regiments were shattered, broke, and dispersed — all order was at an end [. . .] they fell like the very blades of grass beneath the scythe of the mower [. . .] The fire of the Americans from behind their barricade had been indeed most murderous, and had caused so sudden a repulse that it was difficult to persuade ourselves that such an event had happened, — the whole affair being more like a dream, or some scene of enchantment, than reality.170

A large number of high-ranking officers — including Pakenham himself — were soon among the dead. As Gleig described, the result became inevitable: “All was now confusion and dismay. Without leaders, ignorant of what was to be done, the troops first halted and then began to retire; till finally the retreat was changed

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into a flight and they quitted the ground in the utmost disorder.” Of the 3,000 troops who took the field, two-thirds were killed or wounded. The Americans had sustained fewer than 50 casualties. By any calculations, it was a miraculous and complete victory. In Remini’s words, “who could believe it? Who could believe that this band of frontiersmen, privateers, men of color, local citizens, state militiamen, and army regulars had annihilated the most modern and most powerful army in the world?”171 But away from the main assault on Jackson’s line of defence at Rodriguez Canal, not all was glory: “On the right bank,” Nolte made clear, “matters went otherwise [. . .] the Kentuckians ran; the militia followed, and forgot their flag.”172 And the threat from the British had not been extinguished. As Daniel Walker Howe elucidates, “the British did not abandon their campaign against New Orleans. The day after the great land battle, their fleet sailed up the Mississippi and bombarded Fort. St Philip at Plaquemine for the next nine days, hoping to force passage, but to no avail.”173 The British redirected their efforts against Mobile, and might well have captured that city had not news of the peace treaty finally reached the combatants. For the British troops, Waterloo awaited. For the Americans, it was time to bask in the glory of New Orleans. As far as Arsène Latour was concerned, this was “the most important military exploit of the whole war.”174 Enthusiasm for the victory was so widespread that, almost immediately, it would take on the shape of what Marie-Jeanne Rossignol has termed “a national cult.”175 “Let all Europe hear,” boasted one correspondent in Niles’ Weekly Register, “that the elite

3. British Redcoats and Kentucky Hunters at the Battle of New Orleans, from John Frost, A Pictorial Biography of Andrew Jackson (New York: Henry Bill, 1861).

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of those troops, who boasted having [. . .] achieved the dethronement of the emperor Napoleon — have been defeated in sight of the city of New-Orleans, by a heterogenous description of farmers, merchants, lawyers, boatmen, taylors, doctors, clerks, in fact, by every kind of professional and tradesmen, forming the population of a country.”176 And when rumors spread that the British had taken “Beauty and Booty” as their watchword before the battle, indignation and pride were raised to fever pitch. Niles’ Weekly Register fumed: It is a fact, confirmed by the universal testimony, that it was the design of the enemy to have given up that rich city, and its inhabitants, to the lusts of a soldiery, unparalleled, and possibly, never to be equalled, certainly, not excelled, for their brutalized qualities [. . .] rejoice, virgins of Orleans [. . .] that you are unpolluted by the embraces of monsters, remorseless as wolves and ravenous as hyenas.177

In Louisiana, beyond the immediate concern for self-preservation, the significance of victory was particularly profound. Claiborne wrote to James Madison, “I glory in the opportunity which has afforded the people of Louisiana to prove that altho’ the Youngest of the great American Family, they are not the least in valour and Patriotism.”178 Indeed, as Andrew Jackson made clear, in a speech to his victorious troops that was reprinted internationally, the most important lesson of the Battle of New Orleans had been unity: The enemy has retreated and your General has now time to proclaim to the world what he has noticed with admiration and pride — your undaunted courage, your patriotism, and patience under hardships and fatigues. Natives of different states acting together for the first time in this camp; differing in habits and in language, instead of viewing in these circumstances the germ of distrust and division, you have made them the source of an honourable emulation, and from the seeds of discord itself have reaped the fruits of an honourable union.

In short, Jackson proclaimed, victory meant “unanimity established, disaffection crushed, confidence restored.”179 But privately, he wasn’t so sure: as Remini notes, Jackson “always fretted over the possible loss of New Orleans,” imagining ways in which the city might still be cleaved away from America.180 In truth, he need not have worried: until the years of the Civil War, the security of the city and its place within the Union were never truly threatened again. But in the coming years, as she sought her throne as the Queen of the South, New Orleans still had plenty of battles to fight.

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“Eternal bustle”: The Making of an American City

New Orleans, the wet grave, where the hopes of thousands are buried; for eighty years the wretched asylum for the outcasts of France and Spain, who could not venture 100 paces beyond its gates without utterly sinking to the breast in mud, or being attacked by alligators; has become in the space of twenty-three years one of the most beautiful cities of the Union, inhabited by 40,000 persons, who trade with half the world. CHARLES SEALSFIELD 1

New Orleans is not French, and it is not American, but a melange of both — and the result is, something worse than either. BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE 2

The shockwaves from the Battle of New Orleans rolled out across the nation and around the globe. Coming at the end of a dispiriting war, the victory was trumpeted widely, far beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. The clamor would not die down; the city was famous anew. Thomas Jefferson wrote modestly to the Marquis de Lafayette: “I am glad [. . .] that we closed our war with the éclat of New Orleans.”3 To James Madison he noted, “The affair of New Orleans was fraught with useful lessons to ourselves, our enemies and our friends, and will powerfully influence our future relations with the nations of Europe.”4 Most reacted more vociferously. In Congress, Louisiana representative Thomas Robertson declared the battle to have been “as important as any that was ever fought — and now we are invited to the contemplation of a scene which reflects immortal honor on the inhabitants of New Orleans, and by contrast, eternal shame on the enemy.”5 “Where are now the laurels of those far-famed invincibles — those conquerors of Europe, the veterans of Wellington?” teased the Port Folio. Why, they had been “wrested from their brows on the plains of New Orleans!”6 In truth, the practical benefits of the engagement, beyond saving the city from the immediate danger of British invasion, were debatable. After all, the Battle of New Orleans had technically taken place after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and, therefore, the end of the war. As Daniel Walker Howe has judged, “[t]he bloodshed of the Battle of New Orleans was a particularly tragic result of the slowness of communication at the start of the nineteenth century.” And even if the British had been victorious, Howe argues “the evidence suggests that the British were principally motivated to capture New Orleans by the prospect of plunder, and that their occupation of the city, if it had been achieved, would have been short.”7 Regardless, its symbolic value has never been questioned. Robert Remini,

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4. Plan of the City and Suburbs of New Orleans from an Actual Survey Made in 1815 by I. Tanesse, City Surveyor (1817). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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proclaiming the battle to be “one of the great turning points in American history,” asserted that in the victory of New Orleans “the nation had demonstrated that it had the strength, will, and ability to defend its freedom and prove to the world that it was here to stay.” Jackson had unleashed a “powerful surge of nationalism” which essentially reforged American identity — not to mention the fortunes of New Orleans.8 If nothing else, the changes brought on by the war persistently begged the question, what kind of a city was this going to be? New Orleans was entering a period of significant flux. In the coming decades it would establish itself as one of the most important urban areas in the United States. Simultaneously, it would also attract a great deal of commentary, both New World and Old World, both fact and fiction, about its character, its people, its morals. But that was for later; in the immediate wake of battle, military glory eclipsed all other concerns. It provided America’s pioneering writers with a potent theme. Marylander Thomas Kennedy marked the first anniversary of battle with a patriotic encomium to Jackson and his troops: This was the day the glorious work was done, This was the day the precious prize was won, To distant times this all important day, Will still be dear till time shall pass away, Our children’s children shall the story tell.9

More famously, Samuel Woodworth — described by the Southern Literary Messenger in 1838 as “the American poet” of the period — turned to the men who became the popular heroes of the battle to craft an account that became immediately iconic.10 He had already published, in 1816, The Champions of Freedom, a novel that culminated with Jackson’s “brilliant defence” of New Orleans.11 But in his anthemic poem “The Hunters of Kentucky” (1821) he rewrote the story of the Battle of New Orleans and focused his attention on the exploits of its titular heroes, playing into a growing contemporary fascination with the backwoodsman as a distinctive American type (and diminishing the martial contribution of everyone else). In Woodworth’s reckoning, it was the Kentuckians alone who were the city’s last line of defense against the might of “John Bull, in martial pomp”: Behind it stood our little force — None wished it to be greater, For every man was half a horse, And half an alligator.

When the British finally approach, the vernacular narrator happily asserts, “’twould have done you good, I think / To see Kentucky pop them.”12 “The Hunters of Kentucky” had a life far beyond Woodworth. In 1822, the popular actor and theater manager Noah Ludlow, then based in New Orleans, received a copy of Woodworth’s poem in the mail. The poem had “tickled” his brother, and Ludlow thought it would also “please the people of New Orleans.” As such, he decided to do “something entirely out of my line of business.” He set

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Woodworth’s poem to music, and got ready to debut it to his public. He dressed himself in “buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins,” borrowed from a flatboatman, put some “moccasins” on his feet, donned “an old slouched hat [. . .] and a rifle on my shoulder.” That evening, the theater was lively — “crowded full of ‘river men’,” Ludlow remembered. So when he presented himself before the audience, he was immediately “saluted with loud applause of hands and feet, and a prolonged whoop, or howl.” After he had performed the first verse of Woodworth’s poem, “the extraordinary manifestations of delight were louder and longer than before.” And when he reached the exclamation, “here was Old Kentucky,” and simultaneously “took my old hat off my head, threw it upon the ground, and brought my rifle to the position of taking aim,” there was uproar. “At that instant,” Ludlow recalled, “came a shout and an Indian yell from the inmates of the pit, and a tremendous applause from other portions of the house.”13 The song was an immediate sensation. Andrew Jackson used it as his presidential campaign song and rode the abiding popular acclaim to the White House. The fame of 1815 lingered long. Until the Civil War inscribed its own associations on the city, New Orleans remained synonymous with its famous battle. Before new conflicts relegated Jackson’s victory to the pages of history, hardly a traveler arrived in the city without making the requisite visit to the battlefield and marveling over what New Orleanians had achieved in 1815. James Stuart noted in 1833, “Every stranger who is led to New Orleans must, of course, visit the battle-ground.”14 For Benjamin Latrobe, “The battle is of all the battles of the age one of the most remarkable.”15 For Scottish traveler Thomas Hamilton, “New Orleans — for want of a better — is the American Waterloo”; he felt, therefore,

5. Jackson at New Orleans, from Benson J. Lossing, A History of the United States for Families and Libraries (New York: Mason Brothers, 1857).

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that “a little harmless vanity” on the part of Americans was not out of order.16 In 1835, Joseph Holt Ingraham agreed: New Orleans was “the queen of the Southwest — the American Waterloo.”17 As late as 1861, when William Howard Russell of the London Times was in town to cover the Civil War, he still took time to visit the battlefield: “The Americans are naturally very proud of their victory,” he noted, “which was gained at a most trifling loss to themselves.” “It is one of the events which have created a fixed idea in their minds,” he added, a little sniffily, “that they are able to ‘whip the world.’”18 Indeed, on occasion, Europeans could be a tad dismissive of the city’s military achievements. British traveler Isaac Candler confessed (a little implausibly?), “The defeat of the English troops at New Orleans was as much unknown to me [. . .] as if it had never occurred. Since my return, I have found scholars and politicians as ignorant as myself.”19 And the venerable Alexis de Tocqueville was even less impressed. Complaining that Andrew Jackson was “a man of violent temper and very moderate talents,” he maintained, with surprising vehemence, that he had achieved the presidency “solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained, twenty years ago, under the walls of New Orleans; a victory which was, however, a very ordinary achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where battles are rare.”20 But American commentators remained clear that this was a signal victory, fit to stand alongside any other moment of military glory. As John Frost exhorted in his Pictorial Life of Andrew Jackson (1846), “[t]here is no battle on the pages of history which will compare with that of New Orleans [. . .] The memory of that battle will be perpetual; together with Yorktown, and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill — Waterloo, Austerlitz, and Jena — Marathon and Thermopylae, it will go down to the latest posterity.”21

“THRIVING ASTONISHINGLY” The end of the war in 1815 did more than cement the city in the popular imagination. This was a transformative moment in the fortunes of the city, as it was for the entire early West. In 1815 — capitalizing on the growing trend for international travel — Charles Lloyd composed a series of imaginary voyages, intended for the “Instruction and Entertainment of Young Persons,” undertaken by a fictional English family. In the volume devoted to North America, the family enter the New World at New Orleans. Their account of the city serves as a potted history of its fortunes in this period, and says much about its popular reputation. Son Charles laments, “New Orleans! Ay, here it was that our army met with such a disaster in the late war.” His father sadly assents, noting, “Our gallant troops were doomed to fall on this shore in an encounter with the Americans of the States, who, without military discipline, found resolution in the love of their country to withstand effectually as brave an army as ever entered the field.” Daughter Eliza complains, “There is not much to be seen here, at New Orleans, which is but a small town.” But here, her father is more circumspect: “New Orleans, finely situated on the Gulf, must be of great magnitude and importance, as it has an advantageous position for trade with these western territories by the river, with New Spain, the

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West Indies, and South America, and also with Europe, and Africa, and Asia, by sea.”22 New Orleans was primed for change. As Liliane Crété has rightly judged, “[t]he years from 1815 to 1830 mark a watershed in the history of Louisiana, an era of tension and transition between the Old World and the New; between two opposing ways of life, the Creole and the American”23 A number of factors came together to revolutionize life in New Orleans and, in particular, to cement its growing Americanization. The war itself was a significant factor. Richard Wade notes that “the West” was the “primary beneficiary” of the War of 1812: “Embargoes, blockades, and the demands of war quickened the pace of development, leading to an extraordinary expansion along all fronts — agricultural, commercial, and industrial. Though town and country participated in this prosperity, urban centers recorded the most startling gains.”24 Immigration — both from the East and from countries around the globe — grew exponentially. As Thomas Clark and John Guice describe, “[t]he final shot in the Battle of New Orleans signaled the beginning of a race into the Old Southwest.”25 The new influx was certainly extraordinary. Timothy Flint marveled that the “progress of the population of this country, as every one knows, is without any example or parallel in the records of other colonies, in ancient or modern times.” According to Flint, in 1810 the population of the Mississippi Valley “was short of a million.” By 1830, he could boast that the “present population may be rated at 4,000,000.”26 Robert Baird, too, noticed, “the steamboats from New-Orleans, are constantly carrying hundreds and thousands of emigrants up the Mississippi.”27 As John Garretson Clark makes clear, this was very significant news for New Orleans: “Times had never looked better. The world was at peace. Demand for cotton was great and prices high. The Mississippi River Valley was the destination for thousands and thousands of settlers whose only route to market passed New Orleans.”28 The city’s population more than doubled, from 17,242 in 1810 to 46,082 in 1830.29 Visitors to the city soon noticed the change. Henry Ker announced, “New-Orleans, of late years, has been thriving astonishingly. Emigrants from all parts of the United States, are constantly roving the western and southern country, and naturally descend to New-Orleans.”30 And as Crété notes, the growth in population received other boosts: “The year 1815 also saw the arrival in New Orleans of Bonapartist refugees from the Bourbon Restoration, who added a new element to the already heterogeneous population of the city.”31 Propelled by the now rapid growth of steam power, the effects on trade were equally profound. As Richard Wade details, “in 1816 the West poured goods worth $8,062,000 into New Orleans [. . .] The most important item in this down-river commerce was flour.”32 But that dominance was soon to change, in keeping with the shifting demographics of the region. In John Clark’s words, “the movement of masses of men and slaves into the Lower Valley following the Treaty of Ghent initiated a boom in southern staples, especially cotton, that toppled northern produce from its premier position in the economy of New Orleans.”33 At the end of 1818, the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review reported that New Orleans had exported just over 80,000 bales of cotton that year.34 By 1830, James Hall’s Statistics of the West claimed that that figure had grown to over 400,000 bales.35 As cotton became king, so New Orleans became the Southern

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Queen: “By 1830, New Orleans was second only to New York in the export trade; its exports were double those of Boston and treble those of Philadelphia.”36 The city’s obvious and growing wealth was immediately apparent to its visitors. Rachel Jackson — wife of Andrew, the city’s savior — revisited the city in 1821, and was truly alarmed by what she saw at the site of her husband’s glory. She wrote to a friend: “It reminds me of those words in Revelations [sic]: ‘Great Babylon is come up before me.’ Oh, the wickedness, the idolatry of this place! unspeakable the riches and splendor.”37 As Peirce Lewis has described, all of these developments had a profound effect on the physical fabric of the city: “Between 1810 and 1840, the city’s growth rate exceeded any other large American city.”38 Robert Remini might have asserted that the success of 1815 “unified” the city’s disparate groups and “blurred [. . .] past ethnic and social distinctions that had kept them divided,” but that was hardly the whole story.39 While New Orleanians were indeed brought together in the face of danger and in the glow of victory, it is clear that the city remained essentially divided along its established fault lines. Its rapid growth reflected its integral social schisms. In Peirce’s words, “[a]s population spilled outward, it established patterns which would be permanently etched into the urban geography of New Orleans.”40 The ongoing American influx led to the continued development of the Faubourg St. Mary, something that visitors were swift to notice. In his journal in 1825, Donald Macdonald noted, “The city is rapidly extending with stores & brick houses, (the residences of Americans).”41 Timothy Flint, too, noticed that, “[t]he upper part of the city is principally built and inhabited by Americans.’”42 And Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Württemberg, highlighted that the “old part of the city is quite different from the new, with its modern structures.”43 “Thus,” explains Crété, “although capital was pouring into New Orleans [. . .] it was largely absorbed by the uptown districts. The Creole dominance of the city was clearly on the wane.”44 Though the American part of New Orleans was the site of greatest development, on the other side of town the Faubourg Marigny was undergoing its own expansion. Initially, Bernard de Marigny had agreed to sell his land to two Americans, Samuel Peters and James Caldwell, but reneged on the deal at the last minute, choosing to develop it himself. As Mel Leavitt notes, Marigny was a true New Orleans original who “spent more money, offended more people, and fought more duels than anyone else.” His eccentricities revealed themselves in his street plan for his Faubourg: “One street he named Craps, after the game he invented [. . .] Rue D’Amour (Love Street) led directly into Rampart Street where quadroon mistresses were “kept” by Creole gallants [. . .] Good Children Street supposedly domiciled the illegitimate offspring of Marigny’s and other Creole liaisons.”45 But, as Crété highlights, the neighborhood never achieved the prominence that Marigny hoped for. Fashionable Creoles were reluctant to relocate “to the other side of the Esplanade”; subsequently, it “became the home of the less successful and less wealthy among the French and Creoles.”46 And after being spurned by Marigny, James Caldwell concentrated on developing the American sector. Having previously managed a number of Virginia theaters, he “purchased two lots in the Faubourg St. Mary, on the west side of Camp Street between Gravier and

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Poydras” and set about building the “New American Theatre” — better known as the Camp Street Theatre. Formally opened on January 1, 1824, it became the city’s first permanent home for English-language theater.47 Later, he would illuminate New Orleans, winning the contract to install gas lighting in the city.

“SUNDAY IN NEW ORLEANS” There is no better way to take stock of life in the city at this signal juncture than to wander through New Orleans in the company of Benjamin Latrobe. The British-born architect — designer of the Capitol — had a troubled relationship with New Orleans. His daughter Lydia was the wife of Nicholas Roosevelt, and had steamed into town in glory. Son Henry, on the other hand, had been negotiating to secure a contract for his father to design and build a waterworks to supply New Orleans with fresh water since 1809. Though Henry was ultimately successful, he died from yellow fever in 1817. When Benjamin Latrobe himself finally traveled to the city in 1819 he was fascinated with what he found; his journals provide an extraordinarily vivid picture of New Orleans in this post-war moment. “Everything had an odd look,” he noted, “it was impossible not to stare at a sight wholly new even to one who has traveled much in Europe and America.”48 Soon, Latrobe had become a perceptive witness to the changes taking place in the city. “What is the state of society in New Orleans?” he asked rhetorically, repeating the question of a friend: “The state of society at any time here is puzzling.” He elucidated: There are in fact three societies here: 1. the French, 2. the American, & 3. the mixed. The French society is not exactly what it was at the change of government, & the American is not strictly what it is in the Atlantic cities. The opportunities of growing rich by more active, extensive, & intelligent modes of agriculture & commerce has diminished the hospitality, destroyed the leisure, & added more selfishness to the character of the Creoles. The Americans, coming hither to make money, & considering their residence as temporary, are doubly active in availing themselves of the enlarged opportunities of becoming wealthy which the place offers. On the whole that state of society is similar to that of every city rapidly rising into wealth, & doing so much & such fast-increasing business that no man can be said to have a moment’s leisure. Their business is to make money. They are in an eternal bustle.

“Americans are pouring in daily,” he added, predicting, “In a few years [. . .] this will be an American town.”49 As for the “mixed” section of society, Latrobe paid attention to parts of city life that other travelers ignored. In particular, his journal featured numerous observations of “the Indians that stroll about the streets of New Orleans, men, women, & children.” Reflecting the prejudices of his time and place, Latrobe was largely insulting about those he encountered: “These Indians who crawl about New Orleans are of the choctaw tribe, & are a sort of outcasts, the fag end of the tribe, the selvage, the intermediate existence between annihilation & savage

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vigor [. . .] I am informed, they are much deteriorated in appearance & morals since the American whiskey arrived along with the American Government.” And yet, Latrobe could also note: “They stroll about quietly, & interrupt no one, & in fact their dirty appearance, long black greasy hair, & savage faces are the worst parts of them [. . .] They are most scrupulously honest [. . .] No theft of any kind whatsoever has ever been charged to them, & their women are most scrupulously chaste.”50 His ambiguous reaction is a telling testament to the fact that even after Andrew Jackson — their commander in chief at the Battle of New Orleans — pushed through the Indian Removal Act in the early 1830s, a small but not insignificant community of American Indians retained a presence in the city. As Daniel Usner describes, “[t]he Choctaws and other Indians who frequented New Orleans during the nineteenth century illustrate that city streets were as useful as backcountry forests or remote swamplands in the day-to-day struggle for survival.”51 One Sunday morning in April 1819, like a proto-Baudelairean flâneur, Latrobe set out on a walk around the city in the belief that “Sunday in New Orleans may be pretty well understood by recounting the various sights that occur in such a walk.” His artist’s eye for detail captured vivid images of city life that immediately speak to its cosmopolitan qualities — the sense that, though hidebound and hierarchical, New Orleans was already a city whose engrained prejudices could not quite rein in its diversity. Purchasing “3 oranges for a bit” for sustenance, he set out. On the levee, “some sailors were buying, in a French shop, of a black shopwoman, slops, & trying on their pantaloons, she helping them.” “A little further on,” he continued, “were three drunken Indians, who offered sport to several boys that surrounded them. Then half a dozen Kentuckians, dirty, savage and gigantic, who were selling a horse or two to a group of genteel looking men who spoke English.” Moving forward, Latrobe noticed, “On the steps of a store [. . .] two boatmen, drunk & half asleep, swearing in English at some boys who were teizing them.” Next, he “encountered a large group of colored gentlemen and ladies, who seemed about to be about to separate. I stopped for a moment to listen to a pretty loud conversation, & found that a blackish sort of mulatto was discussing the merits of a new Priest who has a very fine voice.” Returning to the French Quarter, on Bourbon Street, Latrobe “passed a cooper who was at work with some mulatto boys. He was scolding them in very good English.” Nearing home, he “passed a shoemaker’s,” and looked in on a friendly game: Opposite to one window sat a broad faced dark mulatto on his bench. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he sat with a very large draft board on his knees; & facing him on another shoemaker’s bench, sat a good looking well dressed white man, apparently 18 or 19, with his hat on, who was playing at drafts with him. They seemed to be arguing, on terms of perfect equality, some knotty point of the game.

Pressing on, he came across further play: “[C]oming near the French coffee house, I heard the blow of the cue, & the rebound of billiard balls.” In the street, passing by, was “a cabriolet, or chair, in which was a white man, & a bright quadroon

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woman holding an umbrella out of the chair.” Finally arriving home, Latrobe was pulled back, inevitably, into business: “[I]n a short time was called upon by 3 tall Kentuckians who came to make contracts for logs.” This leisurely Sunday stroll aside, Latrobe’s fraught relationship with New Orleans continued. In August 1820 he noted optimistically in his journal, “There have been several cases of black vomit, but no epidemic. The cases are very rare & scattering (sporadic), & many cured.”52 By September 3, he was dead from yellow fever.

“THE MIGHTY MART” Latrobe’s account of New Orleans, speaking significantly to the mixture of people and places in the post-war city, highlights a vital truth about New Orleans at this important moment. As the city became a place that attracted a growing flood of visitors — some engaged in trade and some, in larger and larger numbers, traveling for pleasure — it became home to a vibrant and ever-changing transient population, from Kentucky boatmen to European tourists. In turn, both to meet their needs and as a result of their travels, the city became a place that was increasingly written about. At this moment, the city seems to have presented itself to strangers, as it did to Latrobe, as a puzzle in need of a solution. Thus, in a variety of forms and to a number of different ends, new assessments of New Orleans circulated widely. While travelers like Benjamin Latrobe attempted to negotiate city life on personal terms, others began to try and frame New Orleans in grander narratives. As J. Gerald Kennedy notes, “the resources, opportunities, and conditions of frontier life became a virtual preoccupation in the public prints after the war. Booksellers offered an astonishing selection of travel narratives, guides, gazetteers and chronicles, many of which were designed to encourage settlement in the West.”53 In these accounts of the wonders of the Mississippi Valley, New Orleans rarely failed to feature in a starring role as a city manifestly destined by God and Nature to eclipse all others. William Darby — “a land surveyor who undertook the production of an authoritative map and geographical description of the state of Louisiana” — led the way in 1816.54 His vision of New Orleans’ future greatness set the millennial tone for those who followed, providing his eager readers with a vivid sense of the city’s place in the world. Every immigrant to the West could not fail to appreciate the significance of New Orleans for their future prosperity, Darby asserted, since “almost the total of the production of the industry of its inhabitants, must flow to one common center”: New-Orleans alone will be for ever, as it is now, the mighty mart of the merchandise brought from more than a thousand rivers. Unless prevented by some great accident in human affairs, this rapidly increasing city will, in no very distant time, leave the emporia of the Eastern world far behind. With Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, on the left, Mexico on the right, Havanna in front, and the immense valley of the Mississippi in the rear; no such position for the accumulation and perpetuity of wealth and power ever existed.55

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And according to Darby, the city combined business and pleasure in enticing fashion: “There are few places where human life can be enjoyed with more pleasure, or employed to more pecuniary profit.”56 Other geographical accounts of the city echoed Darby’s encomiums: John Melish predicted, just as incontrovertibly, “New Orleans [. . .] is, and will continue to be, the great depot for the river.”57 Such testimonies were explicitly designed, as John Rennie Short describes, “to encourage immigration and westward expansion.”58 At the same time that Darby and others strove to examine New Orleans and its surrounding territories in geographical terms, others began to document Louisiana’s history, ancient and modern. Within close order, François-Xavier Martin — Louisiana’s first attorney general — and François Barbé-Marbois — close witness to the negotiations surrounding the Louisiana Purchase — both produced pioneering histories of Louisiana. Each text gave an epic sweep to the region’s past as a way of appreciating its radiant future. Martin placed Louisiana’s journey from colony to state in a romantic, heroic frame: “The country, covered by the state of Louisiana,” he began, “was within the short span of a century and a half, exclusively occupied by savages and wild beasts.” “What theme, indeed,” he continued, in grandiose terms, “can be more interesting to a young Louisianian, than the contemplation of his more remote progenitors, a handful of men, left on the sandy shore of Biloxi [. . .] afterwards to behold the dawn of liberty on his natal soil, under the territorial government of the United States, and finally, the rise of Louisiana to the rank of a sovereign state!”59 Barbé-Marbois, on the other hand, emphasized the significance of the imperial transactions, which he had seen at first hand: “[T]he consequences of the cession of Louisiana will extend to the most distant posterity. It interests vast regions that will become, by their civilization and power, the rivals of Europe before another century commences.”60 As Arthur Cole described, these geographical and historical encomiums to Louisiana were soon joined by “the commercial guidebooks or directories that listed the attractions of the West and of the South for the aspiring emigrant.”61 As well as giving practical advice to those who were thinking about making a move to the West, these texts worked up their own laudatory visions of New Orleans. Robert Baird’s guide for emigrants to the West declared enthusiastically, “This is one of the most wonderful places in the world,” and took some time out from more practical concerns to invite the reader to “take a little turn with me on the levee.” New Orleans was, in Baird’s view, “the most remarkable city, in some respects, of our country. It is the great commercial mart of the Valley of the Mississippi.” Its prospective glory was an unwritten rule of nature: “Where on earth can another city be found whose situation is so favorable, in regard to the extent of the country, whose productions, as it were, naturally tend to this great centre of trade; almost like material substances on the earth’s centre to the centre of gravitation?”62 In his emigrant guide, John Howe had more practical advice about the city. “You will find in New Orleans, abundance of everything you require, suited for cultivating any description of soil, or requisite for any purpose, and at a price as cheap, or nearly so, as you can get them at home.” And, in Howe’s account, the city was also the place to make another purchase: “Having fixed upon a spot whereon to

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locate yourself, the first thing is to purchase your slaves, on whose labour you will entirely have to depend; the principle market where these miserable beings are exhibited for sale, is New Orleans.” Howe admitted that recent immigrants might balk at this. “On my first landing at New Orleans,” he remembered, “and witnessing the horrid, cruel treatment of their slaves I felt all the horror which a mind unused to such scenes [. . .] could feel.” But, locals assured him, such foibles were temporary: “They told me mine was an old story.”63 All told, it is little wonder that Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Württemberg could claim, in the early 1820s, “[t]o describe the city of New Orleans in detail [. . .] would be an unwarranted excursion into a wide field [. . .] the public was already informed by several exhaustive works about this most important trade center.”64 But of all the geographies, histories, and emigrants’ guides that featured New Orleans in this period, perhaps no single writer dwelt as much on the city’s relationship to the wider development of the Mississippi Valley as Timothy Flint. Flint, in the words of his biographer, was a New England “pioneer, missionary, teacher, author” who traveled widely though the Mississippi Valley in the wake of the War of 1812 before settling in Cincinnati; indeed, as Kilpatrick notes, “there was no more significant man who crossed into the great western valleys in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.”65 Throughout his many and varied texts, his concern for New Orleans rested largely on its moral character. In an autobiographical account of his journeys through the West, for example, “the great commercial capital of the Mississippi Valley” came under significant scrutiny.66 The city, Flint admitted, “is of course exposed to greater varieties of human misery, vice, disease, and want, than any other American town.” Equally, Flint confessed that “this place has more than once been called the modern Sodom [. . .] the tippling houses, and other resorts of vice, have such an aspect of beastliness and degradation, as to render them utterly unbearable.” And, too, “Much has been said about certain connexions that are winked at with the yellow women of this city.” But in the end, unlike many other commentators, Flint concluded that “this city, as it respects people who have any self-estimation, is about on a footing with the other cities of the Union in point of morals.”67 His particular concern for the morality of New Orleans was drawn out more carefully in his 1828 account of the geography and history of the Mississippi Valley. In that text, his vision of the interior of the United States was focused, like his contemporaries, on the fact that “almost the whole commercial intercourse of the country is with New Orleans, by the river and the Mississippi, in boats.”68 This meant, of course, that the city was a common destination for the inhabitants of the West: “The instance of a young man of enterprize and standing, as a merchant, trader, planter, or even farmer, who has not made at least one trip to New Orleans, is uncommon.”69 “Here they come,” Flint noted, “from the remote and isolated points of the west to see the ‘city lions’ and learn the ways of men in great towns, and they necessarily carry back an impression.”70 The city’s influence, therefore, extended far beyond its boundaries: “[A] great proportion of the males of the West, of a relative standing and situation in life to be most likely to impress their opinions and manners upon society, have made this passage to New-Orleans.”71 As Flint saw it, the authority of New Orleans flowed up the Mississippi to the

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farthest extremities of the western river system. And he felt that this was both a blessing and a curse. “It must be admitted,” he warned, that while these frequent trips up and down the river, and more than all to New Orleans, give to the young people, and those who impart authority, impulse and tone to fashion and opinion, an air of society, ease and confidence; the young are apt, at the same time, to imbibe from the contagion of example, habits of extravagance, dissipation, and a rooted attachment to a wandering life.72

Flint therefore concluded, in no uncertain terms: “It is of inconceivable importance to the western country, that New Orleans should be enlightened, moral and religious.”73 And to illustrate his profound concern for the quality of life in the city, he enshrined his vision of New Orleans in one of the earliest novels to concern itself with life in the West, George Mason, the Young Backwoodsman (1829). For Flint’s titular hero, New Orleans becomes both a testing ground for his moral character and a springboard to future fortune. When George first arrives in the city as a naive backwoodsman, he experiences the kind of dislocation and disorientation that must have been common to many: He saw himself amidst a moving mass of life, of people of all nations, languages, and manners. When borne along with the tide, and seeing among the hundreds, that surrounded him, not an individual who knew him, or cared for him, or was connected with him in any other way, than as being common heir of mortality, then it was, that a sense of loneliness and home-sickness pressed upon him.74

But against the apparent emptiness of urban life — and the manifold temptations that New Orleans has to offer — George has two important buttresses. First, “his bible,” and in contrast to the city around him he “spent his Sabbaths as nearly according to his former habits as his present pursuits would admit.” Second, ambition: “His cherished purpose was to become a captain of a steam-boat.”75 And, insulated by the twin pillars of faith and industry, George prospers: “While at New Orleans in 1822, he received by mail the offer of the command of a beautiful new steam-boat [. . .] with an ample salary and perquisites.”76 By the end of the novel, George is “married, and is considered a young man of the most rising fortunes of any in the vicinity of his residence.”77

“AMERICAN ENTERPRIZE” What all of these accounts highlighted was the degree to which a journey to New Orleans down the Mississippi River and its tributaries on a flatboat had become one of the defining western experiences. As Robert Baird explained in 1830, despite “the introduction of steamboats, many hundreds — I might almost say thousands of these boats — still continue to float on these waters [. . .] The rapidly increasing trade of this region, together with the cheapness and convenience of the

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flat boat navigation, seems to increase, rather than diminish their number.”78 The significance of such journeys was profound. A trip to New Orleans became more than a simple business transaction. It was now a rite of passage, an expression of regional identity. Traveling through Pennsylvania on his way to Illinois in 1817, English traveler Morris Birkbeck lodged briefly at Ninian Bell’s tavern and felt that his host’s “little history may serve as an example of the natural growth of property in this young country.” “He is about thirty, has a wife and three fine healthy children: his father is a farmer; that is to say, a proprietor, living five miles distant. From him he received five hundred dollars, and ‘began the world,’ in true style of American enterprize, by taking a cargo of flour to New Orleans, about two thousand miles, gaining a little more than his expences, and a stock of knowledge.”79

(Perhaps unsurprisingly, in Jane Mesick’s words, Birkbeck’s account of the opportunities of the West “stimulated great enthusiasm among the discontented in England.”80) Timothy Flint asserted that “[e]ach flat or keel boat, that has descended from Pittsburgh or the Missouri, to New Orleans, could publish a journal of no inconsiderable interest.”81 Of course, it was still a dangerous endeavor. The British New Monthly Magazine, commenting critically on “the present ardour for emigration to the western world” in 1820, was only too happy to warn potential emigrants about the trials and tribulations of shipping produce down the western rivers: “But what with the delay of running down a 2000 mile river, through rapids, and falls, and shallows, and snaggs, and sawyers, and ’gainsters, and musquitoes, and agues, and fevers, and drunken boatmen; together with delay at New Orleans, and wharfage, and sinkage, and then running through pirates, and patriots [. . .] ’tis left to rot and ruin.”82 Equally, Henry Ker warned prospective travelers, “I would caution the inexperienced who may venture down so long and wild a river as the Mississippi, to be aware of whom they purchase boats [. . .] The frequent impositions and neglect of boat-builders, often endanger the property, and even the lives of those on board.”83 The financial dangers could be just as severe. Despite the glowing reports of many western boosters, it seems that shipping produce to New Orleans did not always pay. Traveling through Kentucky in 1819, William Faux encountered “a sensible, shrewd, old rustic landlord, and farmer” who complained that the only market for his produce was New Orleans, since the journey was “attended with difficulty, some expense, and much risk of health, and loss of time, as some one or two of the farmers must go with the produce.” At the same inn, Faux encountered proof of that claim: “Here was on a sick bed a stranger farmer, out of funds, returning from New Orleans and Natches, on foot. In the dismal swamps of the Mississippi, he caught the bilious fever, and then the jaundice and ague.” And another Kentuckian warned Faux that the boatmen to whom cargoes were entrusted “frequently prove to be thieves; for if the boat is stove in or markets are bad and dull, there are no returns; you hear no more of either produce or the boat-men.”84

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6. Jacob A. Dallas, A flatboat in the path of a steamboat, from “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine and Putnam’s Monthly, 5:40 (October 1857), 433–56.

That the business of shipping goods down the western rivers to New Orleans could be fraught with problems is illuminated by the dealings of two unlikely figures. In 1818 George Keats — the brother of poet John Keats — immigrated to America. By 1819 he had become one of the many attempting to forge a new life in the burgeoning West. Having made the acquaintance of the ornithologist and painter John James Audubon, who was at that point running an unsuccessful grist mill, Keats settled briefly in Henderson, Kentucky. At this point, Audubon encouraged Keats to purchase from him — with the bulk of his savings — a boat

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filled with produce that was to be sold at New Orleans. While this might sound like a standard transaction on the western rivers, it seems that Audubon might not have been entirely honest about the circumstances of the deal: as Stanley Clisby Arthur explains, “the boat, at the time of the sale, was at the bottom of the Ohio river.”85 Exasperated, brother John upbraided George for his lack of business acumen: “I cannot help thinking Mr. Audubon a dishonest man — Why did he make you believe he was a Man of Property? How is it his circumstances have altered so suddenly? In truth I do not believe you fit to deal with the world; or at least the american worrld.”86 And yet, the dangers and difficulties attendant upon a flatboat odyssey down the western rivers seem to have left some room for pleasure. Donald Macdonald noted, in a picture of bucolic joy, “We occasionally passed keel and flat boats floating on the water, & deeply laden with corn, potatoes or cattle for the Orleans Market. Six or eight tall bony & sunburnt men would be sitting on their tops lounging away the five to eight weeks voyage they were upon.”87 Robert Baird, too, noted, “I have often passed fifty of them in a day, rowing with their long sweeps, or else floating leisurely with the current [. . .] allowing the hands and passengers to while away the hours in holding converse together on the extended roof, or in each other’s cabins.”88 Upon eventual arrival in New Orleans, the boatmen provided the city with a fluctuating population that brought its own influence to the urban environment — an influence, though sometimes unwelcome, which was an essential part of the city’s texture at this point. Their propensity for bad behavior, established in the late eighteenth century, was not diminished. As Michael Allen describes, newly arrived boatmen now eagerly headed for a portion of the American sector “bounded by South Liberty, South Robertson, Julia and Girod streets.” Known as “the Swamp” it was “the sleaziest of New Orleans’ neighborhoods of vice [. . .] Its filthy streets and run-down shacks were home to an ever-growing criminal underworld.”89 Unsurprisingly, contemporaries were often aghast at their behavior: “It is said,” warned Henry Fearon, “that when the Kentuckians arrive at this place, they are in their glory, finding neither limit to, nor punishment of their excesses.”90 William Blane had his own admonition: “At New Orleans, where many boats’ crews meet together, they are the terror of all the peaceable inhabitants [. . .] This occasions numerous battles.”91 J. G. Flügel, a German immigrant who spent a number of years trading along the Mississippi and professed himself “tired of this boat life,” described his own unhappy reaction to the nature of life among the boatmen in New Orleans: I hoped to enjoy an hour of tranquility, but scarcely had I proceeded a couple of steps when I met several boxers with bloody faces. Perceiving them I turned away but had proceeded only a few steps when I saw two Frenchmen busily engaged in a cock-fight [. . .] Low, brutish, savage-like has been everything my eyes beheld today.92

In contrast, the experiences of two notable Americans attest to the extraordinary ability of New Orleans to surprise and to influence those who arrived in the city after months on the water. In 1820, after his misadventures with George Keats,

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John James Audubon embarked on his own river odyssey. He traveled to New Orleans in the hope of trading not goods but his own artistic skills, painting portraits or giving lessons to the daughters of Creole families. The journey to the city seems to have had its moments of despair. As he bemoaned in his journal, “I am on Board a Keel Boat going down to New Orleans the poorest Man on it.” When he reached New Orleans, like other boatmen, he found the temptation to celebrate too strong to resist, and soon “retired to the Keel Boat; with a bad head Hake occasioned by drinking some Wine.” And at first he found little to cheer his spirits: “I rose early tormented by many disagreeable thoughts,” he complained, “nearly again without a cent, in a Busling City where no one cares a fig for a Man in my situation.”93 But New Orleans had not finished with him. In an account that he wrote to his wife Lucy (the veracity of which has been much debated), Audubon described a very unexpected encounter. One afternoon, he was “accosted [. . .] at the corner of Royale Street [. . .] by a female of fine form” who requested his presence at her home in the Faubourg Marigny. Intrigued, Audubon arrived at the given address as the appointed time. The woman, a “Mrs Andre,” soon charmed Audubon, and possessed, he felt, “one of the most beautiful faces I ever saw.” She had a rather unusual request: “I want you to draw my likeness and the whole of my form naked.” “Had I been shot with a forty-eight pounder through the heart,” Audubon explained to his wife, “my articulating powers could not have been more suddenly stopped.” Nonetheless, he accepted the commission: “For ten days [. . .] I had the pleasure of this beautiful woman’s company about one hour naked and two talking on different subjects.” “Mrs Andre” — who, in Richard Rhodes’s words, “was probably one of the mistresses of [. . .] Bernard de Marigny” — paid for his services with the present of a gun.94 Abraham Lincoln was also one of the many sons of the West who floated down the Mississippi to reach New Orleans. In fact, he undertook the journey twice. Both journeys seem to have affected the future president, since he described them separately in a brief campaign biography that he wrote in 1860. “When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana,” Lincoln remembered, “he made his first trip upon a flatboat to New-Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made the trip.” The trip was certainly an eventful one: “[O]ne night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then ‘cut cable,’ ‘weighed anchor,’ and left.” Two years later in 1831, along with his stepbrother John D. Johnston and his cousin John Hanks, Lincoln hired himself “to one Denton Offutt, to take a flat boat from Beardstown Illinois to New-Orleans.”95 Whether apocryphal or not, this second trip became an important part of the Lincoln legend. In 1865, John Hanks looked back on this trip of his youth and remembered Lincoln’s reaction to what they found in the city: “There it was we Saw Negroes Chained — maltreated — whipt & scourged. Lincoln Saw it — his heart bled — Said nothing much — was silent from feeling — was Sad — looked bad — felt bad — was thoughtful & abstracted.” “I Can say Knowingly,” Hanks asserted, “that it was on this trip that he formed his opinions of Slavery; it ran its iron in him then & there.”96

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“GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME” As significant as the city’s flatboat visitors were to the nature of life in the city, steam travel became ever more central to the fortunes of New Orleans. Commentators were swift to highlight its importance. Robert Baird, in particular, waxed lyrical about the effect of steam on life on the western rivers. He confidently predicted, “No other country on earth will be benefitted to an equal extent by this wonderful invention. It has already made a revolution in the commercial affairs of the West.”97 The Quarterly Review echoed such sentiments, proclaiming that the “practical effects” of steamboats on the western rivers were “truly astonishing [. . .] the voyage from New Orleans to Pittsburgh, which formerly occupied four months, is accomplished with ease in fifteen or twenty days.”98 But alongside its obvious practical benefits, Baird was also keen to highlight the transformative effect of steam on social relations in the West: “Every day some come from above and others depart, on excursions of one or two thousand miles [. . .] For distance is no longer thought of in this region — it is almost annihilated by steam.”99 The fact that a journey to New Orleans became increasingly easy had an important effect on the city: the horde of flatboaters was joined by an equally populous stream of travelers who might not previously have considered a visit to the region. In particular, the city was opened up to the growing number of European tourists who began to visit the New World. As Jane Mesick explains, “[i]t was in the second and third decades of the century that pleasure-seekers began to visit America in noticeably large numbers.”100 Some of these visitors were welcomed to New Orleans with open arms. When the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the Revolution, toured America in 1824–5, the city spared no expense to mark the arrival of such an illustrious visitor. In the account kept by Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette’s personal secretary, the scale of the city’s celebrations is clear. Their passage up the Mississippi was marked by “a salute of a hundred guns,” while at the site of the Battle of New Orleans he was greeted by “an immense multitude.” When he finally reached the city proper, Lafayette “was conducted by the committee of arrangement under a triumphal arch” — built especially for the occasion — “sixty feet in height [. . .] decorated with colossal statues of Justice and Liberty.” Over the following days, he was visited by a succession of dignitaries, including “a file of a hundred Choctaws.” He attended, politically, both the French and American theaters. And when he finally left town — by steamboat, up the Mississippi — he was waved off by “an innumerable concourse of people” and “saluted by a prolonged acclamation.”101 But not all visits to the city were so storied. And as Mesick notes, of all the destinations on a tourist’s New World itinerary, New Orleans seems to have produced the most extreme reactions: Unhealthful to an extreme, a veritable pest hole of yellow fever, this city was called ‘the wet grave,’ [. . .] Yet there seems to have been something extremely fascinating to the stranger in the gay life, the mixed population, the atmosphere of romance that shed a glamor over the vice and dissipation, and above all, in the practical commercial possibilities of the city.102

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Increasingly, travelers’ reports of New Orleans became the most widely circulated accounts of the city. Even though the presence of these new tourists might have given New Orleanians less immediate cause for concern than the prospect of flatboatmen on a spree, their effect on the popular reputation of the city could be no less pernicious, and far more influential. As Thomas Hamilton explained, referring to the accounts of his compatriots: “There is an old proverb, ‘give a dog a bad name and hang him.’ The proverb is as applicable to cities as to dogs, and unfortunately New Orleans has got a bad name.”103 As Frances Wright put it: “Travellers afflicted with the anti-American mania are fond of drawing their portrait of the national character in New-Orleans. This is much the same as if we should draw that of the English in Guadaloupe or St. Lucie.”104 Others proved the truth of their claims. The Foreign Quarterly Review, for example, could unblinkingly describe the city as a place “where the people are proverbially lax in their manners.”105 Isaac Candler, too, could proclaim that New Orleans was, “by the unanimous accounts of all who have visited that city [. . .] the most profligate and licentious of any one in the United States.”106 At such moments, British commentators seem to have been seeking more than a little revenge for the defeat of 1815. Indeed, when James Kirke Paulding set out to parody European travel accounts in his satirical John Bull in America (1825), he chose as his antihero “an Englishman, travelling to New-Orleans on business.” “With respect to his object in going to New-Orleans,” Paulding noted playfully, “we have some suspicion that it might have been a part of his mission to account for the wonderful disparity of loss in the great battle between the British and the stout hero of New-Orleans.” His journey, however, does not go smoothly. The unnamed Englishman “did not like to go directly for New-Orleans, being apprehensive of the yellow-fever,” since he had been led to believe that it strikes the city “with such virulence that the people all die off there regularly once in two years.” This is an observation that others support. A fellow traveler warns him “such has been the mortality at New-Orleans, that there is not such a single human being left alive there. Nay, the very dogs, cats and parrots are extinct. You may as well wait, therefore, till it is peopled again, which will be very soon.”107 Try as he might, Paulding’s hapless traveler is continually frustrated in his attempts to reach the city. Many others succeeded where he failed. In truth, few European tourists were able to condemn New Orleans entirely out of hand. Their accounts of the city at this crucible period combine extraordinarily rich observation with a variety of prejudices. In the main, they seem to have been uncertain about how to react to New Orleans, puzzled by the contradictions that the city presented to them. British traveler Adam Hodgson was particularly conflicted. Though more sympathetic to life in the New World than many of his compatriots, he could not ignore what he felt to be New Orleans’ failings. True, the city came close to winning him over, and inspired him to produce an extraordinary hymn to its charms: Often, when at New Orleans, walking out at sunrise, on the banks of the Mississippi, which, a few hours before, had been parched and cracked by yesterday’s meridian fervour, but were then saturated with the heavy dews which, at that season, fell nightly

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like ‘showers on the mown grass,’ I have thought that I had never before seen so much to delight the eye, regale the senses, or kindle the imagination; — orange groves, with their golden fruit and fresh green leaves; hundreds of cattle half hid in the deep wet clover, which grows wild and luxuriant on the rich alluvion; the sugar and cotton plantations on the opposite bank, and the forest behind them, stretching to the boundless prairies of the Attacapas and Opelousas; above all, the noble Mississippi flowing majestically to the sea, and carrying the imagination thousands of miles up its current to its distant source.

And yet, such wonders could not outweigh Hodgson’s qualms: “[W]hen I think of the moral pollution which pervades New Orleans, and the yellow fever which annually depopulates it, or of the intermittents and slavery which infest its vicinities, the rocky shores of New England have a thousand times more charms for me.”108 Similarly conflicted, the politically radical English abolitionist Harriet Martineau asserted that the city “affords an instructive study and yields some enjoyment to a stranger,” but also felt “it is the last place in which men are gathered together where one who prizes his Humanity would wish to live.”109 Charles Sealsfield found New Orleans to be “one of the most flourishing cities in the world [. . .] one of the most elegant and wealthy cities of the republic,” but lamented “the detestable selfishness which pervades all classes, and has established a dominion over the mind, as painful as it is disgusting.”110 And Henry Fearon asserted ambiguously, “to all men whose desire only is to be rich, and to live a short life but a merry one, I have no hesitation in recommending New Orleans.”111

“THE HORRORS OF SLAVERY” There is no doubt that a large part of the ambivalence expressed by European tourists when confronted by life in New Orleans was related to New Orleans’ racial dynamics. The city’s large black population (in 1820 the city’s “black population exceeded the white”), its complex encoding of racial hierarchies, the suggestion of inter-racial liaisons, and the ever-present nature of slavery meant that, in comparison with other locations in the South, New Orleans concentrated travelers’ attention on the relationship between black and white. 112 Frances Trollope — who found “very little that can gratify the eye of taste” in New Orleans — singled out for particular “novelty and interest for a newly-arrived European” the “large proportion of blacks seen in the streets” and “the grace and beauty of the elegant Quadroons.”113 But the question of race in New Orleans brought with it a variety of complications. Even the apparently straightforward issue of racial identity became a vexing one. In his journal, in the form of a dialogue with a local, Benjamin Latrobe’s son John noted the difficulties that strangers experienced in their attempts to navigate the city’s dizzying racial categorizations: Why she’s a mulatto — Fie — not at all — dont let her hear you — that’s a quadroon. A Quadroon! Well, I’ll know better next time. Are those quadroons on high there [. . .] Heavens no, they are creoles — natives, whites — Spaniards and French mixed — born in the country — very good society. No indeed they are not quadroons. You must make

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the distinction [. . .] And here are more balconies, and more females [. . .] two old ladies, quadroons — No, those are mulattos.114

Even in “The Hunters of Kentucky,” Woodworth blithely noted that “New-Orleans / Is famed for wealth and beauty — / There’s girls of every hue, it seems, / From snowy white to sooty.”115 In the main, New Orleans became characterized as a place where slavery presented its worst aspects. Harriet Martineau, perhaps the most fulsome and persistent critic of the city’s race relations, asserted, “I could never get out of the way of the horrors of slavery in this region. Under one form or another, they met me in every house, in every street.”116 Even Charles Sealsfield — who felt that “emancipation is impossible” — believed that “the slave population of Louisiana are not so well treated as in the north.”117 Tales of cruelty circulated widely. The noted Karl Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, reported, “One witnesses almost daily examples of the degrading treatment which the poor negroes experience.” He then related “one particular scene, which roused my indignation in the highest manner.” Another resident of his boardinghouse requested water from a young female slave who was employed as a chambermaid. “As the water was not instantly brought to him,” he narrated, the man “struck her immediately with the fist, in the face, so that the blood ran from her forehead.” When the girl “put herself on her defence, and caught the Frenchman by the throat,” the landlady “disgraced herself by having twenty-six lashes inflicted upon the poor girl with a cowhide.”118 As Thomas Hamilton argued, “If such scenes are acted in a Christian country, it is the duty of every traveler to take care at least, that they shall not be done in a corner, that they shall be proclaimed loudly to the world, and that those who perpetrate the enormities shall receive their due meed of indignation and contempt.”119 Acting on such an impulse, Harriet Martineau recounted a story which “she was requested on the spot not to publish [. . .] as exhibiting a fair specimen of slave-holding in New Orleans.” Admitting that “no one could suppose it to be so,” she also found the story “a revelation of what may happen in a slave-holding country.” Madame Lalaurie, Martineau explained, gained a certain reputation: her slaves “looked singularly haggard and wretched.” However, “the lady was so graceful and accomplished, so charming in her manners and so hospitable, that no one ventured to openly question her perfect goodness.” Eventually, stronger hints of cruelty emerged. A neighbor “heard a piercing shriek [. . .] She looked out, and saw a little negro girl, apparently eight years old, flying across the yard towards the house, and Madame Lalaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand.” The chase brought them to the top of the house: “[S]he heard the fall, and saw the child taken up, her body bending, and limbs hanging, as if every bone was broken.” Though this incident precipitated an inquiry, resulting in the forfeiture and sale of a number of her slaves, Martineau records that Lalaurie “does not appear to have lost caste for her actions.” Worse was to come. “She kept her cook chained within eight yards of the fireplace,” Martineau explained; eventually, “the cook declared that they had better all be burned together than lead such a life; and she set the house on fire.”

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As people struggled to put out the fire, it became apparent that Lalaurie “became excessively uneasy” whenever anyone approached “a particular outhouse.” When they finally entered the building, “[a] horrible sight met their eyes.” Slaves, living and dead, “were chained and tied in constrained postures [. . .] They had iron collars with spikes which kept their heads in one position. The cowhide, stiff with blood, hung against the wall; and there was a step-ladder on which this fiend stood while flogging her victims, in order to lay on the lashes with more effect.” Fleeing from an enraged crowd, Lalaurie “escaped to France [. . .] and is supposed to be now skulking about in some French province, under a false name.”120 “In reply to enquiries,” Martineau concluded, “I was told that it was very possible that cruelties like those of Madame Lalaurie might be incessantly in course of perpetration.”121 Benjamin Latrobe certainly thought so. In his notebook, he alleged that a “Mrs. Tremoulet — why should I conceal the name of such a termagant? — is one of those notorious for her cruelty.” And she was not the only one: “Madam Lanusse is another of these Hellcats [. . .] She actually did whip a negress to death.” Latrobe was so affected by these rumors that, when attending a “ball on Washington’s birthday [. . .] the idea of these things destroyed all the pleasure I should otherwise have felt in seeing the brilliant assemblage of as many beautiful faces and forms as I ever saw collected in one room [. . .] I fancied that I saw a cowskin in every pretty hand.”122

“QUADROON CONNEXIONS” The relationships between white men and quadroon women in New Orleans garnered almost as much commentary as overt acts of cruelty, particularly the arrangement known as plaçage. In Joan M. Martin’s explanation, plaçage was a system “whereby women of color — the option of legal marriage denied them — entered into long-standing, formalized relationships with white European men.” As Martin notes, framed within the context of a virulently racist society, plaçage provided an important lifeline for free women of color, and “created a class of free people of color which was well-educated, cultured, wealthy, and powerful.”123 Thomas Ingersoll, on the other hand, has asserted that plaçage was largely a “myth,” and only “a tiny minority of couples [. . .] engaged in lifetime concubinage.”124 Either way, it was in this period that the early hints of plaçage promulgated by travelers like Thomas Ashe were embellished by a variety of commentators who asserted that the practice was flourishing. Lydia Maria Child dwelt at length on the “Quateroons, or Quadroons” of New Orleans in her An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833): “The women are much distinguished for personal beauty and gracefulness of motion [. . .] White gentlemen of the first class are desirous of being invited to their parties, and often become seriously in love with these fascinating but unfortunate beings.” And yet, Child lamented, “[p]rejudice forbids matrimony, but universal custom sanctions temporary connexions [. . .] What eloquent vituperations we should pour forth, if the contending claims of nature and pride produced such a tissue of contradictions in some other country, and not in our own!”125

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In the main, European commentators were likely to respond to the idea of such arrangements with equal outrage. As proof of “the positive licentiousness of the south,” Martineau proclaimed that “Quadroon connexions in New Orleans are all but universal, as I was assured on the spot by ladies who cannot be mistaken.” For Martineau, such arrangements were as pernicious as the violence of Lalaurie: “What security for domestic purity and peace there can be,” she lamented, “where every man has had two connexions, one of which must be concealed; and two families, whose existence must not be know to each other.”126 In his notebook, Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited New Orleans during the preparation of his influential Democracy in America, quickly scribbled his own unfavorable impressions of a quadroon ball: “Strange sight: all the men white, all the women coloured, or at least of African blood. Single tie created by immorality between the two races. A sort of bazaar. The women vowed as it were by law to concubinage. Incredible laxity of morals. Mothers, young girls, children at the dance; still another harmful consequence of slavery.”127 The Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was more circumspect, however. He recognized that “to be the friends, as it is termed, of the white men” was the only option available for many female quadroons, who looked upon “such an engagement as a matrimonial contract.” “The quadroons both assume the name of their friends,” he continued, “and as I am assured preserve this engagement with as much fidelity as ladies espoused at the altar.” After attending a quadroon ball, the duke had an admission to make: he found it “much more decent than the masked ball” which he had just left: “The coloured ladies were under the eyes of their mothers, they were well and gracefully dressed, and conducted themselves with much propriety and modesty.” But he was careful not to linger too long, “that I might not utterly destroy my standing in New Orleans, but returned to the masked ball and took great care not to disclose to the white ladies where I had been.”128 The infamous Frances Trollope, whose Domestic Manners of the Americans caused such controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, evinced perhaps the most ambiguous relationship to slavery in New Orleans. Trollope, unlike many of her fellow travelers, arrived in the city with a purpose: she was bound for Nashoba, a radical community established by Frances Wright that was dedicated to educating slaves as a precursor to emancipation. “I left England with feelings so strongly opposed to slavery,” she explained, “that it was not without pain I witnessed its effects around me.” And yet, her time in the New World, not least in New Orleans, caused her to look back with amusement at what she later considered to be her early naiveties. “At the sight of every Negro man, woman, and child that passed,” she remembered, “my fancy wove some little romance of misery, as belonging to each of them; since I have known more on the subject, and become better acquainted with their real situation in America, I have often smiled at recalling what I then felt.”129 This is not to say, however, that Trollope lost all of her anti-slavery sentiment. Like her friend Timothy Flint, Trollope transformed her experiences of city life into a novel — and not just any novel, but, in Helen Heineman’s words, “the first novel in England or America to call attention to the evils of slavery in the United States.”130

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In The Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw (1836), she directed significant ire at New Orleans, producing a caustic vision of life in the city largely unrivaled throughout the nineteenth century. “Year after year,” Trollope began, “religion and philosophy have struck off the fetters from the emancipated slave in different quarters of the globe; but at New Orleans every white man’s object is to rivet them on his black brethren firmer and firmer still.” Warming to her theme, she developed her verbal assault: This is the business of their lives: — and what are their pleasures? To revel in the caresses of the race they scorn, and to rouse their dreamy, idle souls to animation by the sordid stimulants of strong drink and gambling; and then, as if their own unholy deeds brought not sufficient punishment, nature sends forth the monster Fever, to stalk through the land, breathing avenging curses with his poisonous breath. Such is New Orleans.

Needless to say, her eponymous antihero — a cruel overseer — finds much to amuse himself in the city: “[I]t might be fairly doubted whether his confident hopes of gain at the gambling-houses, or the glowing anticipations of unbounded license of debauchery for his leisure hours, inspired the strongest feeling of triumphant happiness at his heart.”131 But Whitlaw — after a number of misadventures, including the attempted seduction of a tragic New Orleans quadroon — eventually meets a violent comeuppance, killed at the hands of slaves. As Susan S. Kissel has argued, this was audacious: by “allowing the aged slave woman Juno to continue her life undisturbed and unpunished after plotting and executing the murder of the evil overseer [. . .] Trollope challenged Victorian morality.”132 Future abolitionist novelists — Harriet Beecher Stowe included — would pay close attention to Trollope’s portrayal of New Orleans. Ironically, while travelers to the city at this period paid significant attention to the nature of slavery in the city, they seem to have paid little attention to those moments when the enslaved actually managed to carve out a modicum of self-expression for themselves. Since colonial times, Sunday afternoon in New Orleans had been a time when the enslaved, temporarily liberated from their duties, gathered together. A location known as Congo Square — across Rampart Street from the French Quarter on the edge of the Tremé plantation — became the main site for their gatherings. As Gary Donaldson notes, this was a highly significant location: “Although subcultures of slaves certainly existed throughout the South (even among the smallest groups on plantations) only at Congo Square did slaves gather for social, cultural, economic and religious interaction in such large numbers and with such great intensity.” At its peak in this period, Donaldson notes that it attracted “hundreds and even thousands of slaves.”133 Most famously, Congo Square became known as a site of song and dance. But few travelers paid attention, and those who did were not always certain what they were witnessing. Arthur Singleton might have noted cheerily, “On sabbath evening, the African slaves meet on the green, by the swamp, and rock the city with their Congo dances,” but others were less amiable.134 J. G. Flügel was one of those who “witnessed a negro dance” and subsequently, in Daniel Walker’s words, “tapped into contemporary myths about African-

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descended people in an attempt to underscore the supposedly innate differences between blacks and whites and to remind everyone of the constant need to control the behavior of people of color.”135 Flügel noted in his journal, “Their postures and movements somewhat resembled those of monkeys. One might by a little imagination take them for a group of baboons. Yet as these poor wretches are entirely ignorant of anything like civilization (for their masters withhold everything from them that in the least might add to the cultivation of their minds) one must not be surprised at their actions.” When a local informed him “that three of the negroes in the group closest to us were formerly kings or chiefs in Congo,” Flügel softened a little: “I perceive in them a more genteel address. They are richly ornamented and dance extremely well.”136 Benjamin Latrobe was scarcely more sympathetic. While walking through the city, Latrobe recorded that he stumbled upon “the assembly of negroes which I am told every Sunday afternoon meets on the Common in the rear of the city.” Estimating the presence of “5 or 600 persons,” Latrobe carefully recorded what he saw in his journal: They were formed into circular groupes in the midst of four of which [. . .] was a ring. In the first were two women dancing. They held each a coarse handkerchief extended by the corners in their hands, & set to each other in a miserably dull and slow figure, hardly moving their feet or bodies. The music consisted of two drums and a stringed instrument. An old man sat astride of a cylindrical drum about a foot in diameter, & beat it with incredible quickness with the edge of his hand & fingers.137

Latrobe recognized that the “allowed amusements of Sunday have, it seems, perpetuated here those of Africa among its inhabitants.” Yet he concluded, “I have never seen anything more brutally savage, and at the same time dull & stupid.”138 There were, however, some white observers paying close attention. Edwin Pearce Christy, founder of the blackface Christy Minstrels, spent time in New Orleans as a child and remembered visiting Congo Square to witness, avidly, the “queer words and simple but expressive melodies” of the performers.139 After 1830, the rise of radical abolition and the fear generated by Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in Virginia meant that the gatherings in Congo Square were outlawed; but, unacknowledged and appropriated into the medium of minstrelsy, a residue of its countless performances became a signal part of antebellum American culture.

“THE KEY” Still propelled by the momentum from the War of 1812, New Orleans moved into the antebellum years as an apparently unstoppable force. Indeed, there was one truism on which all of the city’s inhabitants, permanent or temporary, could agree — one evident fact which cut across all partisan lines and formed the basis for future action. Whatever stature New Orleans had already achieved, it was destined for future greatness. Charles Sealsfield, speaking for many, marveled,

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There is not a spot on the globe that presents a more favourable situation for trade. Standing on the extreme point of the longest river in the world, New Orleans commands all the commerce of the immense territory of the Mississippi, being the staple pointed out by nature for the countries watered by this stream or by its tributaries — a territory exceeding a million of square miles.

To emphasize this point, he took his readers on an extraordinary imaginary journey: You may travel on board a steam-boat of 300 tons and upwards for an extent of 1000 miles from New Orleans up the Red river; 1500 miles up the Arkansas river; 3000 miles up the Missouri and its branches; 1700 miles on the Mississippi to the falls of St. Anthony; the same distance from New Orleans up the Illinois; 1200 miles to the north-east from New Orleans on the big Wabash; 1300 on the Tennessee; 1300 on the Cumberland; and 2300 miles on the Ohio up to Pittsburgh.

“New Orleans,” he concluded, brooking no contradiction “is beyond a doubt the most important commercial point on the face of the earth.”140 The French consul told Alexis de Tocqueville much the same thing, but brought to his prophecy a sense of history — a perspective informed by his long association with the city though its rise to prominence: “In the 15 years I have been here, he related, “the prosperity of this region has increased an hundred fold. I have seen the quartiers rear themselves in the midst of infested swamps, palaces replace cabins, the city increase in population in spite of the yellow fever.” Moreover, the same was true for the rest of the interior: “The same impulse is imprinted upon all the districts of the state. All are prospering, all are growing visibly, the future of Louisiana is wonderful. Ten states, in which will soon be found the strength and population of the Union, have as their only outlet the Mississip[p]i, and we hold the key to it.”141 As the Southern Queen ascended to her throne, who could have argued with him?

3

“Prima donna”: The Queen of the South

New Orleans, the Queen of the South, the marketplace of countless plantations and farms in all parts of the Union, the crossroads from the cold, northerly climate to the pleasant, mild tropical world, the South America of the Ohio and Mississippi raftsman and flatboatman, the Eldorado and grave of millions [. . .] “For how many centuries has this city existed?” the foreign visitor naturally wonders, quickly surveying with astonishment the wealth and splendor spread out before him. “How much time did it take to build up this seven-mile-long sea of houses, these enormous warehouses, these wharfs and levees?” His astonishment increases when he hears of the fantastic speed with which the city literally arose from the mud and swamp. FRIEDRICH GERSTÄCKER 1

HAVE you ever been in New Orleans? If not you’d better go, Its a nation of a queer place; day and night a show! Frenchmen, Spaniards, West Indians, Creoles, Mustees, Yankees, Kentuckians, Tennesseans, lawyers and trustees, Clergymen, priests, friars, nuns, women of all stains; Negroes in purple and fine linen, and slaves in rags and chains. Ships, arks, steamboats, robbers, pirates, alligators, Assassins, gamblers, drunkards, and cotton speculators; Sailors, soldiers, pretty girls, and ugly fortune-tellers; Pimps, imps, shrimps, and all sorts of dirty fellows; White men with black wives, et vice versa too. A progeny of all colors — an infernal motley crew! Yellow fever in February — muddy streets all the year; Many things to hope for, and a dev’lish sight to fear! COL. JAMES R. CREECY 2

Antebellum New Orleans was a city on the rise and on the make. In the decades before the Civil War, the city experienced its nineteenth-century apotheosis: it would finally transform itself, in John and Elizabeth Barber’s phrase from 1850, into “the stately Southern Queen” of popular mythology.3 Buoyed by growing prosperity and a burgeoning population, the city’s rise to grandeur meant that the antebellum moment would be remembered, forever after, as its Golden Age — materially, at least. Offering significant attractions for a variety of travelers, New Orleans presented a spectacle of urban life that was almost unrivaled for its exciting heterogeneity. As Sandra Frink has described, because of the

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city’s “startling economic and demographic growth,” antebellum New Orleans was marked by “an increasingly diverse and chaotic urban environment.”4 Or as a fictionalized Davy Crockett exclaimed, “The folks at New Orleans are the all-queerest mixture o’all creations’ population that can be found in or about any part o’ this here round-shouldered globe. They are about half Yankee, half Mounseer, half Spanish, half Portugese, half Indian, half Nigger, an’ t’other parts are a compound o’ shark and alligator.”5 Visitors flooded in. Little wonder that, in 1845, B. M. Norman published a new guidebook to New Orleans intended both for “the stranger visiting New Orleans, and to those abroad who may feel an interest in the metropolis of the great South-West.”6 In short, there were few world cities as exciting, and enticing, as antebellum New Orleans. But at the same time, building on its established reputation, it cemented itself in the popular imagination as a distinctly ambiguous Babylon with a variety of abiding discomforts, dangers, and moral hazards. If this was the city’s Golden Age, a variety of baser metals were still obvious in its makeup. As sectional tension grew throughout the nation, New Orleans was pictured frequently by Northern commentators as a place that was decadent and depraved, an abolitionist nightmare. Gambling, sexual impropriety, violence, and a propensity for alcohol were apparently engrained within the texture of city life. The city’s susceptibility to disease became proverbial: New Orleans witnessed its worst outbreaks of yellow fever in the antebellum years and thousands died in repeated epidemics. The city was also home to new forms of international subterfuge: filibusters and mercenaries used New Orleans as a base for numerous infamous schemes. Slavery remained an equally contentious issue at the heart of city life: as the location of the most famous slave market in America, New Orleans starred, ignominiously, in a wealth of anti-slavery material. And on the horizon loomed the coming Civil War — a definitive bookend to the years of the city’s greatest wealth and influence. And yet, at one level, these problems were also part of the appeal of New Orleans. For in compensation, the undisputed Queen of the South retained qualities that other places seemed to lack. Jesse Milton Emerson noted, “There is visible in the population a sort of reckless gayety, and a passion for amusement, and a disregard of death, quite surprising to a cautious man.”7 Then as now, such recklessness frequently proved irresistible. At the termination of his lengthy rambles through North America, Charles Joseph Latrobe reached New Orleans in December 1833, just before the city reached its material apex. According to his friend and occasional traveling partner Washington Irving, although Latrobe was “an Englishman by birth” his extensive travels had made him, “to a certain degree, a citizen of the world [. . .] never was a man more busy or more cheerful.”8 Despite Irving’s encomiums, Latrobe clearly found the experience of wintering in New Orleans a test of his mettle. Nonetheless, his experiences of the city are a revealing summation of the position from which it would develop in the antebellum years. Echoing a popular phrase of the time — one that would only resonate more strongly as the period progressed — he described New Orleans as a “Wet Grave”: “[T]he surrounding country was a sheet of water; the streets were full of mud oozing up from the pavement, and it was a penance to be within its thick and unwholesome atmosphere.”

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Snow followed rain: “[M]any miserable wretches were found dead in the streets, and under the porticoes.” Thoroughly miserable, Latrobe lamented that he “was soon sated with its motley scenes.”9 It is a testament to the city’s burgeoning glamour that even this unhappy traveler slowly found himself warming to the “chaos of mud” around him. Lurking in Latrobe’s melancholy experiences of the city, hints of the extraordinary growth and prosperity of the coming decades were clearly discernible. In miniature, and in spite of the weather, Latrobe painted a picture of the city that would remain recognizable until the Civil War, encapsulating those elements of life in New Orleans that were felt to be so compelling by so many. Searching for the scene from which his reader “would glean the most vivid idea of the characteristic features of this strange city,” Latrobe selected “the levee in front of the square of the Cathedral [. . .] in the vicinity of the markets.” Here, Latrobe felt, was the essential New Orleans. On the one hand, it offered views of the river that was so vital to the city’s fortunes, “lined for upwards of two miles with ships and boats of every size as close as they can float” — from “the flats, arks, and barges” to the “tier of steam-boats, fifty of which may be seen lying here at one time” to the “brigs ranged in rows” and “the three-masters, lying in tiers of two or three deep.” For Latrobe, this very visible expression of the city’s extraordinary economic potential was a sight worth seeing: “[T]he scene presented by the whole margin of the river [. . .] when the sails of the whole are exposed to the air, and their signals or national flags abroad, is one of the most singularly beautiful you can conceive.”10 But this vantage point also offered other picturesque sights that were equally connected to New Orleans’ growing prosperity. The city’s markets presented the viewer with a glimpse of the “melée of all classes and costumes” which made up the city’s population — “French, Spaniards, Americans, Creoles, Quadroons, Mulattoes, Mexicans, Negroes.” This diversity was rivaled by the extraordinary variety of produce available, richly expressive of the city’s place in the world: “[P]aving stones, masses of marble and granite coping stones, piles of timber and bricks, log-wood, coffee, sugar, corn, and wheat, beef, and pork, and mountains of cotton [. . .] fruit stalls loaded with the produce of the tropics, — bananas, plantains, cocoa and peccan nuts, oranges and pines [. . .] piles of butcher’s meat and venison, — fish laid out upon clean fresh palmetto leaves, — eggs wrapped up in Spanish moss [. . .] lines of seed sellers with their neat little packets arranged before them on a yellow mat.” Here too, Latrobe felt, was much to divert the attention of a weary traveler: “At every step you meet with something to catch the attention of a curious or idle man [. . .] Nor will you fail to mark with astonishment the hubbub of voices and tongues broken in upon by that most indescribable of all joyous sounds, the negro’s laugh.”11 As other travelers attested, there was no better metaphor for antebellum New Orleans. “If the market at New-Orleans represents that city,” Joseph Holt Ingraham agreed, “so truly does New-Orleans represent every other city and nation upon earth.”12 Here was the most visible symbol of the city’s booming prosperity and teeming multiplicity; here was confirmation that antebellum New Orleans was a place where seemingly everything — indeed, everyone — could be bought and sold; here was testimony that this was a city where business was

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pleasure, and pleasure was business. No visitor to antebellum New Orleans failed to be impressed with these unique elements of city life. As Irish actor Tyrone Power summarized, “I had never heard this city named without accompanying remarks being elicited descriptive of its rapid increase, its singular position, and motley population, together with the speculations founded on the promise of its future greatness.”13

“A BUSY, DRIVING, DREADFUL PLACE” If antebellum New Orleans was a uniquely diverse environment, there was one important thing, Charles Sealsfield noted with much perspicacity, which bound the city’s inhabitants together: “Heterogeneous as the population may seem, and as it really is, in manners, language, and principles, they all agree in one point — the pursuit after ‘money.’”14 In 1851, Abraham Oakey Hall, the self-styled Manhattaner in New Orleans, certainly agreed: “‘Work, work, work,’ is the unceasing cry. Every one appears in fear lest daylight should cheat him of a dollar [. . .] On ’change; on street corner; at the dinner-table; between the acts of opera and theatre; in the drawing-room; at the ball or soiree; in the sleeping apartments; stocks, cotton, sugar, and money are the liveliest topics.”15 Statistics support these travelers’ tales. As Ari Kelman explains, the busy scenes on the levee that Charles Joseph Latrobe had witnessed in the early 1830s were just the tip of an iceberg (even in spite of the national financial crisis of 1837): “By 1840, over five hundred thousand tons of freight arrived at New Orleans’s port, valued at nearly fifty million dollars. Ten years later, receipts climbed over one hundred million dollars, and never fell below that mark until the Civil War began.”16 In turn, the Mississippi would only become more crowded. In 1830, 989 steamboats arrived in the city; by 1860 that figure was 3,566 — and the boats carried 12 times more freight.17 Though steamboats would dominate, other craft maintained a presence on the Mississippi — and, therefore, in the economic fortunes of the city. Flatboats continued to arrive in vast numbers, peaking at 2,792 in 1846–7 before finally dropping off in the 1850s.18 Little wonder, then, that James Logan discovered “a constant humming, as of bees, from the merchants, clerks, and masters of vessels, who are running to and fro” when he came across the levee in the late 1830s.19 James Creecy reached for the same metaphor: “The business appearance of this city is not surpassed by any other in the wide world: it might be likened to a huge bee-hive, where no drones could find a resting place.”20 And the hum of commerce only grew louder throughout the period. In 1847 Alabamian Albert Pickett marveled: “The very air howls with an eternal din and noise. Drays and wagons of all descriptions, loaded with the produce of every clime, move on continually in one unbroken chain.” “While I was there,” he exclaimed, driven to raptures by the volume of trade, “THIRTY-SIX THOUSAND BARRELS OF FLOUR were sold in a few hours! And while this astonishing transfer was going on, thousands of other produce and commodities were changing hands.”21 The levee did not always provoke joy, however. Ten years later, Jesse Milton Emerson also stood agog at the commercial

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hubbub of the levee. He likened the city to the mouth of a “wonderful cornucopia,” but he found the scale of operations unsettling. “’Tis a busy, driving, dreadful place,” he exhorted: This vast mass of merchandise, which lies in such confusion, is being clutched by brawny negroes, piled on carts, and hauled away; or is being seized and swung into the holds of ships; and somehow, in a wonderful, mysterious providential way, it all gets to its proper destination, to be eaten, or spun, or worn, or wasted by man. You, yourself — a man, a stranger — you, are useless, and you are jostled and run against, and are in danger of having your legs broken by machinery, your head mashed by swaying hardware, or of being rolled into the river by casks of whisky or sugar; you must get out of the way, and at once.22

For good or ill, this instructive “panorama of trade,” as Abraham Oakey Hall described it, mesmerized all who came across it: “I have often seen a stranger from interior wilds gazing upon it with astonishment and admiration,” Hall noted, “and perhaps with awe.”23 Even Frederick Marryat — never easily impressed — maintained without fear of contradiction that “New Orleans will be the first maritime port in the universe.”24 The extraordinary burgeoning of the city’s population was equally vital to the development of New Orleans in this crucible period. Presbyterian-turnedUnitarian minister Theodore Clapp, who knew the city better than most, marveled: “The society is fluctuating and heterogeneous almost beyond a precedent. It is constantly changing.”25 And there was little sense that this explosion would stop. Buoyed up by the scenes he had witnessed on the levee in 1847, Albert Pickett

7. Jacob A. Dallas, The Levee at New Orleans, from “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine and Putnam’s Monthly, 5:40 (October 1857), 433–56.

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predicted that New Orleans would soon be “the largest city on the continent of America, and perhaps in the world.”26 Though such visions were a little optimistic they would not have seemed outlandish. Throughout the antebellum period, New Orleans was consistently one of the five biggest cities in the Union in terms of population; during the 1840s, it vied with Baltimore for the position of secondlargest city in America.27 In real terms, population increased from 46,082 in 1830 to 168,675 in 1860.28 If Charles Joseph Latrobe had found the city diverse in the 1830s, that, too, would soon be eclipsed. As Elizabeth Fussell explains, the reason that New Orleans “grew exceptionally fast” in the antebellum period was immigration: “Most of the new immigrants arrived from Germany and Ireland, with smaller streams coming from other countries, most of them European.”29 Indeed, as Richard Campanella explains, between 1837 and the Civil War, “more immigrants landed at New Orleans than at any other southern city. Nationally, only New York attracted more immigrants.”30 By 1850, “over 55 per cent” of New Orleanians “had been born out of state if not out of country.”31 Even before famine struck Ireland, New Orleans was a significant location for Irish immigrants. As David T. Gleeson describes, the city “became a ‘labor depot’ for Irish workers in the 1830s and 1840s.” After famine began to bite hard, things grew exponentially, increasing the number of Irish arrivals in the city from 813 in 1845 to 7,272 in 1849.32 Likewise, German immigration to Louisiana grew steadily through the first decades of the nineteenth century, driven by what Ellen Merrill describes as “worsening conditions in the homeland.”33 By 1850 the city was home to 11,425 Germans.34 It was in the 1850s, however, that German immigration peaked, driven by the failure of the German Revolution of 1848 and ongoing economic and political instability. From 1850 to 1855 no less than 126,006 German immigrants arrived in New Orleans.35 Though the city often acted as a stepping-stone for immigrants’ ongoing journeys into the interior, many stayed in New Orleans. And for those who did stay, employment was frequently found in a variety of menial occupations, at “the flatboat wharves, warehouses, slaughterhouses, tanneries and in public-works projects for canals, drainage, and railroads.”36 Frederick Law Olmstead, visiting the city in the 1850s, noted that the “slave-holding bosses could get no white men to work with their slaves, except Irishmen or Germans.”37 In turn, the presence of these newcomers added to the tapestry of city life, physically and culturally. As S. Frederick Starr describes, Lafayette, upriver from the Faubourg St. Mary, became “a magnet for the footloose and restless”; by 1850 it was home to “11,000 Germans and 20,000 Irish,” and became known as the Irish Channel.38 When Walt Whitman briefly lived in New Orleans in 1848, it was here that he took up residence. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that one of the character sketches that he produced for the New Orleans Daily Crescent was of a recent Irish immigrant, “Patrick McDray”: “He’s a clever fellow, is Pat, and by dint of hard labor and plenty of it, supplies his daily wants and the animal necessities of five or six small Pats, who look for all the world like chips off the old block.”39 The Faubourg Marigny attracted its own share of immigrants and was dubbed Little Saxony. In addition, new neighborhoods sprang up as New Orleans, in common with other cities in this period of urbanization and industrialization, expanded.

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The American population of New Orleans, though still largely concentrated in the Faubourg St. Mary, made a move to the nascent suburbs when development of the Garden District began in force in the 1840s. The area swiftly became, in S. Frederick Starr’s words, a symbol of “high economic status, political and social identity, a gracious style of life” — and very visible proof of the city’s continuing Americanization.40 The French Quarter also gained a new slice of grandeur with the construction of the Pontalba Buildings in Jackson Square in the late 1840s. Their owner, the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba, possessed an extraordinary biography even by the standards of nineteenth-century New Orleans. Born in the city in 1795, educated by the Ursulines, she was married in 1811 to her cousin Célestin Delfau de Pontalba. The two soon moved to France, but their marriage was a profoundly unhappy one, a situation that was exacerbated by the interference of Micaela’s father-in-law. As Christina Vella notes, the pair “filed a dozen petitions for separation and divorce which, taken together, form a twenty-year narrative of false hopes and aching disappointments.”41 Such profound personal turbulence was capped by an event that, in 1834, gained notoriety around the globe. As the London Quarterly Review described, “there occurred the most extraordinary and unaccountable scene that, though we have just read one hundred French novels, we ever met with”: On the 19th of October, the day after Madame de Pontalba’s arrival, she [. . .] was about to return to Paris, when old M. de Pontalba, at the age of eighty-two, observing a moment when she was alone in her apartment, enters it with a brace of pistols, locks the door, and approaching his astonished daughter-in-law [. . .] fires immediately, and two balls enter her left breast [. . .] She had instinctively covered her heart with her hand — that hand is miserably fractured by the balls; but saved her heart. She then escapes to another closet, where a third shot is fired at her without effect — and at last she rushes in despair at the door — and while M. de Pontalba is discharging his last barrel at her, she succeeds in opening it. The family, alarmed by the firing, arrives, and she is saved. The old man, on seeing that she is beyond his reach, returns to his apartment, and blows out his brains.42

Surviving her father-in-law’s assault, Micaela finally separated from her husband, regained control of her fortune, and left an architectural legacy that still remains one of the centerpieces of the French Quarter. As in the early years of the nineteenth century, the expanding city continued to be marked by, in Mary Ryan’s terms, a residential “pattern of segregation.”43 And these neighborhood divisions only grew in significance. Remarkably, and uncomfortably, between 1836 and 1852 the city’s competing populations agreed to go their own ways. New Orleans was divided into three distinct municipalities, essentially self-governing bodies. As Mary Ryan explains, “[t]he first municipality was the French quarter [. . .] The second was the American quarter [. . .] The third downtown segment [essentially the Faubourg Marigny] housed a mixed lower-class population, including free persons of color and laborers recently immigrated from Europe as well as many French.”44 The Manhattaner in New Orleans outlined the profound inefficiency of such a system: “New Orleans is

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divided into three municipalities, each of which, as far as legislation goes, attends to its own business; protects with due care its own respective Aldermanic gods; dirties or cleans its own causeways; puts out its own fires with its own reservoirs; fines its own rowdies; and puts itself into debt without the vulgar interference of neighbors.”45

“MOTLEY” The city’s extraordinary diversity at this time was clearly seen as one of its most characteristic features. Washington Irving, himself a visitor to the city in the early 1830s, concluded that the Crescent City was “one of the most motley and amusing places in the United States — a mixture of America and Europe.”46 Joseph Holt Ingraham was so taken with the “variety of the human species, of every language and colour” on display that he advised “any philanthropic individual, anxious for the advancement of the noble science of physiognomy” to “bend his steps toward the market-house” in order to “survey the motley countenances of these goodly personages.”47 Josiah Conder’s The Modern Traveller stressed that the city’s population was “of the most motley description, and of every complexion, from the most beautiful white and red, through all the shades of brown and yellow, to jet black.”48 Jesse Milton Emerson doubted whether any other city could offer “a more motley congregation of nations and languages.”49 And Charles Augustus Murray declared the “population passing in the streets” to be “the most amusing motley assemblage that can be exhibited by any town on earth.”50 Motley: above all else, antebellum New Orleans was marked out by a heterogeneity that travelers found both bemusing and beguiling. However, as the city’s official divisions suggest, such an extraordinarily diverse population did not coexist without some tensions. As Ari Kelman astutely notes, “neither the levee nor greater New Orleans was a melting pot in the idealized sense of the metaphor.”51 Strained relationships between the Americans and the Creoles were still very much in evidence. At the beginning of the antebellum period, as Scottish traveler James Logan remarked in the late 1830s, New Orleans still seemed “divided into the French and American towns.” And such a division, Logan embellished, remained a significant one; old antagonisms lingered: “An extreme jealousy exists between the Americans and the French, who cohabit very little, the former holding the latter in contempt, on account of their trifling manners, and because they show a want of energy and enterprise in commerce. The French, again, dislike the Americans on account of their coarse manners and because they consider them as intruders.”52 As James Silk Buckingham saw it, they were “as distinct as the people of any two nations.”53 This animosity was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that, in Mary Ryan’s words, this was the moment that “a confident American culture” truly “took hold over the Crescent City.”54 And yet, there is also a clear sense that as the antebellum period progressed the widely perceived and much publicized division between French and American New Orleans was often more romance than reality. Robert Reinders judged that “whatever the ethnic cleavage might have been in the earlier history of the city,

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differences between Creole and American had nearly disappeared by 1850.”55 Looking back from the 1880s, George Washington Cable agreed that the “old, fierce enmity against the English tongue and American manners began to lose its practical weight and to be largely a matter of fireside sentiment.”56 There were other tensions to take their place: not all New Orleanians welcomed immigrants from Europe. While established political parties competed furiously for their votes, the city, in common with other urban environments in the antebellum years, developed its own nativist groups. As John Sacher highlights, “[o]pposition to immigrants in New Orleans surfaced as early as the 1830s.”57 The Louisiana Native American Association was formed in 1834, and their newspaper, the True American, soon began publication. Their verbal attacks were frequently virulent — though, notably and for obvious reasons, the wider antiCatholic message of the nativist movement was largely missing from Louisiana’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. In an 1839 pamphlet, for example, the Louisiana Native American Association lamented: “[W]hen we see [. . .] the outcast and offal of society — the pauper, the vagrant, and the convict, transported in myriads to our shores, reeking with the accumulated crimes of the whole civilized and savage world, and inducted by our laws, to equal rights, immunities, and privileges with the noble native inhabitants of the United States, we can no longer contemplate it with supine indifference.” They warned in no uncertain terms that “this transportation of paupers, vagrants, and convicts to the United States is rapidly becoming an established system of policy by foreign governments. An English gentleman, recently stated that he had seen the poor marched in droves from the Poor houses to the ships, which were to take them to this country.”58 Though the Native American movement declined in the late 1840s, nativism was reinvigorated in the 1850s with the national rise of the American Party, better known as the Know-Nothings. So strong was their support (particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Whig Party) that in the 1854 New Orleans municipal elections, the Know-Nothings secured a victory, mixing anti-immigrant rhetoric with promises of reform. And as John Sacher explains, though the party largely disappeared in the rest of Louisiana soon after, “the Know-Nothings, preaching opposition to immigrants and using intimidation at the polls, continued to control New Orleans’ municipal government until the Civil War.”59

“BELLES- LETTRES” For some, antebellum New Orleans’ apparently myopic focus on business and material wealth came at the detriment of its cultural life. In particular, there was a feeling that the money grab of the antebellum years was stifling the development of the city’s literary culture: New Orleans was a city more written about than writing. Robert Gibbes Barnwell, the editor of an 1851 collection of writing from the city, lamented: In a city like New-Orleans, where the great mass of the people are absorbed in business — some with the desire of becoming rich, and many by the stern necessity of earning

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their bread — it is not astonishing, though it is much to be regretted, that the cultivation of letters should have been so much neglected [. . .] we are not a literary people.60

“Taste in the fine arts and love of the belles-lettres,” echoed Abraham Oakey Hall, “have hitherto fallen victims to the smell of trade, and money that fills the in-door and outdoor atmospheres.”61 Indeed, Robert Reinders agrees that “as we look at literature produced in New Orleans” during the antebellum years, “the showing is meager.”62 But that is not to say that New Orleans was a city without a literary culture. The Babel of languages on the levee was reflected in the city’s print culture. Alongside the English writers highlighted by Barnwell’s collection, the city had a relatively vibrant Francophone literary scene. When Charles Testus, himself a prolific poet and novelist, surveyed the scene in Portraits Littéraires de la Nouvelle Orléans in 1850, he could list “fifty-six journalists and writers” — though “only thirteen were native born,” the bulk originating in France or the West Indies.63 It was in this period, too, that Charles Gayarré began to release his highly influential History of Louisiana. Just as significantly, the antebellum years saw the release of a landmark poetry collection. In 1845, as Jerah Johnson explains, “seventeen poets, all free men of color [. . .] came together under the leadership of Armand Lanusse, acting as editor, published eighty-four of their works, and called their collection Les Cenelles. That collection became, and remains, the single more important piece of antebellum black literature.”64 German immigrants published German-language newspapers like Der Deutsche Courier and the New Orleans Deutsche Zeitung; and as Kirsten Silva Gruesz has noted, “antebellum New Orleans also served as a significant locus of Spanish-language cultural activity.”65 In other entertainments, New Orleans was hardly lacking. It was home to a vibrant theatrical scene. As Charles Watson has judged, “New Orleans became the second theatrical center in the nation after New York.”66 Its rise to antebellum theatrical prominence was driven by the competition between the established James Caldwell and his rivals, the partnership of Noah Ludlow and Solomon Smith. As Mary Henderson notes, “[b]ecause each was vying for the same audiences, the laurel went to the company that provided the better theatre, the better company, and better scenery and effects, all of which tended to make the productions of higher quality than they had been before.”67 This extended, too, to the theaters themselves. In 1835, Caldwell opened the St. Charles Theatre — “what many considered the finest theatre in all America to that date.”68 James Logan, for example, found it to be “a very magnificent house.”69 In 1840, Ludlow and Smith opened the New American Theatre on Poydras Street. With extraordinary timing, both theaters burned down in 1842 — in Smith’s own words, “leaving the English drama without a home in New Orleans.”70 But not for long. Precipitating Caldwell’s retirement, Ludlow and Smith built a new St. Charles Theatre on the same spot. As Smith described, it “rose like a phoenix from the ashes of its splendid predecessor. In forty working days [. . .] the new house was ready for the reception of the company.”71 The New American was itself rebuilt soon after, and was joined by the Varieties in 1849 (later known as The Gaiety), which came

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under the management of the famous actor-playwright-manager Dion Boucicault; a new opera house followed in 1859. Boucicault was not the only celebrity to set up shop: the enormously popular comedian Dan Rice opened his “Amphitheatre” on Charles Street in 1853 — according to his biographer, “one of the most magnificent places of amusement ever constructed in the Crescent City.”72 And other stars visited: when P. T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to New Orleans on a national tour in the early 1850s, receipts at the St. Charles Theatre came to nearly $90,000.73 Tyrone Power was pleasantly surprised by his engagement in New Orleans, finding that the “dress-boxes were almost exclusively filled by ladies” when he had been told to expect “noisy planters from the up-country and boisterous Mississippi boatmen.”74 And in contrast to its perceived lack of a literary culture, New Orleans’ antebellum theaters fostered new talents; actor-dramatists like Nathaniel Harrington Bannister and James Rees developed original plays featuring frontier figures like boatman Mike Fink and outlaw James Murrell.75 As Watson put it, their original contributions to the stage “accurately reflected western humor, frontier violence, and a political transition from nationalism to sectionalism.”76 The city also became famous for other public spectacles. In Dale Somers’s judgment, antebellum New Orleans became “the sporting center of the Old South.” Racing and boxing were both popular, but most notorious was the city’s propensity for blood sports: “Throughout much of the antebellum period, cockfights, dogfights, bullfights, and bull and bear contests regularly drew large crowds.”77 James Alexander, for example, recorded that “[c]ock-fighting is a favourite amusement with both whites and coloured.”78 But it was the city’s bullfights that garnered the most commentary. A long account of a contest between a bull and a bear, staged in New Orleans in 1853, was reprinted in the New York Illustrated News — with the significant caveat, “Were it not that our position as journalists, requires a portraiture of all that is remarkable in our land, we should be loath to publish any incident so calculated to blight the good name of our sister city”: The bear, opening his paws quick as a flash of lightning, took the bull, clasped one paww each side of his head, grasped his nose with his tusks, and in this position held and hugged the bull, both bear and bull kicking with their hind feet, the bear still sticking to his embrace. After remaining some minutes in this position, during which time the blood flowed rather profusely, the bull suspecting that the bear was sucking rather too much of his life, made a desperate effort and cleared himself. Another short respite, and the bull was again warmed up to the scratch.79

When the fictionalized Davy Crockett attended a New Orleans bullfight, however, there was a more decisive outcome. Deciding that he would test his own strength against “three savagerous mammoth bulls,” Crockett himself jumped into the ring, killed one beast with a single punch, and dispatched the other two in short order: “I jumped right around, caught hold of thar two tails and swung ’em around the ring, till their ribs cracked agin each other, and then laid ’em down ready for skinning.”80 And then, of course, there was Mardi Gras — the time when the motley city

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8. Alfred Waud, Cock-Fighting, from “Sunday in New Orleans,” Every Saturday (July 15, 1871), 70–1.

truly put on its motley. Carnival underwent significant changes in the antebellum period, reflecting wider social trends. As Kevin Fox Gotham explains, for most of the antebellum period Mardi Gras remained a celebration that had developed little from its colonial origins: it was “relatively ad hoc and unorganized. Ragtag groups of revelers would create loosely structured and ephemeral processions through their spontaneous actions.”81 And therefore, as Reid Mitchell notes, for most of the antebellum period “Mardi Gras stood in no very high repute with many respectable New Orleanians” having become associated with rowdyism and violence.82 In 1856, ordinances were passed specifically outlawing some of the carnival behaviors that had become particularly associated with the revelries of immigrant groups: “New Orleanians were to stop defacing buildings with paint, mischievously ringing doorbells, and removing nameplates from buildings; they could no longer beat drums, blow horns or sound trumpets in the streets.”83 But in 1857, the point at which it was in danger of disappearing entirely, the carnival season was reinvigorated by the debut of the Mystick Krewe of Comus. Having informed the newspapers to prepare for something special, this secret organization caused a sensation by parading through the streets with carefully designed costumes and floats before presenting a series of dramatic tableaux at the Gaiety Theatre — themed around Milton’s Paradise Lost. As James Gill notes, “[t]he impact of the first Comus parade on New Orleans was all the greater because the public had no inkling what to expect.”84 These pioneering Krewe members not only planted the seeds of the modern era of carnival, but they also reoriented the celebration along new lines. On the one hand, they began to break down what Gotham terms “the spontaneity and unorganized nature of the antebellum carnival” — bringing an organized hierarchy to bear on a previously anarchic

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free-for-all.85 On the other hand, this new form of carnival was expressive of the ongoing Americanization of the city. As Joseph Roach notes, the Comus Krewe members were members of a particular social group: “American opportunists drawn to New Orleans between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War to seek their fortunes.”86

“VICE” As such amusements attest, antebellum New Orleans, in Susan Larson’s description, was best known “for low amusements rather than high culture.”87 Indeed, there was little in the way of popular entertainment for which the antebellum city was not famous — or infamous. Its reputation as an exotic pleasure garden was unparalleled. While this notoriety was a significant part of the city’s allure, it often rubbed uncomfortably against Victorian mores. As Jesse Milton Emerson noted, “[a]musements form a leading feature of life in New Orleans, and, perhaps, are as much overdone there as they are neglected or undervalued in New Haven, and in most New England towns.”88 Alabamian C. C. Clay Jr. decried the city’s inhabitants as “the most unchristian, ungodly, devilish, pleasure-seeking people I have ever seen.”89 James Logan, too, found the city’s inhabitants “grosser and more open in their vice than in any other part of the United States.”90 One aspect of city life was particularly problematic for some visitors: as the Reverend Philo Tower lamented, “in New Orleans is to be found the most reckless, high-handed Sabbath desecration in the whole country [. . .] the Sabbath is regarded here by almost every one as a holiday.”91 In 1845, the Gospel Teacher, published in Boston, went further, printing “a sad picture of the desecration of the Sabbath in New Orleans” that provides an extraordinary snapshot of the diversions offered by city life: The last Sabbath I spent in New Orleans, I put down in my memorandum book the violations of the day that came under my observation, through the press and otherwise. There was one regimental parade and drill; a horse race for a purse of $1,000; a duel in the Orleans ball room; a fist fight on a $300 bet, or as the advertisement was headed, a farewell benefit for some noted bully; a cock fight opposite the St. Louis Exchange; masquerade ball in the Orleans ball room; two theatres open, a French opera, with ballet dancers; two circuses; exhibition of wax works; German magician; Italian Fontoccini; Organ grinders on the corners of the streets; gambling houses, stores, gin shops, &c., open to fill up the picture.92

Presented with such a panorama of pleasure, James Silk Buckingham worried that the city could have a bad influence on even the hardiest moral constitutions: “Many who are even professors of religion, and members or communicants of congregations at their own homes, seem to shake off all regard for early principles, and to become loose in their morals as well as careless in their habits here.” And as he outlined, this change could be rather momentous. After the first misstep of Sabbath breaking, “the descent is soon made. The bar-rooms of the hotels, next

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become their haunts; smoking and drinking follows; a Quadroon mistress [. . .] is next taken; and habits of betting, racing, and gambling, crown the whole.”93 If nothing else, Buckingham’s warning neatly summarized the main forms of vice for which the antebellum city became famous. The city’s propensity for gambling was certainly one of its most notorious pastimes. Apparently torn between fascination and disapproval, Jesse Milton Emerson noted, “there are all sorts of bowling and billiard-rooms; but the worst of all are the numerous and brilliant gambling houses, which open their doors to the willing guest.”94 Joseph Holt Ingraham went further, entering one of the city’s notorious gambling houses in the belief that it would offer “a scene, which, to an uninitiated, ultra city-bred Northerner, would be both novel and interesting.” First, Ingraham was struck by the noise: “[T]he clear ringing and clinking of silver, mingled with the technical cries of the gamblers [. . .] the eager exclamations of joy or disappointment by the players, and the incessant clattering of the ivory ball racing its endless round in the roulette-table.” Next, he took note of one of the professionals who ran the games dotted around the room: “He was a portly, respectable looking, jolly-faced Frenchman, with so little of the “black-leg” character stamped upon his physiognomy, that one would be far from suspecting him to be a gambler by profession.” Finally, observing “some thousands of dollars change hands in the course of an hour,” Ingraham began to observe “the expression of despair” on the faces of those who lost — and, alternately, “the satisfaction with which the winners hugged within their arms their piles of silver.”95 Tellingly, Ingraham noted that his readers’ conception of such places “has probably been taken, as in my own case, from the fashionable novels of the day.”96 There is no doubt that the city’s gambling hells became fodder for popular writers. Adventure novelist Jack Brace painted a sympathetic picture of the city’s pleasure palaces: “The lights shown from a hundred windows, and the hum of gay voices — the music of merry laughter the jovial shout at the happy jest, filled to the echo a large and spacious edifice, dedicated to sports and amusements.”97 Winter Summerton on the other hand — whose romance, Will He Find Her?, was judged by the Southern Literary Messenger to be “[a]n infamous piece of clap trap [. . .] the impress of an utterly depraved mind” — painted a “gilded temple of Vice” in a less salubrious light: “[T]he steamboat men [. . .] would go there, some to meet their mistresses — some to see the “sport” — some to gamble away their honest earnings, and some actually to enjoy a dance, with big boots and an overcoat on, with some beautiful siren for a partner.”98 Just as frequently, New Orleans’ gambling parlors featured in moral guidebooks for the young and vulnerable. Though written to condemn, they often succeeded in making such locations sound tantalizing. “In New Orleans,” warned Rufus Wheelwright Clark, “there are thousands of these ‘hells,’ fitted up in the most superb manner, decorated with rich specimens of art, voluptuous pictures, furnished with luxurious couches and lounges, and everything to fascinate the eye and corrupt the heart. Here, every night, scenes are enacted that should fill that whole city with lamentation and tears.”99 Similarly, W. Edwyn Shipton warned the Young Men’s Christian Association, “In New Orleans, every third or fourth house in many streets is a ‘bar-room,’ devoted to drinking, billiard-playing, and

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gambling. On the ground-floor of the best hotels the noise of the billiard-balls never ceases from morning till night. Gambling-tables in like manner abound, and are the occasion of frequent misery and many crimes.”100 The city’s fondness for alcohol elicited the same divided reaction. No one disagreed that New Orleanians drank, and in large quantities. But they couldn’t agree on its significance. Edward Durell noted that “a drinking-house” was “an evil which, in New Orleans, is to be found at every corner.”101 Louis Tasistro marveled: One thing certainly struck me as very remarkable: that the habit of promiscuous drinking, however mischievous in itself, does not seem to produce the same pernicious effects here that it does elsewhere; for the enormous quantity of liquor that is generally consumed in New-Orleans before dinner in one day, at each of the Exchanges alone, and by men of acknowledged sobriety and moral character in society, would suffice to supply the demands of any Northern city for a whole month.102

And for William Makepeace Thackeray, at least, the city’s provisions of alcohol were one of its chief attractions. “As for New Orleans, in spring-time,” he rhapsodized, “just when the orchards were flushing over with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavour the juleps — it seemed to me the city of the world where you can eat and drink the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret is not better to drink than at New Orleans.”103 Working against these odds, the city’s temperance society fought a vain battle. In an 1841 pamphlet, they lamented that New Orleans was home to “574 drinking establishments” and argued that the “effect of intemperance here is heard, seen and felt every where: you hear it in the groans of the poor victims in the hospital, in the maniac ravings of the mad house, in the cry and sobs of the young and helpless orphan.”104 New Orleanians drank on regardless. Intimately connected to both gambling and drinking, prostitution was a significant part of New Orleans’ antebellum notoriety. As Alecia Long notes, the city certainly had a “reputation as a center of tolerated prostitution.”105 And as Judith Kelleher Schafer has highlighted, because “slaves and free women of color monopolized domestic service,” the options available to New Orleans women, particularly its new immigrant arrivals, were often limited: “They could enter into marriage for economic security, they could work for near-starvation wages, or they could enter the sex trade.”106 Many ended up with the latter option. Robert Reinders concluded that “it would be impossible to determine” the number of brothels in the antebellum city, but noted that “they were considerable.”107 Unsurprisingly, this was an aspect of city life that most travelers studiously ignored. Not so African explorer Henry Morton Stanley. After a childhood of deprivation in a Welsh workhouse, Stanley emigrated to New Orleans in the late 1850s. The contrast to the world he had grown up with was immediate: “I think it is one of the most vivid recollections I possess,” he recalled in later life, “soft, balmy air, with its strange scents of fermenting molasses, semi-baked sugar, green coffee, pitch, Stockholm tar, brine of mess-beef, rum, and whiskey dripping [. . .] I was nearly overwhelmed with blissful feeling that rises from emancipation. I

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was free!” But as a young man left to his own devices in the urban environment, Stanley was typical of those innocents who appeared in antebellum lectures warning of the temptations and dangers of city life. He freely confessed to being “utterly unsophisticated.” So when an acquaintance suggested visiting a local establishment where “the proprietress [. . .] was extremely gracious,” Stanley agreed. The boys were shown into a parlor: Presently, there bounced in four gay young ladies, in such scant clothing that I was speechless with amazement. My ignorance of their profession was profound, and I was willing enough to be enlightened: but, when they proceeded to take liberties with my person, they seemed to me to be so appallingly wicked that I shook them off and fled out of the house.

Though he said his friend “tried to induce me to return [. . .] with all the arts he could use,” Stanley was having none of it: “I would as soon have jumped into the gruel-colored Mississippi as have looked into the eyes of those giggling wantons again.”108 Others were less repulsed. William L. Robinson, a member of the Howard Association established to assist with the city’s yellow fever epidemics, visited a house of ill repute to attend to a patient. While there, “several of her fellowboarders” insisted that Robinson join them in “a bottle of Champagne.” Unlike Stanley, Robinson was taken with their charms. “They are the first to herald a new fashion,” he noted, with no little regard, for it brings them more prominently to notice. Coquetry and studied arts, applied with an acute intuitive perception of the weak points in a man; in many a refinement of language, ease of manners, and grace which elevates the exceptional beauty in power to a level with her superiors in virtue, make them as inviting to admiration as they are dangerous to encounter.109

Such accounts firmly reinforced New Orleans’ indelible reputation for bad behavior and a thriving demimonde. As Paul Joseph Erickson neatly summarizes, “[i]n terms of the open acceptance of urban vice [. . .] no Northern city was thought to measure up to New Orleans.”110

“CUT- THROAT TOWN” The inevitable flip side of the city’s name for “amusement” was its equally weighty reputation for danger. Violence and disease were seen to walk hand in hand with vice. In many ways, antebellum New Orleans was a place as beset with hazards as pleasures. Numerous travelers attested to the threats to the person that seemed to be a prominent feature of antebellum street life. James Silk Buckingham noted, “Duels are frequent, murders far from rare.”111 According to James Logan, on the authority of a “native,” “four or five murders took place every day.” “On the slightest provocation,” he continued, “an American shoots

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or stabs his companion, no matter whether he be his best friend or his worst enemy.” There was, according to Logan, at least one useful result of the endemic nature of violence: “The only security for life in this cut-throat town, is the belief that every one is armed and ready to use his weapons in an instant.”112 Though Logan’s assessment of the city’s tendency to violence was extreme, he was not alone in making such statements. Edward Sullivan was equally obdurate: “There are more murders here than in any other city in the Union.” And according to Sullivan, the reasons were obvious: “In the first place, everybody drinks hard, and every man is armed; and a man who does not avenge an insult on the spot is despised.”113 Other forms of violence gained equal notoriety. “While at New Orleans,” fugitive slave William Wells Brown remembered, “I saw a slave killed”: A slave came running down the levee, followed by several men and boys. The whites were crying out, ‘Stop that nigger! stop that nigger!’ while the poor panting slave, in almost breathless accents, was repeating, ‘I did not steal the meat — I did not steal the meat.’ The poor man at last took refuge in the river [. . .] After punching him, and striking him over the head for some time, he at last sunk in the water, to rise no more alive.114

And more organized forms of mob violence were a common feature of the city’s political life. As Stacy McGoldrick and Paul Simpson note, during the antebellum years New Orleans “could not conceive of an Election Day without police coercion and mob violence.”115 Political riots were frequent and most election years saw a number of deaths and injuries. 1854 witnessed “a week of rioting between American Party mobs and the Democratic police force.” In 1858, a populist group “of two hundred vigilantes took over Jackson Square and the state arsenal housed there.”116 And violence could be a significant electoral tool: as David Grimsted notes, the success of the Know-Nothings in the 1850s came largely “because the party intimidated more effectively” than its rivals.117 In one particular aspect of the pre-war underworld — both legally murky and vigorously violent — New Orleans was certainly a leading light. The antebellum city was a hotbed of international intrigue and filibustering activity. Throughout the period, adventurers seeking to undertake unofficial military expeditions to foment revolution throughout Latin America found a welcome home in New Orleans. Such schemes seemed to promise the city, in Freehling’s terms, “[m]ore markets, more trade, more ships, more dominance over a commercial orbit.”118 Perhaps more significantly, these international adventures also seemed to promise to extend the dominion, and therefore influence, of slavery. And, at heart, they made clear the degree to which antebellum New Orleans was a city with strong ties to the wider world. As Gruesz puts it, in the middle of the nineteenth century New Orleans was still in many ways “a Caribbean city, strategically positioned within the transportation and communications system of the Gulf of Mexico’s half-moon, linked to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Mexico’s Gulf Coast and Yucatan.”119 The city’s enthusiasm for foreign adventures was certainly in place by the time of the Texas Revolution in 1835. As Edward Miller makes clear, “New Orleans

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was the resource point for supplies and volunteers, and financing came from or through the city’s wealthy cotton merchants.”120 As Herbert Asbury outlines, “several thousand of the city’s young men, both Creoles and Americans, went to Texas singly, in small groups, and as members of large, well-equipped companies.”121 James Logan, in town, noted that “Texas at this time not only formed the engrossing subject of conversation to the merchants of New Orleans, but also a source of speculation.”122 In the wake of revolution, James Silk Buckingham emphasized that close ties remained between the two regions: “A very lively interest is felt among all classes here, in the future prospects of the neighboring republic of Texas; and the intercourse between it and New Orleans being maintained by steam-vessels, that arrive and depart almost daily, the newspapers contained repeated notices of everything that is passing in this new and rising country.”123 While in New Orleans, Harriet Martineau was even approached by a group “who were on the eve of departure for Texas. Attempts were made to induce me to go myself; and also to convince me of the eligibility of the country as a place of settlement for British emigrants.”124 Later, during the Mexican–American War, the city would be an important staging post for American troops. The experience of Texas only encouraged the city’s enthusiasm for filibustering. As one young man noted in a letter to his family, “This is a city in which I would dread being idle, as it is a kind of rendezvous for all reckless characters and men of desperate fortunes [. . .] for they are always looking up young men without prospects, for various filibustering and piratical expeditions.”125 New Orleans was closely involved with the two most notorious failed filibusters of the antebellum years. From 1848 to 1851, Narciso Lopez repeatedly attempted to invade Cuba and liberate it from the Spanish. Throughout that time New Orleans provided him with both material and moral support. A profound enthusiasm for his plans ran through the city. As one of the surviving filibusters related in the United States Democratic Review, at the time of his arrival in New Orleans as a prelude to the invasion, the city was “all in a blaze of sympathising excitement about Cuba and for Cuba [. . .] Placards on the walls invited to public meetings, and Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, was the topic of the newspapers, the Exchange, the street corners, and the bar-rooms. It even ascended into the pulpit.”126 Such enthusiasm inconvenienced Edward Sullivan: “One evening, a large party of liberators, patriots, or whatever is the name assumed by the late piratical invaders of Cuba, assembled in the streets under the windows of our hotel to serenade [. . .] Lopez, and some other notorieties [. . .] The Americans are not heaven-born musicians.”127 After the collapse of Lopez’s plans and the execution of many of his followers, violence abroad incited violence at home: “[M]obs responded by gutting the office of the local Spanish newspaper, La Union, destroying property in the Spanish consulate, and raiding various Spanish coffeehouses and cigar shops.”128 The city responded no less warmly to William Walker’s attempts to conquer Nicaragua. Walker himself had a long-standing association with New Orleans, having opened a law practice on Canal Street in the 1840s, becoming editor and part-owner of the New Orleans Crescent soon thereafter. Though in this capacity he had written editorials dismissing Lopez’s filibustering dreams, the death of a close female friend from cholera in 1849 seems, as Asbury put it, to have

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“produced a profound change in his character.”129 It certainly changed his attitude to filibustering: in 1855, with a small band of men, he invaded Nicaragua. Again, hundreds of men sailed from New Orleans to support him. And, briefly, Walker achieved success, proclaiming himself president of Nicaragua. His reign soon became unpopular, however, and insurgents expelled him from the country. In 1857, he returned to New Orleans — and was welcomed by a rapturous multitude. As William Scroggs narrates: The cheering crowd formed a procession and followed him to the St. Charles Hotel, where he was compelled to make a speech from the balcony [. . .] A mass meeting was arranged for the evening of the 29th, and was held on the ‘neutral ground’ of Canal Street. Walker and his staff occupied a platform decorated with the stars and stripes and with his flag of Nicaragua.130

In his three future attempts to reconquer Nicaragua, New Orleans was no less effusive in its support. Walker was finally executed by a firing squad in Honduras in 1860 — by which point New Orleans had other conflicts on its collective mind. The city’s association with the nefarious world of international adventuring filtered into popular culture. Few antebellum writers encapsulated as much of the city’s bad reputation as Ned Buntline (who himself visited New Orleans as a Know-Nothing agitator). His sensational The Mysteries and Miseries of New Orleans (1851), styled on the European examinations of urban underworlds that were enormously popular at this time, began with a violent death — “Her murderers! They must suffer” — and took in gambling houses — “I’m a ruined man!” — and doomed love affairs — “He loved me — I loved him, you must die!” — before relating the story of Narciso Lopez’s doomed filibustering expedition — “There is a word in the lexicon of life more infamous than coward; that word is — Spaniard!” Somehow fittingly, given the spirit of the times, Buntline’s torturous plotting laid the blame for the failure of Lopez’s expedition not at the feet of the enemy, but rather attributed it to the machinations of “a lost and ruined wife, a victim to the studied arts of seduction.”131

“BRONZE JOHN” Given the city’s profound antebellum reputation for amusement, decadence, depravity, and intrigue, it is worth noting that some travelers considered the notoriety of New Orleans to be overblown. Actor Tyrone Power “had heard in the North much said about the great danger incurred by a night stroll in New Orleans,” but he found himself unmolested and unthreatened: “I question whether London or Paris can boast of less crime in proportion; certainly, not fewer felonies.”132 James Kirke Paulding, traveling through the nation with ex-president Martin Van Buren in 1842, went further. His prior impressions of New Orleans, he explained, had been largely formed — like many others — by the European travelers who had descended on the city in the previous decades. As such, he was “agreeably surprised” at finding New Orleans to be “one of the most orderly,

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decorous Cities in the World.” In advance of his visit, Paulding had “been under the serious apprehension of being robbed at noonday, knocked on the head at night, or at least being obliged to fight a duel with some ferocious Dandy with tremendous whiskers.” And yet, “all these fears vanished in a few days,” and Paulding came to the conclusion that “an honest well disposed peaceable man, might stand a good chance of living there” — with one vital proviso. He would need to “keep clear of the Yellow Fever.”133 This was not an idle concern. Avoiding filibusters and footpads was one thing; yellow jack was another. For those who did make his acquaintance, the experience was never a pleasant one. In his testimony to the Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans, formed in the wake of the legendary 1853 epidemic, Dr. John V. Wren described the usual progress of the illness: “[F]irstly, chill, duration of fever thirty-six to forty-eight hours, slow convalescence; or, haemmorrhage with black vomit would succeed, with extreme yellowness of skin and death. Black vomit occurred in nearly all the cases that died.”134 The Manhattaner in New Orleans, one of the lucky ones who survived an encounter with Bronze John, was a little more poetic: “Any one who after a ‘hard day’s work’ of mental labor in midsummer, has, at an evening jollification finished three bottles of iced champagne and retired to bed in a badly ventilated apartment; and who can recall the sensations of mind and body the ensuing day, can well imagine how one feels under an attack of yellow fever.”135 For many, there was no recovery. Even though, as Jo Ann Carrigan has described, New Orleanians were subject to “recurring invasions” of yellow fever “from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century,” the antebellum years witnessed particularly deadly outbreaks.136 As Carrigan explains, in the 1830s and 1840s, “no year passed without at least a few cases; five to seven years of each decade witnessed outbreaks ranging from mild to violent [. . .] Major visitations during the two decades occurred in 1833, 1837, 1839, 1841 and 1847,” with total casualties topping 8,000.137 As bad as those years were, it was in the 1850s that the city truly became known as the Necropolis of the South. The city’s reputation for disease was profound. The German traveler Friedrich Gerstäcker warned his readers in the late 1840s, “The plague-like yellow fever spreads its leaden wings over the city, and its inhabitants flee to the shores of the neighboring lakes or up to the North in order to elude the grim, merciless enemy.”138 There was little exaggeration in such a statement. The epidemic of 1853, in particular, inscribed itself on the city’s memory. Few New Orleanians became as intimate with the effects of yellow fever as Theodore Clapp. As he noted in his autobiography, “It has been my lot to pass through twenty most fatal and wide-spreading epidemics.” As such, he was all too familiar with “the wretchedness” that accompanied any epidemic: “[I]ts long annals of bereavement, of widowhood, of orphanage; its unutterable griefs, solitude, and destitution; its heart-rending spectacles of thousands who fell without a relative or friend near to close their eyes and perform the last sad offices for their remains.”139 But even his experiences had not prepared him for the ravages of 1853. “The horrors and desolations of this epidemic cannot be painted,” he remembered, “neither can they be realized, except by those who have lived in New Orleans, and have

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witnessed and participated in similar scenes. Words can convey no adequate idea of them.”140 Statistics describe what Clapp could not. As Carrigan outlines, [f]rom mid-July until the last of August the pestilence raged through New Orleans in full fury. The mortality reached almost incredible heights: 200 one week, 400 the next, then up to 500, 900, 1,200, and 1,300 per week. Yellow fever deaths for the week ending August 27 amounted to the staggering total of 1,365. During a period of about three months — July, August, September — New Orleans presented an almost indescribable picture of disease, death, and disorder.141

The dead went unburied; the city became a charnel house. As with modern disasters, Henry M. McKiven has argued that the yellow fever epidemics “laid bare deep social, economic, and cultural divisions” that lay at the heart of city life. In their wake, “[p]oliticians [. . .] framed the disaster to advance their own long-standing agenda.”142 On the one hand, the repeated visitations of yellow fever revealed the city’s concerns that a reputation for disease would injure its commercial status. Erasmus Darwin Fenner, a physician at the city’s Charity Hospital, lamented, “When informed of the first cases of yellow fever that appear in summer, the newspaper press almost invariably denies the truth of the reports, and, not unfrequently showers upon the heads of those whose duty it is to pronounce upon the character of the prevailing diseases, volumes of abuse and ridicule.”143 The suppression of such information undoubtedly cost lives. On the other hand, it was also clear that the epidemics were marked by an inequality of suffering. The poor — particularly new immigrants — seem to have been particularly susceptible. And as Ari Kelman notes, since “the epidemic’s victims were not a part of the public whose health mattered [. . .] it became still easier to justify keeping news of the epidemic quiet and the waterfront open.”144 A correspondent for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine who witnessed the 1853 epidemic bemoaned this state of affairs: To realize the full horror and virulence of the pestilence, you must go into the crowded localities of the laboring classes, into those miserable shanties which are the disgrace of the city, where the poor immigrant class cluster together in filth, sleeping a half-dozen in one room without ventilation [. . .] Here you will find scenes of woe, misery, and death, which will haunt your memory in all time to come. Here you will see the dead and the dying, the sick and the convalescent, in one and the same bed. Here you will see the living babe sucking death from the yellow breast of its dead mother. Here father, mother, and child die in one another’s arms.145

Not only were such victims relatively unvalued but also they were blamed for their condition. Unbeknown to contemporary commentators, yellow fever was transmitted by the “household mosquito” and was brought to the city “on ships arriving from endemic centers in the Caribbean and Central America” — an ironic reversal of the city’s filibustering expeditions.146 But in the antebellum years, as Kelman elucidates, “epidemics offered environmental justifications for antiimmigrant and class prejudice [. . .] Based on erroneous notions about the origin

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and spread of epidemics, New Orleanians blamed victims of outbreaks for their plight, arguing that the dead and dying had brought misfortune on themselves through bad habits.”147 This view received its full expression from New Orleans physician Samuel Cartwright, who declared in 1851 that the city’s propensity for disease was in fact a telling lesson in favor of slavery and against immigration: The excessive mortality in this city is derived from the free colored persons who have no masters to take care of them — from the half free slaves, without masters to look to them, who are permitted to wander about and hire their own time, as it is called — from the foreigners who arrive here in a sickly condition from Europe; but mainly from the white people who make slaves of themselves by performing drudgery-work in the sun [. . .] in the cotton and sugar region, Nature has ordained that the negro shall serve the white man, and the white man shall take care of the negro.148

Beyond such political interpretations, there is no doubt that the great epidemics of yellow fever were felt, by visitors and natives alike, to have had an indelible effect on antebellum New Orleans that went beyond mortality statistics. Jesse Milton Emerson encapsulated the popular sense that the city’s apparent commitment to pleasure was a direct response to the ever-present threat of death: “[T]hose who have been through it, who have felt its deadly pangs, and have seen the dead and the dying on every hand, seem to have become insensible to the terrors of the grizzly king, and to have learned to enjoy to-day, lest no morrow come.”149 James Alexander was one of many who felt that this spirit resulted in a certain degree of flippancy in the face of tragedy: “Though it was the season of disease and death, yet the gamblers still continued to reap their harvest in the city. Night after night I was kept awake by the roulette table in the neighbouring house.”150 And for Erasmus Fenner, this devil-may-care attitude was itself part of the city’s yellow fever problems: “Engrossed with the exciting occupations and enjoyments of the winter,” he complained of his fellow citizens, they care not a thought upon the evils that may come upon them in the summer [. . .] When shown by the reports from their cemeteries that the annual mortality of this city, in proportion to population, more than doubles that of any city either in Europe or America, they either disregard the solemn truth or flatly deny it.151

Disease certainly entered into the popular imagination, and the relationship between New Orleans and illness became proverbial. In E. D. E. N. Southworth’s highly popular novel The Hidden Hand (1859), a character exclaims aghast, upon being told that they are to journey to the city, “New Orleans! And a new malignant fever of some horrible, unknown type, raging there!”152 For New Orleans poet Mary Walsingham Crean, yellow fever prompted apocalyptic visions: “A king is Bronze John — his steed is Death — Of fire is his eye, and of flame his breath, And his lance is the doom of the foe,” he saith, “Bronze John and his saffron plume!”153

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But that was as nothing compared with the truly dystopian vision of New Orleans crafted by German immigrant Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein. Published serially in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung from 1854 to 1855, his The Mysteries of New Orleans presented a vision of the city as Sodom that was unrivaled in its sensationalism. Reizenstein’s New Orleans, though the “prima donna of the South,” was pictured as a “whore insatiable in her embraces, letting go of her victims only after the last drop of blood has been drained and their innermost marrow of life sucked dry.” The city was a “great gambling den [. . .] a vast grave for poor immigrants and the homeless, who can never extract themselves in time from the arms of this prostitute.” And, most particularly, New Orleans was a place where “the chains of a maligned race rattle day and night with no advocate for their human rights.” In Reizenstein’s narrative, therefore, yellow fever was nothing less than a tool used against the city by an ancient and supernatural being called Hiram the Freemason as a “means of revenge” for the sins of slavery.154

“NEFARIOUS TRAFFIC” Perhaps more than an opulent city of sin, more than a dangerous city of death, antebellum New Orleans was most notorious as the site of America’s largest slave market. As William L. Van Deburg has highlighted, this was the period when “popular culture reaffirmed its role as a forum for debating the controversy” surrounding slavery; New Orleans was at the heart of that debate.155 For abolitionists, the city seemed to represent the South’s nadir. Its other foibles — drunkenness, gambling, violence, sexual impropriety — were felt to be mere offshoots of the original sins of slavery and slave-trading. In his novel Clotel, for example, William Wells Brown listed some of New Orleans’ vices as evidence of the evils of its slaveholding culture: “Bull-fights, horse-racing and other cruel amusements are carried on in this city to an extent unknown in any other part of the Union.”156 Noted one abolitionist tract, “Gambling is, proverbially, among the vices of slaveholders. They need its excitements — they need the relief it yields them from the ennui of unemployed time.”157 In turn, antebellum travelers to the city, like others before them, rarely failed to comment on the nature of black life in the Crescent City, and, in so doing, were clearly conditioned by popular culture. The figure of the tragic “quadroon,” for example, grew to become a popular icon in antebellum culture, and the city’s free people of color were studied ever more intently by visitors to New Orleans as an exotic Other. Their beauty — for it was always the women who drew travelers’ eyes — was now proverbial. Mrs. Houstoun noted “the rich dark cheek of the Quadroon. The eloquent blood in her soft cheek speaks but too plainly of her despised descent. She seems to blush at the injustice of man, who visits upon her the sins of her fathers.”158 Edward Sullivan “made a point of going to some of the quadroon balls. I had heard a great deal of the splendid figures and graceful dancing of the New Orleans quadroons, and I certainly was not disappointed.”159 Frederick Law Olmsted was utterly smitten: “I have rarely, if ever, met more beautiful women than one or two whom I saw by chance, in the streets. They are

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better formed, and have a more graceful and elegant carriage than Americans in general [. . .] Of course, men are attracted by them, associate with them, are captivated, and become attached to them” while “not being able to marry them legally.” “The crime and heart-breaking sorrow that must frequently result from it,” he pondered, “must be evident to every reflective reader.”160 They were soon translated into fiction. Fresh from his travels to New Orleans, Joseph Holt Ingraham published a romance entitled The Quadroone (1841) and Dion Boucicault, another habitué of the city, staged The Octoroon (1859) — itself based on adventure novelist Thomas Mayne Reid’s sensational The Quadroon (1856).161 However, the prominence of romantic stock figures like the tragic quadroon could also obscure the nuanced, complicated nature of antebellum life in the city for both free black and enslaved New Orleanians. Few commentators were as shortsighted as James Creecy when he proclaimed, “New Orleans is the heaven of negroes, and in that city they are the happiest human beings that ever breathed the breath of life.”162 But, equally, few moved beyond a number of standardized poses in their accounts of race relations in the city, even though there is little doubt that this was a turbulent time for the city’s black populations. This was not an easy moment to be one of the city’s approximately 10,000 free people of color. As Judith Kelleher Schafer notes, “the social and legal climate hardened against them.” Now, remaining free meant having “to prove their freedom over and over again; they lived in the shadow of losing it, suddenly, permanently, and in a humiliating manner.”163 For the enslaved, the chance of manumission became increasingly unlikely and then, in 1857, impossible, when it became illegal to free a slave in Louisiana. And yet, that did not prevent significant numbers of the enslaved from attempting to gain their freedom. As Schafer notes, many “resorted to the city’s courts to sue for their freedom on various grounds, and many used the legal system successfully and became free people.”164 One of the most remarkable legal stories — one that connected to wider issues of identity in antebellum New Orleans — was that of the slave Sally Miller. In January 1844, Miller filed a petition that made some extraordinary claims. As Carol Wilson narrates, “she declared that she was a free white woman and had been held in slavery illegally for more than two decades. Sally claimed that she had been born of Bavarian parents who had emigrated around 1817.” Her mother had died on the journey to the New World, and her father had sold himself as an indentured servant to a John Miller in the Parish of Attakapas. When he died, Miller claimed, she had been “converted into a slave.” Though Sally herself had been too young to remember these circumstances, in 1843 she had been recognized by another German immigrant who had known her as a child when she went by the name of Salomé Muller. Subsequently, she had been encouraged to sue for her freedom. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the trial drew in wider tensions: “New Orleans’s German community stood by the plaintiff Sally Miller, convinced that she was the lost child they remembered, a victim of tragic circumstances and deliberate abuse. Other New Orleans whites, including some of the city’s most prominent citizens, sided with Sally’s owner [. . .] To them, she embodied the mulatto’s worst traits.”165 After protracted legal wrangling, in June 1845 the Louisiana Supreme Court

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announced its decision: “we are of the opinion that the plaintiff is free”; Sally Miller was to be “released from the bonds of slavery.”166 And despite appeals on behalf of her former owner, she remained free. Recent scholarship suggests that the supreme court might have been wrong in its judgment — that Sally Miller was not, in fact, an enslaved German immigrant. And yet, if this really was, as John Bailey concludes, the story of “an illiterate slave woman” who “with incredible perseverance, bravery and guile conducted a lonely six-year struggle to be free,” it hardly diminishes her achievement.167 It certainly did not stop her story becoming something of a cause célèbre in abolitionist circles. Renowned fugitive slave William Craft retold the story of Sally Miller at the beginning of his own narrative of escape, declaring forcefully, “There was no trace of African descent in any feature of Salomé Muller. She had long, straight, black hair, hazel eyes, thin lips, and a Roman nose.”168 Of course, Miller’s story was not typical of slave life in antebellum New Orleans. But another significant dimension of slavery — one that was intimately connected to the antebellum city’s fortunes — was certainly experienced by many slaves throughout the period: the slave market. In Walter Johnson’s description, and in a grim parody of other visitors’ sojourns in the city, “[t]housands of slaves from all over the South passed through the New Orleans slave pens every year in the antebellum period.”169 And as the antebellum years progressed, the trade only grew. Judith Kelleher Schafer’s analysis of “several thousand advertisements for bondsmen in the New Orleans newspapers for the year 1850 [. . .] indicates a booming slave trade in which the equivalent of one in five of the bondsmen in New Orleans were sold annually.”170 For the slaves themselves, the experience was a traumatic one. As fugitive slave William Wells Brown wrote, “None but those who have been in a slave state, and who have seen the American slave-trader in his nefarious traffic, can estimate the sufferings their victims undergo.”171 Of all those who underwent the process, perhaps the most extraordinary account was left by Solomon Northup. Born free in Upstate New York, Northup was drugged, kidnapped, sold to slave dealers in Washington and transported to the slave market in New Orleans. Like so many other travelers, Northup observed “the crowd that thronged the wharf,” but such multitudes only emphasized his solitude: “[T]here was no one who knew or cared for me [. . .] There was a feeling of utter desolation in my heart.”172 On the day of the auction the slave dealers woke the slaves early — with “an occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the younger slaves” — in order to prepare them for sale: “In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads.” From there, they were led into the saleroom: “The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other.” Prospective customers inspected them closely, and would “turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse.” Northup was purchased by a William Ford, “now a Baptist preacher,” and steamed away from

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9. Slaves for Sale; A Scene in New Orleans, from the Illustrated London News (April 6, 1861), 307.

New Orleans to over a decade of enslavement.173 William Wells Brown witnessed the process from the other side. As a young man he was hired out to a slave dealer. “I had to prepare the old slaves for market,” he remembered in later life: “I was ordered to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the grey hairs plucked out where they were not too numerous, in which case he [the slave dealer] had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking brush we would put it on.” Brown was also ordered to “make them appear cheerful and happy [. . .] I have often set them to dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears.” “It was,” he remembered bitterly, “the longest year I ever lived.”174 For those who attended the slave markets as buyers or spectators, the sales could evoke a variety of responses. As Joseph Roach notes, “slave auctions proved a popular and highly theatrical spectacle. The most popular of them took place in a magnificent theaterlike rotunda, designed and built for this purpose, in the St. Louis Hotel.” They were, in Roach’s terms, a “violent, triangular conjunction of money, property, and flesh.”175 The reactions of antebellum visitors were manifold. Visiting the slave pens, Swedish traveler Frederika Bremer noted bitterly, “I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places excepting the whole thing; and I can not help feeling a sort of astonishment that such a thing and such scenes are possible in a community calling itself Christian. It seems to me sometimes as if it could not be reality — as if it were a dream.” For Bremer’s benefit, “slaves were summoned into a large hall, and arranged in two rows.” She found them “well fed and clothed” — but noted, too, “I have heard it said by the people here that they have a very different appearance when they are brought hither, chained together two and two, in long rows.” When a slave trader displayed one slave’s teeth to her,

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10. The Slave Auction, from The White Slave (London: Ingram, Cooke & Co., 1852).

Bremer bristled: “Had I been in her place, I believe that I should have bitten his thumb.” The sale itself she found intolerable: “No sermon, no anti-slavery oration could speak so powerfully against the institution of slavery as this slave-auction itself!”176 Louis Tasistro, on the other hand, found the slave market a “most remarkable scene,” and read in “their good looks and cleanly attire, the most undeniable symptoms of good feeding and excellent health [. . .] each face was a sure index of that paternal care which slaveholders in the South are known to bestow on their black dependants.” And yet, when faced with the reality of an auction of a mother and child, even he had to leave the room before the bidding was done: “[H]owever reconciled I might have been to the mother’s undergoing that striking operation,

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11. Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans, from James Silk Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1842).

I had no heart to see the helpless infant, albeit of a complexion exceedingly obnoxious to my sympathies, exposed to so cruel an ordeal.”177 Edward Sullivan boggled, “I have seen slaves, men and women, sold at New Orleans who were very nearly white as myself.”178 For abolitionists, there is little doubt that the “auction platform provided a graphic symbol of slavery’s worst evil.”179 Inspired by accounts of the New Orleans slave auction, John Greenleaf Whittier composed the widely reproduced “The Christian Slave” — a stern rebuke to “that vile South Sodom”: A Christian! going, gone! Who bids for God’s own image? — for His grace Which that poor victim of the market-place Hath in her suffering won? My God! can such things be?180

Richard Hildreth, too, included a scene in a New Orleans saleroom in his abolitionist novel The White Slave (1852). His hero is forced to endure the spectacle of his wife on the auction block: “Press, reader, to thy heart the wife of thy bosom, and thank God that you were both born free! After twenty years’ separation I had again found mine —, ripe in womanly beauty, — exposed for sale in a slave auction room!”181 But no abolitionist account of the slave market — indeed, no

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account of antebellum New Orleans — was more influential than that which appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The reception of the book in New Orleans can be judged from Grace King’s memories of her childhood: “It was not even allowed to be spoken of in our house!”182 So significant was the city’s appearance in that text that, as Joseph P. Roppolo has outlined, the character of Uncle Tom was reappropriated and actually “enlisted in the cause of Slavery” in a series of antebellum, anti-abolitionist plays staged in New Orleans’ theaters.183 But such productions could do little to counter the vision of the antebellum city that Stowe transported around the world. Tom’s experience of the New Orleans slave market is precipitated by the murder of his current master in a street brawl: Augustine St. Clare is reading an evening paper in a city cafe when “an affray arose between two gentlemen in the room, who were both partially intoxicated. St. Clare and one or two others made an effort to separate them, and St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side with a bowie-knife, which he was attempting to wrest from one of them.”184 Alcohol and violence, Stowe made clear, were endemic in this slave society. Tom’s subsequent sale is his entry into the worst of slavery and a prelude to his murder at the hands of Simon Legree. With characteristic irony, Stowe was quick to note that the slave warehouse was not “some foul, obscure den”: “[I]n these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly [. . .] Human property is high in the market; and is, therefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may come to sale sleek, and strong, and shining.” Tom’s sale — “beneath a splendid dome” — takes place in a blur: Tom stepped upon the block, gave a few anxious looks round; all seemed mingled in a common, indistinct noise [. . .] and almost in a moment came the final thump of the hammer, and the clear ring on the last syllable of the word ‘dollars,’ as the auctioneer announced his price, and Tom was made over. — He had a master!

Martyrdom awaits. And yet, Stowe was also at pains to note that New Orleans was not solely culpable for such scenes: the profits of the slave market were interconnected and national in scope: Two days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. & Co., New York, sent on their money to them. On the reverse of that draft, so obtained, let them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall make up their account in a future day: ‘When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.’185

Such a reckoning was on its way.

“SUI GENERIS” In 1833, Scottish traveler James Edward Alexander declared in no uncertain terms, “let no one judge of America from New Orleans, for it is altogether sui generis.”186 On the brink of Civil War, New Orleans was still seen as a unique presence in the

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Union. Of course, as a burgeoning antebellum urban space it had been subject to many of the same tensions as other growing antebellum cities. And, as it was soon to find out, it was no more immune to the implications of urbanization and industrialization than any other city. But for its visitors, it retained a capacity to beguile and bemuse that was unrivaled. In June 1857, a young steamboat pilot — still learning his craft — arrived in the city. Like many other travelers who experienced the Crescent City at the high-water mark of its powers, Samuel Clemens — the man who would be Mark Twain — found it difficult to process what he found. This was, as he described it in a letter to a friend, “a place such as I had never dreamed of before.” And just as Charles Latrobe had done back in the harsh winter of 1833, Clemens led his correspondent to the French Market in order to better understand the city. He marveled at the produce on display: Oranges, lemons, pineapples, bananas, figs, plantains, watermelons, blackberries, raspberries, plums, and various other fruits were to be seen on one table, while the next one bore a load of radishes, onions, squashes, peas, beans, sweet potatoes — well, everything imaginable in the vegetable line — and still further on were lobsters, oysters, clams — then milk, cheese, cakes, coffee, tea, nuts, apples, hot rolls, butter, etc. — then the various kinds of meats and poultry.

The people elicited their own response: Of course, the place was crowded (as most places in New Orleans are) with men, women and children of every age, color and nation. Out on the pavement were groups of Italians, French, Dutch, Irish, Spaniards, Indians, Chinese, Americans, English, and the Lord knows how many more different kinds of people [. . .] keeping up a terrible din with their various cries.

In the decades of its greatest growth, New Orleans was still motley.187 Two years later, in March 1859, Sam Clemens was back in town. No stranger, now, to the vibrant cosmopolis at the end of the Mississippi River, he found that the city retained the power to surprise the unwary traveler. He was treated to the kind of exotic spectacle which was becoming increasingly associated with the city — and which, in a nod to the future, would soon become integral to the city’s popular reputation: “I saw a hundred men, women and children in fine, fancy, splendid, ugly, coarse, ridiculous, grotesque, laughable costumes,” he described to sister Pamela, “and the truth flashed upon me — ‘This is Mardi-Gras!’” Clemens lingered over the remarkable variety of costumes that he encountered — “giants, Indians, nigger minstrels, monks, priests [. . .] — everything, in fact, that one could imagine” — and noted, in particular, that the “‘free-and-easy’ women turned out en masse — and their costumes and actions were very trying to modest eyes.” Even those delights paled in comparison with “the grand torchlight procession of the ‘Mystic Krewe of Comus.’” And then he made a statement that spoke volumes about the significance of the city’s transformation in the antebellum years: “I think that I may say,” Clemens judged, “that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.”188

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“Certainly,” he concluded, “New Orleans seldom does things by halves.”189 But what young Sam Clemens failed to realize — indeed, what few travelers noticed — was that by the end of the antebellum period the foundations of the city’s prosperity — and its ever-awaited glory — were becoming increasingly fragile. In 1857, for example, Jesse Milton Emerson declared that any visitor to New Orleans “will leave the city profoundly impressed with the gigantic character of her commerce and hopeful for her future.”190 But he, like Clemens, was witnessing a glorious sunset, not an expectant dawn. Even before the Civil War, the city was at the beginning of an economic decline. As early as 1847, writing in J. D. B. De Bow’s Commercial Review of the South and West — the influential journal of Southern agriculture and commerce, itself edited out of New Orleans — Buckner H. Payne clearly read the writing on the wall. His warnings of “Contests for the Trade of the Mississippi Valley” began ominously: A contest has been going on between the North and South, not limited to slavery or no slavery [. . .] but a contest for the wealth and commerce of the great valley of the Mississippi [. . .] a contest tendered by our Northern brethren, whether the growing commerce of the great West, shall be thrown upon New Orleans, or given to the Atlantic cities — which shall store, sell, and ship the immense products, of that great country, lying between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains? Shall, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore do it, or shall our own New Orleans?191

Those rival cities, Payne outlined, had begun to spend “many millions [. . .] constructing canals and rail roads, intended to connect with the West by way of the Lakes, and with the West by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.” In comparison, the Review asked, “what have we in the State of Louisiana, and New-Orleans in particular, done to ensure this commerce to ourselves? The very question startles us with the answer we have to make.” In short, not much. And the numbers spoke plain truths: “[T]he present cost of transportation of a barrel of flour from Cincinnati to New-York, via the Ohio and Erie canal, Lake Erie and the New York canal is $1.35 [. . .] via New Orleans, $1.38” — and even that difference failed to take into account the premium for “extra risk, and for soiling the barrel at New Orleans.” There was no denying the city’s extraordinary natural advantages — advantages that could not be rivaled “by any other State or city in the world.” But now was the time, Payne exhorted, “to apply quickly and effectually the remedies properly applicable to win for New-Orleans not the second or third rank, but the front rank in commercial importance over every other city in the world [. . .] it will make our city the centre of the commerce of the whole world.”192 Such optimism was largely groundless. What efforts there were to secure New Orleans’ future economic position came too little and too late. By 1851 a contributor to De Bow’s Southern and Western Review openly lamented “the evident decay of the commerce of New Orleans and its comparative retrograde movement.”193 Significantly, as Merl Reed has described, “Louisiana’s antebellum railroad development was chaotic and only partially successful”; in practical terms, the state “fell behind two decades in building her railroad system.”194 By the Civil War, a line did

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extend to Jackson, Mississippi, and one was slowly working towards Opelousas, but “after a decade of agitation, New Orleans was still not a railroad center.”195 It was not until after the Civil War that the city attempted, systematically, to remedy the faults that Payne had highlighted in 1847. With hindsight, George Washington Cable came to a clear diagnosis: while other cities increased their manufactures and developed their transportation links, “in New Orleans the Creole, grimly, and the American, more boastfully, rejoiced in a blaze of prosperity that blinded both.” And this encouraged, in Cable’s view, “an intellectual indolence” from which developed “an invincible provincialism.” A typical New Orleanian “boasted of his city’s natural advantages, forgetting that it was man, not nature, that he had to contend with [. . .] and smilingly ignored the fact that, with all her increase in wealth and population, his town was slipping back along the comparative scale of American cities.” Awareness came too late: “The locomotive engine smote the commercial domain of New Orleans in half, and divided the best part of her trade beyond the mouth of the Ohio among her rivals.” And Cable was certain about the final meaning of New Orleans’ fall from economic grace: “Stripped of disguises, it stood a triumph of machinery over slavery that could not be retrieved, save possibly through a social revolution so great and apparently so ruinous that the mention of it kindled a white heat of public exasperation.”196 And of course, that revolution was on its way. The Southern Queen was soon to be a city embroiled in war and occupied by the enemy, its economic dominance destroyed, slavery abolished, and its antebellum glory — and shame — the province of burnished, persistent memory.

4

“Oh, weep for New Orleans!”: Civil War and Reconstruction Could it be? New Orleans in the hands of the Vandals, — the “miserable miscreants,” — the “hyenas,” as President Davis and Robert Toombs were wont to stigmatize the whole people of the North? Where was the great ram that was to work such wonders? Where were the Confederate gunboats? Were not Forts Jackson and St. Philip impregnable? Could not the Chalamette batteries sink any Yankee fleet that floated? Had not the fire-eaters, — the last-ditch men, — resolved that New Orleans should be laid in ashes before the detested flag, emblematic of Yankee rule, should wave from the public buildings? [. . .] Let the universe slide after this! Let chaos return! EPES SARGENT 1

Indeed, beneath the oddity and picturesqueness and gayety of New Orleans there is more antagonism of races and nationalities and political creeds than can be found in any other large city in the Union. Speaking generally, of course, the white man hates the negro and the negro hates the white man. The creole and Anglo-Saxon native do not love one another. The carpet-bagger, if he happens to be the villain he is painted, necessarily hates the people he robs [. . .] And strange as it may sound, the people who fought it out like men on opposite sides in the late war, seem to hate one another the least of all. RALPH KEELER 2

Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861 — at carnival time. As David Surdam notes, “[m]any of the planters along the Mississippi River and residents of New Orleans were initially wary of secession.” Business came first in this city, and “the specter of economic losses shadowed their support.”3 But in the wake of Louisiana’s exit from the Union, opponents of secession either stayed quiet or left town. As William Howard Russell of the London Times described, “Whatever may be the number of the Unionists or the non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been directed by the popular party against the friends of the Federal government.”4 The announcement of secession itself was met with characteristic exuberance. As Charles Dufour describes: “[T]he bells of the fire-alarm telegraph rang furiously all over the town and guns began booming at the foot of Canal Street. People rushed into the streets.”5 And secession did little to derail the newly invigorated Mardi Gras: the Mystick Krewe of Comus paraded, as scheduled, on February 12, complete with an effigy of Abraham Lincoln riding a rail.6 As war loomed, New Orleans seemed secure in its antebellum glory. Looking back from the vantage point of the late 1880s, Eliza

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Ripley remembered vividly the complacency with which she and many others regarded the coming conflict: “Basking in the sunshine of prosperity [. . .] buoyed up by the hope and belief that a peaceful solution of national complications would be attained, we were blind to the ominous clouds that were gathering around us.” Not that everyone was so blithe: “Prophets arose in our midst, with vigorous tongue and powerful eloquence lifting the veil and giving us glimpses of the fiery sword suspended over our heads.” And yet, ensconced in the South’s most powerful city, such gloomy predictions “were like pages in history, in which we had no part nor lot, so hard it was for people who had for generations walked the flowery paths of peace, to realize war and all that that terrible word imports.” 7 Still, war was clearly visible on the horizon — and beyond it, hidden but approaching fast, were the realities of what war would mean for New Orleans. At the zenith of its power, influence, and wealth the city would find itself humbled — conquered by Union forces and occupied by Union troops. After the war, as Reconstruction progressed and then faltered, the city would be riven by longstanding racial tensions that frequently erupted in violence — worse than that which the city had witnessed during the war itself. And yet, even in the aftermath of such desolation — and perhaps, in part, because of it — post-war New Orleans would soon find itself once again established as a vital imaginative location that held a powerful romantic appeal. As it slowly set about restoring its lost fortunes, it would retain a position in the national — and international — spotlight, playing a significant role in the process of rehabilitating the popular image of the South. But in April 1861, such unimaginable prospects were very distant. For many in New Orleans, the preparation for war offered a number of pleasing, picturesque dimensions. George Washington Cable recalled that for the boys watching the dress parades of the home guard, “there was only rich enjoyment in the scene. If there was anything solemn in it, why did the band play polkas?”8 Military companies proliferated, reflecting the city’s cosmopolitan society (and love of spectacle). In Russell’s description: “The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are Pickwick rifles, La Fayette, Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and native volunteers [. . .] Tailors are busy night and day making uniforms.”9 Even famous riverboat gambler George Devol remembered the way that he and his fellow blacklegs “got up a cavalry company, and named it the Wilson Rangers [. . .] the ladies said we were the finest looking set of men in the army.” Every day, Devol and his comrades “would mount our fine horses, gallop out back of the city, and the first orders we would receive from our commanding officer would be: ‘Dismount! Hitch horses! March! Hunt shade! Begin playing!’ There was not a company of cavalry in the Southern army that obeyed orders more promptly than we did.” After a long day of gambling, the company would return to the city: “[T]he people would come out, cheer, wave handkerchiefs, and present us with bouquets; for we had been out drilling in the hot sun, preparing ourselves to protect their homes from the Northern invaders.” “The citizens called us their defenders,” Devol declared, “and we did defend them, so long as there was no hostile foe within five hundred miles of them.”10 In her journal, Kate Stone made it clear that Devol’s Wilson Rangers weren’t the only demimonde regiment: “My Brother told us much

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of the soldiers he saw in New Orleans [. . .] the Tiger Rifles, recruited from the very dregs of the City and commanded by a man who has served a term in the penitentiary; and the Perrit Guards, the gambler’s company.”11 Soon enough, New Orleans became less lighthearted. A Federal blockade of the city began on May 27, in the shape of the United States man-of-war Brookyln. Echoes of 1815 were unmistakable as privations began to bite. “There had come a great silence on trade,” remembered Cable, “and the queen of Southern commerce, the city that had once believed it was to be the greatest in the world, was absolutely out of employment.”12 In Joy Jackson’s words, “the fabric of everyday life seemed to be coming apart,” and basic provisions soon became scarce.13 Worse was to come. In early April 1862, large numbers of Louisiana soldiers were involved in the Battle of Shiloh — at that point, the bloodiest in the nation’s history. What at first seemed to be a great Confederate victory soon dissolved in doubt. As Elliot Ashkenazi has described, “[t]he news reports were confusing and contradictory, but the army trains that came into New Orleans nonstop for two weeks carrying the wounded and dead ended the confusion and uncertainty. The slaughter was there for everyone to see.”14 First among the dead was General Albert Sidney Johnston; his funeral cortège paraded slowly up St. Charles Avenue. As Cable had it, New Orleans was never “really glad again [. . .] never cheered with elation afterward.”15 In Devol’s words, speaking for many, “we began to realize that the war was getting pretty close to home.”16 Such realizations came late — arguably too late. The city’s preparations for potential attack were marked by apparent lethargy and disorder. In Charles L. Dufour’s judgment, “It is incredible how casual the Confederacy was about the defense of its greatest city.”17 Early in the conflict, Louisiana native General P. G. T. Beauregard — hero of Fort Sumter and Bull Run — was well aware of the necessity for the defenders of New Orleans to “look to our most vulnerable point, the Mississippi River,” having spent ten years before the war involved in army engineering projects in his home state.18 But Beauregard was not given command of the city, and things progressed slowly. The responsibility of defending New Orleans fell first to the elderly general David E. Twigge, veteran of both the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War. By September 1861, Governor Thomas O. Moore — speaking for many — was sufficiently concerned about Twigge’s abilities to write to Jefferson Davis requesting a replacement “who, with youth, energy and military ability, would infuse some activity in our preparations and some confidence in our people.” The city, after all, was “the most important to be preserved of any of the Confederacy.”19 Twigge’s replacement, General Mansfield Lovell, arrived in the city in October 1861. What he discovered disturbed him: “I find great confusion, irresolution and want of system in everything administrative [. . .] The city has been almost entirely stripped of everything available in the way of ordnance, stores, ammunition, clothing, medicines” — a situation which, despite some significant efforts, improved little.20 Forts St. Philip and Jackson, guarding the approaches to New Orleans along the Mississippi River, Lovell found “sadly deficient,” lacking both guns and ammunition.21 Eventually, preparations gained some momentum: under Beauregard’s advice, work commenced on obstructing the Mississippi at the forts; floating batteries started construction; fire

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rafts were planned; and, just above the city limits, work began on two Confederate ironclad warships, the Mississippi and the Louisiana. The New Orleans Delta warned ominously, “Let not history look back with scorn upon the puny efforts of New Orleans to defend herself from invaders.”22

“THE VILE INTRUDER” All too soon those “puny efforts” were put to the test. At the end of 1861, Southern poet Catharine Poyas attempted to bolster the city’s morale: O! not yet our queenly city Shalt thou totter to thy fall, For our bravest and our dearest Form around a living wall.

In particular, she exhorted the women of the city, “The Daughters of the Southern Queen,” to “banish from your bosoms / Every thought could make ye — pale,” lest “the vile intruder / Deem that Southern women quail!”23 Then, at the end of April 1862, war returned to New Orleans. This time, unlike 1815, there was to be no miraculous reprieve. If preparations for the defense of the city had been marked by apparent disorder, the Union invasion force, under the command of Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut, was, in comparison, impeccably organized and fully determined. When offered command of the expedition, Farragut declared, “I expect to pass the forts and restore New Orleans to the Government, or never return.”24 And as Jim Dan Hill described, he was well prepared to do the former: “He could not have had more information concerning the enemy had he been working a war-college map problem in tactics.”25 By the end of February, Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron had congregated at Ship Island, 30 miles south of Biloxi off the Mississippi coast, and soon moved towards the Mississippi, the gateway to New Orleans. Though some time was lost moving the Union’s fleet over the bar at the mouth of the river, by mid-April the invasion force was successfully situated in the Mississippi, not far below the forts. On April 18 — Good Friday — a mortar flotilla under the control of Commander David Dixon Porter opened fire on Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, and continued with their bombardment for six days. Though the persistent shelling — Porter reckoned “about 2800 shells every twenty-four hours; in all about 16,800 shells” — had done little, in real terms, to reduce the firepower of the forts, it certainly caused consternation in New Orleans.26 The Delta reported, “Our people, we are persuaded, possess as much nerve as any to be found in the world. But it cannot be disguised that, for some days past, they look with painful concern to the defense of the forts.” The danger, they felt, was “undefined, mysterious and fearful.”27 Even then, faith remained. As Cable related, the citizens did what they could to reassure themselves: Had we not inspected the fortifications ourselves? Was not every man in town ready to rush into them at the twelve taps of the fire-alarm bells? [. . .] Nothing afloat could pass

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the forts. Nothing that walked could get through our swamps. The Mississippi — and, in fact, she was a majestically terrible structure, only let us complete her — would sweep the river clean!28

On April 24, Farragut put an end to such hopes. Having prepared the way by sending two gunboats, under fire from the forts, to cut the chain barrier that spanned the river, there was now room enough for the Union fleet to pass through. Seventeen warships began their journey towards New Orleans. The city’s defenders attempted to prevent their approach. The damaged forts opened fire with everything they had, causing significant damage to the invasion force. As Porter related, “While passing the forts the Hartford [Farragut’s flagship] was struck thirty-two times in hull and rigging, and had three men killed and ten wounded.”29 Even after the Union fleet passed the forts, they still had fighting to do. The Confederate gunboats of the River Defense Fleet — such as it was — engaged with the Union warships, as did the ram Manassas; fire rafts were sent downriver to collide with the Union fleet; the ironclad Louisiana, though not capable of movement because unfinished, could still fire its weapons, as did the floating batteries and even the guns positioned on the 1815 battlefield. But it was all to no avail. New Orleans’ river defenses were finally proved to be inadequate. In the city itself, General Lovell had been preparing as best he could for a potential ground invasion by the Union; in Charles Dufour’s words, “gunboats were quite another thing.”30 He retreated from the city, taking his 3,000 troops with him. The ironclad Mississippi, still incomplete, was burned. The garrisons in the forts mutinied. Surrender was inevitable. As David Porter put it, “The Queen City of the South lay at the conqueror’s feet.”31 For those who had remained in New Orleans, chaos reigned as the Federal fleet approached. “All was gloomy and dull,” remembered Marion Southwood in 1867, “drums beating, soldiers running to and fro. All was wild consternation.”32 In expectation of occupation, piles of cotton bales were burned on the levee. Warehouses were emptied and other valuable goods were destroyed. In Southwood’s words, “Molasses was running in the gutters, like water. Hundreds of barrels had been opened rather than let the dreaded Yankees get possession of them.” Empty ships were set on fire and loosed from their moorings. For Southwood, “[i]t was a magnificent, but awful sight.”33 What wasn’t destroyed was looted. In Cable’s description, “[t]he lower steamboat landing, well covered with sugar, rice, and molasses, was being rifled. The men smashed; the women scooped up the smashing.”34 Faced with the enemy, gambler George Devol and his comrades found discretion to be the better part of valor: “We cut the buttons off our coats, buried our sabres, and tried to make ourselves look as much like peaceful citizens as possible, for we had enough of military glory, and were tired of war.” Thus liberated, he concentrated on the important task of pillaging: “I hired a dray (for which I had to pay $10), and loaded it down to the guards. We put on a hogshead of sugar, twenty-five hams, a sack of coffee, box of tea, firkin of butter, barrel of potatoes, some hominy, beans, canned fruits, etc. I would have put on more, but the dray wouldn’t hold it.”35 And then, on April 25, the enemy finally appeared. Almost three decades later, Cable vividly remembered the moment the Federal warships approached

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12. William Waud, Landing of Captain Bailey and Lieutenant Perkins on the Levee, New Orleans [. . .] to Demand the Surrender of the City, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated History of the Civil War (New York: Mrs. Frank Leslie, 1895).

the city: “I see them now as they come slowly round Slaughterhouse Point into full view, silent, so grim and terrible; black with men, heavy with deadly portent; the long-banished Stars and Stripes flying against the frowning sky [. . .] The crowds on the levee howled and screamed with rage.”36 Faced with the Union fleet, Marion Southwood felt that “[n]othing could exceed the grim ugliness of its appearance — all battered and torn with long strips of board off the sides of the vessels; time-stained and blackened with smoke and dirt; looking as though they had been shot at and not missed.”37 For the Union troops, events were equally dramatic. Albert Kautz, one of Farragut’s officers, found that the capture of the city afforded a rare moment of contrast between enemies: Here were two factions of the same nation in such close proximity that they could hear each other’s voices and look into each other’s faces. One was in exuberant spirits, with banners streaming over them from every mast-head; the other, depressed and exasperated, was surrounded by the blackened and charred remains of steamers and cotton bales which they themselves had fired.38

And in her diary, Mary Chesnut despaired in no uncertain terms: “New Orleans is gone, and with it the Confederacy!”39

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“BEAST” The ramifications of the fall of the South’s most important city were, indeed, profound. New Orleanian Julia Le Grand, another diarist, recognized how precipitous the city’s fall from grace had been: Poor New Orleans! What has become of all your promised greatness! In looking through an old trunk, I came across a letter of my father to my Uncle Thomas, in which, as far back as 1835, he prophesied a noble future for you. What would he say now to see you dismantled and lying low under the heel of the invader!40

In contrast, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine glowingly declared, “The capture of New Orleans proves to have been one of the most brilliant exploits of modern warfare.”41 In David Porter’s judgment, “[t]he most important event of the War of the Rebellion, with the exception of the fall of Richmond, was the capture of New Orleans and the forts Jackson and St. Philip, guarding the approach to that city.” “To appreciate the nature of this victory,” he argued, “it is necessary [. . .] to be able to comprehend not only the immediate results to the Union cause, but the whole bearing of the fall of New Orleans on the Civil War, which at that time had attained its most formidable proportions.” First, “New Orleans was the largest Southern city, and contained all the resources of modern warfare.” And second, it was the key to the Mississippi — in Porter’s terms “the backbone of the Rebellion.”42 Though Vicksburg held out until 1863, the fall of New Orleans precipitated the collapse of Confederate resistance along the river, cutting the Confederacy in two. But the consequences went further still. The capture of the city effectively precluded international recognition of the Confederacy and intervention on its behalf. Situated in London, Henry Adams wrote to his brother Charles that as news of the capture of New Orleans spread through the city, “the whole town was in immense excitement as though it were an English defeat [. . .] the effect of the news here has been greater than anything yet. It has acted like a violent blow in the face on a drunken man.”43 In very real terms, the loss of New Orleans truly was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. In the Southern Literary Messenger, Mary Bayard Clarke (writing as “Tenella”), published “A Lament for New Orleans” that was telling in its attitudes. It opened conventionally enough: Oh, weep for New Orleans! The fair Southern Queen, Whose throne by the “Father of Waters” is seen, She sits in the dust — her fair head bowed down — Her sceptre departed and fallen her crown.

But Clarke then posed an awkward question, reflecting the concerns of many: “[W]ho hath disgraced her?” Certainly not “the bravest and best of her sons,” since they were “fighting with Polk or had fallen with Dreux” (the New Orleanian who was the first Confederate field officer to be killed in battle). Rather, “’Tis traitors

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at home, who have tarnished her shield,” for they “have bartered her honour to save their red gold.”44 Such complaints about the city’s swift and apparently unopposed capitulation were widespread. Kate Stone argued in her diary that it was “better to burn our cities than let them fall into the enemy’s hands.”45 And Marion Southwood noted suspiciously, “Some thought that if the United States had not had so much money at its disposal, the forts would not have been passed [. . .] ‘there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.’”46 But if some of the men of New Orleans were felt to have done less than they might when finally faced with the enemy, Clarke — and, soon, many others — had no doubts about the commitment of the city’s women: Her daughters, God bless them! are loyal and true, And women more noble the world never knew, In wrath and defiance they boldly arose, And scorned to concede one inch to their foes. Insulted — imprisoned — but never enslaved, While men were submitting, the tyrant they braved.47

Indeed, as the specter of occupation loomed, it was the women of New Orleans who would become an object of admiration throughout the Confederacy — and little less fascination across the globe. Their antagonists finally arrived in the city on May 1. The bitterness that marked the arrival of the Union occupation force under the command of General Benjamin Franklin Butler — soon to be known by a variety of other, less formal, names — is still immediately discernible in Marion Southwood’s 1867 account. Echoes of the Battle of New Orleans and the alleged British desire for ‘Beauty and Booty’ were evident: To imagine that creatures, such as are seldom seen, unless paying a visit to the penitentiary, should be turned loose upon a wealthy refined and enlightened community! Oh, such looking objects as they were! with old light blue slouched hats, and clothes to match looking as though they had slept in them, and water was scarce; their daguerreotypes should have been taken and sent to Barnum’s Museum [. . .] There was a perfect rush to see this awful representative of human authority.48

As far as the citizens of New Orleans were concerned, Butler himself was the worst of all. Southwood remembered, as the Union force marched through the city’s streets with Butler at its head, that “the indignation of the canaille knew no bounds; they knew no language too gross to accost him with [. . .] every epithet which could be applied to the vilest was heaped upon him.”49 The insults did not go unnoticed. Author John W. De Forest, serving in the Twelfth Connecticut Volunteers, was part of the occupation force. While camping in Lafayette Square, he noted to his wife that there was “an almost continual mutter of ‘Damn Yankees’ from the row of ugly, dirty, vicious faces which surrounded our pen.”50 Butler soon paid them back in kind. The tone of General Butler’s command of the city was established almost

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immediately. In the wake of Farragut’s demands for the surrender of New Orleans, a United States flag had been raised over the mint. Epes Sargent fictionalized the moment in his post-emancipation novel Peculiar (1864). In particular, he imagined the profound effect that the raising of the Union flag had on the city’s black inhabitants: “[I]f some hearts were sick and crushed at the spectacle, there were many thousands in that great metropolis to whom the sight of the old flag carried a joy and exultation transcending the power of words to express.”51 But, almost immediately, it was lowered again by a number of rebellious New Orleanians — under fire from the Union fleet — then shredded. In celebration, the Picayune published a list of the names of those responsible, commending them for their “patriotic act” — including mention of one “W. M. Mumford, who cut it loose from the flag-staff amid the shower of grape.”52 Mumford himself didn’t hide from the glory: he took to wearing part of the flag as a buttonhole. On April 29, Butler declared to Edwin Stanton, secretary of war, “This outrage will be punished in such manner as in my judgment will caution both the perpetrators and abettors of the act, so that they shall fear the stripes if they do not reverence the stars of our banner.”53 He was good to his word. Not long after Butler arrived in the city, Mumford was arrested and executed. Unsurprisingly, opinions on his hanging split along sectional lines. Marion Southwood lamented, “Some of our most influential and respected citizens used their most earnest and pathetic entreaties to pursuade General Butler to spare the prisoner’s life [. . .] In a short time the poor man was executed leaving an estimable wife and three small children to the tender mercies of the world to be supported by charity.”54 The exiled Governor Moore declared, “The noble heroism of the patriot Mumford has placed his name high on the list of our martyred sons.”55 But in James Parton’s account, published in New York in 1864, Mumford was rather less revered. “His life,” Parton argued, “was not a valuable one; he was one of those who live by preying upon society, not by serving it. He was a professional gambler.”56 Whatever the controversy surrounding Mumford’s execution, it was soon eclipsed by fresh arguments. In his autobiography, Butler remembered how quickly Union forces “had the men of New Orleans [. . .] completely under our control.” And then he added ruefully, “But not so with the women”; the women of New Orleans began a campaign of resistance against the occupation force. “Pretty soon,” Butler described, “complaints of treatment from women of all states and conditions and degrees in life came pouring in upon me.” Sometimes, this amounted to little more than symbolic gestures. When met with a Union soldier, for example, a woman might “take great pains to hold her skirts aside as if she feared they might be contaminated.” At other times, the gestures were more explicit. On one occasion, David Farragut was surprised by “the emptying of a vessel of water [. . .] from the balcony above, and not very clean water at that.” On another, one of Butler’s officers passed “two very well dressed and respectable looking women” — and “one deliberately stepped across in front of the other and spit in his face.” Butler was concerned: “A city could hardly be said to be under good government where such things were permitted or attempted by any class of its inhabitants.” But what to do? Arresting such women “would be a source of perpetual turmoil at least, and possibly ripen into insurrection.” What was needed

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was “an order that would execute itself.” The result was “General Order No. 28” — soon known as the “Woman’s Order” — given on May 15, 1862: As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.57

The reaction to Butler’s order was immediate and severe. A spirit of horrified indignation spread throughout the Confederacy. English merchant William Corsan, who was in town checking on his Southern business connections, witnessed the outpouring of fury:

13. Women of New Orleans Insulting Federal Officers, from Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major General Benj. F. Butler, Butler’s Book (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892).

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I could not help looking almost with pity on that [. . .] man, for whose blood a whole nation was thirsting; who is never spoken of by half his own countrymen but as “the beast;” who is probably hated more intensely than any other living man, and by more people; and against whose dying quietly in his own bed there are so many untold chances.58

Kate Stone, without such foibles, fumed in her diary, “Is the soul of Nero reincarnated in the form of Butler? Why can he not fall of the scourge of New Orleans, yellow fever?”59 And according to Butler himself, General Beauregard read the order to his army at Corinth “to inflame the Southern heart.”60 Confederate poet Paul Hamilton Hayne followed suit in his poem “Butler’s Proclamation” — and brooked no quarter: O! soldiers, husbands, brothers, sires! Think that each stalwart blow ye give Shall quench the rage of lustful fires, And bid your glorious women live Pure from a wrong whose tainted breath, Were fouler than the foulest death. [. . .]

Slay! slay! with ruthless sword and will, The God of vengeance bids you “kill!”61

The North was less solid in its reactions. The New York Times criticized “the coarse and needless vulgarity of the language of his order.”62 One female correspondent — “Amanda” — took the matter less seriously, and provided some suggestions about the way that Butler should have treated the problem: “I would provide all handsome young soldiers with blinkers, like horses, to prevent them from exchanging glances with the girls, en passant. I know the excessive cruelty of such a measure, but, really, the girls deserve it.”63 Harper’s Weekly was not even slightly apologetic. It highlighted the fact that Butler’s troops were feeding the starving citizens of New Orleans, and it claimed that they were “gradually developing a Union sentiment” at the same time.64 It also published an anonymous satirical poem, “The Ballad of the Crescent City,” which described the fortunes of a “haughty Creole matron with her daughters and her slaves.” At first, this woman accosts the occupying force in a familiar fashion: So she passes, while the venom from her fragrant mouth still slips Like the loathsome toads and lizards from the enchanted maiden’s lips, And her spotless soul joys doubtless, soft her modest bosom beats, That she so has aped the harlot in her city’s public streets!

But soon, her behavior undergoes a change. And the reason is clear: For spitting once too often at the Banner of the Free, And once too oft through her PURE lips the venom letting loose, The haughty Creole dame was shown into — the CALABOOSE!65

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14. The Ladies of New Orleans, before and after General Butler’s Proclamation, from Harper’s Weekly (July 12, 1862), 448.

There was at least consensus that the order had its intended effect: as Drew Gilpin Faust outlines, “[h]orrified at the prospect of being identified as women of the lowest moral and social order, the females of New Orleans policed their own behavior.”66 But the controversy was still spreading. In the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Lord Palmerston announced: [A]n Englishman must blush to think that such an act has been committed by one belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race. (Cheers.) If it had come from some barbarous race that was not within the pale of civilization, one might have regretted it, but might not have been surprised; but that such an order should have been promulgated by a soldier — (cheers) — by one who had raised himself to the rank of general, is a subject undoubtedly of not less astonishment than pain.67

Not everyone was so sympathetic. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels responded scathingly to Palmerston’s condemnation of Butler in the Vienna Presse: “The English women who are starving in Lancashire (they are, however, not ladies, nor do they possess any slaves), have inspired no parliamentary utterance hitherto [. . .] But the ladies of New Orleans! That, to be sure, is another matter.” Marx and Engels felt little sympathy for “yellow beauties, tastelessly bedecked with jewels,” or their “mode of heroism, a mode that could have been invented only by female slaveholders [. . .] These Magaeras imagined they could be ill-mannered ‘with impunity.’”68 Such views were not the prevailing ones, and the incident also bled into popular romance in ways that were prescient for the kind of Old South, Lost Cause nostalgia that would develop in the coming decades. In June 1865, the London correspondent from the New York Times noted the publication of “a serial

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sensation story in weekly penny numbers, entitled, ‘The Confederate’s Daughter, or the Tyrant of New-Orleans: by a Confederate Soldier.’ This is illustrated, and it attributes to Gen. Butler and his soldiers atrocities that would be libels on Nero or Caligula.”69 The theme was clearly a popular one, since, as the Syracuse State League reported in September 1865, it translated to the stage: The play of the “Confederate’s Daughter” is having great success [. . .] Gen. Butler appears in it as “the tyrant Of New Orleans,” makes love improperly to the Confederate’s daughter, but is foiled by a faithful negro, who has a fight with Butler, and beats him in a square fight. Butler afterwards undertakes to hang the lover of the said daughter, but he is reprieved. Butler is removed from command and the Confederate’s daughter triumphs. The play is highly exciting.70

Butler was indeed replaced — in December 1862, by Major General Nathaniel Banks. Despite the controversies that marked his control of New Orleans — including his reputation for stealing silver spoons — even his detractors had one good thing to say about the Beast’s dominion: “[T]he federals could clean the streets, if they couldn’t do anything else.”71 And at least one person did very well out of Butler’s time in the city: after having his race horses confiscated, gambler George Devol happily bragged, “I caught a sucker paymaster for $19,000, and they did not find out who it was that won the greenbacks.”72

“ONLY NIGGERS” On the departure of Butler, Marion Southwood declared, the people of New Orleans were “delivered from worse than Egyptian bondage.”73 Julia Le Grand was also pleased at the change: “We find a great difference in the appearance of Banks’ troops and those of Butler,” she noted. “There is a difference even among devils, it seems, as some of Banks’ people do try to be kind to us, while Butler’s were just the reverse.”74 But as James Gill notes, occupation was still occupation, and war was still war: “[C]onditions hardly improved under Banks. A quarter of the population still depended on government relief for food, and the war had taken such a toll that the occupying forces ran ten orphanages [. . .] Financial ruin and widespread want left a pall of depression.”75 English merchant William Corsan noted that “neither a bale of cotton, a hogshead of sugar, a bushel of corn, a packet of merchandise, or a man at work, could be seen from end to end of that levée nearly nine miles long.”76 From January 1863 to March 1865, between four and nine thousand white families received rations from the Union Army.77 “The poverty of the once flourishing city of New Orleans is astonishing,” noted John W. De Forest, predicting “it will be years before it quite recovers from all the effects of this stupid rebellion.”78 Of course, the arrival of Banks in New Orleans coincided with another deliverance from bondage — and this one was worthy of Southwood’s biblical comparison. The Emancipation Proclamation was a standout moment in a period of extraordinary flux for New Orleans’ African-American population. From the

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beginning of Union occupation, as slaves deserted Louisiana’s plantations, the city’s black population increased dramatically: “Between 1860 and 1870, while the white population declined from 144,601 to 140,923, blacks more than doubled in numbers, from 24,074 to 50,456.”79 For all black New Orleanians, this would prove to be, in John Blassingame’s words, “a time of breathtaking changes, boundless dreams, and painful disappointments.”80 And this was as true for those who had been free before the war as it was for those who were newly free. Though the war certainly didn’t eradicate the traditional hierarchies that had existed between free men and women of color and the enslaved, it did erode them. Newspaper editor and politician Whitelaw Reid visited New Orleans in 1866 as part of a tour to determine the “temper and condition” of the defeated South, and spent some time examining the changing quality of life for the city’s black population. He visited “a fair held by the Catholic negroes — mostly of the old Louisiana free-negro stock” — and was immediately confounded and beguiled by the city’s racial politics. “Nowhere else in the world could that scene have been witnessed,” Reid marveled. “There were elegantly dressed ladies, beautiful with a beauty beside which that of the North is wax-work [. . .] Some of them were wealthy; all were intelligent.” And yet, as Reid noted ruefully, within the context of post-war New Orleans “they were only niggers.” One man explained to him the consequences of this new reality. No longer were free men and women of color “aloof from the slaves” as they had previously been: “[W]e see that our future is indissolubly bound up with that of the negro race in this country [. . .] We have no rights which we can reckon safe while the same are denied to the fieldhands on the sugar plantations.”81 The quest to achieve full legal equality for Louisiana’s African-Americans took place within a context of labyrinthine politicking and extraordinary corruption — in Ted Tunnell’s phrase, Louisiana’s Reconstruction history is “more tangled than the region’s labyrinth of swamps and bayous.”82 Evidently, black New Orleanians faced formidable resistance from white Southerners eager to reassert the old order of things. The city became, in James Hogue’s description, “a unique epicenter of violent politics”; a new kind of civil war developed, “made even more vicious in its perceptible slide toward violence lacking any restrain or limits in its cruelty.”83 Though white supremacist forces were eventually triumphant in Reconstruction New Orleans — as they were across the South — the changes in city life for its black inhabitants in the post-war period, however temporary, should not be diminished. Radical political action had its achievements: slavery was officially abolished in New Orleans by the Constitutional Convention formed by Nathaniel Banks in 1864, and other developments soon followed. After the advent of Congressional Reconstruction in 1867, as Somers explains, “the Louisiana constitution of 1868 [. . .] granted full rights to all citizens, including the vote, prohibited segregation in public schools,” and officially ended segregation in public facilities. At the same time, black New Orleanians soon discovered that “the quest for equality involved more than the passage of legislation.”84 As a result, a new spirit of protest emerged. It took numerous forms. On the one hand, it was evident in various instances of direct action against segregation. Black New Orleanians “filed at least fourteen suits against soda shops, saloons, theaters, and the opera in New Orleans between 1869 and 1875” because they refused to serve black customers — and they

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were often successful.85 The most prominent, and successful, campaign for the integration of public services focused around the city’s streetcars. After sustained protest, the streetcar system was integrated in 1867 — and, remarkably, remained integrated until 1902. The quest for economic independence also took hold. As Blassingame notes, black New Orleanians “obtained a significant share of the brokerage houses, retail groceries, cigar factories, and tailoring shops in the city.”86 And the movement developed a cultural front. Belgian astronomer, abolitionist, and political radical Jean-Charles Houzeau had spent some time in New Orleans before the war, but returned to the city in 1863, first to contribute to the French-language black newspaper L’Union, then to become managing editor of the New Orleans Tribune — the first black daily newspaper in the United States. No less remarkably, he passed as an African-American while so doing. Its goal, Houzeau described, was nothing less than to become “the organ of five million black and brown-skinned men of the United States” while it worked to “defend the masses of the proscribed race and unite this oppressed population completely around its standard.” While it never quite achieved that vaunted position, as Houzeau described, it at least “lived long enough to see equality under the law triumph.”87 Perhaps the most telling demonstration of the possibilities — and, indeed, limitations — of Reconstruction for black New Orleanians could be found in the field of education. In the face of massive white resistance, the city’s black children attended private black schools, public black schools, and, after 1869, a small number of integrated public schools in an effort, as Joe Gray Taylor put it,

15. Negro Schools of New Orleans, from Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour (New York: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1866).

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“to make up for two centuries of deliberate neglect in the education of southern blacks.”88 With little funding behind it — in 1867, for example, of the “estimated ten thousand black children of school age in New Orleans [. . .] provision was made for no more than five thousand of them” — the education effort inevitably had its shortcomings.89 As Tunnell notes, “in many parts of Louisiana, freedmen complained not about the state’s failure to provide unsegregated schools, but about its failure to provide any schools.”90 And those schools that did integrate were frequently subject to sustained white protest. As the Reconstruction period reached its end, for example, groups of white boys would “disrupt a mixed classroom of black and white students and demand the ejection of all children who appeared to be other than white.”91 But, while they could, black New Orleanians persisted in the endeavor of educating their children. Whitelaw Reid spent time visiting some of the schools that had been established in New Orleans since the beginning of Union occupation. Though he admitted, “I was not unduly sanguine in my expectations,” what he discovered gave him cause for optimism. One teacher — “smart, bright, looking for all the world like a Lowell factory girl” — who had also taught in the North, told him that “she saw no difference in the rapidity with which whites and blacks learned to spell and read. There were dull scholars and bright scholars everywhere.” Reid agreed: “I do not hesitate to say that the average progress of the children of plantation hands, as shown in every negro school from Fortress Monroe around to New Orleans, is fully equal to the average progress of white children at the North.”92

“KILLED OFF” Reid was not quite so optimistic about what he saw looming on the horizon. He noted that “returning Rebel soldiers seemed to have called into active utterance all the hostility to Northerners that for nearly four years had lain latent.” And — presciently — he was downright pessimistic about what was coming next: “The Rebels [. . .] already began to talk, in tones subdued only by the presence of the military authorities, about soon putting an end to the career of nigger agitators in Louisiana.”93 John Townsend Trowbridge, undertaking his own tour of the South in 1866, was told in no uncertain terms, “A heap of the planters wants ’em all killed off.”94 Hogue supports their observations. When “battered Confederates” returned to New Orleans, the city seemed to have undergone a startling transformation: “[T]hey found not only themselves penniless but also many of their enemies ensconced in their former places of wealth, influence, power and prestige. Not only were their economic prospects dim, but the social order they had gone off to war to defend seemed turned on its head too.” Moreover, they “invariably remarked upon the flood tide of freedmen streaming into the city.”95 At the same time that they sought to regain political control, white Louisianans formed, as Tunnell describes, “a vast shadowland of secret paramilitary political clubs and societies: Knights of the White Camellia, Swamp Fox Rangers, Innocents, Seymour Knights, Hancock Guards, and the seldom seen but widely rumoured Ku Klux Klan.”96 Violence loomed.

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It erupted in 1866. In July, in the midst of controversy, the Constitutional Convention, which had met in 1864, prepared to reconvene on a legal technicality. This was a radical move designed, as James Hollandsworth explains, to “bypass the legislature [. . .] amending the constitution to disfranchise former Confederates and enfranchise blacks.”97 On July 30, the day of the convention, as the delegates gathered in the Mechanics’ Institute on Dryades Street, a group of black men — largely Union veterans — marching in support of black male suffrage clashed with a white crowd that had also gathered outside the building. The conflict escalated until the white mob, made up of both police — mainly former Confederates and Know-Nothings — and civilians, drove the black marchers into the Institute. Then, they began firing revolvers into the building. One eyewitness described the devastation: “The floor of the Convention room was covered with the blood, limbs, hair and brains of human beings [. . .] The hall and stairway dripped with human gore. The sidewalk was covered with blood and tattered garments.”98 Jean-Charles Houzeau despaired to a friend, “Ces esclavagistes [the supporters of slavery] sont des demons.” But as he also noted, the event drew national attention back to New Orleans and created “a sudden and profound furor in the country.”99 Harper’s Weekly, for example, gave significant space to the massacre, declaring that: The facts of the case are appalling [. . .] It can not be doubted that the New Orleans massacre has done more than the abstract argument of a year to impress the country with the conviction that we can not wisely hope for peace at the South so long as inequality of guarantees of personal and political liberty endure.100

The event clearly helped to turn public opinion towards the policies of Radical Reconstruction. “Ironically,” as Hollandsworth notes, “the violent reaction of whites in New Orleans had accomplished precisely what the advocates of black suffrage wanted all along” — temporarily, at least.101

16. The Riot in New Orleans, from Harper’s Weekly (August 25, 1866), 537.

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In truth, the events of 1866 were “only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible manifestation of a much broader pattern of vigilante violence across racial lines” that took place in New Orleans throughout this period.102 Other moments of widespread violence broke out in the city: street battles took place in 1872 and 1873. Most significant, however, were the events of September 1874. On September 14, a paramilitary organization known as the Crescent City White League staged a coup. Well-armed White League militia companies in New Orleans gathered around the statue of Henry Clay on Canal Street, barricading the streets and demanding the resignation of Republican governor William P. Kellogg. They were engaged by heavily outnumbered black Louisiana State Militia units under the command of former Confederate James Longstreet. The ensuing battle — the so-called “Battle of Liberty Place” — was a swift and conclusive victory for the White League. As Hogue has described, “[f]or what was perhaps the last time in American history, the troops let out a rebel yell and attacked at a run.” 103 The White League controlled New Orleans for three days before President Grant ordered Federal troops to Louisiana to restore order. It served as a prelude for the White League coup of 1877 which — after President Hayes withdrew Federal troops from Louisiana, ending Reconstruction — effectively succeeded where its forerunners had failed.

“WILDEST SCENES OF GAIETY” What is, perhaps, most remarkable about this tumultuous and destructive period in the life of New Orleans is the way that the brutalities of Reconstruction unfolded alongside the reemergence of carnival. As ever in New Orleans, the shifting tenor of post-war Mardi Gras was closely related to the wider context of civic life. In Christopher Benfey’s words, “[b]ad years tend to inspire good carnivals,” and Reconstruction proved to be a fertile period for the reestablishment and development of carnival traditions.104 Within the space of a few years in the early 1870s, carnival experienced a new renaissance; many of the traditions most associated with Mardi Gras were quickly established (like, for example, the debut of Rex, King of Carnival, in 1872). Indeed, as Reid Mitchell has noted, it was in the post-war period “that New Orleanians created Carnival in its modern form,” fashioning it out of “the new cultural needs that war, defeat, and changes in the social order created — and from the political and economic turmoil and racial tension in the city.”105 And there were practical motivations at work, too. As Kevin Fox Gotham has asserted, “[o]ne important motivation for creating the Krewe of Rex in 1872 was to lure visitors to New Orleans in an effort to revive the local economy that had been devastated by the Civil War.”106 The tensions animating post-war carnival were not immediately apparent. When the Mystick Krewe of Comus returned to the streets in 1866, they conjured a spectacle which, James Gill notes, “moved many onlookers to tears”: “Under the rubric ‘The Past, the Present and The Future,’ Comus presented tableaux depicting the horrors of the Civil War and the joys of reconciliation.”107 On one level, carnival clearly served, as Anthony Stanonis has described, as “a balm to soothe

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the sting of defeat and sudden poverty.”108 While that was true, much more was at work here, and the apparently conciliatory tone of this first Reconstruction parade was deceptive. After all, the year that Comus returned to the city’s streets was also the year of the 1866 Mechanics’ Institute riot. Equally, the Mystic Krewe was, in Mitchell’s words, “only one of many fantastic Southern organisations” who “donned fabulous disguises” in the post-war period.109 In a variety of ways, the reemergence of parading was indelibly linked to the struggle of elite white New Orleanians to overturn the effects of Reconstruction. Most famously, this spirit was apparent in the 1873 parade of Comus. Taking as its theme “The Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species,” the parade went to elaborate lengths to satirize prominent Republicans. With masquers attired in detailed papier-mâché costumes, as James Gill narrates, “[t]he parade featured a host of beasts, each unmistakably representing some despised figure. The tobacco grub was President Grant [. . .] and nobody needed any help identifying Beast Butler in the shape of a hyena, complete with a silver spoon.” But prominent Republicans were not the only target of the satire; the parade’s white supremacist sentiments were also made clear: “Supposed lord of all-creation was a banjo playing gorilla, who was seated on a throne in the tableau.”110 Nor was Comus unique in its satirical use of carnival. Other organizations — most notably the Knights of Momus and the Twelfth-Night Revelers — emerged in the Reconstruction period and used their parades to burlesque the contemporary scene. In 1877, with Reconstruction almost at an end, Momus depicted prominent Republicans in “Hades,” to no little controversy. And beyond the elaborate and carefully planned spectacles of the Krewes, an anti-Republican, anti-Reconstruction ethos was discernible at all levels of carnival. Even the make-believe rule of Rex, as Mitchell has highlighted, “met a desire for a kind of symbolic victory amid actual defeat.”111 And, in the end, the animating politics of these elaborately staged rituals of protest were echoed and intensified and played out anew on the city’s streets. In very real terms, carnival was the dumb show to the White League riot. As Christopher Benfey has highlighted, “the Mystick Krewe of Comus and the Crescent City White League [. . .] mixed methods, personnel, and locales.”112 As a result of its new Reconstruction prominence, Mardi Gras became an increasingly visible subject in post-war popular culture. As early as 1868, Ellerton Vincent’s novel The Artist’s Dream devoted significant space to a description of Mardi Gras celebrations as witnessed by visitors to the city, including a relatively accurate account of Comus’ 1861 parade: Early in the evening, Chartres, Canal, and other streets were lined with spectators awaiting the movements of the ‘Mistick Krewe of Comus.’ The procession appeared about nine o’clock, with lights on both sides. A large semi-circular transparency was held aloft, hung with Chinese lanterns, and bearing the name of the ‘Krewe.’ The subject of the exposition was ‘The Four Ages of Life’ [. . .] It was the first celebration of Mardi Gras they had ever witnessed; and they were charmed with the novelty and brilliance of the entertainment.113

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17. J. Wells Champney, The Carnival, from Edward King, The Great South (Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1875).

In 1871, James Curtis Waldo also capitalized on the growing interest in carnival — and the rising nostalgia for life before the war — by publishing a novel entitled Mardi Gras: A Tale of Antebellum Times in New Orleans. “Mardi Gras,” Waldo explained, “is always marked by the wildest scenes of gaiety, and is given over to amusement by almost the entire population of the Crescent City.”114 Magazines, too, paid attention. “At New Orleans, last Mardi Gras,” marveled George Pond in the Galaxy magazine in May 1873, “what did the ‘Mistick Krewe of Comus’ choose for their sport but the ‘Missing Links’ of Darwin?”115 As such accounts related its superficial charms, carnival became New Orleans’ romantic calling card to the wider nation — a useful mask with which to cover the less picturesque aspects of Reconstruction at the same time that it hid them in plain sight. As the widespread response to carnival suggests, whatever other hardships

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18. J. Wells Champney, “The joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor,” from Edward King, The Great South (Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1875).

the city faced in the post-war period, it did not have to wait long to find a new prominence in national culture. This process was largely driven by outside commentators — though New Orleanians themselves certainly helped the process along — and was underway even during the war. For example, Confederate artilleryman Napier Bartlett published Clarimonde: A Tale of New Orleans Life in 1863 — “composed amid the vicissitudes of camp life.”116 In a text complete with duels, yellow fever, Mardi Gras, and other picturesque details, Bartlett worked to a template that would soon become a staple of popular literature — and compounded that formula with a collection of Stories of the Crescent City in 1869.117 Further wartime precursors of the city’s post-war imaginative revitalization could be found in the works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Though best known as a vital figure in the New England literary world, editing both Every Saturday and the Atlantic Monthly, Aldrich had a significant connection to New Orleans, spending a number of years in the city as a child while his father pursued business interests. His writings attest to the importance of this brief sojourn — as did his 1908 biographer, Ferris Greenslet: “[I]t is perhaps not too fantastic a speculation to suppose that from those early days in the old Creole city, with its strange, tropical beauty, its exotic sounds and scents, he drew imaginative clues to a richer and more romantic life than was commonly to be observed among the dwellers upon the North Shore.”118 In his seminal post-war account of his childhood, The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), Aldrich even claimed by the time he was sent back to the North to pursue his education he was

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what is called ‘a Northern man with Southern principles.’ I had no recollection of New England: my earliest memories were connected with the South, with Aunt Chloe, my old negro nurse, and with the great ill-kept garden in the centre of which stood our house — a white-washed brick house it was, with wide verandas — shut out from the street by lines of orange, fig, and magnolia trees.119

It was during the war years that Aldrich turned to those memories to produce a number of compelling accounts of the city, apparently sewing the seeds for many of the literary interpretations of New Orleans that would follow in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first, Out of his Head (1862), provided its readers with a compelling account of the pleasures of New Orleans: its narrator smokes a cigar in an exotic “fairy garden,” and muses on the romantic nature of life in the Crescent City: “As you stroll through the streets, in the twilight, you see groups, assembled on the piazzas of the low-roofed French houses, or sauntering unceremoniously in front gardens; and many a Creole brunette and many a rich southern blonde, bends tender eyes on you as you pass. You catch glimpses of charming domestic tableaux.” But Aldrich contrasted the picturesque aspects of city life with the ever-present threat of disease — in this case, cholera (the cause of Aldrich’s own father’s death): “The hospitals were already filling up; and the red flag wilted in the languid breeze at the quarantine [. . .] And then commenced that long procession of funerals which never ceased to trail by our door for so many weary months.”120 Arguably more significant was the short story that Aldrich published in the Atlantic in June 1862. “Père Antoine’s Date Palm” acknowledged the circumstances of its publication with a framing device: it begins with an admission by its narrator that the details of the story were provided by a “Miss Badeau,” a native of New Orleans who was “packed up, labelled, and sent North” at the beginning of the war. And the narrator, in a prescient nod to the stories of cross-sectional romance that would bloom in the post-war years, is not slow to confess his admiration for this “bitter little rebel, with blonde hair, superb eyelashes, and two brothers in the Confederate service.” The story itself, an account of the significance of the titular date palm in the personal tragedies of Père Antoine, is a model of the kind of sketch — rich in history, exoticism and sentimental detail — that would soon come to characterize writing about the city.121 Not that every fictional portrait of New Orleans engaged so warmly with the city’s favorite romantic tropes. In 1867, Lydia Maria Child might have dwelt on Garden District mansions and beautiful quadroons in her state-of-the-nation novel, A Romance of the Republic, but she used such props to touch upon some of the thorny racial issues facing the post-war nation.122 In the same year, one-time occupier of the city John W. De Forest published one of the most significant post-war portraits of New Orleans in his seminal realist account of the war, Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. His novel featured New Orleans prominently — but not flatteringly. Within the novel, New Orleans is the home of the Confederate heroine Lillie Ravenel and her Unionist father, both now in exile in the North. Echoing decades of Northern disapproval of the city, Dr. Ravenel firmly declares that New Orleans “is a Sodom. I consider it a proof of depravity in any one to want to go

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there”; De Forest bears out his judgment throughout the text, making the occupied city the scene of various corruptions both financial and personal.123 And yet, De Forest’s use of New Orleans as a potent symbol of Southern corruption was largely out of step with the wider literary use of the city in this turbulent period. As a variety of texts attested, New Orleans’ antebellum glamour survived the Civil War relatively unscathed. The carnival mask did its work well. In many ways, this was remarkable. Conditions in the city in the late 1860s and early 1870s would not have apparently led themselves to the kind of reveries that the city so often inspired in commentators. In his autobiography, carpetbag governor Henry Clay Warmoth presented a vivid picture of the grim realities of city life in 1868: New Orleans was a dirty, impoverished, and hopeless city, with a mixed, ignorant, corrupt, and bloodthirsty gang in control. It was flooded with lotteries, gambling dens, and licensed brothels. Many of the city officials, as well as the police force, were thugs and murderers. Violence was rampant, and hardly a day passed that some one was not shot [. . .] There was no money in either treasury. The people drank either water caught in cisterns from the dirty roofs of their houses or the dirty unfiltered water of the Mississippi River. Epidemics of yellow and malarial fevers prevailed nearly every year. Houses were unscreened and mosquitoes were as common as the flies that filled the air. The slaughter-houses were so located that all of their offal and filth were poured into the Mississippi River.124

Somehow, the magic of New Orleans turned such dross to gold. In stark contrast to the city’s wider fortunes, its popular reputation was soon in rude health again, replenished by a new prominence in national literature and reinvigorated with a fresh appeal for its many visitors. Rather than De Forest’s Sodom, New Orleans — like much of the post-war South — became increasingly characterized by a romantic nostalgia for times past.

“THIS IS SOME TOWN, CERTAIN” It was not long, therefore, before a new generation of tourists started to arrive in New Orleans. An immediate contrast to De Forest’s vision of the city could be found in one of the more idiosyncratic accounts of New Orleans to emerge in this period — George T. Wilburn’s comic Sam Simple’s First Trip to New Orleans, published, tellingly, in 1870. Sam, a visitor from the mountains of North Alabama, finds the urban environment a little daunting: “I wanted to look about some, but I was fraid those Omnibusses would run over me.” Braving it, he is impressed with what he finds: This is some town, certain, and the tallest houses — git out. I saw so many pretty things, I just wished I had a million, so I could buy them all; but my little hundred dollars aint no where for buying fine things.” But it turns out that “Omnibusses” are not the only potential worry: “I asked a man standin in a store door, which way the St. Charles was. Creation and Blunderbusses! he talked Dutch, Indian, Hebrew and somethin else. Wild bears and

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wolfe’s den! I’ve got down among the foreigners and I’ll never understand a word they say [. . .] they eat rat pies and bull frogs.125

Though played for laughs, Sam’s experiences of New Orleans — its combination of urbanity, opulence, and exoticism — were not too far removed from his fellow Gilded Age visitors. Even Whitelaw Reid felt obliged to declare, “it is at once the most luxurious, the most unprincipled, the most extravagant, and, to many, the most fascinating city in the Union.”126 New Orleans, therefore, soon found itself playing a significant role in both the burgeoning post-war project of symbolically reuniting the nation, and the newfound national passion for travel. As Gilded Age America began to pay attention to its geographical diversity and privilege local color in its popular culture, New Orleans was well placed to capture the public imagination. Almost in a rush, glowing descriptions of the city could be found in a variety of popular periodicals — particularly, in travel reports and other accounts of the South undertaken by correspondents for illustrated journals. As Sue Rainey has noted, “[i]n this period of peace and renewed optimism following the wrenching turmoil of the Civil War,” Americans “anticipated the return of a recovering South to national life. Thus they wanted information about a region that had been largely off limits for more than a decade, but which held special attractions.”127 Jennifer Rae Greeson, on the other hand, has suggested that the proliferation of Northern accounts of the South in the early 1870s might be more profitably linked, in ideological terms, to “British imperial writing about Africa [. . .] positing discovery as the necessary predecessor to development.”128 Either way, New Orleans was a highly profitable location for commentators and tourists alike. It is certainly telling that a new guidebook to New Orleans, Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated, was released in 1873. Equally pertinent was its opening claim: “No city in the United States, of equal population, commercial importance and material wealth, is so little known by the outside world as New Orleans. And yet its history, full of romantic incident and legendary lore, is in itself sufficient to fill a volume.”129 In William Cullen Bryant’s Picturesque America (1872), begun as an ongoing series in Appleton’s Journal in 1870, New Orleans was featured in a full-page steel engraving taken from a sketch by Alfred Waud. Thomas Bangs Thorpe’s essay on “The Lower Mississippi” provided an appropriate commentary, highlighting (not a little optimistically) both the city’s romance and its economic power: the levee, he asserted, “was crowded with the teeming productions of the counties and States which lie on the tributary streams of the great river. A Babel of tongues is heard among the human toilers, who with the keenest industry pursue their different avocations. You realise that you are in a great city.”130 George Ward Nichols, traveling “[d]own the Mississippi” for Harper’s, was more effusive in his praise: “The sun was going down behind us,” he described, as his steamboat approached New Orleans, “and its golden light illuminated each roof-top and wall and spire. So that all the length and breadth of this great city was bathed in splendid radiance. It was a noble presentation.”131 Ralph Keeler, also in the company of Alfred Waud, produced a long account of his time in the city during a trip along the river for Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s

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19. Alfred Waud, New Orleans, from William Cullen Bryant ed., Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, Vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1872).

Every Saturday in 1871. Though his trip was similarly motivated by a desire to paint a portrait of the newly reunited nation, in comparison with other post-war accounts of the city’s picturesque charms, Keeler proved to be a more nuanced commentator. Not that he ignored the picturesque. “The people of New Orleans go at life in what to the stranger may seem odd ways,” he noted, “but they manage to get a good deal of merriment out of it.” On Canal Street, Keeler announced, “the mixed blood of the polyglot city meets and promenades itself [. . .] Here, too, the pure blood of all the races comes together in separate streams, making a carnival out of business, and assuredly a business out of carnival.” As such, he was happy to declare New Orleans to be “probably the most picturesque city in the Union.” To the frequent accusations of sinfulness, Keeler admitted that “in New Orleans immorality does not wear [. . .] the hypocritical fig-leaf,” but also confessed, “one meets hundreds of lovely faces, the innocence and purity of whose owners need no champion.” And he was quick to highlight the appeal of local customs, paying attention to the newly prominent carnival: “There is never a Sunday and scarcely a week-day in New Orleans, without a procession of some kind. On great occasions, like the time-honored one of Mardi Gras, the whole body and soul of the city is given up to this sort of display.”132 But at the same time, Keeler was not, like most of his contemporaries, blinded by the carnival mask. While New Orleans “on the surface has the appearance of being very gay [. . .] this surface gayety is about the only real voluntary compromise among the clashing races and creeds of a city which, in spite of itself, is one great architectural and social compromise with races, creeds and climates.”133 Rather than the melting pot described by others, Keeler realized that the city was a boiling cauldron of violent antagonisms. “Indeed,” he concluded, “beneath the oddity and picturesqueness and gayety of New Orleans there is more antagonism of races and nationalities and political creeds than can be found in any other large

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city in the Union.” And rather than the lazy, easy city of pleasure described by some, Keeler found a location marked by a litany of repeated hardships of which the war and Reconstruction were but recent additions: “The people have suffered so much from the war, their epidemics and floods and a hundred other causes, that complaint is chronic with them. They have got used to it, and so has the faraway North to the sound of it.” As for the notorious corruption of New Orleans politics and the parlous state of its economy, Keeler was obdurate that “nothing but thorough reform can prevent the hopeless bankruptcy of the State. There is no use of trying to disguise the fact that Louisiana to-day presents Americanism at its very worst.”134 Undoubtedly the most influential post-war account of the city could be found in the pages of Scribner’s Monthly. In the words of Robert Downs, Edward King’s “Great South” series, illustrated by J. Wells Champney and collected as a single volume in 1875, was “by far the most comprehensive and detailed” account of the South to emerge in the Reconstruction era.135 New Orleans writer Grace King attested to the fact that “[h]is name will never be forgotten in New Orleans.”136 Certainly, King’s account of the city contained very little to offend its inhabitants, and much to appeal to Northern readers. His account of New Orleans was remarkable for the degree to which he embraced the city and its peculiar brand of Southern romanticism. Resurrecting a number of well-established antebellum clichés about New Orleans, King reframed the city for the post-war moment. Indeed, his experiences might have served as a template — if not an advertisement — for the city’s nascent tourist industry. “Louisiana,” he began portentously, “is Paradise Lost. In twenty years it may be Paradise Regained. It has unlimited, magnificent possibilities.” His vision of New Orleans was driven by a powerful sense of the city’s history: “You must know much of the past of New Orleans and Louisiana,” he asserted, “to thoroughly understand their present.” In this regard, the influence of his conversations with Creole historian Charles Gayarré is evident. In turn, a charming patina colored everything that he encountered. The “solemn music from the cathedral belfry,” for example, seemed to call up “visions of the quaint past.” New Orleans, as he saw it, was “so richly varied, so charming, so unique [. . .] Every street in the old city has its legend, either humorous or tragical.”137 King was also at pains to amplify the city’s exotic otherness. Here, indeed, was a location characterized by a distinctive, picturesque local culture. “This is not an American scene,” King noted of the French Quarter, “and one almost persuades himself that he is in Europe, although ten minutes of rapid walking will bring him to streets and squares as generically American as any in Boston, Chicago, or St. Louis.” At the French Market, too, “one can readily imagine himself in some city beyond the seas.” If New Orleans was “fruitful in surprises,” few were more pleasant than the glimpses of Creole life that tantalized the viewer with a sense of a secret, closed world. Such visions brought King to raptures: Sometimes, through a portal opened by a slender, dark-haired, bright-eyed Creole girl in black, you catch a glimpse of a garden, delicious with daintiest blossoms, purple and red and white gleaming from vines clambering along a gray wall; rose-bushes, with the grass about them strewn with petals; bosquets, green and symmetrical; luxuriant hedges,

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arbors, and refuges, trimmed by skillful hands; banks of verbenas; bewitching profusion of peach and apple blossoms; the dark green of the magnolia; in a quiet corner, the rich glow of the orange in its nest among the thick leaves of its parent tree; the palmetto, the catalpa;–a mass of bloom which laps the senses in slumbrous delight. Suddenly the door closes, and your paradise is lost, while Eve remains inside the gate!

20. J. Wells Champney, “When Rex and his train enter the queer old streets, the balconies are crowded with spectators,” from Edward King, The Great South (Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1875).

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It was little wonder, King concluded, if the “majority of the people in the whole quarter seem to have a total disregard of the outside world.” Unsurprisingly, he was also entranced by the specter of Mardi Gras — especially since he was on hand to witness the legendary 1873 carnival season (though he apparently found no political import in the “waggeries and surprises” that he witnessed). As well as providing his readers with a potted history of carnival, he also gave a detailed firsthand account of its charms: “Thousands of people assemble in dense lines along the streets included in the published route of march; Canal Street is brilliant with illumination, and swarms of persons occupy every porch, balcony, house-top, pedestal, carriage and mule-car. Then comes the train of Comus, and torch-bearers, disguised in outré masks, light up the way.” The masked balls, and the theater surrounding them, offered “one of the loveliest sights in Christendom.”138 Thus captivated by the distinctive nature of the local culture, King could not hide his sympathy for the fate of the city’s “ancien régime” and its experiences of Reconstruction: “Ah! these faces, these faces,” King lamented, “expressing deeper pain, profounder discontent than were caused by the iron fate of the few years of the war! One sees them everywhere; on the street, at the theatre, in the salon, in the cars; and pauses for a moment, struck with the expression of entire despair — of complete helplessness, which has possessed their features.” Nor could he hide his prejudices when discussing the city’s African-American inhabitants: “But the negroes,” King judged, taken as a whole, seem somewhat shuffling and disorganized; and apart from the statuesque old house and body servants, who appear to have caught some dignity from their masters, they are by no means inviting. They gather in groups at the street corners just at nightfall, and while they chatter like monkeys, even about politics [. . .] The mass of the negroes are recklessly improvident, living, as in all cities, crowded together in ill-built and badly-ventilated cabins, the ready victims for almost any fell disease.

If, as King described, the future of New Orleans depended on “the battle of race with race, of the picturesque and unjust civilization of the past with the prosaic and leveling civilization of the present,” it was not exactly clear where his — and, increasingly, the nation’s — sympathies lay.139

“GENTILITY IN RAGS” As much as King’s account of New Orleans was clearly influential to Reconstruction readers — providing them with another vision of the city that contrasted sharply with its widespread reputation for political and racial violence — the true significance of his role in the story of the city’s post-war fortunes might be located outside his own work. In Arlin Turner’s judgment, The Great South “prepared readers and editors for use of Southern materials and thus opened the way for Southern writers.”140 And in particular, King helped to open doors for the most significant interpreter of nineteenth-century New Orleans. Appropriately, while attending Comus’s 1873 Mardi Gras parade, King made the acquaintance of a

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part-time reporter for the Picayune (and part-time cotton clerk) who had also been sent to cover the proceedings. George Washington Cable was a native New Orleanian who had fought for the Confederacy — but, of New England and Indiana parentage, he was also an outsider in a city that privileged insiders, and his political beliefs were increasingly out of step with the majority of white New Orleanians. After their meeting at the parade, Cable acted as a tour guide for King and his illustrator, ushering them around New Orleans while narrating his own version of the city’s history. As Christopher Benfey has asserted, “[i]n their friendship — it is not too much to say — lie the seeds of modern Southern literature.”141 For just as King and Champney were about to leave New Orleans to continue their journey through the South, Cable invited the pair to his cottage in the Garden District and “read them the stories he had been writing and laying away, known only within his family.”142 King was so taken with Cable’s writings that he worked tirelessly to place them with Scribner’s Monthly. While the first — “Bibi,” which would later form a centerpiece of Cable’s novel, The Grandissimes (1880) — was rejected by editor Richard Gilder for being too distressing, another story, “Sieur George,” found favor, largely thanks to King’s lobbying. But what exactly Cable’s first publication signified is debatable. The associate editor of Scribner’s, Robert Underwood Johnson, likened the story to “a fresh and gentle southwest wind that blew into the office.”143 In turn, Louis D. Rubin has described Johnson’s assessment as “almost comically inappropriate.”144 Indeed, the tone of Cable’s story would appear to be anything but “fresh and gentle.” His opening description of the “large four-story brick building” standing in “the heart of New Orleans” that houses the action of the story might be taken as a synecdoche for the city itself: “With its gray stucco peeling off in broad patches, it has a solemn look of gentility in rags, and stands, or, as it were, hangs, about the corner of two ancient streets, like a faded fop who pretends to be looking for employment.” Cable’s New Orleans seems to exude decline, degeneration, dilapidation — to be haunted by its history and trapped in the poverty of its present. While there is a suggestion that “gentility and fashion” live elsewhere in the city, Cable’s literary debut gave little sense of it.145 And yet, as Benfey describes, “’Sieur George” introduced Gilded Age readers “to an entirely new landscape in American literature.”146 For a post-war audience, there was indeed something fresh in this decay. Perfectly timed to capitalize on the growing vogue for both the South and picturesque accounts of local cultures, foregrounded by the travel accounts of commentators like Keeler and King, informed by the political and social realities of life in post-war Louisiana, Cable’s vision of the city found an eager readership. As he had led Edward King through New Orleans, so Cable now became the nation’s favored guide to the city. As Arlin Turner exhorted, Cable took his readers along the banquettes of the French Quarter, under the balconies balustraded with intricate iron-work; they stopped to peer into the flowered courtyards or caught teasing glimpses through the sap-green shutters that might be cautiously ajar but never open wide [. . .] and heard from the author an enchanting tale of jadis, once upon a time, when the house and the street had known better days.147

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In one way at least, New Orleans stood poised on the verge of a renaissance. As unlikely as it may have seemed in 1873, Cable’s early literary successes with his tales from the city’s past pointed towards the future of New Orleans as surely as the other signal events of war and Reconstruction. As Grace King admitted, late in life, “With him Louisiana stepped [. . .] into fictional fame”; but, as she also noted, it did not step “into good fortune.”148 In the decades to come, strenuous efforts would be made to bring prosperity back to the city; numerous projects would be launched to raise the Southern Queen out of the economic hardships of war and Reconstruction — to project an image of the city that was characterized by modernity and industry. And yet, it would be surprising how persistent — and how necessary — the pull of the city’s past would prove to be.

5

“A colossal white elephant”: New Orleans, the New South, and the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition For a hundred years and more has New Orleans been drawing hither wandering souls from all the ends of the earth [. . .] All cities of the North, East, and West have yielded up some restless souls to the far-off Southern city, whose spell is so mystic, so sweet, so universal [. . .] And assuredly those who wander from her may never cease to behold her in their dreams — quaint, beautiful, and sunny as of old — and to feel at long intervals the return of the first charm — the first delicious fascination of the fairest city of the South. LAFCADIO HEARN 1

“La Exposicion” The banners! The bells! The red banners! The rainbow of banners! The chimes! The music of stars! The sweet manners Of peace in old pastoral times! The coming of nations! Kings bringing Rich gifts to Republics! The trees Of paradise, and birds singing By the bank of De Soto’s swift seas! JOAQUIN MILLER 2

The Anglo-Greek journalist Lafcadio Hearn steamed into New Orleans in 1877. He was swiftly enchanted by the place that would serve as his home for the next decade — an enchantment, in fact, whose spell had been cast at least partly by George Washington Cable. As Hearn later remembered, undoubtedly speaking for many, the timing of his arrival coincided roughly with the publication of Cable’s “strange little tale,” “Jean-ah Poquelin”: “[I]ts exotic picturesqueness had considerably influenced my anticipations of the Southern metropolis, and prepared me to idealize everything peculiar and semi-tropical that I might see.”3 But even then, and despite his many peregrinations, Hearn was still surprised by the city he discovered at the mouth of the Mississippi — or, more precisely, he was surprised by the unsettling combination of strangeness and familiarity that it exuded. “It is not an easy thing to describe one’s first impression of New Orleans,” Hearn finally attempted to explain to the readers of the Cincinnati Commercial, his previous home, in one of the hundreds of sketches of life in the city that he would produce in the coming years, “for while it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth, yet it recalls vague memories of a hundred cities” — though, tellingly, none of them were American. For an inveterate traveler like

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Hearn, constantly on the move since childhood, New Orleans evoked “suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, of cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean, and of seaports in the tropics.” Canal Street, Hearn felt, provided “recollections of London and Oxford Street and Regent Street.” Th e French Quarter hinted at “memories of Havre and Marseilles.” And Jackson Square contained buildings “which remind one of Spanish-American travel.” In Hearn’s judgment, then, “the power of fascination which New Orleans exercises upon foreigners is due no less to this particular characteristic than to the tropical beauty of the city itself.”4 Two years later the city welcomed another newcomer — one who would be no less influential in defining the city’s post-Reconstruction glamour (in all senses of the word). The journey taken by poet and novelist Mollie Moore Davis to New Orleans from her birth in Talladega, Alabama, and her childhood and youth in Texas was no less significant than Hearn’s international voyaging. When her husband, former Confederate officer Major Thomas Edwards Davis, accepted a position with the New Orleans Picayune in 1879, she, too, fell in love with the city in its most exotic forms. After consulting with George Washington Cable — whose Old Creole Days had just been released to significant acclaim — the Davises took a house in Royal Street, in a French Quarter that had seen better days. Davis set about furnishing it not just with material comforts but also with a heavy patina of romance. “‘Ah!,’ cried I at last,” Davis remembered in 1884, in a series of sketches for the Picayune about her early experiences of the city, “‘this is the house of one’s dreams! Why, almost anything might have happened here! Look into this cuddy-hole,’ I continued, peering into it. ‘What a cunning hiding place for Pauline in all her pretty disarray when Claude was unexpectedly ushered up the stairway some forenoon like this to lay his proposition — and his prospects — before lean, grizzled, courteous père and rotund, complaisant, mustachioed mère!’” More exotically, the courtyard was home to “an enormous high-shouldered, mildewed earthern jar, like those wherein the Forty Thieves did hide themselves.” Nor was Davis obliged to people her surroundings with solely imaginary figures: “I am told by the garrulous old Creole who is mending the locks that in this ancient house Gen. Jackson once made his headquarters, and surely sometimes his mighty shade must come back.” And even closer to hand, her neighbors provided some unexpected distractions. Noticing that an old shoemaker had left his shirt hanging from his windowsill, Davis “laughed outright, my inmost senses tickled by a vision of Mrs. Heightee in all the pomp of her velvet and feathers, descending my stairway and suddenly transfixed with horror as her eyes light upon this picturesque addition to the local colour of my surroundings.” Astonished even by her own reaction to the strange setting in which she found herself, she exclaimed unrepentantly, “Ah, vagabond that I am, how I enjoy it all!”5 The experiences of Hearn and Davis serve as models for the countless visitors who arrived in New Orleans in the post-Reconstruction era. Both provide eloquent testimonies to the growing, almost unavoidable, influence of George Washington Cable and the equally inescapable appeal of the city’s romantic past and picturesque present for outsiders. As new arrivals in the city, Hearn and

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Davis were able to conjure the post-war poverty that they saw around them into compelling reveries of the exotic and the sentimental. They could, in Davis’s terms, enjoy toying with vagabondism in the enchanting ruins of the Creole past. Such flights of fancy were less available to those who had known the city in its antebellum prime. Though Reconstruction came to an official end in 1877 (Federal troops left the city on April 24, only one week short of the fifteenth anniversary of occupation), the ruinous economic and social effects of the Civil War and its aftermath were still felt profoundly. In search of a solution to the city’s manifold problems a new progressive spirit was soon discernible — progressive, at least, in economic and political, if not racial, terms. The specter of New South plenitude finally found its way to New Orleans, culminating in the glorious failure of an international fair, the New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, which opened in December 1884 and closed in bankruptcy less than a year later. While it lasted, however, it drew thousands of eager visitors to the city — visitors, like Hearn and Davis, who had been conditioned to view the city through the writings of George Washington Cable (and, in his wake, a host of other Louisiana writers). The transmutation of poverty, history, and literature into picturesque tourism might not have been the vision of the future that the city’s New South boosters were pedaling in the post-Reconstruction years, but it would ultimately prove more reliable than any number of competing hopes for industrial wealth.

“THE INHABITANTS OF NEW ORLEANS LIVE UPON A DUNG- HEAP” The problems that had affected New Orleans throughout Reconstruction had been no secret: Harper’s Weekly lamented to its readers in 1875, “Since 1868 the fear of its dangerous class and the constant insecurity of life and property have made New Orleans no attractive place for merchants and mechanics. Its shops and houses are untenanted, or let only for a meagre return; its streets have been the scene of frequent conflicts.”6 Lyle Saxon put the matter succinctly: “New Orleans had been one of the richest — if not the richest — city in the country. It became one of the poorest.”7 In 1866, Mayor Hugh Kennedy had assured John Trowbridge that the city was still destined for “future greatness”: “Men who formerly lived upon the proceeds of slave-labor are now stimulated to enterprise. A dozen industrial occupations will spring up where there was one before. Manufactures are already taking a start.”8 But such hopes had gone unrealized. While other Southern cities — Atlanta, most notably — engaged in a process of post-war industrialization fired by Northern investment, New Orleans attempted to struggle on in glorious isolation, antagonistic to Yankee influence and the New South developments that were thriving elsewhere. The war had only exacerbated the commercial problems that had started to affect the city before the conflict; the economic downturn of the 1870s made them ever worse. As Michael Ross described, “The Mississippi steamboat trade, the Crescent City’s economic lifeblood, had decreased to a fraction of prewar levels,

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and whole sectors of that commerce had entirely disappeared.”9 While the levee could still present the illusion of prosperity to visitors, as Eric Arnesen outlines, profound problems were lurking: “[T]he deterioration of the levees during the war, the collapse of much of the state’s sugar production, and a series of floods and epidemics significantly hindered expansion.”10 Cotton remained the city’s most valuable export. As Arnesen hints, the city’s post-Reconstruction problems were only exacerbated by the virulent return of disease to the city. In 1878, New Orleans was caught at the heart of what John Ellis has described as “one of the great medical disasters in American history.”11 Having largely been in abatement since the horrors of the 1850s, yellow fever struck the city anew, and with devastating consequences. At the height of the epidemic, thousands fled the city in panic. When it was over, in Khaled Bloom’s description, “more than four thousand lives were swept away.”12 The Board of Health estimated the economic cost at 12 million dollars. George Washington Cable’s son (also named George) was one of the victims; Lafcadio Hearn escaped with a case of dengue fever and a spell in a charity hospital. In the aftermath of the epidemic, commentators were quick to blame the city’s poor sanitation. John Keating concluded in 1879, with no little disgust (and in stark contrast to the city’s romantic veneer), “it may be properly stated that the people have a huge privy in common, and that the inhabitants of New Orleans live upon a dung-heap. Is it possible to imagine a sanitary condition more deplorably bad? That epidemic disease should sweep at times as a fire is no marvel.”13 The political situation was little better. Throughout the latter part of the century graft was rife. In Leonard Huber’s words, “wholesale corruption was rampant, and reform administrations almost periodically came to power when conditions became intolerable, only to fade.”14 In the late 1870s, therefore, New Orleans was at a low ebb. But it was not long before attempts were made to rectify the situation and improve the city’s fortunes. As John Kendall described in 1922, “New Orleans, sorely stricken by all that had befallen her in the previous twenty years, faced towards the future [. . .] the community took stock of itself, preliminary to setting about the great task of recovering its long lost prosperity.”15 New Orleans, then, belatedly attempted to mount the New South bandwagon, and shake off its reputation for poverty, disease, and dirt. At first, improvements seemed to come swiftly. Propitiously, 1879 saw the completion of a new system of jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi, begun in 1874 by James B. Eads, which deepened the channel to allow ocean-going vessels to pass up the river to the city. The project was hailed, in Florence Dorsey’s words, “as one of the most courageous engineering exploits ever attempted” and its good effects seemed to be immediate: in the year of the project’s completion, “twenty-six times as much export went out through the Mississippi mouth as did in the year that the work was begun [. . .] the shipping of valley grain through New Orleans was trebling.”16 Other developments followed: in the same year, a group of businessmen founded the Auxiliary Sanitation Association of New Orleans which attempted to improve the city’s public health — indeed, it took as its motto, “Public Health

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is Public Wealth.” Its members’ subscriptions, as Margaret Humphreys explains, “paid the wages for ten new board of health sanitary inspectors, bought garbage scows and carts for the city, had malodorous cemeteries covered over with fresh dirt, provided free disinfectant to the poor for use in privies, and established a flushing system to clean the streets.”17 The introduction of a new quarantine system in the 1880s helped to work against fresh outbreaks of disease — yellow fever stayed away from the city until 1897. Attempts were also made to improve the city’s rail connections — neglected until the late 1870s because of a lack of investment and a former reliance on the river and port, and now spurred on by the success of Eads’s jetties (not to mention the help of Jay Gould). Kevin Fox Gotham summarizes the progress: “[B]y 1880, five major railroads traveled through New Orleans. In 1883, the Southern Pacific established rail connections from California and New Orleans, heralding the beginning of long range transport and trade between the Crescent City and other regions.”18 The newfound passion for progress also extended to the social sphere: the reform-minded administration of Mayor Joseph Shakespeare attempted to control the city’s passion for gambling. In 1881, after it became common knowledge that “a young French nobleman [. . .] while visiting the city, was lured into a disreputable resort and fleeced outrageously in a poker game,” the mayor “immediately ordered closed all gambling houses except within an area bounded by Camp, Chartres, St. Louis, Bourbon, Carondelet, and Gravier streets.”19 Those that remained were kept under close supervision and were required to make monthly donations to the city — money that was used to fund the building of an almshouse. Canal Street was bathed in electric light by 1882. As Patricia Brady has noted, such developments “were positive symbols of the city’s viability.”20 And yet, for all the good intentions and apparent steps forward, there was also an abiding sense that some of these efforts had come too late. For example, as Michael Ross highlights, by the time that New Orleans completed its rail connection to Texas in 1881 “city leaders found that this vital link had arrived ten years too late. The lines established a decade earlier that ran to St. Louis and Memphis proved to be difficult foes [. . .] the city failed to regain that trade it had lost.”21 Worse, the improvements to the city’s river access and port facilities did not seem to have their intended effect. The Times-Democrat laid the situation bare in 1883, lamenting, “While the cotton crop of the United States was in 1860, 3,200,000 bales, New Orleans received 2,200,000 bales. Now when the crop is 6,000,000 bales, New Orleans handles only 1,400,000. In 1860, New Orleans received 78,000 hogshead of tobacco, now N.O. does not sell or export 10,000 hogsheads. In 1860, New Orleans received 22 percent of the imports of the United States; now less than 2% of the whole.”22 If economic progress was hard to come by, social developments were equally hard fought. As Humphreys notes of the Auxiliary Sanitation Association’s efforts, “they could do little to remedy the fundamental sanitary problems of the city — the inadequacy of its water, sewage and drainage systems.”23 The city’s black population had even less to be optimistic about. The vehement reassertion of white supremacy continued unabated, something that was most immediately noticeable in the resegregation of the school system. After 1877, in Roger Fischer’s words, black and white New

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Orleanians “again studied in separate schools, dined in separate restaurants, and imbibed in separate saloons.”24

“A GREAT EXPOSITION” It was as a potential solution to at least some of the city’s ongoing problems that the grandly titled World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition was brought into being in 1884. At its inception, the New Orleans exposition was close kin to the other American world’s fairs that took place throughout the late nineteenth century. Such occasions played a vital role in America’s conception of itself as it moved into the twentieth century. As President William McKinley outlined, the day before his assassination at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901: “Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people, and quicken human genius [. . .] Every exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step.”25 In the South, the definitive themes of industry, commerce, and progress common to all American expositions were given a particular regional slant. As C. Vann Woodward has described, Southern exhibitions of this period also served as important “rituals of ‘reconciliation’ and nationalism [. . .] The huge exposition structures of plaster and iron were temples erected to the alien gods of Mass and Speed.”26 But the idea for the Cotton Centennial did not originate in New Orleans itself — or, indeed, in the South. It was, in fact, the brainchild of a Boston liberal: Edward Atkinson, successful entrepreneur, mill owner, one-time abolitionist, and soon-to-be anti-imperialist. As his biographer Harold Francis Williamson explains, Atkinson’s inspiration for the Cotton Centennial came from Northern mill owners’ desire for superior cotton: In a letter to the New York Herald [in 1880] [. . .] he outlined the complaints of the cotton manufacturers, and in addition expressed the opinion that the South was not aware of the opportunities which were available to improve the quality of the cotton both in its culture and its preparation for the manufacturers. To overcome this situation, he proposed ‘a great exposition exclusively devoted to cotton,’ which should be held at some point convenient to planters and manufacturers alike.27

The year 1884 — the hundredth anniversary of the first shipment of cotton to leave the United States — was also suggested as a possible date (inspired, no doubt, by the new fashion for centennials following the exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876). However, the first fruits of Atkinson’s idea came much earlier than that, at the highly successful International Cotton Exposition held in Atlanta in 1881. As Don Doyle relates, “[m]ore than any other event, the exposition launched the New South movement, both as a publicity crusade and as a campaign for economic development, and it placed Atlanta at the vanguard of that movement.”28 But Atkinson’s ideas had also reached the ears of Franklin C. Morehead. Based in Vicksburg, Morehead was the president of the National Cotton Planters

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Association and the editor of the Planters Journal. He felt that New Orleans could provide the perfect location for a centennial cotton exposition. At first, despite the extraordinary success of Atlanta’s recent fair, there was little enthusiasm in the city for such an undertaking. As Thomas Watson notes, “many [. . .] within the ranks of the Crescent City’s elite displayed considerably more skepticism than enthusiasm when first presented with the suggestion of hosting the cotton centennial exposition.”29 Even without the city’s commitment to the exposition, plans for a cotton centennial gained momentum. In November 1882, the New York Times announced that “[f]ormal invitations were forwarded to-day by the National Cotton Planters’ Association of America to the cities of New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, Augusta, Montgomery, Nashville, Memphis, Louisville, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Baltimore to compete for the location of the World’s Cotton Centennial Exposition to be held under the auspices of the above association in 1884.”30 In January 1883, at the same time that Senator Augustus Hill Garland of Arkansas was attempting to push a bill through Congress to support the exposition, the New Orleans Times-Democrat asked engineer James Buchanan Eads what he felt about the prospect of the city attempting such an undertaking. He was enthusiastic, suggesting that it was “a grand idea [. . .] It would be a shame for New Orleans to let it go elsewhere.”31 Slowly, the tide of opinion in the city shifted. By April 1883, the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat could announce that, despite other bids from Boston, New York, and Cincinnati, “it was resolved that the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition be held at the city of New Orleans because New Orleans is the commercial center of the cotton States.” The National Cotton Planters’ Association was also at pains to highlight the scope of this undertaking, and made it clear to potential visitors that “the cotton feature of the Exposition, notwithstanding its great importance, is in no sense intended to be other than simply the center of a system of sister features, a system of exhibits which shall be so co-ordinated as to embrace every art and industry.”32 In an open letter to the Century, Richard Nixon also highlighted the Exposition’s potential importance “for the vast commerce that must at some time spring up between the United States and the Central and South American countries.”33 The Exposition was set to open in December 1884; New Orleans primed itself for a new place on the national stage. John R. G. Pitkin optimistically proclaimed in 1884, “This Exposition will show that a people who have been over borne by war and wreck, can still accomplish a great work, and it will prove that they are invincible in the face of any fortune.”34 To oversee this extraordinary endeavor an extraordinary man was appointed as director general of the exposition. Major Edward A. Burke was a vital figure in New Orleans throughout the 1880s. Despite some youthful misfortunes (including bankruptcy and other financial scandals in Galveston), Burke managed to achieve a position of influence in New Orleans life that was almost unrivaled. He was one of the leaders of the “ring” that controlled New Orleans politics, and it was widely rumored that he had played a significant role in the machinations behind the Battle of Liberty Place. He was also a newspaper magnate: by 1881, he had gained control of both the New Orleans Times and the New Orleans Democrat, bringing both papers together to form

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the Times-Democrat which, in Thomas Watson’s words, acted as “an oracle of the doctrines of economic development commonly associated with the mystique of the New South” while also “serving the political interests of its publisher.”35 And Burke would later become state treasurer. Placing the Cotton Exposition in the hands of a mercurial, scheming figure like Burke was perhaps the first sign that its organization might not run as smoothly as, say, the execution of Atlanta’s national showcase. In truth, financial instability and bureaucratic obfuscation would characterize the New Orleans Cotton Centennial Exposition long before its eventual bankruptcy in 1885. But at the same time, for all of its troubles, it would be wrong to characterize the entire affair as a complete failure. While it might have been unsuccessful in its ostensible intention to place New Orleans on a new economic and industrial footing, it would succeed in repositioning the city in the national (and international) imagination in ways that would be vital for its future. While it might have reinforced some of the unfavorable stereotypes that dogged New Orleans, the Exposition also helped to spread awareness of the city’s concomitant charms. The international interest generated in the city (and even the new attention afforded to writers like Cable) would help in the process, already begun in the 1870s, of reshaping the city for future generations of travelers.

“PICTURESQUE TOWN” The national press carefully followed preparations for the Exposition in the runup to its grand opening. In June 1884, the Boston Daily Advertiser unabashedly proclaimed, “The great exhibition which is to be opened at New Orleans [. . .] is unquestionably of national importance.”36 In May 1884, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper was equally optimistic about the Exposition’s prospects: “All the indications favor the belief that the Cotton Centennial Exposition will be a great success, exceeding in the number and extent of its exhibits the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876.” Alongside an illustration of the Exposition’s site, it marveled at the scope of the city’s plans: “The preparations are making on a royal scale, and with a prudence and sagacity which leave nothing to be desired. The main exposition building will be in some respects the most remarkable structure ever built in this country.”37 One week later, it had further cause for celebration: “Nothing affords stronger proof that race prejudices are disappearing in the South than the fact that blacks are to be given an opportunity of displaying their progress in the arts, manufactures and industries generally at the New Orleans Exposition.”38 After another week had passed, it proclaimed (again, a little optimistically), As may be imagined, no event — the Mardi Gras sinks into insignificance — which has ever occurred in New Orleans has excited so much interest; all classes of citizens are heartily at work laboring to insure its success, even the laboring poor contributing from their wages to the Exposition stock [. . .] The grounds will be embellished with evergreens, gathered from all parts of the world; artificial lakes, fountains and ornamental gardens are being introduced.39

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There was even international interest — the London Times declared, expectantly, “The principal feature of interest in this vast exhibition will lie in the evidence which it will afford as to the recuperative energies of the Southern States.”40 In addition to the publicity generated by the ongoing preparations for the Exposition, further attention was brought to bear on New Orleans by its burgeoning literary reputation. With George Washington Cable now at their vanguard, the city’s writers both drove and exploited the growing national interest in New Orleans as the Cotton Centennial approached — even though their visions of the city often seemed antagonistic to the stated aims of the Exposition. By 1884, Cable himself was approaching the apotheosis of his fame. He had capitalized on the success of his early local-color stories by collecting them in Old Creole Days in 1879. The Grandissimes, his novel-length exploration of Creole society and its racial dynamics at the time of the Louisiana Purchase (and, by implication, the present day) followed in 1880. Continuing to publish throughout the early 1880s, Cable also embellished his literary career with stints on the lecture platform and a persistent — and growing — interest in ameliorating the social ills that he saw around him in New Orleans (particularly the issue of prison reform). By 1884, Cable was an established figure in the literary landscape of America. A poll taken by the New York literary magazine the Critic in an effort to find “Forty Immortals” who might form the basis of an American Academy ranked Cable twelfth, immediately above both Henry James and Mark Twain.41 A glowing profile of Cable in the Century proclaimed, “he is unquestionably a genius [. . .] if it were ever safe to predict permanent favor for a writer, we should claim it for the author who has so allied himself to all the varied humanity that he has depicted that his name must live as long as interest in the picturesque and plaintive creole survives.”42 In the year of the Exposition itself, Cable published Dr. Sevier, a novel set in the antebellum period but which addressed, as Arlin Turner summarizes, “the social problems Cable saw in the New Orleans of his day [. . .] corruption in public institutions, sanitation and disease, poverty and charity, the relations of officialdom, the churches and individuals to all these problems.”43 Though apparently in keeping with the progressive spirit of the Exposition, the novel marked another fracture in a clear and growing division between Cable and the city of his birth. Most troubling, for New Orleans, was Cable’s declaration in Dr. Sevier, “soldiers of the Union [. . .] your cause is just. Lo, now, since nigh twenty-five years have passed, we of the South can say it!”44 Indeed, Cable’s reputation in New Orleans was proving to be inversely proportional to the weight of laurels heaped upon him in the North. Where Northern readers loved Cable for the picturesqueness and apparent exoticism of his scenes, the South, and New Orleans in particular, was more sensitive to his politics (most significantly, his relatively liberal racial politics). Where the North reveled in the apparent romance of his stories, the Crescent City began to bristle at the strong vein of reality that was always close to the surface of his writing. Numerous voices, among which the Creole historian Charles Gayarré loomed large, murmured in protest against Cable’s apparently traitorous representations of the city and its inhabitants. As a visiting contemporary had noted as early as 1881, “Cable [. . .]

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is the most cordially hated little man in New Orleans.”45 In November 1884, just as the Exposition was receiving its final frantic preparations, Cable left the city to embark on the “Twins of Genius” tour with Mark Twain at the high-water mark of his fame, regaling audiences around the nation with his visions of New Orleans. He never really came home to the city again, permanently moving to the North in 1885 — a willing exile. But Cable was not the only New Orleans literary voice emerging at this time. After his arrival in the city in 1877, Lafcadio Hearn published widely on New Orleans, working for both the City Item and Burke’s Times-Democrat. Fiercely prolific, Hearn poured out, in Frederick Starr’s description, a “vast corpus of descriptive essays, impressionistic writings, whimsical pieces, portraits, poems in prose, historical sketches, and occasional pieces describing the variegated life of New Orleans.”46 In the run-up to the Exposition, Hearn’s vision of the city gained a national audience. In February 1883, he produced a study of “New Orleans in Carnival Garb” for Harper’s Weekly.47 In November 1883, he acted as a guide to “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances” for readers of the Century — the same article in which he described the influence that Cable’s stories of the city had had on his own perception of New Orleans. Then, in December 1884, just before the opening of the Exposition, Hearn described “Quaint New Orleans and its Habitants” for the readers of Harper’s Weekly. Clearly intended to be of use to those interested in or visiting the Cotton Centennial, the article did not shy away from the dilapidation of parts of the city: “Within the Carré,” Hearn explained, “the streets are serried, solid, and picturesque. Memories of aristocratic wealth still endure in certain vast mansions, broad-balconied and deep-courted, now mostly converted into hotels or lodging-houses, half the year void of guests.” And here, Hearn spoke to the manifold ironies surrounding the Cotton Centennial. On the one hand, such picturesque decay was a significant part of the appeal of New Orleans for Gilded Age visitors — it was what drew people, in increasing numbers, to the city. On the other hand, progressive events like the Exposition clearly sought to ameliorate such growing decrepitude. And for Hearn, that was cause for lament, not celebration. “The somnolent quiet of the old streets is being already broken by the energetic bustle of American commerce,” Hearn lamented, like a Creole at the time of the Louisiana Purchase; “[T]he Northern Thor is already threatening the picturesque town with iconoclastic hammer. Colossal capital advances menacingly from the southern side, showing the sheet-lightning of its gold.”48 Though less prolific than Hearn, Mollie Moore Davis’s writings on the city were no less suggestive of these ironies. As Joy Jackson made clear, her sketches of life in the city also “attracted the interest of national magazines looking for local color similar to Cable’s stories.”49 Like Hearn, Davis led her readers through the more picturesque locations in the French Quarter. In her work, the transmutation of a leaden present into a golden past was never far away. In Jackson Square, for example, “a vision grew upon me. Roses and orange trees, and prim flower-beds, and statue — all had disappeared. The dim square became again the dusty Place [. . .] peopled with phantoms.” Even a trip to the meat stalls of the French Market could evoke unexpected associations:

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A smell of garlic was on the air, and the fat, round-faced Gascon butchers, with twinkling black eyes, were talking and gesticulating among themselves [. . .] One only, with bristling mustache curled upward and disdainful air, was cutting off steaks in silence: and when I saw him, I declare I thought of D’Artagnan, laying about him in those famous melees in which his soul delighted!50

The publicity that accrued to the city from its growing literary reputation was further embellished by a new influx of notable visitors in the early 1880s. German traveler Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg lamented, “Despite everything in her favour, New Orleans has not lived up to potential” and spent some time outlining the city’s post-war problems. But he also marveled that New Orleans was a “city of surprises,” declared that Canal Street was “the most beautiful here if not in all America,” and gave a detailed account of carnival.51 The British traveler George Augustus Sala found the city’s “confusion of tongues [. . .] simply delicious,” and was just as fascinated by Mardi Gras: “[I]n the New Orleans saturnalia there has been to me a thoroughly new, original, and weirdly picturesque element which I have never seen before, and which, in all human likelihood, I shall never see again.”52 But it was two figures in particular — both icons of their age — who drew international attention to the city as it prepared to host the Exposition. If they helped to overturn abiding images of yellow fever and economic stagnation, they also, in the end, subscribed to attitudes towards the city that seemed to be essentially antagonistic to the ideals of progress held up by the Exposition’s organizers. Oscar Wilde arrived in the city in June 1882. Though he only stayed for two days before heading to Texas (by the new rail connection), he was embraced by New Orleans society. None other than General Beauregard called on Wilde at his hotel and offered to take him for a drive around the city. In an interview for the Times-Picayune at the St. Charles Hotel, Wilde declared, in almost direct opposition to New South hopes for the city, “I have nothing to do with commerce and what is called progress. I am a student of art. I see that in the rush and crash of business the native and characteristic picturesqueness of people is being rapidly destroyed, and I desire to do what I can to rescue from oblivion the truly artistic peculiarities that still survive.”53 Given Wilde’s fondness for “picturesqueness,” it is unsurprising that he also expressed a taste for the work of George Washington Cable. The next morning, after Wilde’s performance at the Grand Opera House, Cable himself called on Wilde and spoke at length with him about the history of the city. The other visitor of note to take the city by storm in 1882 was none other than Mark Twain, revisiting the scenes of his youth as part of his preparations for Life on the Mississippi (1883), a personal account of the river in which New Orleans played a large part. Twain’s reaction to the city was one of the most prominent accounts of New Orleans to appear at this vital moment. And unlike many other commentators, Twain was just as interested in the signs of progress on display in the city as he was in its picturesque past. On first impression, New Orleans seemed little different than it had in the antebellum years — or rather, little improved: “The city itself had not changed,” Twain noted, “It had greatly increased in spread and population, but the look of the town was not altered.

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The dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets; the deep, trough-like gutters alongside the curb-stones were still half full of reposeful water with a dusty surface.” But Twain was quick to admit that these first impressions belied a sense of imminent change in the city. Noting that New Orleans was “well outfitted with progressive men,” Twain asserted, “there is a ‘boom’ in everything”: The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of the healthiest cities in the Union.

Twain was also quick to praise the introduction of electricity to the city (“[t]he New Orleans electric lights were more numerous than those of New York, and very much better”), the development of the popular press, the spread of the telephone, and the ready availability of ice. Such encomiums were precisely the kind of publicity for which the city had been striving.54 But even Twain’s interest in New Orleans was not limited to its recent attempts at progress. Though he was no longer inclined to admire the sort of picturesqueness that New Orleans was felt to offer — indeed, he used his description of what he now called “girly-girly” Mardi Gras to shape one of his most direct attacks on the South and its attachment to “the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead” — he was not immune to the city’s charms. “Many of the cemeteries are beautiful,” he noted, “and are kept in perfect order.” In “the American part of the town,” too, Twain liked what he found: “No houses could well be in better harmony with their surroundings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and comfortable-looking.” When he reached the French Quarter, he was quick to note that it bore “no resemblance to the American end of the city” — but was no less enthusiastic about its unique charms. Its “chief beauty,” he felt, was the “deep, warm, varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the plaster. It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as natural a look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds. This charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated; neither is it to be found elsewhere in America.”55 Of course, much of Twain’s particular appreciation of the French Quarter can be traced to the same source as Oscar Wilde’s fascination with the city: the figure of George Washington Cable. The two met soon after Twain’s arrival in the city. And as far as Twain was concerned, his association with Cable meant that he had “the South’s finest literary genius” as a personal tour guide. The two wandered around the French Quarter, taking in “the old St Louis Hotel” and the “venerable Cathedral” before driving out to “the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain.” But as appealing as these sites were, they did not stop Twain from making a profound judgment about the city. He felt that Cable’s work itself offered an experience of New Orleans that rivaled — perhaps outstripped — the real thing. In an assertion that both reflected and undoubtedly drove the experiences of other late nineteenth-century visitors to the city, Twain admitted,

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21. The Centennial Cotton Exposition Buildings at New Orleans, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 24, 1884), 221.

I find by experience that the untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it and learn of it and judge of it more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact with it. With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things — vivid, and yet fitful and darkling.56

While such evocative gloom had an undoubted appeal to late nineteenth-century readers, it was far removed from the cleansing light of progress promised by the Cotton Centennial.

“A DISAPPOINTMENT” Though scheduled to begin on December 1, 1884, numerous delays meant that the Exposition could not open its doors to visitors until December 16. The official opening ceremony was enlivened by the fact that President Arthur, though not present in person, started proceedings remotely, by telegraph. The speeches of the day emphasized, uniformly, the twin pillars of reconciliation and progress. The Reverend De Witt Talmage led the prayers: “May this day mark the beginning of a new dispensation of prosperity and brotherhood [. . .] We pray that the past feeling of sectional discord may vanish.”57 Immediately, the New York Times made it clear that not everything was running smoothly. “Whatever may have been sent out to the contrary,” their correspondent announced,

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it was a chaos without form if not altogether void. In the vast main building but a small fraction of the exhibits were in place, and during the ceremonies of the opening saws and hammers were busy in every direction preparing stands [. . .] on the electrical signal from Washington [. . .] The engines started, but no machinery was set at work.58

Others agreed. A correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin unhappily admitted that the Exposition was a disappointment for early visitors [. . .] The Exhibition grounds are in an unfinished state [. . .] The machinery department is still in a somewhat chaotic state. Two engines with their large fly-wheels are in motion, though but few of the small machinery exhibits are ready. In fact, beyond the cotton spool thread exhibit, no piece is in working order, not will much of this class of exhibits be in condition for examination before the 1st of February. This is the greatest disappointment early visitors have received.59

In short, though open to the public the Exposition remained unfinished. As Watson notes, “the cloak of secrecy Burke had wrapped around the exposition’s problems began to unravel.”60 In particular, its precarious finances looked to be on the verge of toppling. Watson elucidates: “When 1885 arrived, Director General Burke reluctantly admitted that the exposition had fallen $250,000 in arrears.”61 Its organizational problems were exacerbated by a wealth of other factors. The weather was bad: the Milwaukee Sentinel noted on December 18, “Following the heavy rains of yesterday, to-day was intensely cold, and the attendance at the World’s exposition was even less than during Wednesday’s deluge.”62 The streetcar drivers began a wildcat strike. The New York Times correspondent noted on December 28 that “the drivers did a great wrong, especially in leaving the crowd at the Exposition grounds last evening, instead of waiting until all were at home before they struck work [. . .] Several cases of violence were reported to-day, and intimidation was indulged in by the strikers at all points.”63 Violence was not limited to the strikers: early in December, the murder of a Captain A. H. Murphy (“a well known sport and politician”) by Thomas J. Ford (“serving his second term as police magistrate of that portion of the city lying below Canal-street”) made the national press.64 This was swiftly followed by news of another fatal “shooting affray” in the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper the Mascot.65 And death dogged the Exposition itself: on December 22, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported that “[t]hree hundred feet of iron framework of the large hotel erected west of the main Exposition building fell with a terrible crash to-day. Frank Green (colored), of Nashville, was instantly killed” — and many others were injured.66 Despite the terrible publicity generated by these events, not all accounts of the Exposition were negative. “In one way or another,” the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin generously asserted on January 14, “the Exposition at New Orleans will pull through” — adding, knowingly, “even if the financial exhibit is not altogether satisfactory.”67 The simultaneous presence in New Orleans of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show helped to promote a carnival atmosphere — though, as Michael P. Smith has noted, it catered more specifically to “average New Orleanians [. . .] minority, working-class people.”68 Undeterred by the bad press, many visitors did

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flock to New Orleans and the Exposition to examine the wealth of exhibits that were on display — even though their numbers were far below the initial hopes of the organizers. As Kevin Fox Gotham highlights, “[o]f the originally predicted 4 million visitors, only 1,158, 840 attended.”69 A flavor of the Exposition as it would have been experienced by ordinary tourists can be found in the writings of German geographer and world traveler Emil Deckert, who, accompanied by his family, joined the stream of visitors to the fairground. Deckert was not slow to admit that, in many ways, the Exposition seemed “a miserable failure.” He likened the site of the fair to “a giant swamp overgrown with marsh grass and rushes [. . .] None of the highly touted views of subtropical nature that the fair had promised us!” He lamented, “We found the fair still far from finished, three months after it opened. There were sawing, unpacking, and tidying up everywhere.” And Deckert also felt that there were other things missing from the Exposition — more telling, and perhaps more notable, because of their absence. There was no sign, for example, of the “poverty and barrenness in great stretches of the South [. . .] those defects that Fair covered with a thick veil.” Also missing was a good enough sense of the “[n]atural wealth and achievements of the North [. . .] about that region the Fair left much to be desired.” “Did this not show very well,” Deckert concluded, “how New Orleans, even on this exceptional occasion, was far from bringing together at its Fair all aspects of North American economic life, and how people in New York and Boston certainly had no great hopes for the city at the mouth of the Mississippi?”70 But, according to Deckert, these failings hardly stripped the Exposition of all pleasure: “[W]e can look back with nothing but gratitude at having seen it [. . .] It gave us an exceedingly grand and convenient view of the resources and wealth of the various states and several parts of the Union, as well as their present condition and prospects for development.” “At its best and brightest,” he felt, “the Fair displayed the developed and undeveloped resources of the South and West: boundless fertility of southern soil and southern sun, marvelous progress of the Negro race, limitless treasures of gold and silver in the mines of Colorado and Nevada, miraculous what production worked by irrigation in those states, and so forth.” Indeed, “despite all and each of its flaws, the Fair was a joyous event. In halls, in restaurants, and on covered walks of the so-called park, there was always much merrymaking. To it, uncommonly lively participation by colored people contributed very much, for the colored were on the whole far more enthusiastic than whites.” In short, the Exposition demonstrated “that the people of New Orleans are a joyous people.” “Of course,” Deckert cautioned, “we had to remember at every step that here in New Orleans we were still in the country in which advertising is nothing less than the most important thing in economic life. And of course we could never forget that many forces and calculations were behind the big ‘show’ spread out for us here.” “Behind it, above all,” Deckert noted sagely, “was the desire to attract immigrants and investors to the South, in order to remedy as much as possible the general bankruptcy that struck after the Civil War.”71 In time, lengthy accounts of the Exposition — mostly complimentary — began to be published in the most influential national journals. As Eugene Smalley declared enthusiastically, in a two-part account of his experiences in New Orleans

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for the Century, “this project has succeeded, and in a very notable way too.”72 But, here again, ironies were evident: those elements of New Orleans life which were most commonly singled out for particular comment by reporters and visitors alike were not always to be found at the Exposition. As Arlin Turner rightly noted, tourists arrived in New Orleans “with copies of Old Creole Days in their hands [. . .] and many visitors showed more interest in the scenes [Cable] had employed than in the displays at the exposition grounds.”73 More succinctly, visitors nominally came to the city because of the Exposition, but it was Cable’s pre-industrial New Orleans that they truly sought. This dichotomy was succinctly expressed in two cover illustrations for Harper’s Weekly, produced a month apart. To commemorate the opening of the Exposition, the journal featured a grandiose representation of “The Genius of the Industrial Arts Awakened in the South.” A month later, at a point when such visions of classical order might well have seemed less appropriate, the cover displayed a chaotic rendering of “Arrivals at the Levee,” rich with the picturesque potential of that famous location. Though steamboat chimneys might have given a faint echo of the transformative, Vulcan fire promised at the start of the Exposition, far more compelling was the local-color romance, the vibrant chaos, and the racial panorama of the stevedores and porters on the levee, long a favorite scene for the city’s visitors. The African-American presence in the second Harper’s Weekly cover chimed with the particular attention given to the so-called “Colored Department” at the Exposition itself. As Kevin Fox Gotham has judged, “The 1884 Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition was the first major exposition to use racial themes and images, including stereotypes of whiteness and blackness, to project an image of white supremacy while delegitimizing the cultural creations of blacks.” Though superficially progressive, the “Colored Department” was, in fact, wholly in keeping with the wider project of white supremacy that was still gaining pace in New Orleans. But as Gotham also notes, “black exhibitors rejoiced at the opportunity to participate in a world’s fair.”74 Indeed, for some contemporary commentators, the very presence of a Colored Department was a sign of significant progress and promise. The New York Freeman declared that its opening on February 24, 1885, marked by a Colored People’s Day, “was a brilliant success.”75 The correspondent for the American Missionary was even more ebullient, exclaiming, “Excellence in workmanship, fertility in invention, tastefulness in the fine arts, were all displayed to a remarkable degree in the large collection. Southerners and Northerners were alike astonished at what their eyes beheld.”76 Charles Dudley Warner, writing for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and one of the Exposition’s most notable visitors, was more cautiously optimistic: There was not much time — only two or three months — in which to prepare the exhibit, and it was hardly a fair showing of the capacity of the colored people. The work was mainly women’s work — embroidery, sewing, household stuffs, with a little of the handiwork of artisans, and an exhibit of the progress in education; but small as it was, it was wonderful as the result of only a few years of freedom.77

But such optimism, or even such faint praise, was not universal. A later report

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22. The New Orleans Exposition — The Genius of the Industrial Arts Awakened in the South, from Harper’s Weekly (December 20, 1884).

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23. The New Orleans Exposition — Arrivals at the Levee, from Harper’s Weekly (January 10, 1885).

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by the New York Freeman in May noted “of the $50,000 guaranteed the Colored Department by the management not quite $14,000 has been spent” — and also spent some time lamenting the “filthy condition of New Orleans.”78 Eugene Smalley was more disdainful — and, therefore, more in keeping with the true trajectory of the racial dynamic of the Crescent City. Proclaiming that it “would be more correct to call it the Somewhat Colored Department,” Smalley asserted in no uncertain terms, “As to the higher attainments of civilization, whatever they exhibit, except in rare and isolated cases, is plainly traceable to either contact with the white race or to the admixture of white blood.”79 Only one other department received as much attention in the press. Reactions to the Women’s Department, under the leadership of Julia Ward Howe, were as disparate as the commentaries on the Colored Department. In later life, Grace King would remember Howe’s time in the city in glowing terms (unsurprising, perhaps, since it was so intimately connected to her own emergence as a writer): “She gained the admiration and won the hearts of all New Orleans.” Of particular note was Howe’s ability to convince the great and good of the city to open their houses for an exhibition of “the miniatures, jewels, laces, documents, and pieces of old furniture shut up in houses of old Creole families who clung even in poverty to the vestiges of ancestral love of display and extravagance.” “The result,” King remembered, “was incredible, astounding” — and entirely in keeping with the fascination for Creole life in New Orleans engendered by Cable, Hearn, and Davis.80 George William Curtis, from the “Editor’s Easy Chair” of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, used the Women’s Department to defend a woman’s “right of earning her own living by her own industry and skill.”81 Recent analyses of the successes of the Women’s Department have been no less sanguine. Etta Reid Lyles has asserted that it “served as a forum from which Julia Ward Howe and other Northern social reformers launched a Southern woman’s rights movement and created an unprecedented alliance between women of the North and South.”82 But contemporary accounts could also be less effusive. Smalley, in the Century, felt that the exhibit did not go far enough: “The impression a critical observer takes away from the Woman’s Department, besides the pleasing one of its soft and pretty decorative effect, is that it is wholly and of necessity inadequate to present a view of the attainments of women in the industries and arts.”83 Less complimentary still was the correspondent for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, who reduced the department’s efforts to the level of tittle-tattle: “The women’s department of the World’s Exposition here,” they confided, “has from the beginning been the source of much heart-burning and bickering among the gentler sex, and in not a few cases they almost come to blows over their feuds.”84

“WHITE ELEPHANT” Privately, Lafcadio Hearn was happy to admit that as far as he was concerned the Exposition was little more than “a big fraud.”85 Publically, the New Orleans Mascot was equally happy to lambast the Exposition as “a colossal white elephant floundering in the mire of stupidity, mismanagement, and we dare say corruption.”86 At

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an interview given before the official closure of the Exposition on June 1, 1885, Director General Burke attempted to rescue its legacy, singling out for particular mention the two departments that had garnered the most attention. “He pointed with great pride to the distinctive display made by the colored people,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported, in which, he felt, could be found proof of “not only the betterment of the condition of the negro, but an harmonious adjustment of the race relations in the South.” He was hardly less sanguine about the achievements of the Women’s Department: “In its extent and comprehensiveness this display could hardly fail to give increased impetus to the movement that popularized self-supporting employment for women. In this direction that Director General felt that one of the grand aims of the undertaking had been attained.”87 Even after the fair’s closure, Burke was still proclaiming disingenuously, “Already the busy hum of new industries promoted by the Exposition can be heard throughout the South. Eager researches daily bring to light hidden resources which promise speedy prosperity to the people who have bravely battled with adversity.”88 There was even talk that a second exposition would be reopened on the same site — and it was, briefly, with no greater success than the first: crippled by debt, the buildings were finally auctioned for salvage in May, 1886. Despite Burke’s best attempts, his grandiose visions of progress were not to be the legacies of the Exposition. In Michael Ross’s assessment, for example, the Exposition represented not a new beginning but rather the final nail in New Orleans’ New South coffin. “Rather than changing the national perception of New Orleans,” he judged, “the Exposition reinforced many negative stereotypes. Thus, New Orleans’s belated and half-hearted attempt to join the New South movement backfired, and the city’s long economic decline continued.”89 Joy Jackson, on the other hand, argued that, “[a]lthough a financial failure, it still had a measure of success as a morale booster to a reawakening economy imbued with the philosophy of the New South.”90 But it seems that Grace King, witnessing the unfolding of the Exposition at first hand, best understood the singular importance of the Exposition to post-Reconstruction New Orleans: “[I]t was not that which was built by hands that gave this exposition its historical importance,” she argued. “It was not the exhibits. It was the people who came to it. It was the visitors from a distance, and foremost among them the newspaper correspondents sent out to report upon the land and its people.”91 Though hardly a success in economic or industrial terms, then, the Exposition’s ramifications were undoubtedly widespread and significant, dramatically affecting both the city’s future and the lives of some of its most influential citizens. Primarily, as Kevin Fox Gotham has rightly judged, the Exposition represented “a major turning point in the history of New Orleans as a tourist destination.”92 Most particularly, it enshrined particular ways of viewing the city: through the patina of romance, through the lens of the picturesque. Rather than overturning such reveries under the banners of progress and industrialization, the Exposition only intensified them. This was made clear in a guidebook created for the Exposition by William H. Coleman (with the significant involvement of Lafcadio Hearn), a work whose full title loudly proclaimed its intentions: Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans [. . .] Containing Exhaustive Accounts of the

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24. Madame Delphine’s, from William H. Coleman, ed., Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans (New York: Will H. Coleman, 1885).

Traditions, Historical Legends, and Remarkable Localities of the Creole City (1885). It included writings not only from the likes of Gayarré, Hearn, and Cable but also a laudatory foreword from Cable himself — in which he stiffly declared, “I take pleasure in recommending the following work.” Picturesque illustrations, which, Cable noted, were “from sketches made under my own supervision,” littered the

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text.93 As Kevin Fox Gotham has noted, the romantic focus of such apparently official books “not only selectively described the city but also gave the appearance of undeviating candor and reliability.”94 Even then, the effect of the Exposition on the image of New Orleans as a tourist destination might not have been quite so significant if it had come at a different time. The late 1880s and early 1890s were a transformative moment in the traveling habits of Americans. As Anthony Stanonis has explained, this was the moment that urban tourism started to grow exponentially: “Railroads lowered fares, and postcards emerged to spread images of cities nationwide. Urban environments opened to tourists as railroads, hotels and local business boosters tapped the market in travelers.”95 At exactly the same moment, the burgeoning culture of national reunion, nascent in the Northern travel accounts of the South in the early 1870s, was finally taking off in earnest. Old quarrels between North and South were being firmly set aside. Indeed, in October 1884, just as the Exposition was set to open its doors, and just after the publication of Cable’s Dr. Sevier, the Century magazine was beginning its pioneering, non-partisan series “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” a vivid symbol of the rapprochement between the regions. All of this meant that, in Nina Silber’s words, “the South became something other than a social problem; it became an accepted sojourn on the tourist’s itinerary.”96 New Orleans was poised at the apex of these two forces, bolstered by the publicity generated by the Exposition and the numerous popular literary accounts of the city. Though the city was still some way from fully committing itself to a reliance on tourism, its attempt to join the New South had failed. Increasingly, it was to the memory and evocation of the Old South that the city would look to for its future development. These trends were clearly elucidated in a number of fictional works that emerged directly from the Exposition. In 1886, Maud Howe, daughter of Julia Ward, used her experiences of the city when crafting her novel, Atalanta in the South. Playing out the ideal of reunion in the shape of a romance between a New England heroine and her New Orleanian beau, Howe featured the city in a glowing, welcoming light (sounding, at times, like a tourism booster): “It is a wonderfully hospitable place, New Orleans,” she declared, “and the stranger who after a three months’ residence there does not feel himself part and parcel of its society, linked to it by sympathy and good-will, must be a curmudgeon.” Carnival season was a particular highlight, and, for Howe, a sign of the city’s fortitude in the face of hardship: “New Orleans in her poverty, as once in the palmy days of prosperity, holds high revel at this season of pleasure, and hospitably opens her gates to friend and to stranger.” And, of course, the French Quarter came in for its share of rapture: “For quaint houses no city in the United States — nay, I had almost said in the world, — can rival New Orleans.”97 No less revealing was a short account of the city provided by Rebecca Harding Davis. As part of a fictional tour of the South written for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Davis set the New Orleans section of the imaginary journey at the time of the Cotton Centennial. In the course of the story, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Ely have different reactions to the city, both of which are telling. Mr. Ely is “bewildered and stunned” by the Exposition, and soon abandons it “to study

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historic New Orleans.” Mrs. Ely, on the other hand, is at first a diligent visitor to the Exposition; but, eventually, she too becomes disappointed by its preponderance of “cotton-gins and ploughs.” In search of “something ‘typically Southern’” she heads to the French Quarter with a “mob of tourists.” “She promenaded the Boulevard Esplanade,” Davis described, looking out for Mr. Cable’s Creoles, and regarding every old man with white hair and black eyes with awe as a possible Grandissime [. . .] She had heard all her life of the wickedness of New Orleans, and she took a fearful joy in venturing into quarters that were said to be its worst haunts; but they now turned gay, decent faces to the passing stranger.98

Equally, in Edward Everett Hale and Susan Hale’s A Family Flight through Mexico (1886), young travelers Tom and Bessie tell of a visit to New Orleans at the time of the Exposition. Tom declares that the Exposition was “very much finer than any Exposition that ever was before, — at least, so a man told me.” Sister Bessie, however, is a little less politic: “It may be that it was meant to be finer when it was done [. . .] but when we were there it wasn’t really done at all, — some of it was hardly half-done.” But regardless, Bessie was hardly disappointed in New Orleans: “Anyway, the French Quarter was finished when we got there and had been finished, I guess, for about a hundred years, — and never touched since, — it looks so queer [. . .] I never saw anything like it at home.” Evidently, the city had arrived as a tourist destination.99 The Exposition’s effect on New Orleans’ wider cultural landscape was also profound — and sometimes unexpected. Its influence on the music of the city in this crucible period before the development of jazz, for example, was likely to have been profound. As John Storm Roberts has asserted, it was the music of the Eighth Regiment of Mexican Cavalry, part of the Mexican government’s exhibition, which seems to have had the greatest effect: “That the ‘Mexican band,’ as it came to be called, was highly important to New Orleans music is beyond doubt. Within a year of its stay, local publishing houses had issued sheet music of its most popular numbers.”100 Tulane University, born out of the struggling University of Louisiana by a bequest from wealthy New Jersey businessman Paul Tulane, had itself opened in 1884. Here, too, the Exposition had an influence: when Newcomb College, a pioneering women’s educational establishment, was founded at Tulane in 1886, New England visitors to the Exposition William and Ellsworth Woodward stayed on as faculty members. The Exposition would also leave its mark on the city’s physical landscape. The fairground was soon redeveloped, most notably as Audubon Park — which, as Ari Kelman describes, was quite a contrast to the visions of industrialization promulgated by the Exposition: “Beneath canopies of massive oaks draped with Spanish moss, New Orleanian’s strolled amid a form of Arcadian nature, benign, romantic, with urbanity cast to its margins.”101 Just as New Orleans writers had had an indelible and lasting effect on the expectations of travelers arriving in New Orleans for the Exposition, so in turn the Exposition had a profound effect on the city’s literary landscape. In particular, it played a crucible role in the development of Grace King’s literary career. At the same moment that Cable finally fell out of favor with the city of his birth, King

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emerged as the sanctioned chronicler of Creole history. And unlike Cable, King was largely uninterested in questioning the rights and wrongs of the past. As Anthony Stanonis has asserted, King “seized the banner of Creole racial purity and held it high until her death in the 1930s,” articulating “a racial history of New Orleans that became the dominant version accepted by local whites and marketed to tourists well into the twentieth century.”102 The Exposition was directly responsible for her emergence onto the national stage. Her family’s aristocratic connections meant that she came into contact with almost all of the literary luminaries that passed through the city during the period of the Exposition. She also played a significant role (as did Mollie Moore Davis) both in the organization of the Women’s Department and the literary club established by Julia Ward Howe and her daughter Maud. Poet and journalist Joaquin Miller — who rented out George Washington Cable’s vacated home — became a family friend: “He came in all the bravery of his long hair, scarlet scarf, sombrero, and patent-leather boots, and proved in truth a social bonanza to us [. . .] Miller was not troubled, as other Exposition visitors were, about our political problems or our social injustices.”103 (He himself declared, ambiguously, “When the great poet comes [. . .] he will find endless material for his story in this brave, cultured and classic old French city of New Orleans. As for myself, I can better value gold in the rough ore than the glittering coins.”104) King also developed a relationship with Charles Dudley Warner — “a friendship that proved a determining factor in my life” — and was soon visiting him and his famous neighbors at Nook Farm, Connecticut, including Mark Twain and numerous Stowes and Beechers. Even then, she discovered that others had got there before her. She learned that Lafcadio Hearn “had a brilliant reputation in the North.” William Dean Howells, too — clearly influenced by his reading of Cable — told her that she “ought to be happy at living in a place so full of romantic sentiment as New Orleans.”105 But undoubtedly the most significant acquaintance that King made at the Exposition was Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century magazine. Gilder was curious, as she recalled, “about the inimical stand taken by the people of New Orleans against George Cable and his works.” King “hastened to enlighten him to the effect that Cable proclaimed his preference for colored people over white [. . .] He was a native of New Orleans and had been well treated by its people, and yet he stabbed the city in the back, as we felt, in a dastardly way to please the Northern press.” Gilder, King noticed, “listened with icy indifference” before putting a question to her that had profound ramifications: “‘Why,’ he said, ‘if Cable is so false to you, why do not some of you write better?’”106 And so she did, in ways that were integral to the city’s fate in the remaining years of the nineteenth century. Lafcadio Hearn, too, had his own moment of destiny at the Exposition. One department in particular captured his imagination. As Vera McWilliams described, “most of his attention was given to the fascinating exhibits from Japan. Week after week he studied the elaborately detailed displays under the instruction of Ichizo Hattori, the Japanese educational representative.”107 A new adventure in Japan — indeed, a new life — beckoned to the inveterate traveler. None of which, of course, solved the city’s ongoing social and economic problems. As the twentieth century approached, those tensions would only

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become more pronounced; the Southern Queen would be forced to try and find new ways to revive its fortunes — a process in which tourism, promoted by the Exposition, would play a vital role. As for Major Edward Burke, his extraordinary career in the murky world of New Orleans politics and finance came to an abrupt halt not long after the close of the Exposition. As the New York Times marveled on January 19, 1890, On Wednesday next will be tried in New Orleans one of the most celebrated cases ever placed on the criminal docket of this State. All the world has been informed of the defalcation, embezzlement, and forgeries committed by Edward A. Burke, late State Treasurer. He was a man who had the confidence of all, who wielded a great political influence, had managed both political parties, yet stole $600,000 worth of Louisiana bonds.

Not that Burke would be there in person: “Burke left New Orleans soon after the expiration of his term of office, went to England, placed some Honduras mining interests, and after being lost to sight for over a month, has recently been heard from in Spanish Honduras, where he is secure from extradition” — and from whence he never returned.108

25. The City of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River. Lake Pontchartrain in Distance — with the buildings of the Cotton Centennial Exposition visible on the far left (Currier & Ives, 1885). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

6

“Par excellence a city of fun”: Segregation and Sex at the End of a Century I told you New Orleans is a gumbo, a mystery, a witchery! BELLE HUNT 1

In no other civilized country in the world, nay, more, in no land of barbarians would it be possible to duplicate the scenes of brutality that are reported from New Orleans. IDA B. WELLS- BARNETT 2

New Orleans was a kind of haunted place anyhow. JELLY ROLL MORTON 3

“To sit in a laundry and read The Grandissimes,” advised J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan and a man who knew a thing or two about traveling to imaginary lands, in 1898; “that is the quickest way of reaching the strange city of New Orleans.”4 George Washington Cable and New Orleans might have parted company in the middle of the 1880s, but his influence on popular conceptions of the city had a long shadow, stretching well into the twentieth century. For some New Orleanians, this was problematic. “Mr. Cable,” complained one Creole, “has made us an object of amusement to his American readers. Northern people come here to New Orleans to study us as curiosities. They walk up and down Royal Street with ‘Dr. Sevier’ in one pocket, ‘The Grandissimes’ in another and ‘Old Creole Days’ in their hands trying to identify the localities and types of persons.”5 Yet despite the disapproval of his hometown, Cable’s works clearly drove the city’s nascent tourist industry. J. M. Barrie himself was one of those who visited New Orleans in the last years of the nineteenth century, “drawn [. . .] by love of Mr. Cable’s stories.” As soon as he arrived — “while the mosquitoes and I were still looking at each other” — Barrie received some local visitors: “[S]everal delightful Creole ladies had called to warn me. Against what? Against believing Mr. Cable.” But as he wandered around what he felt was “perhaps the most picturesque city in America,” Barrie came up against his own uncomfortable truth. “Gradually we realize,” he noted presciently, “that the rivalry between French and English is a trumpery matter in New Orleans compared to the question of blacks and whites.”6 Barrie was right. As the city approached the twentieth century, the changing relationship between black and white New Orleanians dominated city life. Through the 1880s and 1890s, the city’s black population grew. Pushed by growing hardships, financial and social, and pulled by the opportunities of the city, rural African-Americans entered New Orleans in large numbers. Dale Somers notes,

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“By the turn of the century 77,714 blacks accounted for 27.1 percent of the city’s population of 287,104.”7 At the same time, in the wake of Reconstruction, the distinctive, nuanced, tangled racial tapestry that had characterized New Orleans throughout the nineteenth century was pulled apart and reworked into a carefully delineated pattern of black and white. In Somers’s judgment, even compared with the violent tensions of the Reconstruction years, “race relations in New Orleans began to deteriorate rapidly between the late 1880s and the turn of the century,” because “a majority of the whites in New Orleans and elsewhere became committed to white supremacy and a caste system identified with the southern way of life.”8 In short, what was once the South’s most integrated urban environment committed itself to segregation. The growing separation of black and white would soon become essentially complete — and legally mandated. Beyond its immediate effects on the lives of New Orleanians, this expanding fault line would go on to have far-reaching effects on crucial elements of the city’s culture. Segregation worked changes on all aspects of life in New Orleans, from its infamous sex life to the sound of its music to the growth of its tourist trade. It was the constant, turbulent backdrop to the city’s public face of fun and pleasure. The significance of these developments was not lost on George Washington Cable. He completed the break from the city of his birth with a series of articles in the Century in 1885 which spoke directly to New Orleans’ animating racial tensions. In “The Freedmen’s Case in Equity” Cable declared, “The greatest social problem before the American people to-day is, as it has been for a hundred years, the presence among us of the negro.” Since the enslaved had been “brought here by cruel force and with everybody’s consent except his own,” Cable argued, there followed a “moral responsibility on the whole nation never to lose sight of the results of African-American slavery until they cease to work mischief and injustice.” Even though Cable felt that the South should take a leading role in that process, he was forced to acknowledge the fact that freed men and women were still “subjected to a system of oppression so rank that nothing could make it seem small except the fact that they had already been ground under it for a century and a half.” Moreover, that system of oppression was worsening: “[T]he adherent of the old régime stands in the way to every public privilege and place — steamer landing, railway platform, theater, concert-hall, art display, public library, public school, court-house, church, everything.” And yet, Cable remained convinced that he was not alone in hoping for more equitable treatment for black Americans: “[T]here are thousands of Southern-born white men and women in the minority in all these places [. . .] who see the wrong and folly of these things, silently blush for them.”9 This was a theme that he amplified a few months later. His appeal to “The Silent South” began with a lingering glance at the “bronze figure of one of the world’s greatest captains” — the statue of Robert E. Lee that New Orleanians had erected in Tivoli Circle in 1884. Lee, Cable argued, “symbolizes our whole South’s better self; that finer part which the world not always sees.” Addressing “that finer part,” Cable made it clear that he was no radical. He shrank from the idea of “Social equality” between black and white: “The present writer wants quite as little of it as the most fervent traditionist of the most fervent South.” Indeed, he argued that

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“neither race [. . .] wants to see the civil rewards of decency in dress and behaviour usurped by the common herd of clowns and ragamuffins.” “But there is another thing that the colored race certainly does want,” Cable concluded, couching his arguments for civil rights in conservative terms that his fellow Southerners might accept: “the freedom for those of the race who can to earn the indiscriminative and unchallenged civil — not social — rights of gentility by the simple act of being genteel.”10 And still Cable’s arguments were too radical. The Century articles tore away whatever remained of the “immunity” (Lawrence Powell’s term) that his popularity had brought him in New Orleans.11 Charles Gayarré, the now aged and impoverished Creole historian, led the attack in the city’s newspapers. And he was, as Louis Rubin notes, “hortatory, satirical, malicious; he made no attempt to answer Cable’s arguments, but merely responded with abuse and condemnation.”12 In truth, Cable could not have been more out of touch with the feelings of white New Orleans. The extension of segregation, in common with the rest of the South, became an ongoing project. In 1890, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a bill that would become emblematic of the struggle against segregation in the late nineteenth century. As its name suggests, the Separate Car Act forced the separation of railroad passengers by race. Black New Orleanians fought back. Because of their efforts, the Separate Car Act would prove to be what Mark Elliott has termed “a watershed in the history of black civil rights.”13 In the main, the protest movement was led by a group who had become known as the Creoles of color — the descendants of the antebellum free men and women of color. As Elliott describes, they largely “represented the professional middle class of the city, who had achieved a greater degree of integration into the public sphere than any other nonwhite group in the South.”14 At their head were men like Louis Martinet and Rodolphe Desdunes, both law graduates of the city’s Straight University and key figures in the establishment of the Crusader, a weekly New Orleans AfricanAmerican newspaper dedicated to the cause of civil rights. In 1891, their opposition to the legal spread of segregation led them to form the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. To help their cause, they enlisted the support of Albion Tourgée — the famous white lawyer, novelist, and longtime civil rights campaigner. At first, Martinet attempted to organize a boycott of the railroads. When it failed to gain momentum, a different approach was needed. And so Daniel Desdunes, the musician son of Rodolphe, boarded a white-only car on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. With the full connivance of the railroad (who, for logistical purposes, also opposed segregation on its trains), Desdunes was swiftly arrested. The Committee set about challenging his prosecution. However, this act of civil disobedience did not become the lightning rod that the Committee had hoped. As Elliott explains, “the state dropped its prosecution [of Desdunes] in May 1892 — a consequence of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s having struck down the Separate Car Act’s application to interstate travel.” Though this initially seemed a success, it became clear that this ruling would “have little effect on the majority of railroad cars within the state and amounted to little more than a loss of money and time.”15 Black New Orleanians would need to wait a little longer for their day in court.

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“LITTLE PALERMO” Meanwhile, other changes to the texture of life in New Orleans were taking place. Like the Irish and Germans before them, large numbers of Italians — particularly Sicilians — emigrated to New Orleans in the late nineteenth century. As Garry Boulard highlights, in this period “[m]ore people of Italian and Sicilian descent lived within the city’s borders than in any other city in the United States.”16 In 1900, a commentator could pronounce, “[T]here is a colony of Italians thirty thousand strong in New Orleans.”17 In the main, the city’s new inhabitants congregated in an increasingly dilapidated French Quarter. To the contemporary observer, their living conditions tended to elicit a mixture of pity and disgust. Traveler Belle Hunt, for example, described a ten-roomed, leaky-roofed tenement house where fifty families eat, sleep and have their being [. . .] in penury and filth. A common court, the receptacle for rotten vegetables and cast-off clothing, does service as a common dressing room. A rusty pipe plays muddy water in a slime-lined basin, where sleep-begrimed eyes and crisp, pink radishes are washed for the early market stalls.18

But as Boulard describes, “Little Palermo” also became a vibrant, busy hub: “Fruit vendors, door-to-door salesmen, and organ grinders filled the city air with their calls [. . .] Italians and Sicilians owned or managed countless corner grocery stores.”19 More, they became an important part of the local economy. George Cunningham highlights the fact that Italian New Orleanians “developed the fruit business to the point where the importation of fruits took on economic significance for the port.”20 But, like others before them, the city’s new arrivals faced opposition from more established residents. As Joy Jackson notes, “nativistic belligerence against newly arrived immigrants increased rather than decreased by the 1890’s.”21 Lawyer Henry C. Castellanos, for example, bemoaned the rise of Sicilian-owned groceries, which were, he felt, “not only in antagonism to traditional customs, but dangerous to public health [. . .] hot-beds of infection, disease and filth.”22 Rumors that immigrants were involved in organized crime circulated widely. Thus marginalized, it is perhaps unsurprising that some Italians found common cause with the city’s black population. In David Roediger’s judgment, there was a significant degree of “Italian-Black solidarity”: “[T]he associations of Blacks and Italians took place at peddlers’ carts, in the cane fields, in the timber camps and in the halls and bars.”23 (Indeed, in this era of segregation, there were other significant moments of interracial cooperation in the city. As Eric Arnesen has described, “[b]lack and white dock workers — organized in the separate union locals, each representing a distinct ‘class of labour’ — banded together in the early 1880s, forging a powerful organization to coordinate workers’ struggles and mediate relations between blacks and whites.”24) Like the city’s black inhabitants, New Orleans’ Italian population faced their own moments of persecution in the late nineteenth century. None was more significant than the mob violence that followed the murder of Police Chief David

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Hennessy in October 1890. Walking home to Girod Street, at the corner of Basin, Hennessy was cut down by a number of assailants with shotguns. Lingering in the Charity Hospital for a number of hours, Hennessy was said to have given only one clue — one whispered word — about the identity of his killers: “dagos.”25 Hennessy had a history with New Orleans’ Italian community. He had become famous for his part in the arrest of Giuseppe Esposito, a notorious figure wanted for kidnap and murder in Italy, on Canal Street in 1881. Subsequently, in Richard Gambino’s words, he was “celebrated as a model of American manhood.”26 But he was also intimately involved in the city’s underworld. James Gill notes that he was “well known in the brothels of New Orleans” and “controlled the Red Light Social Club.” He was friends with Tom Anderson, the unofficial ‘Mayor’ of the city’s demimonde, and, indeed, boxer John Sullivan, who fought in and around New Orleans in the early 1890s.27 With no little irony, at the time of his murder, Hennessy had been charged by Mayor Shakspeare with reforming what was felt to be one of the most corrupt police forces in the country.28 His funeral was a grand affair. As Gambino notes, it eclipsed “even the elaborate New Orleans funeral two years earlier of the former President of the Confederate United States of America, Jefferson Davis.”29 Street singer Richard “Rabbit” Brown commemorated his death in a song: “The Downfall of the Lion.”30 As the “dagos” rumor spread, the city’s Italian community was placed under intense scrutiny. Outrage at the murder of Hennessy played into popular fears about the existence of Italian organized crime in the city. As Smith notes, “Italian men and boys filled the Central Station cells overnight. A fortune teller and over forty peddlers, fruit sellers, and shoemakers were arrested on the street and in their homes.”31 Nineteen men — Italians and Italian-Americans — were indicted on charges related to Hennessy’s murder. Worse was to come. On March 13, six of the accused were acquitted, amidst rumors of jury intimidation by the Mafia. A furious mob — thousands strong — gathered at the statue of Henry Clay in Canal Street, evoking previous moments of racial violence in the city’s history. They moved towards the Orleans Parish Prison on Rampart, where the acquitted and their codefendants were still being held. Storming the prison, the mob clubbed, shot, and hanged 11 men. Reaction to the lynchings was extraordinary, and the case was discussed widely. British member of parliament James Bryce felt that the “general sentiment of the United States regrets, but scarcely condemns, the violence used at New Orleans.”32 Certainly, the New Orleans lynchers received their share of support. The New York Times showed little sympathy for the dead: [T]he mob’s victims were desperate ruffians and murderers. These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigations [. . .] Our own murderers are men of feeling and nobility compared to them.33

Internationally, there was less sympathy for the mob. In 1892, Edward Wakefield noted, “The Italians have got a very bad name lately, but very unjustly.” In his

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judgment, “[t]here was not a vestige of what in England would be called evidence of the existence of any Mafia in New Orleans; but several of the most respectable Italian witnesses declared the whole story to be an absurd invention.”34 James Bryce noted caustically [t]hat the men who seized and slaughtered the acquitted Italian criminals should be the leading citizens of New Orleans; that they should have preferred this method of protecting their community to that of improving the legal procedure and administration of the State of Louisiana; that their conduct should have met with far more sympathy than reprobation over the United States generally, are facts curiously illustrative of the history of the southern States and of the condition of society there.35

And since a number of those lynched were Italian citizens, the wider ramifications of these events were highly significant. In Richard Gambino’s judgment, they created “a scare of war with a European power that helped unite the country behind a military lobby which built America’s ‘New Navy,’ the navy that launched the United States on its career as a global power eight years later in the SpanishAmerican War.”36 But, in the main, there was little national condemnation of the lynchings. One particular American caught the popular mood. In March 1891, future president Theodore Roosevelt attended a Washington dinner party. “Monday we dined at the Camerons,” he related to his sister, “various Dago diplomats were present, all much wrought up by the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. Personally, I think it rather a good thing, and said so.”37

“THAT SEGREGATION OUTFIT” On the evening of June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy purchased a first-class ticket and boarded an East Louisiana Railroad train to Covington. Born in New Orleans in 1863, Plessy was currently employed as a shoemaker — a traditional occupation for a free man of color — in the French Quarter. He lived with his wife in the Faubourg Tremé — which, as Louise McKinney describes, was by now “the oldest black neighborhood in the country [. . .] rich in economic, cultural, political and social developments that have affected African-American history.”38 Famously, it was home to a wealth of different musicians and musical styles, like the brass band of Plessy’s friend Daniel Desdunes. For Plessy’s train trip had a purpose. When the Citizens’ Committee had needed another volunteer to purposefully flout the Separate Car Act, Plessy had stepped forward. As Keith Medley explains, Plessy had purchased a ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad because “it never left Louisiana” and therefore “provided the stage for a test of whether the Separate Car Act could apply to cars traveling solely within the state.”39 Like Desdunes before him, when challenged about his presence in the white-only first-class car, Plessy refused to move, was arrested, charged, and bailed by the Citizens’ Committee. This time, however, the Citizens’ Committee got its wish. Plessy’s case would go all the way to the top. In October, Plessy came before Judge John Howard Ferguson. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, as did,

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in turn, the Louisiana Supreme Court. It took until April 1896 for the case of Plessy v. Ferguson to finally come before the United States Supreme Court. “Justice is pictured as blind,” Albion Tourgée declared in his arguments, “and her daughter, the Law, ought at least to be color-blind.”40 But it availed little. The Supreme Court ruled 7–1 against Plessy, upholding the legality of segregation and enshrining the concept of “equal but separate” in law. As Mark Elliott notes, though “white Northern newspapers expressed surprise and outrage” at the decision, “none gave it extensive coverage.”41 Homer Plessy, his act of civil disobedience over, paid a fine of 25 dollars and went back to his life in New Orleans, unheralded as a civil rights pioneer. But the wider ramifications for his fellow black New Orleanians were profound. In Elliott’s terms, “The adverse decision by the Supreme Court decimated the New Orleans Citizens’ Committee. Not only did they dissolve the committee — abandoning its protest activities [. . .] — but they discontinued the Crusader.”42 Now largely unopposed, segregation marched on. The Louisiana State Legislature banned interracial marriages. At the 1898 Louisiana Constitutional Convention, delegates legally segregated the school system. They also successfully moved to disenfranchise black Louisianans. As Joy Jackson notes, “The literacy and property-owning qualifications written into the 1898 Louisiana constitution removed the bulk of Negroes from the state’s registration rolls. In Louisiana in 1888 there were 128,150 Negro registered voters. By 1900 under the new state constitution, they numbered only 5,320.”43 In 1902, in a verdict that delivered a symbolic deathblow to the hard-fought gains of Reconstruction, streetcars were resegregated. As segregation was imposed on all areas of life, the city’s population distribution began to change. In Craig Colten’s words, “[a]lthough New Orleans was noted as having a low degree of residential segregation during the antebellum period, neighborhoods dominated by a single racial group emerged during the height of Jim Crow.” And, inevitably, this lead to further inequalities: “sanitary conditions for black and white populations” were “highly skewed.”44 New Orleans musician Johnny St. Cyr lived through all these changes, and well remembered their effects on the city — on its people, and their relationships with each other: There were mixed neighborhoods of colored and white where we all got along just like one race of people. The white lady and her husband next door used to set on the steps of our house and talk to my mother and stepfather. I even had a cousin married to a white woman and had two children by her. It wasn’t until [. . .] they began that segregation outfit; then it got so bad around here it made a fellow want to go North if he had the chance.45

“TENDERLOIN” The effects of segregation reached intimately into the nature of life in New Orleans. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the city retained its longstanding reputation for illicit sex. In his account of the Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities (1883), J. W. Buel declared that “with the exception of New York and Washington City, New Orleans contains a larger population of bawds

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than any other American city [. . .] There is much in the atmosphere to develop and sensualize women.” Basin Street already had a reputation as the location of “the palatial quarters of gilt-edged aristocratic bawds, who reserve their favors for fortune’s favorites only.” But Buel also warned that the French Market “has a notoriety that is very extensive”: “[L]ocated on the streets diverging therefrom are scores of low dives, patronized by the Jack Tars of all nations. These places present many repulsive features common to excessively low life, and not infrequently become the scene of brutal murders resulting from rows over the degraded wretches who inhabit the streets’ vilest quarters.”46 In many respects, Buel was not exaggerating. Al Rose has highlighted that prostitution “spread throughout New Orleans” in the 1880s and 1890s, to the extent that the “financial stability and social welfare of the city were seriously threatened.” In particular, the proliferation of prostitution was felt to be damaging to property prices: “[R]eal estate values were seriously disrupted by the unpredictability of the ‘moral’ development of neighborhoods.”47 As a result, city leaders took an extraordinary step. As Kevin Fox Gotham narrates, “In 1897, the city government created a special red light district, ‘Storyville,’ to segregate and regulate the prostitution trade in the city.”48 It was, with no little irony, named for Sidney Story, the alderman who conceived the idea of hiving off the city’s prostitutes into a designated area. “The District,” as it was most commonly known, was mainly situated “in the squares bounded by Basin, Customhouse, Robertson, and St. Louis Streets” — an area across Rampart Street from the French Quarter in the site now occupied by the Iberville Housing Project.49 Less famously, Storyville had another annex a few blocks away across Canal Street, “lying between Perdido and Gravier, and Locust and Franklin streets,” an area

26. Jack Tars in a French Market District Dive, from J. W. Buel, Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities (St. Louis: Historical Publishing Co., 1883).

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that was already “an informally recognized area for black prostitutes serving black men and some white men as well.”50 Though the outcome of Plessy v. Ferguson may not seem immediately relevant to the development of these vice districts, it is clear that the same segregationist ethos drove both policies. In Alecia Long’s terms, “[a]lthough prostitutes [. . .] were the parties to be segregated, they would come to share both physical and ideological space with African Americans in the city — and in the minds of many of the city’s residents.” Both groups were felt to demonstrate “a natural propensity toward disorder, sensuality, immorality, filth, and disease.”51 While it would be too simplistic to assert that the two different designated areas for prostitution served as distinct “white” and “black” Storyvilles, there is some sense that this is how they operated, and that just such a separation of the races was part of the overall plan. Of course, as Long rightly notes, there is no little irony in the fact that “race mixing and people of color were central to the history of the city’s last official vice district — both above and below Canal Street.”52 But it is also evident that “segregation was observed intermittently” in Storyville. And, as Joseph Roach highlights, it was only as time went by that “the liaisons permitted in Storyville became more rigorously segregated.”53 As musician Johnny St. Cyr remembered, speaking with Alan Lomax, New Orleanians understood what this meant in practice: “What about segregation in the Tenderloin District?” I asked. “Was there a Negro section?” “There was. Uh-huh.” “Was it pretty strictly enforced?” “Yes it was.” “A colored man couldn’t go to the white houses?” “No. That’s right. It was only forced on one way, though. White man could go to Negro houses.”54

There was further significance in the location of both vice districts: “The choice of the ‘obscure neighborhood’ that would become known as Storyville was certainly conditioned by the class and race of the people who lived there. Low-lying and swampy, this area [. . .] was largely populated by people without the resources to buy houses or pay rent in more desirable areas.”55 They were, predominately, African-American neighborhoods. New Orleans was hardly unique in seeking to control prostitution in this fashion. As Al Rose highlights, fin-de-siècle America was home to “hundreds of red-light districts, ranging in size from a discreet ‘house’ or two in or near small towns and cities to block after block of brothels and worse in larger cities such as Chicago and San Francisco.”56 But Storyville swiftly eclipsed all other vice districts, in scale and notoriety. The scale of the city’s sex trade was extraordinary: Storyville employed roughly “two thousand prostitutes” who generated “a quarter of a million dollars a week, well over ten million dollars a year, probably closer to fifteen million” — money that found its way to all corners of the city’s economy.57 And the effects on the makeup of the District’s neighborhoods were equally

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profound: “With so many brothels, cribs, prostitutes, dance halls, cabarets, and saloons crammed into such a concentrated area, the resulting landscape was a crazy quilt of hundreds of colorful dens of iniquity.”58 “I’m telling you,” exclaimed jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton, “this tenderloin district was like something that nobody has ever seen before or since.”59 Storyville’s establishments ran the gamut, as Morton described, “from the highest class to the lowest.” There were “creep joints where they’d put the feelers on a guy’s clothes, cribs that rented for about five dollars a day and had just about room enough for a bed, small-time houses where the price was from fifty cents to a dollar and they put on naked dances, circuses, and jive.” Then, of course, there were “the mansions where everything was of the very highest class.”60 In the city’s most famous establishments on Basin Street, opulence was the watchword. Musician Clarence Williams felt, “They were just like millionaires’ houses.”61 As Morton remembered, “[t]hese houses were filled up with the most expensive furniture and paintings. Three of them had mirror parlors where you couldn’t find the door for the mirrors, the one at Lula White’s costing $30,000. Mirrors stood at the foot and head of all the beds.”62 When Tom Anderson opened a new bar in 1901 it was “the first saloon in America to be illuminated by electricity,” and “boasted a hundred bulbs in its ceiling plus a bright electric sign outside.”63 The people ran the gamut, too. The thousands of working women and men who made up the District left little record of their lives. Morton remembered the wide variety of women standing in the doorways [. . .] some very happy, some very sad, some with the desire to end it all by poison, some planning a big outing, a dance, or some other and of enjoyment. Some were real ladies in spite of their downfall and some were habitual drunkards and some were dope fiends as follows, opium, heroin, cocaine, laudanum, morphine.64

Then, there were the celebrities — the District notables who rose to national prominence. Tom Anderson, who gained election to the state legislature while maintaining interests in a variety of Storyville establishments, stood at their head. But in the main, Storyville was dominated by a number of enterprising and entrepreneurial women who worked their way from poverty to wealth. Josie Arlington, born Mary Deubler, was the proprietor of the Arlington, “perhaps the grandest — certainly it was the gaudiest — bordello in the District.”65 Her economic successes allowed her, in Long’s words, “to purchase the trappings (but not the substance) of respectability; she lived out her life in relative ease and luxury on one of the city’s most reputable thoroughfares.”66 Lulu White ran “Mahogany Hall,” a brothel “specializing in mixed-race women.”67 She developed a famously opulent image: “diamond rings on all her fingers (including thumbs), bracelets up both arms, a diamond necklace, a tiara.”68 Emma Johnson operated the “House of all Nations,” a venue that became notorious for its live sex shows. Of course, the patina of glamour cultivated by a select few houses and individuals often wore thin very quickly. Of Emma Johnson’s sex “Circus,” Morton remembered ruefully: “They did a lot of uncultured things there that probably couldn’t be mentioned, and the irony part of it, they always picked the youngest

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and most beautiful girls to do them right before the eyes of everybody [. . .] People are cruel, aren’t they?”69 At its heart, Storyville revolved around the buying and selling of bodies. As such, it evoked previous moments in the history of nineteenth-century New Orleans. As Joseph Roach describes, “New Orleans brothel performances have roots deep in representations and behaviors spawned in the slave culture of the antebellum period [. . .] Storyville establishments featured auctions in which young girls and even children, advertised as ‘Virgins,’ were put up on front-parlor tables and gaveled down to the top bidder.”70 And like the slave market before it, Storyville became a crucial component of New Orleans’ fascination for visitors (at least, its male visitors). The District even developed its own guidebook, the Blue Book, which hosted advertisements and detailed the specialties of Storyville’s establishments; during carnival season in 1895 alone “twenty thousand copies [. . .] were distributed to tourists.”71 Morton, at least, could look back fondly on the peculiar tenor that the District added to New Orleans’ life at the end of the nineteenth century: “Lights of all colors were glittering and glaring. Music was pouring into the streets from every house [. . .] The chippies in their little-girl dresses were standing in the crib doors singing the blues. Then you could observe the fancy Dans, dressed fit to kill, wearing their big diamonds.”72 Though marginalized from polite society, Storyville’s residents left indelible marks on the city’s culture. Like many aspects of city life, this was expressed most clearly during Mardi Gras. As James Gill outlines, the mid-1880s witnessed the birth of a new date on the Mardi Gras calendar: “the ‘Ball of the Two Well-Known Gentlemen,’ which was staged by the city’s pimps, procurers and hookers.” By the days of Storyville it had been joined by a number of similar underworld celebrations, and “slumming in the District at Mardi Gras” had become “so fashionable [. . .] that tickets to the Carnival balls there were among the hottest items in town.”73 And so the story goes: chafing at the top-world appropriation of the District’s Mardi Gras celebrations, in 1906 Josie Arlington organized a surprise for the high-toned revelers. Using her wealth of contacts, she arranged for the Ball of the Two Well-Known Gentlemen to be raided by the police. All women who weren’t able to produce a prostitute’s registration card were promptly arrested. It was a telling demonstration of the city’s power dynamics at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“HOT MUSIC” Storyville and segregation left their mark on New Orleans in other ways, none more significant than the transformation of the city’s musical culture. Both had a role to play in the development of the musical style that would come to be known as jazz. It is important to note, however, that jazz — as Al Rose puts it — “was not born in Storyville [. . .] Nor did jazz originate in the pre-Storyville whorehouse environment.”74 Indeed, as Bill Malone and David Stricklin make clear, “[n]o facet of the jazz story has had a more tenacious or romantic hold on the popular imagination than that of its supposed Storyville origins.”75 Only one legend has been more pervasive. Bryan Wagner explains that while “music historians have

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often named Congo Square as the birthplace of jazz tradition,” such an assertion is little more than a “good story.”76 In truth, jazz was a total product of life in New Orleans — particularly black New Orleans — at the end of the nineteenth century. It came out of an entire culture of music making. Musician Danny Barker remembered that “there were countless places of employment that employed musicians, not including private affairs, balls, soirées, banquets, marriages, deaths, christenings, Catholic communions, confirmations, picnics at the lake front, country hay rides, and advertisements of business concerns [. . .] The city was full of the sounds of music.”77 But within the city’s vibrant musical culture, there were spaces and people and moments that were particularly significant. Storyville might not have birthed jazz, but it certainly helped raise it. “This is the story of how I got my first job in music,” related Jelly Roll Morton: “I had leave to stay out at night on Saturday and Sunday till 11 p.m., so when some boys enticed me to go to the tenderloin district, I finally accepted the invitation. I liked the freedom of standing at a saloon bar, passing along the streets crowded with men of all nationalities and descriptions.” Morton and his comrades “heard that one of the houses was stuck for a pianist.” They volunteered the 14-year-old Jelly Roll for the job: “I was so frightened when I first touched the piano, the girls decided to let me go immediately. One of my friends spoke up, ‘Go ahead and show these people you can play.’ That encouraged me greatly and I pulled myself together and started playing with the confidence of being in my own circle.” Morton was a hit: “I began to make more money than I had ever heard of in my life. I bought a new suit and a hat.” “All the highest class landladies had me for ‘the professor’, if they could get me,” he boasted.78 And from this privileged position, Morton had access to situations that other black New Orleanians were denied. “A screen was put up between me and the tricks they were doing for the guests,” Morton remembered, “but I cut a slit in the screen, as I had become to be a sport now, myself, and wanted to see what anybody else was seeing.” And Morton was not alone: every brothel of note had its resident piano player. As such, “New Orleans was the stomping grounds for all the greatest pianists in the country.” Morton paid tribute to his contemporaries: “Kid Ross was the steady player at Lula White’s. Tony Jackson played at Gypsy Schaeffer’s [. . .] If a Naked Dance was desired, Tony would dig up one of his fast speed tunes and one of the girls would dance on a little narrow stage, completely nude.” Jackson, Morton noted with uncharacteristic modesty, “was the outstanding favorite of New Orleans [. . .] the greatest single-handed entertainer in the world.”79 The hot music of Storyville piano professors was only one element of the developing musical culture of New Orleans at the close of the nineteenth century. For, as Zutty Singleton recalled, “[t]here were so many bands in New Orleans.”80 The city’s bands — brass bands, string bands, society bands, “spasm” bands, dance bands of all varieties — provided the other vital crucibles of jazz. And here, segregation had a role to play. In keeping with the city’s long-established racial hierarchies, there were white bands, black bands, and bands made up by the Creoles of color. “Downtown” Creole bands, Thomas Brothers notes, were known for their “European standards of musicianship.”81 Across Canal Street (that shifting but ever-present borderline in nineteenth-century city life), “Uptown”

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African-American bands preferred a different kind of music that “gathered the musical energy of the plantations” and tended towards the “gutbucket.”82 Put another way, by Charles Hersch, “Creoles and whites tended to be ‘legitimate’ music readers [. . .] Blacks and lower-class musicians were mostly ‘fakers’ or ‘head’ musicians, who could not read but improvised or learned melodies by ear.”83 But as Jim Crow laws refashioned New Orleans society throughout the 1890s, these two opposing musical styles were forced into closer and closer contact. Though characterized by a variety of tensions, this new musical dynamic would prove to be vital for the development of jazz. As Ted Gioia explains: The Creole musicians were, for the most part, better trained than the black players from uptown; they were steeped in the classics and skilled at reading music. But suddenly these polished Creole ensembles were forced to compete for work against the less schooled, more boisterous black bands that were pursuing a ‘hotter’ style, one that would serve as the foundation for New Orleans jazz. In time, the hotter sound would emerge as the dominant strain — although assimilating many aspects of the Creole tradition in the process.84

As the nineteenth century came to a close, a “drama of competition and collaboration” was in full swing.85 When it came to developing the “hotter sound” of New Orleans music in this formative period, one man — perhaps more myth than man — stands alone. “Buddy Bolden was the first man that began playing jazz in the city of New Orleans,” recalled pioneering trumpeter Bunk Johnson, “and his band had the whole of New Orleans real crazy and running wild behind it.”86 Bolden was born in New Orleans in 1877, at the end of Reconstruction, and grew up in a mixed First Street neighborhood. After playing cornet in small bands for dances, parties, and other social gatherings in the mid-1890s, Bolden soon developed a significant popular reputation. Jelly Roll Morton was certainly struck by this “light brownskin boy from Uptown,” both in his personal charisma and his musical ability: “He drink all the whiskey he could find, never wore a collar and a tie, had his shirt busted open so all the girls to see that red flannel undershirt, always having a ball — Buddy Bolden was the most powerful trumpet in history.”87 And he got around. As Donald Marquis notes, “Bolden played all over town for different stratas of black society and for every conceivable function.”88 Much of his playing was done at venues located around the blocks of black Storyville — “rough places,” as Morton termed them, like the Odd Fellows and Masonic Hall, and Union Sons Hall, better known as “Funky Butt Hall.” As Morton knew all too well, these were places “inhabited by some very tough babies.”89 One “little incident” in Jackson Hall that involved Buddy Bolden was, Morton felt, particularly instructive of the “environments that produced hot music.” An argument developed at the bar: A great big husky guy steps on this little guy’s foot (I was just in between them) and [. . .] the little guy didn’t want to stand for it and pulled out a great big gun, almost as long as he was old, and shot, and if I hadn’t pulled my stomach back, I wouldn’t be here to tell you the history of jazz.

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As the dead man dropped to the floor, Bolden “started blazing away with his trumpet, trying to keep the crowd together.” Chaos ensued: “Many of us realized it was a killing and we started breaking out windows and through doors.” “When the patrol pulled up,” Morton recalled, “they took the dead man and laid him in the bottom of the patrol wagon and then here comes the little cripple man that shot him, and, finally, Buddy Bolden. I’ve often wondered why they would put Mister Bolden in the patrol when he was up there blowing high notes to keep everyone quiet.”90 At times, Bolden’s music was clearly shaped by and for these tough venues. Brothers describes one of his numbers, “a song titled Don’t Go ’Way Nobody that Bolden is reported to have sung after midnight, thus launching a transition into a different style and mood”: ’Way down, ’way down low So I can hear those whores Drag their feet across the floor Oh you bitches, shake your asses.91

But whatever he played, Bolden played it with a style all his own. Trombonist Bill Matthews recalled: He was one of the sweetest trumpet players on waltzes and things like that and on those old slow blues, that boy could make the women jump out the window. On those old, slow, low down blues, he had a moan in his cornet that went all through you, just like you were in a church or something [. . .] He’d tell his boys to get low, they’d get low and he’d take it.92

The effect of his music could be mesmerizing, life altering. Clarence Williams headed to New Orleans from Plaquemine as a young teenager: “It was after I heard Buddy Bolden, when he came through my home town [. . .] and his trumpet playin’ excited me so that I said, ‘I’m goin’ to New Orleans.’ I had never heard anything like that before in my whole life.”93 Clarinetist George Bacquet was equally stunned. He attended a “ball at Odd Fellows’ Hall”: “I remember thinking it was a funny place, nobody took their hats off. It was plenty tough.” Then, the music took effect: All of a sudden, Buddy stomps, knocks on the floor with his trumpet to give the beat, and they all sit up straight [. . .] I’d never heard anything like that before. I’d played ‘legitimate’ stuff. But this! It was somethin’ that pulled me! They got me up on the stand that night, and I was playin’ with ’em. After that, I didn’t play ‘legitimate’ so much.94

But after dominating the New Orleans music scene at the beginning of the new century, Bolden became increasingly afflicted with mental illness. In 1907 he was institutionalized in a hospital at Jackson, Louisiana, where he remained until his death in 1931. Even at his peak, Bolden was not the only musical force in town. Bolden’s

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great rival was John Robichaux. And the two made a telling contrast. As Marquis explains, “Robichaux was in many ways the epitome of the New Orleans Creole of color”: before the encroachment of segregation, his “regular jobs included Antoine’s Restaurant [. . .] and he led the only Creole band to play a carnival ball in the old French Opera House.”95 When Jim Crow laws robbed him of those audiences, Robichaux and his society band were pushed into similar circles as Bolden. And on occasion they would come into direct competition — most famously at Lincoln and Johnson Parks. As Hersch explains: “Lincoln Park was enclosed by a wooden fence and featured a large, one-story dance hall and pavilion. It drew crowds of African Americans for picnics, prizefights, vaudeville shows, movies, balloon ascensions, and fireworks, all accompanied by music” — music that was often supplied by Robichaux’s band. Bolden, on the other hand, “was more at home in the neighboring Johnson Park, which catered to his core lower-class audience; he performed at a hall there for evening dances, and occasionally a holiday or Sunday matinee.” When both bands were in residence, rivalry ensued: “To take Robichaux’s audience away, Bolden would blast a few notes toward Lincoln Park.”96 Then, as Marquis notes, “dancers frequently abandoned the smoother Robichaux band to hear Bolden produce a newer, more raggedy, more exciting sound that stirred their dancing fancy.”97 But not always. As Brothers stresses, “[i]t is important to remember that Robichaux sometimes won his battles with Bolden. The competition was real.”98 And, inevitably, there was a cross-filtration of sounds and ideas. Taken together, the Bolden and Robichaux bands “provide the earliest and most clear-cut examples of the two types of music, Uptown and Downtown, that simultaneously borrowed from each other and hastened the development of jazz.”99 They were both forging the sound of the future. Alongside the shifting sounds of the city’s music, black New Orleanians were establishing other important cultural traditions that still hold a significant contemporary resonance. Just as the denizens of the District reworked Mardi Gras at this time, “spoofing the pretentious upper class,” so too were portions of the city’s African-American population engaged in the process of transforming carnival from the bottom up.100 Some time in the final years of the nineteenth century, a number of working-class black men began masquerading as Indians during Mardi Gras and roaming the city’s streets. They would sing, dance, and compete (both theatrically and physically) with tribes from different neighborhoods. This was a gesture with significant meaning. As Reid Mitchell describes, “[m]asking Indian was a form of black protest in a Jim Crow New Orleans.” Adopting such costumes “allowed these men to assert themselves, both collectively and individually,” in ways that “contrasted significantly with black New Orleanians’ day-to-day compliance with the city’s norms.”101 And, like the carnival celebrations in Storyville, their appeal was profound. Jelly Roll Morton remembered vividly, “Even at the parades with floats and costumes that cost millions, why, if the folks heard the sign of the Indians [. . .] that big parade wouldn’t have anybody there: the crowd would flock to see the Indians.”102

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“A LITERARY CENTER” Against a background of segregation, sex, and strange new sounds, New Orleans, as Grace King later remembered, also “came as near as ever in its history to being a literary center.”103 More than that, it developed a connected reputation, Elaine Showalter notes, “as the headquarters of the New Woman.”104 Women dominated the city’s literary scene. The salons of King herself and Mollie Moore Davis, at her Royal Street home, acted as significant cultural hubs, attracting a wide variety of visitors: “[L]iterary guests included such New Orleanians as ‘Pearl Rivers’ (Eliza Nicholson, editor of the Daily Picayune) and ‘Catharine Cole’ of the Times-Democrat, along with many out-of-town visitors — among them Richard Watson Gilder, George W. Cable, Ruth McEnery Stuart [. . .] and Kate Chopin.”105 As Southern writing gained a new national prominence — “it cannot be denied that American fiction of to-day [. . .] is predominantly Southern in type and character,” lamented Albion Tourgée — New Orleans’ women writers stood at its forefront.106 Yet Cable, whatever his reputation in the city, remained the most prominent literary New Orleanian. A survey of “American Fiction” for the Edinburgh Review in 1891 contrasted Cable’s “rich warmth” with William Dean Howells’s “bleakness”: “It is the passage from the ice of the north to the glow of the sun-bathed south, the return to romance from bald, impersonal, unsympathetic realism.” Indeed, Cable’s ability to transport the reader “into a new, yet old, world,” produced rapturous visions: “New Orleans, with its sleepy, picturesque wharves, its half-deserted streets bearing aristocratic prae-Revolutionary names, its houses lying back from the road with tottering iron gates and windows closed by shutters, exclusive and dignified in their decay, like high-bred émigrés in darned court suits. Half close your eyes, and the delicious langour of a southern night steals over the senses.”107 In Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Charles Coleman was hardly less complimentary, praising Cable’s “delicate and exquisite workmanship, picturing new scenes and a highly romantic people [. . .] the keen insight into creole character, and the intimate acquaintance with the picturesque streets and by-ways of the French quarter of New Orleans.” But, looking to the future, Coleman also took time to notice the work of “Miss Grace King, a young lady of New Orleans” who “depicts with a delicate touch the passionate and romantic in the life of her native city, contrasting with striking effect the nature of creole, negro and quadroon, the intensity of which is relieved by a quiet and charming humor.”108 What the critics praised was what most readers — and, indeed, many tourists — still sought in writing about New Orleans: the picturesque, the romantic, the local-color detail (all of which provided a stark contrast to others aspects of life in the city at the turn of the century). Even for locals, the wealth of New Orleans literature had begun to lay a patina over the contemporary scene that was apparently inescapable. “Here the proper person,” explained Catharine Cole in the Picayune, “whether to the manor born or not, fancies that every dingy, lazy-going, mule-drawn street car will lead him to the complex life of the French Market; every house suggests a romance, every shop a carnival.” And the reason for this was clear: “The tales of Cable [. . .] the beautiful if somewhat shadowy

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photographic sketches of Grace King, all appeal to one. They seem the natural birth of the rambling, jumbled town, the clang of bell and perfume of flower, of the violet and amber mist that hangs in the air.”109 At the same time, there was also a sense that, in common with much Southern literature at this junction, the work of King and others was, to use Albion Tourgée’s term, “not only Southern in type, but distinctly Confederate in sympathy.”110 While there is some truth in such a claim, it would be wrong to characterize the city’s literary output as entirely sentimental and nostalgic. In particular, as the twentieth century approached, three writers — King herself, Kate Chopin and Alice Dunbar-Nelson — produced new visions of the city that, while bearing the trappings of the local-color style, went beyond it, approached realism, and revealed unexpected dimensions of fin-de-siècle New Orleans. “I am not a romanticist,” Grace King insisted in 1915, “I am a realist à la mode de Nlle Orléans. I have never written a line that was not realistic — but our life, our circumstances, the heroism of the men & women that surrounded my early horizon — all that was romantic — I had a mind very sensitive to romantic impressions, but critical as to their expression.”111 In the wake of King’s literary awakening at the Cotton Centennial and her avowed intention to refute Cable’s accounts of New Orleans, her first stories were explicitly intended to demonstrate, in her own words, “some of those relations brought on by slavery” which were “honorable to all concerned.”112 In further contrast to Cable, she placed her stories in the contemporary scene. She set the tone with her first published story, which appeared in the New Princeton Review in 1885. The central character of “Monsieur Motte” is really a devoted and selfless quadroon, Marcélite, who anonymously supports the child of her former master, Marie Modeste, throughout her school years. To avoid embarrassing her mistress, Marcélite masquerades as her uncle — the titular and imaginary Monsieur Motte. “Oh, my bébé! my little mistress!” Marcélite declares, when her subterfuge is finally uncovered, “it’s your nurse, it’s your own negro who loves you, who would die for you!”113 But her loyalty does not go unacknowledged: when Marie finally marries, King tells the reader that it is Marcélite “who walked behind the bride that night to the altar” and, later, “in her distant, unlighted room watched the night through, shedding on the bridal wreath the tears that only mothers shed on bridal wreaths of daughters, praying the prayers that only mothers pray on the wedding nights of daughters.”114 In drawing this loving relationship between ex-slave and former mistress King was staying true to her intention, in Robert Bush’s words, to elucidate the position of what she considered to be “white benevolence.” As far as King was concerned, “most of the female domestic slaves had been treated with humaneness, and [. . .] during Reconstruction they more often returned this treatment in the form of loyalty.”115 As such, her works found favor with a wide audience of readers, North and South, who were increasingly drawn to texts that looked back on the days of slavery with fond nostalgia. But as King developed as a writer, she quickly moved beyond the sentimental; increasingly, her realism “à la mode de Nlle Orléans” came to the fore. In Balcony Stories (1893), for example, she developed an explicitly female vision of the city. Dedicated to her mother, this

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collection of short stories, King explained, was a direct product of women’s lives in New Orleans: “[T]he women love to sit and talk together of summer nights, on balconies, in their vague, loose, white garments,— men are not balcony sitters.” Her stories were, she emphasized, “reminiscences, episodes, picked up as only women know how to pick them up from other women’s lives [. . .] and told as only women know how to relate them.”116 And they were stories, too, which crossed boundaries of race and class to demonstrate her abiding concern with “the pathos and dignity of the endurance of poverty” — something that contemporary New Orleans presented all too readily.117 This explicitly female narrative viewpoint was extended further when King turned to writing history at the end of the century. In New Orleans: The Place and the People (1895), King declared that “New Orleans is, among cities, the most feminine of women.” But, more than that, in King’s vision New Orleans became one with her citizens, impoverished but dignified and, at least, free from Gilded Age vulgarity. “Critical sister cities note,” King explained, that for a city of the United States, New Orleans is not enterprising enough, that she has not competition enough in her, that she is un-America, in fact, too Creole. This is a criticism that can be classed in two ways; either among her qualities or her defects. It is palpably certain that she is careless in regard to opportunities for financial profit, and that she is an indifferent contestant with other cities for trade development and population extension [. . .] It is extremely doubtful if she will ever be rich, as riches are counted in the New World.

And New Orleans still had a great deal to offer in recompense: “Is she not (that rarest of all qualities in American cities) individual, interesting? [. . .] And outranked hopelessly as she is now in wealth and population, is there a city in the Union that can take precedence of her as graciously, and as gracefully, as she can yield it?”118 Kate Chopin’s vision of New Orleans was no less explicitly concerned with the experiences of women in the city; but, unlike King, Chopin’s heroines — like Chopin herself — frequently encountered New Orleans as outsiders. Chopin lived in New Orleans from 1870 — just after her marriage — to 1879 — when her husband Oscar’s business as a cotton factor faltered. During that time, they progressed through a succession of homes representing the rise and fall of Oscar’s fortunes. As Christopher Benfey notes, they moved “steadily uptown, from their first house on Magazine Street in the working-class neighborhood known as the Irish Channel” to “a better address on Louisiana Avenue between Coliseum and Prytania, in the Garden District.”119 And as Emily Toth describes, Chopin’s time in the city clearly had a profound effect on her: “In New Orleans, Kate seems to have freed herself from some expectations.” She would “take long, solitary walks [. . .] smoking her Cuban cigarettes whenever she could.”120 Though much of Chopin’s decade in the city remains obscure, snippets survive. In her diary in 1894, for example, she vividly recalled the birth of her first child: “I can remember yet that hot southern day on Magazine street in New Orleans. The noises of the street coming through the open window.”121 Oscar Chopin also engaged with city

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life: as part of Company B of the First Louisiana Regiment, he took part in the White League riot in 1874. Though Chopin hardly returned to New Orleans after she left it in 1879, she came back many times in her imagination. In some ways, Chopin’s vision of the city chimed with the other representations of New Orleans that circulated widely at this time. As Helen Taylor notes, “Chopin was happy to present the city to an already enthusiastic national readership as the lush, exotic and cosmopolitan playground they believed it to be.”122 In her short story “A Matter of Prejudice” (1897), for example, the Creole Madame Carambeau is pictured, in exotic isolation, in an “old Spanish” house “far down in the French Quarter”: “[I]t stood upon a square of ground that was covered thick with a semi-tropical growth of plants and flowers. An impenetrable board fence, edged with a formidable row of iron spikes, shielded the garden from the prying glances of the occasional passer-by.”123 But at other moments, her city seems less familiar. For Taylor, Chopin’s New Orleans “is a bringer of life, change, vitality and sexuality [. . .] of eroticism rather than racial or physical danger.”124 The city certainly plays such a role in The Awakening (1899). From her “very charming house on Esplanade Street,” Edna Pontellier walks restlessly through New Orleans — from the “side street” where Madame Ratignolle lives in domestic contentment above her husband’s “drug store,” to pianist Mademoiselle Reisz’s garret, from whose windows “could be seen the crescent of the river, the masts of ships and the big chimneys of the Mississippi steamers,” to the bucolic “garden out in the suburbs” where, Chopin tells us, Edna “often stopped [. . .] during her perambulations.”125 “I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk,” she declares.126 And in Edna’s voyages between these separate poles, and through the doomed love affairs and other awakenings which they represent on the path to her eventual suicide, Chopin forged a unique conception of New Orleans which, in Taylor’s words, “symbolically challenged the gendered meanings of fin-de-siècle urban space.”127 Contemporary critics, who balked at the novel’s apparent immorality, could at least praise the “pretty bits of description of Creole life.”128 Alice Dunbar-Nelson opened up further imaginative spaces in her sketches of city life. Born in New Orleans in 1875, she was the daughter of a seamstress who had moved to the city from a Louisiana plantation, and possessed an “ambiguous black, white, and Native American ancestry [. . .] light skin and reddish hair.”129 Though in 1896, the year of Plessy v. Ferguson, Dunbar-Nelson undertook what Gloria Hull describes as “the almost archetypal Afro-American migratory pattern,” leaving New Orleans for the North, her childhood in the city frequently translated into her writing.130 Indeed, even before she left New Orleans, she published her first collection of sketches and poems, Violets (1895). Though she later dismissed the volume as little more than juvenilia, her stories explored spaces and communities in the city that had previously been ignored. As Anne Razey Gowdy notes, Dunbar-Nelson depicted “a class of working men and women — immigrants, minorities — often unhappy and oppressed, struggling to survive.”131 With the young protagonist of “Titee,” readers wandered through the “Third District, with its swamps and canals and commons and rail-road sections, and its wondrous, crooked, tortuous streets.” In “A Carnival Jangle,”

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readers witnessed something sinister lurking beyond the excitement of a Mardi Gras adventure — “Fantasy and fancy and grotesqueness in the costuming and behavior of the maskers run wild. Such dances and whoops and leaps as these hideous Indians and devils do indulge in” — which ends in murder. In “Anarchy Alley,” they visited a working-class “Bohemia”: “[F]rom the beer saloon and the cheap book-store, to the cheaper cook shop and uncertain lodging-house [. . .] Idleness and labor, poverty and opulence, the honest, law-abiding workingman, and the reckless, restless anarchist, jostle side by side, and brush each other’s elbows in terms of equality as they do nowhere else.”132 Even after she left, the city — particularly its neglected people and places — retained a hold on her imagination. “Tony’s Wife,” a story from her second collection of stories, The Goodness of St. Rocque (1899), is an unsentimental sketch set in a “little queer old shop on Prytania Street.” The shop is run by Tony, “a great, black-bearded, hoarse-voiced, six-foot specimen of Italian humanity,” and his common-law wife, “meek, pale, little, ugly, and German.” Tony is continually cruel to his companion: “He hated her in a lusty, roaring fashion, as a healthy beefy boy hates a sick cat and torments it to madness.” And when he dies, his family continues that cruelty: “[T]hey sent her forth in the world penniless, her worn fingers clutching her bundle of clothes in nervous agitation.”133 In these scenes of poverty and despair, there was little romance.

STRANGE TRUE STORIES While King, Chopin, and Dunbar-Nelson were all examining aspects of contemporary New Orleans life, there was another significant movement in New Orleans literature, towards a renewed fascination with history. As a new century dawned, the city’s writers took the opportunity to look back over the century just gone. After all, the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase was also approaching, and events and people from the colonial and more recent past were now replayed, reexamined, and given a contemporary significance. Most telling, because most charged, was the attention that these new histories gave to key moments in the antebellum relationship between black and white New Orleanians. In their hands, the slave dances at Congo Square and the infamous cruelties of Madame Lalaurie were imbued with new meaning. Part of the new fascination with Congo Square — an interest that had been conspicuously absent at the time that it actually served as a cultural hub for black New Orleanians — can be laid at the feet of New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Gottschalk had gained fame in the antebellum years with a series of exotic compositions — most famously, his Bamboula (1848) — which were readily associated with the city. As S. Frederick Starr makes clear, in truth “these songs had no known connection with Congo Square,” and Gottschalk probably found his inspiration in music he heard as a child from his San Dominguan grandmother and African-American nurse.134 Regardless, they came to serve as representatives of what late nineteenth-century New Orleanians imagined Congo Square to have sounded like.

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In both Grace King’s New Orleans: The Place and the People and Henry Castellanos’s New Orleans As It Was (1895), Congo Square was replayed as a microcosm of the whole system of slavery. Castellanos, a New Orleans lawyer who turned to writing at the end of his life, was more conservative than King, but both writers used the memory of Congo Square to wax nostalgic about antebellum life in the city, to reappropriate the site as a symbol of the antebellum relationship between black and white that they considered happy and natural. King asserted, The great holiday place for the slaves in those days was Congo square, then well outside the city limits. People are yet living who remember what a gala day Sunday was to the negroes, and with what keen anticipations they looked forward to it. On a bright afternoon they would gather in their gay, picturesque finery, by hundreds, even thousands, under the shades of sycamores, to dance the Bamboula.135

For Castellanos, “[n]othing could be more interesting than to see their wild and grotesque antics [. . .] the ludicrous contortions and gyrations of the Bamboula.”136 Though contemporary white spectators seem to have been largely disturbed by what they encountered at Congo Square, for King and Castellanos its weekly celebrations were important precisely because of their role as a spectacle for white New Orleanians. At Congo Square, they asserted, black and white fell into the acceptable roles of entertainer and entertained. According to King, “[w]hite people would promenade by to look at the scene, and the young gentlemen from the College of Orleans, on their way to the theatre, always stopped a moment to see the negroes dance ‘Congo.’”137 Castellanos also made clear: “White people, from motives of curiosity or fun, invariably attended these innocent pastimes. Their presence alone was sufficient to repress any serious disorder.”138 Developing this idea, both writers contrasted the apparently acceptable, public, and patrolled entertainments of Congo Square with the unnatural activities they associated with voodoo. For King, the very word “changes the gay, careless Sunday scene into its diabolic counterpart [. . .] the open square to hidden obscure corners.”139 For Castellanos, Congo Square was “tumult, motion and hilarity”; voodoo was a “disgusting organization or order, with its stupid creed and bestial rites.”140 And at the end of the day, everyone went home happy: “At nightfall the frolic ceased,” King concluded, “the dispersed revellers singing on their way home to another week of slavery and labour.”141 Having already featured Congo Square in The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable produced a long and influential account of its dances for the Century in 1886 — a text which contrasted significantly with the imaginings of King and Castellanos. First, Cable imbued the site of Congo Square itself with symbolic significance. It was, he noted, a liminal location marked by “poisonous wilderness on three sides and the proud man’s contumely on its front.” His description of its revelers was tellingly representative of the whole of Africa: “[F]rom the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast and the cape of Palms [. . .] Popoes, Cotocolies, Fida, Socoes, Agwas [. . .] and from interior Africa others equally proud and warlike; fierce Nagoes and Fonds; tawny Awassas; Iboes.” And where other writers

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portrayed Congo Square as a location where white observed black, Cable figured it as a meeting point for a variety of marginal and transient New Orleanians, both white and black: “[T]he butcher and baker, the raftsman, the sailor, the quadroon, the painted girl, and the negro slave.” Cable emphasized, too, that this was “the slave’s term of momentary liberty, and his simple, savage, musical and superstitious nature dedicated it to amatory song and dance tinctured with his rude notions of supernatural influences.”142 Perhaps most significantly, however, where King and Castellanos attempted to prettify Congo Square and strip it of some its meaning, Cable was at pains to portray its entertainments as powerful, serious, and potentially dangerous. For, as Starr notes, Cable was seeking to forge a “mythological image of Congo Square as a dissemination point for West Indian and African culture in New Orleans.”143 Though he characterized the music as “maddening repetition,” he asserted that its surface simplicity masked a potent complexity, and also hinted at a fruitful cross-cultural influence: In the dance! There was constant, exhilarating novelty — endless invention — in the turning, bowing, arm-swinging, posturing and leaping of the dancers [. . .] the music of Congo Plains was not tamed to mere monotone [. . .] The strain was wild. Its contact with French taste gave it often great tenderness of sentiment. It grew in fervor, and rose and sank, and rose again, with the play of emotion in the singers and dancers.

“No wonder,” Cable noted, “the police stopped it.” Unlike King and Castellanos, Cable’s vision was not marked by nostalgia: “Times have changed, and there is nothing to be regretted in the change that has come over Congo Square.” Because, for Cable, the significance of Congo Square to New Orleans was still unfolding; echoes of its music could be easily discerned: “Still a glamour hangs over its dark past. There is the pathos of slavery, the poetry of the weak oppressed by the strong [. . .] the bizarre melodies and dark lovers’ apostrophes live on.”144

27. The Bamboula, from George Washington Cable, “Creole Slave Dances: The Dance in Place Congo,” Century, 31:4 (February 1886), 517–32.

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When it came to accounting for the crimes of Madame Lalaurie and their meaning for the city’s history of slavery, there was equal opposition. Grace King, as Christopher Benfey makes clear, swerved the issue entirely. In her account of the Creole Families of New Orleans, King “gave extensive attention to the Macarty family” — Lalaurie’s maiden name — but she “steered clear of any whiff of scandal” and certainly did not repeat any of the “whispered stories about Delphine.”145 Castellanos, on the other hand, met the gossip head-on, playing the story for its sensational potential. “On penetrating into the attic,” he described ghoulishly, “their blood curdled by the horrid spectacle which struck their view — seven slaves, more or less mutilated, slowly perishing from hunger, deep lacerations and festering wounds.” Alongside “the martyrdom to which those poor, degraded people had been subjected,” he dwelt on the damage that had been done to Lalaurie’s property on Royal Street: “Everything was demolished; nothing respected. Antique and rare furniture, valued at more than ten thousand dollars, was mercilessly shivered to atoms.”146 When Harriet Martineau reported this story in her account of New Orleans in the 1830s, she had been warned not to print it as a typical example of slavery in the city. In the 1890s, Castellanos was still fighting that battle. He lamented that “deductions have been drawn ascribing exclusively the wrongs which I have just narrated to the baneful and pernicious influence of the institution of slavery.” Rather, he laid the blame at the feet of womankind: “There is a class of females, few in numbers it is true, the idiosyncracies of whose natures are at times so strange and illogical as to defy the test of close analyzation.” Castellanos had little time for the notion that the house was haunted. But in his reckoning of its fortunes in the wake of Lalaurie, a wider lament for the fortunes of the city he had known as a young man might be discerned: As a school house for young ladies; as a private boarding house; as a private residence; as a factory; as a commercial house and place of traffic, all these have been tried, but every venture has proved a ruinous failure. A year or two ago, it was the receptacle of the scum of Sicilian immigrants, and the fumes of malodorous filth which emanated from its interior proclaimed it what it really is: A HOUSE ACCURSED.147

Cable, on the other hand, read events differently. He included the story as part of his collection of Strange True Stories of Louisiana (1889) (in which he also narrated the extraordinary tale of Sally Miller, the white slave). He eschewed sensation for a calm reportage: “They say that Louis Philippe, afterwards king of the French, once slept in one of its chambers,” Cable began, in order “to clear the field of all mere they-says, and leave the ground for what we know to be authenticated fact.” He told the same terrible story that Martineau and Castellanos had told before him: “[S]even dark human forms were brought forth, gaunt and wild-eyed with famine and loaded with irons, having been found chained and tied in attitudes in which they had been kept so long that they were crippled for life.” Lalaurie’s house, Cable described, stood as a ghost-ridden monument” to the “horridest possibilities” of slavery.148 But, unlike Castellanos, Cable did not end the story there. As he lamented,

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“its days of dark romance were by no means ended.” “The era of political reconstruction came,” and Lalaurie’s house became a school that allowed “a common enjoyment of the civil right of public instruction without separation by race.” Inserting himself in the narrative, Cable reminisced, “I shall never forget the day [. . .] when I sat in its lofty drawing-rooms and heard its classes in their annual examination.” But this state of things was not to last. In the wake of the White League riot, Cable continued, the school’s teachers were confronted by the sight of “men swarming in through the wide gateway and doorway by dozens.” “We have come,” announces a White Leaguer, “to remove the colored pupils.”149 In the assembly room — “Madame Lalaurie’s dining-hall,” Cable notes significantly — the school roll was called, and the White Leaguers challenged each girl about the status of her race. This act of violence, Cable suggested, was no less traumatic than those cruelties that had gone before. And if that message wasn’t clear enough, in response to a White Leaguer who had complained about Cable’s presentation of events, published in the Century, Cable asserted unapologetically: “[T]here are harms deeper and far more lasting than bodily injuries, and I say there was not a black man in the State — no, nor a white man [. . .] — who was not, and does not remain to this day, harmed by the whole policy and action of the White League.” “This is only a deep conviction,” he concluded, “History will decide whether or not it is well founded.”150

“THAT MUCH- TALKED- OF VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS” In retrospect, it is easy to link the continuing growth of tourism in this period to the growing profile of the city in popular culture and, conversely, the continuing failure to reestablish the city on a viable economic footing. As Julian Ralph lamented, recalling the splendid visions of earlier times, “New Orleans, from a commercial point of view, is new-born, or, at least, she is but newly recovering the relation to our great country of the present time which she bore to the smaller one of ante-bellum days [. . .] she might now have been one of the very great cities of the world.”151 As Joy Jackson echoes, in comparison with other cities, and in a variety of ways, “New Orleans managed to carry over into its late nineteenthcentury life many of the customs, sights, and sounds of antebellum days.” While this was appealing to its many visitors, it did little to help the city’s finances: “[I]ts industrial enterprises were still operating on a modest scale [. . .] Larger cotton exports went hand in hand with a practically empty city treasury. Electric lights on the river front illuminated ramshackle wharves badly in need of repair.” The New South boosting of the Exposition had achieved little, and the city was hampered by debts: between 1882 and 1895, “a considerable portion of city funds went to pay off old debts incurred [. . .] in the early 1870s.”152 While the city’s population was still growing, it was badly losing ground with America’s other cities. In 1880, it was home to 216,090, the tenth-biggest city in the nation. By 1900, New Orleans contained 287,104 inhabitants, and had slipped to twelfth. In comparison, New York now had a population of roughly three and a half million; Chicago and Philadelphia each boasted well over one million.153

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There were those who held out hope that the city would still finally capitalize on its promise. Considering “New Orleans and Reconstruction” for the Atlantic Monthly in 1901, Albert Phelps well understood that New Orleans had always been a case of deferred potential. The earliest pioneers of the Mississippi Valley, he described, had left “a legacy of dreams, of fiery imagination, of plans that stretched into the golden haze of the future.” And in the glorious visions of these men, “there had always been foreshadowed the figure of a city which should dominate this enormous valley of fertility and richness, — a city lying near the mouth of the great river which, with its countless branches, drained and enriched and opened this vast treasure store of Nature.” Phelps knew all too well, therefore, that “as New Orleans is one of the few cities of this country with a past, so, likewise, it has always been the city of the future.” Surveying the current scene, Phelps lamented the deprivations to which the city had been subject in recent years: “The young generation of many an old house was glad to drive street cars, or snip cloth at a dry-goods counter.” And others experienced much worse: “This is the story of the strong, but the weaker went to the wall, as always; and some day, when the novelist of the city shall come, he shall find in the whispered stories of these days themes as powerful, significant, pathetic, and tragic as the themes of Tolstoi.”154 Confronted with “the decaying houses of the past” — the increasingly dilapidated French Quarter — Phelps felt that strangers to New Orleans found it difficult “to understand this life, which seems to draw its present existence from the past.” But even now, the “vast possibilities” of the future still enchanted; the prophecies persisted. “The central position of New Orleans in this wide region and its extraordinary facilities for shipping,” Phelps exhorted, “seem to single it out to be the great port of the whole country.” If New Orleans wanted to be “the great world-city which Nature seemed to design she should be”; if the city wanted to be “mistress of the richest portion of the continent”; if, indeed, it wanted again to be the Southern Queen, then “commerce,” Phelps argued, would be the key. But as Phelps also confessed, “this gift of Nature to New Orleans has never been, as yet, worked to its full advantage.” What was left in recompense, as ever, was a singular reputation: “As a city of gayety and pleasure, in spite of her myriad sorrows, New Orleans is known above all her sister cities.”155 In that regard, at least, Phelps was prophetic: it was a telling epitaph for the city as it entered the twentieth century. Of course, Phelps’s dream of the renewing potential of “commerce” had hardly been abandoned by New Orleans. In J. Mark Souther’s assessment, up until the middle of the twentieth century “New Orleans municipal and business leaders remained focused on the city’s port as its primary economic engine.”156 But even at the end of the nineteenth century, the turn towards tourism, already discernible at the time of the Exposition, was well under way. As Kevin Fox Gotham outlines, spurred on by the Cotton Centennial, this was the moment that “the growing challenges of urbanization and industrialization spearheaded the mobilization of New Orleans business elites to form new organizations and develop strategies to promote travel to the city.” As writers and travelers developed a growing cultural awareness of the city, organizations which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century (the Young Men’s Business League, the New Orleans Progressive Union, and the New Orleans Association of Commerce), “supplied the organizational

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structures, marketing strategies, and promotional efforts to disseminate this image on an international scale and link New Orleans with a fledgling mass tourism industry.”157 And in so doing, they indelibly fixed, in Anthony Stanonis’s telling phrase, “the image of New Orleans as a product of a romantic, foreign past rather than a symbol of efficient, American modernity.”158 There was a clear focus to these early years of tourism expansion. As Stanonis notes, “[b]etween the 1890s and 1910s, tourism in New Orleans rested largely on revelers eager to partake in Mardi Gras and male travelers drawn to Storyville, the city’s vice district.”159 Indeed, J. Mark Souther has argued that “it was only many decades later that the process of place-making gave rise to a tourism industry that focused preponderantly on the French Quarter.”160 But even in the last years of the nineteenth century, the pull of the French Quarter for the city’s visitors was evident. Cable, of course, stoked the fire. “When you [. . .] make that much-talked-of visit to New Orleans,” he told an imagined interlocutor in Strange True Stories of Louisiana, a representative for his reader, “by all means see early whatever evidence of progress and aggrandizement her hospitable citizens wish to show you; New Orleans begins to the living present, and has serious practical relations with these United States and this great living world and age.” “And yet,” he continued, “I want the first morning walk that you two take together and alone to be in the old French Quarter.”161 When Elizabeth Cumings visited the city in 1895, for example, she made a beeline for the “haunted house which Cable has immortalized” — even if she was a little disappointed to discover that “a saloon smelling of sour beer occupied most of the lower floor,” and equally chagrined by a “maternal creole” who dismissed all talk of ghosts: “Nussing in dose story I tell you.”162 Even for New Orleanians, the French Quarter was increasingly imagined as a place of romance and escape. In the Picayune, Catharine Cole reported a story of a couple of charming women, living under orange trees and jasmine vines in the heart of our Garden District, who ran away into French Town and were gone for a week. They took a traveling bag with them and an easel and no end of brushes and pencils, and they concealed themselves in an entresol somewhere in the Rue Royale.163

Its status as a place of bohemian refuge was forming, too. The soon-to-be prolific and popular short-story writer William Sydney Porter turned up in New Orleans in 1896, fleeing embezzlement charges. More than sanctuary, the city gave him his pen name. “I went to New Orleans,” Porter remembered in a New York Times profile in 1909, not long before his death, “and took up literary work in earnest. I sent stories to newspapers, weeklies, and magazines all over the country [. . .] It was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O. Henry.”164 Jeanette Covert Nolan notes, “even though his own tribulations pressed upon him, and almost against his will, the city interested him.”165 Though he soon left the city for Honduras, it certainly left some kind of impression. In “The Making of a New Yorker,” for example, the rambling protagonist “Raggles” tramps through a succession of American cities, “and his mind carried a concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized and typified each one.” “New Orleans,” Porter

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described, “had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and that was all.”166 Accounts of the city continued to proliferate in the illustrated press. Two in particular emphasized those elements of life in the city — at least, the publishable ones — that drew increasing numbers of visitors to New Orleans and set the template for its future expansion. Julian Ralph spent time in New Orleans as part of a tour of the South for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and was at pains to emphasize its appeal to tourists. “In New Orleans,” Ralph declared, “a wealth of romantic and picturesque and gayly colored reminders of shifting dynasties and exciting history beats in upon my mind.”167 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ralph gave little sense of the tensions that marked the urban environment. The city was covered in a veneer of pleasure: “It is the best of all the American winter resorts, because it has what others possess (which is to say, warm weather and sunshine), and, in addition, it offers the theatres, shops, restaurants, crowds, clubs, and multiform entertainments of a city of the first class. It is par excellence a city of fun, fair women, rich food, and flowers.” Ralph dwelt on the appeal of Mardi Gras, and noted its attempt at commercial expansion: “The mardi gras carnival is advertising its attractions to such an extent that the last occurrence of this festival found 100,000 strangers there, representing every State and large city in the Union.” And for Ralph, carnival season provided “the key to the character of the people.” It seemed to prove one thing about New Orleanians: “They are not like the rest of us.”168 This abiding sense of otherness was compounded by Ralph’s reaction to the city’s attempts at modernity, in which he expressed the dichotomy at the heart of city life: “Here in New Orleans [. . .] the people insist upon taking visitors to see the new part of each city, among the modern residences; and the visitors persist in hastening back to the old French quarter, always and every time.” “I suppose,” he complained, “it cannot be expected that people will ever understand the full value of the relics of their past.” In a similar vein, he was uncomfortable at the local denigration of George Washington Cable: “It gives a peculiar sensation to hear Cable abused by the creoles — and you never can hear anything but abuse of him.” This baffled him: “Surely it was he who lifted them to a sentimental and romantic realm, out from their walled-in courts of the French quarter.” In short, Ralph felt it was obvious what drew visitors to the city: “[T]he French market, the cathedral, the French quarter, and those other really charming bits of the city which have been the subjects of descriptive articles and letters since our grandfathers’ days [. . .] and they remain powerful magnets to draw future battalions of tourists there.” While “a typical Chicago man would throw up his hands in horror at the lamentable backwardness of the city [. . .] We who seek change in travel, and who are rested where others rest, love New Orleans all the better for its so-called faults.”169 Texan Belle Hunt, writing for Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, went further in her appreciation of the city’s history: “The past clings to the present in New Orleans,” she explained, “nay [. . .] it locks hands with the future until everything is pregnant with triple significance.” Like Ralph, Hunt rejected the city’s contemporary sights. When a visitor to New Orleans “strolls or drives on St. Charles

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28. In the Old French Quarter, from Julian Ralph, “New Orleans, Our Southern Capital,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 86:513 (February 1893), 364–86.

Avenue, Jackson Street or Esplanade,” she complained, “he sees the magnificent modern homes set in their green lawns” but “forgets that he is in any particular Southern city.” However, as soon as the traveler crosses Canal Street, “lo! the scene shifts like a transformation in an extravaganza.” Hunt’s account of the French Quarter was ecstatic, transcendent: “There seems a veritable change in atmosphere; a nearer, more sensuous warmth in the sun; in the breeze a hint of sleep, yet keenest consciousness; in the sky a deeper, calmer blue; in wild bird’s song, flower’s breath and insect hum a thrill of human reciprocity, intoxicating and divine!” Fact and fiction mingled in the associations that it evoked, a veritable panorama of the century just gone:

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In one of these gaunt old houses Lafayette lodged when he was here; in another, Jenny Lind; General Jackson’s headquarters were once at 84 Royal; and the pink house set ‘cat-a-cornered’ further down is ‘Sieur George’s’ of Cable’s romance. ‘Mme. John’s’ is not far off, and ‘Mme. Delphine’ arched her dainty instep over the tiny rivulet of mud there at your feet [. . .] On one goes, bewildered but fascinated.

Hunt also marveled at “the ‘Haunted House,’ on the corner of Rue Royale and Hospital Street” and “Congo Square, where Voudous dance by midnight moon.”170 Already, both locations had been rehabilitated as prime tourist attractions. Though she — and others — also noticed the poverty of some of the Quarter’s inhabitants — “old hags, drunken men, pale-faced young mothers and ghastly, bold-eyed children huddled together in penury and filth” — they, too, were swiftly subsumed within the general aura of romance and sensuality: “The tinkle of street-car bell makes you drowsy; the warm, moist air flits on and off your cheek, like the kisses of one who loves you while you sleep.” “New Orleans is a gumbo,” Hunt concluded, reaching for a metaphor that others would often adopt, and one with a very particular recipe: “Mix well, and let simmer for a couple of centuries.”171 And, in many ways, she was right: the Southern Queen’s future lay in its past — or, at least, a version of it, rendered picturesque and safe by the passage of time.

EPILOGUE: “WHAT A WONDERFUL CENTURY” In 1903, New Orleans celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase in fine style. As Samuel Wilson and Leonard Huber describe, “[t]here was a gala concert at the French Opera House followed by a ball [. . .] a high mass and Te Deum at the St. Louis Cathedral, a review of troops at the Cabildo and a reenactment of the transfer ceremony in the sala capitular.”172 Governor David Francis exhorted: “What a wonderful century we are rounding out by this centennial celebration. What marvelous development and growth have characterized the 100 years during which this territory has existed, under the inspiring and broadening influences of self-government.”173 That was one way of looking at it. But viewed from any angle, it had indeed been an extraordinary century — of battles lost and won, of slavery and freedom, of riches and rags, of death and rebirth. The twentieth century would present new challenges. Around the corner was an era of reform — as Jackson outlines, “radical changes in the conquest of yellow fever, the eradication of smallpox, proper drainage, a sewerage system, water purification, and improved port facilities.”174 And beyond those battles, other struggles: for civil rights; for preservation, renovation, and gentrification; for tourist dollars; and, always, for survival, in the face of new political and economic crises, poverty and crime, hurricanes and oil spills. For New Orleans, the tumultuous events of the nineteenth century had ended with an appropriate bang. In many ways, the story of Robert Charles could not have been more fitting. Charles was born shortly after the end of the Civil War, a child of Reconstruction. Growing up in Copiah County, Mississippi, he was

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one of the thousands who left plantations in the 1890s to head for the city. Like many of his fellow migrants, once he reached New Orleans, Charles worked in a variety of odd jobs. But he also developed other concerns. Faced with the growing encroachments of segregation and disenfranchisement, Charles developed a growing discontent with the inequities of the world around him. In particular, he became “increasingly involved in promoting the cause of black emigration to Africa.”175 And in the wake of the notorious lynching, in Georgia, of Sam Hose — as Joel Williamson describes, “Hose was tortured, burned, and then his body reclaimed from the fire and slices taken from his heart and liver” — he became more militant.176 “According to his coworkers on the levee,” Wagner notes, “Charles began to advocate self-defense” in the face of white brutality.177 As events proved, this was more than just talk. On the evening of Monday, July 23, 1900, Charles and his roommate Lenard Pierce left their lodgings on Fourth Street to visit two female acquaintances on Dryades Street. While waiting on a step down the block, the two men were approached by three police officers. “What happened then,” William Ivy Hair notes, “commenced one of the bloodiest, most anarchic weeks in New Orleans’ history.”178 The policemen’s questions led to a scuffle, and in the ensuing struggle Charles exchanged gunshots with the officers, wounding one and receiving his own injury. Managing to escape, Charles went home to Fourth Street and collected his Winchester rifle. When the police arrived to apprehend him, Charles shot his way out, killing two officers in the process. On Tuesday morning, a massive manhunt began. While the police scoured the city’s streets, mobs began to form. As Hair notes, “[h]ostility between whites and blacks in the city had been mounting for some time, and all ingredients for an outbreak of racial terror were already present.”179 Charles’s actions provided the spark that ignited them. Groups of white men roamed through the city, beating and killing black men and women. Charles successfully evaded capture until Friday, when an informant told the police that the fugitive was holed up at 1208 Saratoga Street, between Clio and Erato, sheltered by friends from Mississippi. In 1900, this remained an area where “working-class whites and blacks lived [. . .] alongside each other in small duplex cottages”; today, its residents live in the shadow of the Pontchartrain Expressway, near the Louisiana Superdome.180 When the police arrived to apprehend him, Charles was still not willing to go quietly. He killed two more policemen before fleeing to the building’s second story — the location of his last stand. The building was soon surrounded. The police were joined by a large white mob, who had brought their own armaments. The crowd poured bullets into Charles’s hiding place; still he managed to return fire, and “fatally wounded two other men and injured nineteen more.”181 Only when the building was set on fire did Charles attempt to run; he was cut down by a hail of bullets. Long after he was dead, members of the crowd emptied their weapons into his corpse, stamping it into the mud. And still the violence was not over. As Williamson highlights, “after Charles’s death, the mobs broke loose again, burning down a large school building for blacks, killing three more black people, and beating many others.”182 In Dale Somers’s judgment, these events were both symptomatic and prophetic, since

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they effectively “established the pattern for Negro-white relations for the next half century.”183 Reaction to Charles’s actions among the city’s black community was mixed. Hair notes, “[p]roperty owners among the black and Creole of color population were said to be more gratified at Charles’s death than were the whites, since their fear of racial retaliation had grown with each day he remained at large.”184 One voice, at least, was raised high in Charles’s defense. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an anti-lynching campaigner who published a coruscating account of the events surrounding his death, Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900). Charles’s initial resistance to arrest, she asserted, was an understandable reaction to what was an “inexcusable and unprovoked assault upon two colored men by police officers of New Orleans.” While he “had not broken the peace in any way whatever,” he was still made the “victim of a savage attack.” In Wells-Barnett’s judgment, if Charles had lived in a “law-abiding community” he could have safely submitted to “a trial by a jury of his peers”; but he would have known “that his arrest in New Orleans, even for defending his life” would lead, inevitably, to “death by lynching at the hands of a cowardly mob.” Viewed in such a light, his actions were courageous: “He very bravely determined to protect his life as long as he had breath in his body and strength to draw a hair trigger on his would-be murderers.”185 And, in turn, Wells-Barnett was certain that “to the people of his own race Robert Charles will always be regarded as the hero of New Orleans.”186 Briefly, surreptitiously, that may have been true. Jelly Roll Morton — who even maintained, hopefully, “there has never been anything authentic that Robert Charles was captured” — also remembered that “like many other bad men, he had a song originated on him.” But the authorities quickly, and successfully, moved to ban it: “I once knew the Robert Charles song,” Morton remembered, “but I found it was best for me to forget it. And that I did, in order to go along with the world on the peaceful side.”187 If the death of Robert Charles announced the end of one century, the birth of another New Orleanian ushered in another. Louis Armstrong liked to claim that he was born on Independence Day, 1900. Technically, he was a year and a month out; poetically, he was on the money. “It was the Fourth of July,” Armstrong asserted in his autobiography, “when almost anything can happen.” He was born in James Alley, “in the very heart of what is called The Battlefield,” Armstrong asserted, “because the toughest characters in town used to live there, and would shoot and fight so much.” It was a colorful New Orleans neighborhood: “There were churchpeople, gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, thieves, prostitutes and lots of children.” His father left. His mother went to black Storyville. “Whether my mother did any hustling,” Armstrong demurred, “I cannot say.” After some time with his grandmother, Armstrong went to live with his mother. On the way to his new home, at the age of five, he took his first trip on a streetcar, and he learned something new about city life: “I walked right up to the front of the car without noticing the signs on the backs of the seats on both sides, which read: FOR COLORED PASSENGERS ONLY.”188 He was soon dragged back. Quickly, Armstrong came to enjoy his new environment: “That neighborhood certainly had a lot to offer.” Funky Butt Hall was down the street, and Armstrong

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and his friends “could hear the orchestra from the sidewalk.” They certainly heard Buddy Bolden: “Old Buddy Bolden blew so hard that I used to wonder if I would ever have enough lung power to fill one of those cornets.” Age would give him a different perspective: “I think he blew too hard [. . .] In any case he finally went crazy. You can figure that out for yourself.”189 There were other forms of music, too. He sang in a “little quartet” that “passed the hat” in the District; he went to church with his mother, where “Elder Cozy [. . .] had the whole church rocking.” And after he was sent to the Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys for firing a pistol on New Year’s Eve, he “took up the bugle”; soon, “I was not only a musician, but a band leader!” Leaving the home, Armstrong remembered, “I was young and strong and had all the ambition in the world.” He delivered coal during the day, played in the honky-tonks at night. His day job had an added perk: “What I appreciated most about being able to go into Storyville without being bothered by the cops, was Pete Lala’s cabaret, where Joe Oliver had his band and where he was blowing up a storm on his cornet.” And in 1917, he witnessed a different kind of history when the District was finally closed down: “It was sure a sad scene. They reminded me of a gang of refugees. Some of them had spent the best part of their lives there. Others had never known any other kind of life.”190 But, as Armstrong noted, the city was changing. It was time for a “new generation”: “My little crowd begun to look forward to other kicks, like our jazz band, our quartet and other musical activities.” When Joe Oliver left town for Chicago, Armstrong was chosen to take his place: “What a thrill that was! To think I was considered up to taking Joe Oliver’s place in the best band in town!” His popularity grew exponentially; the city was his: “I [. . .] could go into any part of New Orleans without being bothered.” Eventually, Armstrong went the same way as Oliver. But when he boarded the train to leave for the North, he was sent off in fine style: “It seemed like all of New Orleans had gathered at the train to give me a little luck.” “I had hit the big time,” Armstrong remembered happily, “I was up North with the greats [. . .] My boyhood dream had come true at last.”191 It was a New Orleans story, not just a product of Storyville and segregation, though certainly that, but the result of a hundred years and more of sound and fury, sadness and suffering, a triumph of hope over experience. Soon, it would belong to the world.

Acknowledgements

Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans, I will forever remain faithful New Orleans. I thank you New Orleans. LIL WAYNE

Unlike Lil Wayne, I wasn’t born and raised in New Orleans; but, as this book demonstrates, the city at the mouth of the Mississippi has always had a habit of making strangers feel at home. And, researching and writing this book over the last few years, I certainly have some people to thank. So, first of all, thank you New Orleans, for providing the warmest welcome during research trips, both pre- and post-Katrina, and for remaining a constant source of inspiration and fascination during the long hours of research and writing. I hope I’ve done justice to the Southern Queen and her inhabitants in these pages, and I hope that this book is a small testament to the necessity of the ongoing survival of New Orleans — a place which, as Lafcadio Hearn put it so rightly in the 1870s, is like “no other city upon the face of the earth.” Next, I need to express my gratitude to Michael Greenwood, my editor at Continuum, who has been a model of patience and a consistent and reliable source of guidance. Indeed, I’m pleased to be able to show my gratitude to everyone at Continuum and Pindar NZ who worked on this book. I would also like to thank the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Library of Congress for permission to reproduce images in their collections, and the librarians at those institutions and at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University, the Stephen F. Austin State University Library, the British Library, and the Cambridge University Library, for all their assistance. I’m also happy to be able to acknowledge my colleagues in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, for stimulation and succor. Special mention must go to Malcolm McLaughlin — not only a great scholar, but a good friend, and a dependable font of humor in the face of adversity. I presented an early version of Chapter 5 of this book at the British Association for American Studies Conference 2008 hosted by Edinburgh University, which led to many useful conversations. Thanks, too, should go to the editors of Material Culture, who indulged me by publishing a long review essay on recent New Orleans scholarship, the writing of which helped to formulate some thoughts which later appeared in Chapter 6. Finally, some personal acknowledgements. I’d like to thank Helen, Panos and Katerina Haberis for all their support (not to mention Kat’s karaoke turn at the Cat’s Meow on Bourbon Street). I’d like to thank my parents, Kathleen and Peter,

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for their continued and unfailing encouragement. They are my longest-serving readers, and remain my most enthusiastic audience. Most of all, I’d like to thank my wife Arianna, for far more than can be mentioned here. At different times during the writing of this book she has been a tireless travel companion, proofreader, editor, and friend. And, now, she is a mother to Delilah, who grew with this book.

Notes

Notes to Introduction: A Bend in the River 1 Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and ‘Inventor of Jazz’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 4–5. 2 Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, S. Frederick Starr ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 7. 3 E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand (New York: A. L. Burt, n.d.), 429. 4 Belle Hunt, “New Orleans, Yesterday and To-day,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, 31:6 (June 1891), 641–55, 654. 5 Lafcadio Hearn, “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances,” Century, 27:1 (November 1883), 40–8, 40. 6 Joshua Clark, “Introduction,” French Quarter Fiction: The Newest Stories of America’s Oldest Bohemia (New Orleans: Light of New Orleans Publishing, 2003), 12. 7 Louise McKinney, New Orleans: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), viii. 8 J. Mark Souther, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 14. 9 Theodore Clapp, Autobiographical Sketches and Recollections (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1857), v. 10 Craig E. Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), xix. 11 Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883), 454. 12 Josh Neufeld, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (New York: Pantheon, 2009). 13 Matthew Albright, “$5 Million Tourism Campaign: ‘This isn’t the first time New Orleans has survived the British’,” NOLA.com, June 17, 2010. Available at http://www.nola.com/news/ gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/5_million_tourism_campaign_thi.html (accessed August 26, 2010). 14 Richard S. Kennedy, Literary New Orleans: Essays and Meditations (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), xiv. 15 Peirce F. Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (Santa Fe: Center for American Places, 2003), 5, xvi. 16 Clark, “Introduction,” 10. 17 Lomax, Mister, 107. 18 James Edward Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches (Philadelphia: Key & Biddle, 1833), 233. 19 Julian Ralph, “New Orleans, Our Southern Capital,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 86:513 (February 1893), 364–86, 365. 20 Anthony J. Stanonis, Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 25.

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21 David Hammer, “Road Home Discriminated, Judge Rules,” NOLA.com, August 17, 2010. Available at http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/base/news-15/ 128202681992740.xml&coll=1 (accessed August 26, 2010). 22 Amy Liu and Allison Plyer, “An Overview of Greater New Orleans: From Recovery to Transformation,” The New Orleans Index at Five (Washington: Brookings Institution and Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, 2010), 6. 23 Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 14. 24 Lewis, New Orleans, 20. 25 Tristram R. Kidder, “Making the City Inevitable: Native Americans and the Geography of New Orleans,” in Craig E. Colten ed., Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 9–22, 11. 26 John Garretson Clark, New Orleans, 1718–1812: An Economic History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 19. 27 Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, 3 vols, Vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1841), 11. 28 Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1923), 257–8. 29 Albert Phelps, Louisiana: A Record of Expansion (New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1905), 60. 30 Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 8. 31 Dawdy, Building, 26. 32 Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1. 33 Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut (London: Joseph Thomas, 1841), 320. 34 Dawdy, Building, 7. 35 Clark, New Orleans, 55. 36 Ingersoll, Mammon, 73. 37 Ibid. 38 Caryn Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 13. 39 Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 95. 40 James Pitot, Observations on the Colony of Louisiana from 1796 to 1802, Henry C. Pitot trans. and ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 108. 41 Ingersoll, Mammon, 195. 42 Kimberly Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 17. 43 Hanger, Bounded, 1. 44 Paul F. Lachance, “Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Louisiana,” in David P. Geggus ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 209–30, 209. 45 Ibid. 46 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 373. 47 Frederic Austin Ogg, The Opening of the Mississippi: A Struggle for Supremacy in the American Interior (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 437.

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48 Bruce Tyler, “The Mississippi River Trade, 1784–1788,” Louisiana History, 12:3 (Summer 1971), 255–67, 262. 49 Isaac Weld, Travels Through the States of North America (London: John Stockdale, 1799), 43. 50 André Michaux, Travels to the Westward of the Allegany Mountains (London: Richard Phillips, 1805), 31. 51 Zadok Cramer, The Navigator: Containing Directions for Navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers (Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum, 1811), 224. 52 Alexander Wilson, “Particulars of the Death of Capt. Lewis,” Port Folio, 7:1 (January 1812), 34–47, 36. 53 Wilson, “Particulars,” 45.

Notes to Chapter 1: “A very difficult people to manage”: The Battles for New Orleans 1 Alexander Adam, A Summary of Geography and History (London: T. Cadell, 1802), 701. 2 Thomas Kennedy, Poems (Washington City: Daniel Rapine, 1816), 159. 3 Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 192. 4 Jonathan Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America (London: printed for the author, 1778), 528–9. 5 Fortesque Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country (Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear & Richbaum, 1810), 333–5. 6 Andrew Ellicott, The Journal of Andrew Ellicott (Philadelphia: Budd & Bartram, 1803), 191–2. 7 Francis Baily, Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America In 1796 & 1797 (London: Baily Brothers, 1856), 314, 307, 304. 8 Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Voyage à la Louisiane (Paris: Dentu, 1802), v. 9 James Pitot, Observations on the Colony of Louisiana from 1796 to 1802, Henry C. Pitot trans. and ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 2–3. 10 Duke De La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Richard Phillips, 1800), 479–83. 11 Jon Kukla, A Wilderness so Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2003), 214. 12 Peter J. Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 37. 13 Pierre-Louis Berquin-Duvallon, Travels in Louisiana and the Floridas, in the Year 1802, John Davis trans. (New York: I. Riley & Co., 1806), 71. 14 Berquin-Duvallon, Travels, iv. 15 Berquin-Duvallon, Travels, 35, 24, 27, 32. 16 Berquin-Duvallon, Travels, 47, 53, 48, 52, 65, 59, 35, 78. 17 Thomas Jefferson, The Correspondence of Jefferson and Du Pont de Nemours, Gilbert Chinard ed. (New York: Lenox Hill, 1971), 47. 18 “Monthly Commercial Report,” Monthly Magazine, 15:1 (February 1, 1803), 98–9, 98. 19 “Papers Relative to Louisiana,” Cobbett’s Annual Register, 3 (January–June 1803), 240–4, 243. 20 Charles Brockden Brown, An Address to the Government of the United States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French (Philadelphia: J. Conrad, 1803), 54. 21 “Papers Relative to Louisiana,” 241.

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22 Mississippi Question: Report of a Debate in the Senate of the United States, William Duane ed., (Philadelphia: W. Duane, 1803), 5. 23 “Louisiana,” Cobbett’s Annual Register, 3 (January–June 1803), 432–3, 432. 24 Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph ed., 4 vols, Vol. 3 (Charlottesville, VA: F. Carr, & Co., 1829), 492–4. 25 Kukla, Wilderness, 233. 26 Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of his Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892), 312–13. 27 Jefferson, Memoir, Vol. 3, 501. 28 Paul F. Lachance, “Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Louisiana,” in David P. Geggus ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 209–30, 210. 29 Kastor, Crucible, 40. 30 François Barbé-Marbois, The History of Louisiana (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830), 271–5. 31 The Annual Register; or, A View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1803 (London: W. Otridge & Son, 1805), 339. 32 Fisher Ames, Works of Fisher Ames, Seth Ames ed., 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854), 323–4. 33 Zadok Cramer, The Navigator: Containing Directions for Navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers (Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum, 1811), 224. 34 Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana: The Spanish Domination (New York: Redfield, 1854), 602, 604. 35 Pierre Clément Laussat, Memoirs of My Life, Agnes-Josephine Pastwa trans., Robert D. Bush ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 89. 36 C. C. Robin, Voyage to Louisiana, Stuart O. Landry trans. and ed. (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2000), 65–6. 37 Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. H. A. Washington ed., 9 vols, Vol. 4 (New York: John C. Riker, 1853), 524. 38 William Claiborne, Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, Dunbar Rowland ed., 6 vols, Vol. 1 (Jackson, MS: State Department of Archives and History, 1917), 372. 39 George Dargo, Jefferson’s Louisiana: Politics and the Clash of Legal Traditions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 11. 40 Joseph G. Tregle Jr., “Creoles and Americans,” in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon eds, Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 131–88, 134. 41 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 1, 322, 330. 42 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 1, 331, 354, 358, 359. 43 Otto A. Rothert, The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 325. 44 Thomas Ashe, Travels in America, Performed in 1806, 3 vols, Vol. 3 (London: Richard Philips, 1808), 251, 254. 45 Ashe, Travels, Vol. 3, 258. 46 Ashe, Travels, Vol. 3, 264. 47 Ashe, Travels, Vol. 3, 271, 274. 48 Theophilus Moore, Marriage Customs and Modes of Courtship of the Various Nations of the Universe (London: John Bumpus, 1820).

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49 Amos Stoddard, Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of Louisiana (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1812), 151. 50 Stoddard, Sketches, 320–8. 51 Jedidiah Morse, The American Universal Geography, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Boston: Thomas & Andrews, 1812), 594. 52 “Letter from Mr. Mills,” Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine, 9:5 (September 1813), 233–7, 236. 53 Henry Ker, Travels through the Western Interior of the United States (Elizabethtown, NJ: printed for the author, 1816), 46–9. 54 Ker, Travels, 49. 55 John Melish, Travels through the United States of America (London: George Cowie & Co., 1818), 389. 56 “New Orleans,” American Register, 6 (1810), 325–7, 326. 57 Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres (New York: Redfield, 1854), 184. 58 Samuel Wilson Jr., “Early History of Faubourg St. Mary,” in New Orleans Architecture: The American Sector (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1998), 11. 59 Richard and Marina Campanella, New Orleans, Then and Now (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1999), 14. 60 Nolte, Fifty, 185. 61 James H. Dormon, “The Persistent Specter: Slave Rebellion in Territorial Louisiana,” Louisiana History, 18:4 (Autumn 1977), 389–404, 391. 62 John Lambert, Travels through Lower Canada and the United States, 3 vols, Vol. 3 (London: Richard Phillips, 1810), 153. 63 Buckner F. Melton, Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason (New York: Wiley, 2002), 48. 64 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 3, 127. 65 Melton, Burr, 84. 66 “Queries,” Balance and Columbian Repository (Tuesday, August 20, 1805), 267. 67 Kastor, Crucible, 74. 68 Melton, Burr, 123. 69 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 42. 70 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 47. 71 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 54. 72 Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr (Philadelphia: Hopkins & Earle, 1808), 4, 6. 73 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 97. 74 Jefferson, Memoir, Vol. 4, 97–8. 75 Jefferson, Memoir, Vol. 4, 115–16. 76 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 175. 77 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 194–5. 78 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 284. 79 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 352. 80 Paul F. Lachance, “The 1809 Immigration of Saint- Domingue Refugees to New Orleans: Reception, Integration and Impact,” Louisiana History, 29:2 (Spring 1988), 109–41, 112. 81 Campbell Gibson, “Rank by Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places, Listed Alphabetically by State: 1790–1990.” Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/ twps0027/tab01.txt (accessed August 27, 2010). 82 Lachance, “1809,” 111. 83 Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 260. 84 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 357.

198 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

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Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 365. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 392. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 402. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 4, 422. Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 289. Nathalie Dessens, From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 162. Dessens, Saint-Domingue, 85. Sublette, World, 283. Dessens, Saint-Domingue, 160. Dormon, “Persistent,” 391. Ingersoll, Mammon, 283–4. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 2, 387. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 3, 7. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 3, 187. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 2, 233. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 2, 239. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 2, 245. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 95. Dormon, “Persistent,” 392. Thomas Marshall Thompson, “National Newspaper and Legislative Reactions to Louisiana’s Deslondes Slave Revolt of 1811,” Louisiana History, 33:1 (Winter 1992), 5–29, 8. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 94. Kastor, Crucible, 127. Kastor, Crucible, 128. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 96. Dormon, “Persistent,” 8. Ingersoll, Mammon, 293. Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 134. Thompson, “National,” 21. Kastor, Crucible, 130. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 107. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 130. Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 5, 109. Sublette, World, 264. Ibid. William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 2005), 30. Davis, Pirates, 50. Davis, Pirates, 89. Arsène Latour, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana (Philadelphia: John Conrad & Co., 1816), 14–15. Davis, Pirates, 87–8. Davis, Pirates, 110. “Louisiana,” Weekly Register (Saturday, May 1, 1813), 142. “Pirates of Barrataria,” Niles’ Weekly Register (Saturday, October 22, 1814), 93–4. “Historical Affairs,” Scots Magazine (December 1814), 945–53, 949. “British Proclamations, &c,” Niles’ Weekly Register (Saturday, November 5, 1814), 133.

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129 Lord Byron, The Corsair, ninth edition (London: John Murray, 1815), 101–2. 130 Byron, Corsair, 4. 131 Joseph Holt Ingraham, Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836), 7, 88. 132 George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746–1813 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 404. 133 Cadwallader D. Colden, The Life of Robert Fulton (New York: Kirk & Mercein, 1817), 176–7. 134 “Louisville, (Ken.) Sept 9,” American Register, 6 (1810), 268–9, 268. 135 John H. B. Latrobe, The First Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1871), 7. 136 Latrobe, Steamboat, 13, 3–4, 14–15, 21–2. 137 Jay Feldman, When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder and the New Madrid Earthquakes (New York: Free Press, 2005), 15. 138 James Lal Penick, The New Madrid Earthquakes (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 8. 139 Latrobe, Steamboat, 23–6. 140 Henry Edward Chambers, Mississippi Valley Beginnings (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), 307–8. 141 Latrobe, Steamboat, 32. 142 Louis Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (New York: Dover, 1993), 12. 143 Ari Kelman, “Forests and Other River Perils,” in Craig Colten ed., Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 45–63, 49. 144 David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, The War of 1812 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), xiii. 145 Nolte, Fifty, 187–8. 146 The New Annual Register; or, General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1812 (London: John Stockdale, 1813), 131. 147 Junius P. Rodriguez, “Always “En Garde”: The Effects of Slave Insurrection upon the Louisiana Mentality, 1811–1815,” Louisiana History, 33:4 (Autumn 1992), 399–416, 405. 148 Le Chevalier Felix de Beaujour, Sketch of the United States of North America at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century (London: J. Booth, 1814), 123. 149 Robin Reilly, The British at the Gates: The New Orleans Campaign in the War of 1812 (London: Cassall, 1974), 170. 150 John Buchanan, Jackson’s Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2001), 305. 151 James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols, Vol. 1 (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866), 366. 152 “Trial of Gen. Jackson,” Niles’ Weekly Register (Saturday, June 3, 1815), 245–53, 248. 153 Nolte, Fifty, 203. 154 Reilly, British, 199. 155 Davis, Pirates, 179. 156 Andrew Jackson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, Vol. III: 1814–1815, Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, Sharon Macpherson, and John H. Reinbold eds (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 151. 157 Davis, Pirates, 209. 158 Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (London: Pimlico, 2001), 57. 159 Davis, Pirates, 211. 160 “Events of the War,” Niles’ Weekly Register (January 28, 1815), 345–50, 345–6.

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161 Latour, Historical, 68, 72. 162 George Robert Gleig, A Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, at Washington, Baltimore, and New Orleans (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1821), 244. 163 “Events of the War,” Niles’ Weekly Register (January 14, 1815), 315–20, 316. 164 Nolte, Fifty, 209. 165 Nolte, Fifty, 211. 166 Remini, Battle, 83. 167 Nolte, Fifty, 221. 168 Gleig, Narrative, 327–8. 169 Gleig, Narrative, 222. 170 John Henry Cooke, A Narrative of Events in the South of France, and of the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 (London: T. & W. Boone, 1835), 235–9. 171 Remini, Battle, 152–3. 172 Nolte, Fifty, 223. 173 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15. 174 Latour, Historical, 145. 175 Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, The Nationalist Ferment: The Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789–1812 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004), 192. 176 “New-Orleans,” Niles’ Weekly Register — Supplement to Volume VIII (1815), 158–68, 159. 177 “Events of the War,” Niles’ Weekly Register (February 25, 1815), 409–12, 410. 178 Claiborne, Letter Books, Vol. 6, 334. 179 “Further from New-Orleans,” Niles’ Weekly Register (February 25, 1815), 403–7, 403–4. 180 Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1835–1845 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 492.

Notes to Chapter 2: “Eternal bustle”: The Making of an American City 1 Charles Sealsfield [Karl Anton Postl], The Americans As They Are, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Hurst, Chance, & Co., 1828), 145. 2 “Domestic Manners of the Americans,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 31:194 (May 1832), 829–47, 835. 3 Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph ed., 4 vols, Vol. 4 (Charlottesville, VA: F. Carr, & Co., 1829), 252. 4 Jefferson, Memoir, Vol. 4, 260. 5 “Mr. Robertson’s Remarks,” Niles’ Weekly Register, 8:2 (Saturday, March 11, 1815), 30–1, 30. 6 “Defence of the American Character,” Port Folio, 6:1 (July 1815), 18–27, 25. 7 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 16. 8 Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (London: Pimlico, 2001), 196. 9 Thomas Kennedy, Poems (Washington City: Daniel Rapine, 1816), 161. 10 “Biographical Sketches,” Southern Literary Messenger, 4:10 (October 1838), 663–71, 664. 11 Samuel Woodworth, The Champions of Freedom, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: Charles N. Baldwin, 1816), 328. 12 Samuel Woodworth, “The Hunters of Kentucky,” in Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads (New York: published for the author, 1830), 221–3. 13 Noah Ludlow, Dramatic Life As I Found It (St. Louis: G. I. Jones & Co., 1880), 236–8.

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14 James Stuart, Three Years in North America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Robert Caddell, 1833), 217. 15 Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans: Diary & Sketches 1818–1820, Samuel Wilson Jr. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 73. 16 Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1833), 327. 17 Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South-West. By a Yankee, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), 73. 18 William Howard Russell, My Diary, North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), 243. 19 Isaac Candler, A Summary View of America (London: T. Cadell, 1824), 480. 20 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Henry Reeve trans., 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Sever & Francis, 1863), 369. 21 John Frost, Pictorial Life of Andrew Jackson (Hartford, CT: W. J. Hamersley, 1846), 406–7. 22 Charles Lloyd, Travels at Home, and Voyages by the Fire-Side, 5 vols, Vol. 5 (London: Longman, Hurst, Ress, Orme & Brown, 1815), 130–7. 23 Liliane Crété, Daily Life in Louisiana 1815–1830, Patrick Gregory trans. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), ix. 24 Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 161. 25 Thomas D. Clark and John D. W. Guice, The Old Southwest, 1795–1830 (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 164. 26 Timothy Flint, History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Cincinnati: E. H. Flint, 1833), 134–5. 27 Robert Baird, View of the Valley of the Mississippi (Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1834), 229. 28 John Garretson Clark, New Orleans, 1718–1812: An Economic History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 353. 29 Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 46 Urban Places: 1810,” 1998. Available at http://www. census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab04.txt (accessed August 29, 2010); Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 90 Urban Places: 1830,” 1998. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab06.txt (accessed August 29, 2010). 30 Henry Ker, Travels through the Western Interior of the United States (Elizabethtown, NJ: printed for the author, 1816), 48. 31 Crété, Daily Life, x. 32 Wade, Urban, 41. 33 Clark, New Orleans, 54. 34 “Domestic Occurences,” American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review, 5:4 (February 1819), 303–5, 304. 35 James Hall, Statistics of the West (Cincinnati: J. A. James, 1836), 280. 36 G. G. Huebner, “The Foreign Trade of the United States Since 1789,” in Emory R. Johnson, T. W. Van Metre, G. G. Huebner, and D. S. Hanchett eds, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1915) 3–135, 39. 37 James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866), 595. 38 Peirce F. Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (Santa Fe: Center for American Places, 2003), 44. 39 Remini, Battle, 190. 40 Lewis, New Orleans, 44.

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41 Donald Macdonald, “The Diaries of Donald Macdonald, 1824–1826,” Indiana Historical Society Publications, 14:2 (1942), 143–381, 349. 42 Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, & Co., 1826), 302. 43 Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Württemberg, Travels in North America, 1822–1824, W. Robert Nitske trans., Savoie Lottinville ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 32. 44 Crété, Daily Life, 37. 45 Mel Leavitt, A Short History of New Orleans (San Francisco: Lexicos, 1982), 82–3. 46 Crété, Daily Life, 37. 47 Nelle Smither, A History of the English Theatre in New Orleans (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), 34. 48 Latrobe, Impressions, 21. 49 Latrobe, Impressions, 32, 35. 50 Latrobe, Impressions, 76–7. 51 Daniel H. Usner, American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 127. 52 Latrobe, Impressions, 128–31, 163. 53 J. Gerald Kennedy, The Astonished Traveler: William Darby, Frontier Geographer and Man of Letters (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 4. 54 Gay M. Gomez, “Describing Louisiana: The Contribution of William Darby,” Louisiana History, 34:1 (Winter 1993), 87–105, 87. 55 William Darby, A Geographical Description of the State of Louisiana (New York: James Olmstead, 1817), 45–6. 56 Darby, Geographical, 76. 57 John Melish, A Geographical Description of the United States (Philadelphia: published by the author, 1816), 39. 58 John Rennie Short, “A New Mode of Thinking: Creating a National Geography in the Early Republic,” in Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930, Edward Carlos Carter ed. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999), 19–50, 47. 59 François-Xavier Martin, The History of Louisiana (New Orleans: Lyman & Beardslee, 1827), v–vi. 60 François Barbé-Marbois, The History of Louisiana, an “American citizen” trans. (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830), xvii. 61 Arthur C. Cole, “Southward Ho! First Lecture of the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures, Louisiana State University, 1944,” in Toward a New View of America: Essays in Honor of Arthur C. Cole, Hans L. Trefousse ed. (New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1977), 1–16, 10. 62 Baird, View, 280–3. 63 John Howe, The Emigrants’ New Guide (Leeds: printed for the author, 1822), 15–19. 64 Wilhelm, Travels, 32. 65 John E. Kilpatrick, Timothy Flint: Pioneer, Missionary, Author, Editor, 1780–1840 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 17. 66 Flint, Recollections, 301. 67 Flint, Recollections, 305–10. 68 Timothy Flint, A Condensed Geography and History of the Western States, or The Mississippi Valley, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (Cincinnati: E. H. Flint, 1828), 229. 69 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 213. 70 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 559. 71 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 213. 72 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 215–16. 73 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 559.

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74 Timothy Flint, George Mason, the Young Backwoodsman (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins, 1829), 123. 75 Flint, George Mason, 123–4. 76 Flint, George Mason, 128. 77 Flint, George Mason, 151. 78 Baird, View, 127. 79 Morris Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey in America (London: James Ridgway, 1818), 51. 80 Jane Mesick, The English Traveller in America, 1785–1835 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1922), 5. 81 Flint, Condensed, Vol. 1, 213. 82 “T’other Side of the Ohio,” New Monthly Magazine, 13:73 (February 1820), 143–52, 147. 83 Ker, Travels, 37. 84 William Faux, Memorable Days in America (London: W. Simpkin & R. Marshall, 1823), 188–9, 146. 85 Stanley Clisby Arthur, Audubon: An Intimate Life of the American Woodsman (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2000), 92. 86 John Keats, Selected Letters, Robert Gittings and Jon Mee eds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 284. 87 Macdonald, “Diaries,” 339. 88 Baird, View, 127. 89 Michael Allen, Western Rivermen, 1763–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 128. 90 Henry Bradshaw Fearon, Sketches of America (London: Longman, Hurst, Ress, Orme, & Brown, 1819), 274. 91 William Newnham Blane, Travels through the United States and Canada (London: Baldwin & Co., 1828), 136. 92 J. G. Flügel, “Pages from a Journal of a Voyage Down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1817,” Felix Flugel ed., Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 7:3 (1924), 414–40, 432. 93 John James Audubon, Journal of John James Audubon Made During His Trip to New Orleans in 1820–1821, Howard Corning ed. (Cambridge, MA: Business Historical Society, 1929), 98, 112, 116. 94 Audubon, Journal, 120–4. 95 Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler ed., 8 vols, Vol. 4 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 62–4. 96 Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis eds, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 457. 97 Baird, View, 60. 98 “Rail-Roads and Locomotive Steam-Carriages,” Quarterly Review, 42:74 (March 1830), 377–404, 379–80. 99 Baird, View, 280. 100 Mesick, English Traveller, 12. 101 Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America, in 1824 and 1825, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: White, Gallaher & White, 1829), 89–91, 101. 102 Mesick, English Traveller, 41. 103 Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1833), 205. 104 Frances Wright, View of Society and Manners in America (New York: E. Bliss & E. White, 1821), 39.

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105 “Duke Bernard’s Travels in North America,” Foreign Quarterly Review, 3:6 (January 1829), 630–5, 634. 106 Candler, Summary, 276. 107 James Kirke Paulding, John Bull in America (New York: Charles Wiley, 1825), vi, xvii, 3, 25. 108 Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1824), 259–60. 109 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Saunders & Otley, 1838), 160. 110 Sealsfield, Americans, Vol. 2, 187. 111 Fearon, Sketches, 278. 112 Crété, Daily Life, 69. 113 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co., 1832), 28. 114 John H. B. Latrobe, Southern Travels: Journal of John H. B. Latrobe, 1834, Samuel Wilson Jr. ed. (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 1986), 43. 115 Woodworth, Melodies, 222. 116 Martineau, Retrospect, Vol. 2, 143. 117 Sealsfield, Americans, Vol. 2, 178. 118 Karl Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Travels through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1828), 82. 119 Hamilton, Men, Vol. 2, 218. 120 Martineau, Retrospect, 136–42. 121 Martineau, Retrospect, 143. 122 Latrobe, Impressions, 54. 123 Joan M. Martin, “Plaçage and the Louisiana Gens de Couleur Libre: How Race and Sex Defined the Lifestyles of Free Women of Color,” in Sybil Kein ed., Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 57–70, 58, 69. 124 Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 337. 125 Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal In Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (New York: John S. Taylor, 1836), 197. 126 Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: Saunders & Otley, 1837), 116–17. 127 George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 629. 128 Bernhard, Travels, Vol. 2, 61–2. 129 Trollope, Domestic, 30. 130 Helen Heineman, Mrs Trollope: The Triumphant Feminine in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979), 143. 131 Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1836), 180–2. 132 Susan S. Kissel, In Common Cause: The “Conservative” Frances Trollope and the “Radical” Frances Wright (Bowling Green, KY: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 56. 133 Gary A. Donaldson, “A Window on Slave Culture: Dances at Congo Square in New Orleans, 1800–1862,” Journal of Negro History, 69:2 (Spring 1984), 63–72, 63. 134 Arthur Singleton, Letters from the South and West (Boston: Richardson & Lord, 1824), 127.

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135 Flügel, “Pages,” 432; Daniel E. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 129. 136 Flügel, “Pages,” 432. 137 Latrobe, Impressions, 49–50. 138 Latrobe, Impressions, 50–1. 139 William Dillon Piersen, Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 181. 140 Sealsfield, Americans, Vol. 2, 165–6. 141 Pierson, Tocqueville, 623.

Notes to Chapter 3: “Prima donna”: The Queen of the South 1 Friedrich Gerstäcker, Gerstäcker’s Louisiana: Fiction and Travel Sketches from Antebellum Times through Reconstruction, Irene S. Di Maio ed. and trans. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 54. 2 James R. Creecy, Scenes in the South (Washington: Thomas McGill, 1860), 275. 3 John W. Barber and Elizabeth G. Barber, Historical, Poetical and Pictorial American Scenes. (New Haven, CT: J. W. Barber, 1850), 178. 4 Sandra Frink, “‘Strangers are Flocking Here’: Identity and Anonymity in New Orleans, 1810–1860,” American Nineteenth Century History, 11:2 (June 2010), 155–81, 158. 5 Richard M. Dorson ed., Davy Crockett: American Comic Legend (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 108. 6 B. M. Norman, Norman’s New Orleans and Environs (New Orleans: B. M. Norman, 1845), v. 7 Jesse Milton Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine and Putnam’s Monthly, 5:40 (October 1857), 433–56, 443. 8 Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies (London: John Murray, 1835), 5. 9 Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Rambler in North America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), 238–9. 10 Latrobe, Rambler, 239–40. 11 Latrobe, Rambler, 240–1. 12 Joseph Holt Ingraham, The South-West. By a Yankee. 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), 99. 13 Tyrone Power, Impressions of America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836), 132. 14 Charles Sealsfield [Karl Anton Postl], The Americans As They Are, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Hurst, Chance, & Co., 1828), 179. 15 Abraham Oakey Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1851), 23–4. 16 Ari Kelman, A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 62. 17 Louis Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (New York: Dover, 1993), 644, 34. 18 Hunter, Steamboats, 55. 19 James Logan, Notes of a Journey, through Canada, the United States of America, and the West Indies, 3 vols, Vol. 3 (Edinburgh: Fraser & Co., 1838), 178. 20 Creecy, Scenes, 12. 21 Albert J. Pickett, Eight Days in New Orleans (Montgomery, AL: published by the author, n.d.), 19.

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22 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 435–6. 23 Hall, Manhattaner, 24. 24 Frederick Marryat, Diary in America: Second Series (Philadelphia: T. K. & P. G. Collins, 1840), 53. 25 Theodore Clapp, Autobiographical Sketches and Recollections (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1857), 253. 26 Pickett, Eight Days, 18. 27 Campbell Gibson, “Rank by Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places, Listed Alphabetically by State: 1790–1990.” Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/ twps0027/tab01.txt (accessed August 27, 2010). 28 Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 90 Urban Places: 1830,” 1998. Available at http:// www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab06.txt (accessed August 30, 2010); Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1860,” 1998. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab09.txt (accessed August 30, 2010). 29 Elizabeth Fussell, “Constructing New Orleans, Constructing Race: A Population History of New Orleans,” Journal of American History, 94:3 (December 2007), 846–55, 848. 30 Richard Campanella, “An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans,” Journal of American History, 94:3 (December 2007), 704–15, 706. 31 Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City During the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 23. 32 David T. Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 33. 33 Ellen C. Merrill, Germans of Louisiana (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2005), 50. 34 John F. Nau, The German People of New Orleans (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1958), 7. 35 Ibid. 36 Campanella, “Ethnic,” 707. 37 Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856), 588. 38 S. Frederick Starr, Southern Comfort: The Garden District of New Orleans, 1800–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989), 23. 39 Walt Whitman, The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Emory Holloway ed., 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 25. 40 Starr, Southern Comfort, 5. 41 Christina Vella, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 3–4. 42 “French Novels,” London Quarterly Review, 56:111 (April 1836), 36–71, 64. 43 Ryan, Civic, 35. 44 Ibid. 45 Hall, Manhattaner, 34–5. 46 Washington Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, Pierre M. Irving ed., 3 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883), 170. 47 Ingraham, South-West, Vol. 1, 99. 48 Josiah Conder, The Modern Traveller: North America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (London: James Duncan, 1830), 213. 49 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 436. 50 Charles Augustus Murray, Travels in North America, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1854), 185–6. 51 Kelman, River, 63. 52 Logan, Notes, Vol. 3, 177–9.

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53 James Silk Buckingham, The Slave States of America, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1842), 343. 54 Ryan, Civic, 29. 55 Robert C. Reinders, End of an Era: New Orleans, 1850–1860 (New Orleans: Pelican Publishing, 1964), 11. 56 George Washington Cable, The Creoles of Louisiana (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), 260. 57 John M. Sacher, A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 234. 58 Address of the Louisiana Native American Association to the Citizens of Louisiana and the Inhabitants of the United States (New Orleans: D. Felt, 1839), 4–6. 59 Sacher, Perfect War, 257. 60 Robert Gibbes Barnwell ed., The New-Orleans Book (Boston: Wright & Hasty’s Steam Press, 1851), v. 61 Hall, Manhattaner, 24. 62 Reinders, End of an Era, 223. 63 Reinders, End of an Era, 215. 64 Jerah Johnson, “Les Cenelles: What’s in a Name?,” Louisiana History, 31:4 (Winter 1990), 407–10, 407. 65 Kirsten Silva Gruesz, “Delta Desterrados: Antebellum New Orleans and New World Print Culture,” in Jon Smith and Deborah N. Cohn eds, Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 52–80, 52. 66 Charles S. Watson, The History of Southern Drama (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 48. 67 Mary C. Henderson, “Scenography, Stagecraft, and Architecture in the American Theatre: Beginnings to 1870,” in Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby eds, The Cambridge History of American Theatre Volume 1: Beginnings to 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 373–424, 405. 68 Henderson, “Scenography,” 406. 69 Logan, Notes, Vol. 3, 180. 70 Solomon Smith, Theatrical Management in the West and South (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), 166. 71 Smith, Theatrical, 169. 72 Maria Ward Brown, The Life of Dan Rice (Long Branch, NJ: published by the author, 1901), 125. 73 Phineas Taylor Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs; or, Forty Years’ Recollections (Hartford, CT: J. B. Burr & Co., 1869), 330. 74 Power, Impressions, Vol. 2, 100. 75 Thomas Ruys Smith, “‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’: Outlaw John A. Murrell on the Antebellum Stage,” European Journal of American Culture, 28:3 (October 2009), 263–76. 76 Watson, History, 48. 77 Dale A. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 72, 59–60. 78 James Edward Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches (Philadelphia: Key & Biddle, 1833), 233. 79 Lyle Saxon, Fabulous New Orleans (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2004), 234–6. 80 Dorson, Davy, 111. 81 Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 32. 82 Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 45. 83 Mitchell, Mardi Gras, 47.

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84 James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999), 48. 85 Gotham, Authentic, 32. 86 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 257. 87 Susan Larson, The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 14. 88 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 441. 89 William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 150. 90 Logan, Notes, Vol. 3, 197. 91 Rev. Philo Tower, Slavery Unmasked (Rochester, MI: E. Darrow & Brother, 1856), 388. 92 “Disgraceful to our Country,” Gospel Teacher, 7:1 (July 1, 1845), 7–8. 93 Buckingham, Slave States, Vol. 1, 347–8. 94 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 441. 95 Ingraham, South-West, Vol. 1, 128–33. 96 Ingraham, South-West, Vol. 1, 128. 97 Jack Brace, Marie; or, The Gambler of the Mississippi (New York: E. D. Long & Co., n.d.), 14. 98 “Will He Find Her?,” Southern Literary Messenger, 32:1 (January 1861), 81; Winter Summerton, Will He Find Her? A Romance of New York and New Orleans (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860), 13. 99 Rufus Wheelwright Clark, Lectures on the Formation of Character, Temptations and Mission of Young Men (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1853), 138. 100 W. Edwyn Shipton, Lectures Delivered Before the Young Men’s Christian Association (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1857), 134. 101 Edward Henry Durell, New Orleans As I Found It (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845), 39. 102 Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro, Random Shots and Southern Breezes, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1842), 68. 103 William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers (London, Smith, Elder, & Co., 1869), 177. 104 An Address to the Citizens of New Orleans on the Subject of Temperance Published by Order of the New Orleans Temperance Society (New Orleans: Toy, Printer, 1841), 12. 105 Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865–1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 2. 106 Judith Kelleher Schafer, Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 16. 107 Reinders, End of an Era, 165. 108 Henry Morton Stanley, The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Dorothy Stanley ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 82–4. 109 [William Robinson], The Diary of a Samaritan (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860), 304–5. 110 Paul Joseph Erickson, “Welcome to Sodom: The Cultural Work of City-Mysteries Fiction in Antebellum America,” unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Texas at Austin, May 2005), n. 114. 111 Buckingham, Slave States, Vol. 1, 351. 112 Logan, Notes, Vol. 3, 179. 113 Edward Sullivan, Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America (London: Richard Bentley, 1852), 224–5.

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114 William Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave (London: Charles Gilpin, 1850), 58–60. 115 Stacy K. McGoldrick and Paul Simpson, “Violence, Police and Riots in New Orleans Political Culture: 1854–1874,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 20:1/2 (March/June 2007), 72–101, 73. 116 McGoldrick and Simpson, “Violence,” 82, 86. 117 David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 238. 118 Freehling, Road, 152. 119 Gruesz, “Delta,” 55. 120 Edward L. Miller, New Orleans and the Texas Revolution (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 4. 121 Herbert Asbury, The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), 173. 122 Logan, Notes, Vol. 3, 197. 123 Buckingham, Slave States, Vol. 1, 377–8. 124 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Saunders & Otley, 1838), 152–3. 125 Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 96. 126 Louis Schlesinger, “Personal Narrative of Louis Schlesinger of Adventures in Cuba and Ceuta,” United States Democratic Review, 31:3 (September 1852), 210–24, 212. 127 Sullivan, Rambles, 220. 128 Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 30. 129 Asbury, French, 186. 130 William O. Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 316–17. 131 Ned Buntline, The Mysteries and Miseries of New Orleans (New York: Akarman & Ormsby, 1851), 9, 29, 61, 85, 53. 132 Power, Impressions, Vol. 2, 134–5. 133 James Kirke Paulding, “The Mississippi,” 1842, Tulane University, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Jones Hall, Manuscript Collection, M227. 134 Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans of the Epidemic Yellow Fever of 1853 (New Orleans: Picayune Office, 1854), 67. 135 Hall, Manhattaner, 68–9. 136 Jo Ann Carrigan, “Yellow Fever in New Orleans, 1853: Abstractions and Realities,” Journal of Southern History, 25:3 (August 1959), 339–55, 339. 137 Jo Ann Carrigan, The Saffron Scourge: A History of Yellow Fever in Louisiana, 1796–1905 (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1994), 41. 138 Gerstäcker, Louisiana, 55. 139 Clapp, Autobiographical, v, vii. 140 Clapp, Autobiographical, 210. 141 Carrigan, “Yellow Fever,” 346–7. 142 Henry M. McKiven, “The Political Construction of a Natural Disaster: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853,” Journal of American History, 94:3 (December 2007), 734–43, 742, 734. 143 Erasmus Darwin Fenner, History of the Epidemic Yellow Fever at New Orleans, La. in 1853 (New York: Hall, Clayton & Co., 1854), 4. 144 Kelman, River, 98. 145 “History and Incidents of the Plague in New Orleans,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 7:42 (November 1853), 797–806, 798–9.

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146 Carrigan, Saffron, 1. 147 Kelman, River, 97. 148 Samuel Cartwright, “How to Save the Republic, and the Position of the South in the Union,” De Bow’s Southern and Western Review, 1:2 (August 1851), 184–97, 196. 149 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 443. 150 Alexander, Transatlantic, 233. 151 Fenner, History, 4. 152 E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand (New York: A. L. Burt, n.d.), 429. 153 Mary Walsingham Crean, “Bronze John and His Saffron Steed,” in Living Female Writers of the South, Mary T. Tardy ed. (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1872), 126. 154 Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, The Mysteries of New Orleans, Steve Rowan trans. and ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 3, 66. 155 William L. Van Deburg, Slavery & Race in American Popular Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 25. 156 William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853), 181. 157 Wilson Armistead ed., Five Hundred Thousand Strokes for Freedom: A Series of Anti-Slavery Tracts (London: W. & F. Cash, 1853), 26. 158 Mrs. Houstoun, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico (Philadelphia: G. B. Zieber & Co., 1845), 80–1. 159 Sullivan, Rambles, 223. 160 Olmsted, Journey, 302–5. 161 Joseph Holt Ingraham, The Quadroone, 2 vols (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841); Thomas Mayne Reid, The Quadroon; or, A Lover’s Adventures in Louisiana, 3 vols (London: George W. Hyde, 1856). 162 Creecy, Scenes, 19. 163 Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), xxi, 97. 164 Schafer, Becoming, xiii. 165 Carol Wilson, The Two Lives of Sally Miller (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 4–6. 166 John Bailey, The Lost German Slave Girl (New York: Grove Press, 2005), 215. 167 Bailey, Lost, 257. 168 William Craft, Running a Thousand Miles For Freedom (London: William Tweedie, 1860), 5. 169 Walter Johnson, Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7. 170 Judith Kelleher Schafer, “New Orleans Slavery as Seen in Advertisements,” Journal of Southern History, 47:1 (February 1981), 33–56, 33. 171 Brown, Narrative, 50. 172 Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Auburn, NY: Derby & Miller, 1853), 75–9. 173 Northup, Twelve, 79–80, 90. 174 Brown, Narrative, 42, 44–5, 61. 175 Roach, Cities, 211, 215. 176 Frederika Bremer, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, Mary Howitt trans., 2 vols, Vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1854), 202–3, 209. 177 Tasistro, Random, Vol. 1, 87, 92. 178 Sullivan, Rambles, 200. 179 Deburg, Slavery, 32. 180 John Greenleaf Whittier, Voices of Freedom (Philadelphia: Thomas S. Cavender, 1846), 44–5.

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181 Richard Hildreth, The White Slave (London: Ingram, Cooke & Co., 1852), 268. 182 Grace King, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 77. 183 Joseph P. Roppolo, “Uncle Tom in New Orleans: Three Lost Plays,” New England Quarterly, 27:2 (June 1954), 213–26, 213. 184 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, 2 vols, Vol. 2 (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1852), 141. 185 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Vol. 2, 154, 163, 166–7. 186 Alexander, Transatlantic, 233. 187 Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853–1866, Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson eds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 72–3. 188 Twain, Letters, 87–90. 189 Twain, Letters, 90. 190 Emerson, “Up the Mississippi,” 454. 191 Buckner H. Payne, “Contests for the Trade of the Mississippi Valley,” Commercial Review of the South and West, 3:2 (February 1847), 98–112, 98. 192 Payne, 98–101, 107, 110. 193 “Attakapas,” “Why New Orleans Does Not Advance,” De Bow’s Southern and Western Review, 1:4 (October 1851), 387–9, 387. 194 Merl Reed, New Orleans and the Railroads (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 128–9. 195 Reinders, End of an Era, 48. 196 Cable, Creoles, 242–6, 256.

Notes to Chapter 4: “Oh, weep for New Orleans!”: Civil War and Reconstruction 1 Epes Sargent, Peculiar: A Tale of the Great Transition (New York: Carleton, 1864), 174. 2 Ralph Keeler, “New Orleans: On the Levee,” Every Saturday (July 22, 1871), 92–4, 93. 3 David George Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 183. 4 William Howard Russell, My Diary, North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), 230. 5 Charles L. Dufour, The Night the War Was Lost (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 23. 6 James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999), 58. 7 Eliza Ripley, From Flag to Flag (New York: D. Appleton, 1889), 10. 8 George Washington Cable, “New Orleans Before the Capture,” Century, 29:6 (April 1885), 918–23, 918. 9 Russell, Diary, 231. 10 George Devol, Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi (New York: Home Book Co., 1887), 116–17. 11 Kate Stone, Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861–1868, John Q. Anderson ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 17. 12 Cable, “New Orleans,” 919. 13 Joy J. Jackson, “Keeping Law and Order in New Orleans Under General Butler, 1862,” Louisiana History, 34:1 (Winter 1993), 51–67, 51. 14 Elliot Ashkenazi, The Civil War Diary of Clara Solomon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 6.

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Cable, “New Orleans,” 920. Devol, Forty, 117. Dufour, Night, 45. Chester G. Hearn, The Capture of New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 20. Dufour, Night, 67. Dufour, Night, 91. Hearn, Capture, 109. Dufour, Night, 236. Catharine Gendron Poyas, Year of Grief: And Other Poems (Charleston, WV: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1869), 125. Robert J. Schneller, Farragut: America’s First Admiral (Dulles, VA: Brasseys, 2002), 35. Jim Dan Hill, Sea Dogs of the Sixties (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1935), 17. David D. Porter, “The Opening of the Lower Mississippi,” Century, 29:6 (April 1885), 923–53, 940. Dufour, Night, 242. Cable, “New Orleans,” 921. Porter, “Opening,” 947. Dufour, Night, 292. Porter, “Opening,” 949. Marion Southwood, “Beauty and Booty”: The Watchword of New Orleans (New York: published for the author, 1867), 20. Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 21. Cable, “New Orleans,” 922. Devol, Forty, 118–19. Cable, “New Orleans,” 922. Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 20. Albert Kautz, “Incidents of the Occupation of New Orleans,” Century, 32:3 (July 1886), 455–9, 455. Mary Boykin Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, C. Vann Woodward ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 330. Julia Le Grand, The Journal of Julia Le Grand: New Orleans 1862–1863, Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. Croxall eds (Richmond, VA: Everett Waddey, 1911), 40. “Monthly Record of Events,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 25:146 (July 1862), 258–62, 258. Porter, “Opening,” 925. Henry Adams, The Selected Letters of Henry Adams, Newton Arvin ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), 34. “Tenella” [Mary Bayard Clarke], “A Lament for New Orleans,” Southern Literary Messenger, 37:7 (July 1863), 419–20. Stone, Brokenburn, 101. Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 19. “Tenella,” “Lament,” 419. Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 40–1. Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 42. John W. De Forest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1946), 20. Sargent, Peculiar, 431. James Parton, General Butler in New Orleans (New York: Mason Brothers, 1864), 275.

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53 Benjamin Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War. Volume 1 (Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1917), 428. 54 Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 108. 55 Parton, Butler, 352. 56 Parton, Butler, 346. 57 Benjamin Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major General Benj. F. Butler, Butler’s Book (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), 413–16. 58 William C. Corsan, Two Months in the Confederate States (London: Richard Bentley, 1863), 23. 59 Stone, Brokenburn, 126. 60 Butler, Autobiography, 420. 61 Paul Hamilton Hayne, “Butler’s Proclamation,” Southern Poems of the War, Emily V. Mason ed. (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1867), 209. 62 “Of New Orleans,” New York Times (May 30, 1862), 4. 63 “Amanda,” “Gen. Butler and the ‘Ladies’,” New York Times (June 2, 1862), 2. 64 “The Work of Reconstruction,” Harper’s Weekly (June 14, 1862), 370. 65 “The Ballad of the Crescent City,” Harper’s Weekly (June 14, 1862), 370. 66 Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 210. 67 Parton, Butler, 341. 68 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1961), 192. 69 “Our London Correspondence,” New York Times (June 16, 1865), 2. 70 “Foreign Gossip,” Syracuse State League (September 30, 1865), 6. 71 Parton, Butler, 309. 72 Devol, Forty, 121. 73 Southwood, “Beauty and Booty,” 244. 74 Le Grand, Journal, 77. 75 Gill, Lords, 72–3. 76 Corsan, Two Months, 20. 77 John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans 1860–1880 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 50. 78 De Forest, Adventures, 21. 79 Dale Somers, “Black and White in New Orleans,” Journal of Southern History, 40:1 (February 1974), 19–42, 21. 80 Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 25. 81 Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour (New York: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1866), 243–4. 82 Ted Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism and Race in Louisiana, 1862–1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 2. 83 James K. Hogue, Uncivil War: Five New Orleans Street Battles and the Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 4, 2. 84 Somers, “Black and White,” 24. 85 Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 185. 86 Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 49. 87 Jean-Charles Houzeau, My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civil War Era, David C. Rankin ed., Gerard F. Denault trans. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 152. 88 Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed: 1863–1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), 458.

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Taylor, Louisiana, 461. Tunnell, Crucible, 126. Hogue, Uncivil, 146. Reid, After, 248, 255. Reid, After, 237, 266. John Townsend Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of its Battle-Fields and Ruined Cities (Hartford, CT: L. Stebbins, 1866), 401. Hogue, Uncivil, 18. Tunnell, Crucible, 153. James G. Hollandsworth, An Absolute Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 2. Emily Hazen Reed, Life of A. P. Dostie; or, The Conflict in New Orleans (New York: W. P. Tomlinson, 1868), 309. Houzeau, Passage, 63, 133. “The New Orleans Report,” Harper’s Weekly (October 20, 1866), 658. Available at http://www. andrewjohnson.com/06FirstImpeachmentDiscussions/iiib-6.htm (accessed August 25, 2010). Hollandsworth, Massacre, 149. Hogue, Uncivil, 51. Hogue, Uncivil, 136. Christopher Benfey, Degas in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 173. Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 72. Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 35. Gill, Lords, 76. Anthony J. Stanonis, “Through a Purple (Green and Gold) Haze: New Orleans Mardi Gras in the American Imagination,” Southern Cultures, 14:2 (Summer 2008), 109–31, 115. Mitchell, Mardi Gras, 68. Gill, Lords, 101–3. Mitchell, Mardi Gras, 57. Benfey, Degas, 10. Ellerton Vincent, The Artist’s Dream (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868), 81–2. James Curtis Waldo, Mardi Gras: A Tale of Antebellum Times (New Orleans: P. F. Gogarty, 1871), 3. George Pond, “Drift-Wood,” Galaxy, 15:5 (May 1873), 693–9, 696. Napier Bartlett, Clarimonde: A Tale of New Orleans Life (Richmond, VA: M. A. Malsby, 1863), 3. Napier Bartlett, Stories of the Crescent City (New Orleans: Steel & Co., 1869). Ferris Greenslet, The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 10. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Story of a Bad Boy (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1895), 6. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Out of his Head: A Romance (New York: Carleton, 1862), 51, 57. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Père Antoine’s Date Palm,” Atlantic Monthly, 9:56 (June 1862), 778–81. Lydia Maria Child, A Romance of the Republic (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867). John W. De Forest, Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867), 10.

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124 Henry Clay Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 80. 125 [George T. Wilburn], Sam Simple’s First Trip to New Orleans (Americus, GA: Hancock, Graham & Reilly, 1870), 47–8. 126 Reid, After, 234. 127 Sue Rainey, Creating Picturesque America (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994), 22. 128 Jennifer Rae Greeson, “Expropriating The Great South and Exporting ‘Local Color’: Global and Hemispheric Imaginaries of the First Reconstruction,” American Literary History, 18:3 (Fall 2006), 496–520, 498–9. 129 Edwin L. Jewell, Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated (New Orleans: 1873), 3. 130 William Cullen Bryant ed., Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, Volume 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1872), 273. 131 George Ward Nichols, “Down the Mississippi,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 41:246 (November 1870), 835–45, 845. 132 Ralph Keeler, “New Orleans: The Heart of the City,” Every Saturday (July 1, 1871), 5–6. 133 Keeler, “Heart,” 6. 134 Keeler, “Levee,” 92–94. 135 Robert B. Downs, Books That Changed the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 138. 136 Grace King, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 50. 137 Edward King, The Great South (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1875), 17–20, 37. 138 King, Great South, 19, 46, 19, 28, 31, 44. 139 King, Great South, 34–6, 17. 140 Arlin Turner, George W. Cable: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 53. 141 Benfey, Degas, 106. 142 Turner, Cable, 53. 143 Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1923), 122. 144 Louis D. Rubin, George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 50. 145 George Washington Cable, Old Creole Days (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2001), 247–50. 146 Benfey, Degas, 112. 147 Turner, Cable, 56. 148 King, Memories, 50.

Notes to Chapter 5: “A colossal white elephant”: New Orleans, the New South, and the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition 1 Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, S. Frederick Starr ed. (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2001), 187–8. 2 Joaquin Miller, The Complete Poetical Works (San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray, 1897), 207. 3 Lafcadio Hearn, “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances,” Century, 27:1 (November 1883), 40–8, 40. 4 Hearn, Inventing, 7.

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5 Mollie Moore Davis, “‘Keren-Happuch and I’ Scrapbook,” Stephen F. Austin University, Ralph W. Steen Library, [A-98]. 6 Anthony J. Stanonis, Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 10. 7 Lyle Saxon, Fabulous New Orleans (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2004), 255. 8 John Townsend Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of its Battle-Fields and Ruined Cities (Hartford, CT: L. Stebbins, 1866), 404. 9 Michael Ross, “Resisting the New South: Commercial Crisis and Decline in New Orleans, 1865–85,” American Nineteenth Century History, 4:1 (Spring 2003), 59–76, 60. 10 Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863–1923 (Urbana, IL: Illini Books, 1994), 37. 11 John Hubert Ellis, Yellow Fever and Public Health in the New South (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 56. 12 Khaled J. Bloom, The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 2. 13 John McLeod Keating, A History of the Yellow Fever (Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879), 319. 14 Leonard Huber, New Orleans: A Pictorial History (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1991), 11. 15 John Smith Kendall, History of New Orleans (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1922), 408. 16 Florence Dorsey, Road to the Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1998), 216. 17 Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 90. 18 Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 49–50. 19 Kendall, History, 432. 20 Patricia Brady, “Literary Ladies of New Orleans in the Gilded Age,” Louisiana History, 33:2 (Spring 1992), 147–56, 147. 21 Ross, “Resisting,” 68. 22 Ross, “Resisting,” 69. 23 Humphreys, Yellow Fever, 91. 24 Roger Fischer, “The Post-Civil War Segregation Struggle,” in The Past as Prelude: New Orleans 1718–1968, Hodding Carter ed. (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1968), 288–305, 304. 25 William McKinley, William McKinley’s Pan-American Address (New York: Bensler & Wesley, 1904), 9. 26 C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 124. 27 Harold Francis Williamson, Edward Atkinson: The Biography of an American Liberal, 1827–1905 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), 167. 28 Don Harrison Doyle, New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, Mobile, 1860–1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 152. 29 Thomas D. Watson, “Staging the ‘Crowning Achievement of the Age’ — Major Edward A. Burke, New Orleans and the Cotton Centennial Exposition: Part I,” Louisiana History, 25:3 (Summer 1984), 229–59, 233. 30 “Site for a Cotton Exposition Wanted,” New York Times (November 19, 1882), 9. 31 Watson, “Exposition: Part I,” 237. 32 “The Cotton Exposition,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (April 25, 1883), 6. 33 Richard Nixon, “The World’s Exposition at New Orleans,” Century, 29:2 (December 1884), 312–13, 313.

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34 Joy Jackson, New Orleans in the Gilded Age: Politics and Urban Progress, 1880–1896 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 7. 35 Watson, “Exposition: Part I,” 233. 36 “A World’s Exposition,” Boston Daily Advertiser (June 13, 1884), 4. 37 “The New Orleans Exposition,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 24, 1884), 221. 38 “A Timely Act,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 31, 1884), 227. 39 “The New Orleans Industrial Exposition,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (June 7, 1884), 246. 40 “The Union of North and South, from an Article in the London Times,” New York Times (December 29, 1884), 3. 41 Allen Walker Read, “The Membership in Proposed American Academies,” American Literature, 7:2 (May 1935), 145–65, 155. 42 “George Washington Cable,” Century, 23:4 (February 1882), 602–5, 602. 43 Arlin Turner, George W. Cable: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 161. 44 George Washington Cable, Dr. Sevier (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 377. 45 Turner, Biography, 119. 46 Hearn, Inventing, xviii. 47 Lafcadio Hearn, “New Orleans in Carnival Garb,” Harper’s Weekly (February 24, 1883), 122. 48 Lafcadio Hearn, “Quaint New Orleans and its Habitants,” Harper’s Weekly (December 6, 1824), 812. 49 Jackson, Gilded, 295. 50 Davis, “‘Keren-Happuch and I’ Scrapbook.” 51 Ernst von Hesse- Wartegg, Travels on the Lower Mississippi 1879–1880, Frederic Trautmann trans. and ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 141, 151, 156. 52 George Augustus Sala, America Revisited: From the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Vizetelly & Co., 1883), 63, 91. 53 Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith, Oscar Wilde Discovers America [1882] (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1936), 362. 54 Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883), 424, 427. 55 Twain, Mississippi, 431, 429, 442. 56 Twain, Mississippi, 442–5. 57 “The Exposition Opened,” New York Times (December 17, 1884), 2. 58 “The Great Exposition: Confusion and Disorder on the Opening Day,” New York Times (December 24, 1884), 5. 59 “The New Orleans Exposition,” San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (January 13, 1885), 4. 60 Thomas D. Watson, “Staging the ‘Crowning Achievement of the Age’ — Major Edward A. Burke, New Orleans and the Cotton Centennial Exposition: Part II,” Louisiana History, 25:4 (Fall 1984), 341–67, 347. 61 Watson, “Exposition: Part II,” 347. 62 “In New Orleans,” Milwaukee Sentinel (December 19, 1884), 4. 63 “No Horse Cars in New Orleans,” New York Times (December 29, 1884), 2. 64 “Murdered by a Police Justice,” New York Times (December 2, 1884), 1. 65 “The Editor’s Fatal Shots,” New York Times (January 14, 1885), 3. 66 “With a Big Crash,” Milwaukee Sentinel (December 22, 1884), 3. 67 “The New Orleans Exposition,” San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (January 14, 1885), 2. 68 Michael P. Smith, “Buffalo Bill and the Mardi Gras Indians,” in Marcia Gaudet and James. C. McDonald eds, Mardi Gras, Gumbo, and Zydeco: Readings in Louisiana Culture (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2003), 16–26, 17.

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69 Gotham, Authentic, 46. 70 Frederic Trautmann, “New Orleans, the Mississippi, and the Delta through a German’s Eyes: The Travels of Emil Deckert, 1885–1886,” Louisiana History, 25:1 (Winter 1984), 79–99, 89–91. 71 Trautmann, “New Orleans,” 89–91. 72 Eugene Smalley, “The New Orleans Exposition,” Century, 30:1 (May 1885), 3–14, 3. 73 Arlin Turner, “George W. Cable’s Beginning as a Reformer,” Journal of Southern History, 17:2 (May 1951), 135–61, 136. 74 Gotham, Authentic, 61–2. 75 “Colored People’s Day,” New York Freeman (March 7, 1885), 1. 76 “The Colored People at the New Orleans Exposition,” American Missionary. 39:7 (July 1885), 189–91, 189. 77 Charles Dudley Warner, “Impressions of the South,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 71:424 (September 1885), 546–52, 550. 78 “Colored Department of the Great Exposition at New Orleans in a Bad Way,” New York Freeman (May 16, 1885), 1. 79 Eugene Smalley, “In and Out of the New Orleans Exposition,” Century, 30:2 (June 1885), 185–99, 194. 80 Grace King, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 54–5. 81 George William Curtis, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 70:417 (February 1885), 483–8, 485. 82 Quoted in Melissa Walker Heidari, To Find My Own Peace: Grace King in Her Journals (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), xxxii. 83 Smalley, “In and Out,” 189. 84 “A Lively Rumpus,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (May 14, 1885), 3. 85 Hearn, Inventing, xv. 86 Mel Leavitt, A Short History of New Orleans (San Francisco: Lexicos, 1982), 126. 87 “The New Orleans Exposition to Be Reopened, Probably, in October,” St Louis GlobeDemocrat (April 29, 1885), 6. 88 “The World’s Exposition,” New York Times (August 15, 1885), 3. 89 Ross, “Resisting,” 72. 90 Jackson, Gilded, 208. 91 King, Memories, 51. 92 Gotham, Authentic, 48. 93 William H. Coleman ed., Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans (New York: Will H. Coleman, 1885). 94 Gotham, Authentic, 56. 95 Anthony J. Stanonis, Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 19. 96 Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 67. 97 Maud Howe, Atalanta in the South: A Romance (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886), 286, 120, 28. 98 Rebecca Harding Davis, “Here and There in the South,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 75:448 (September 1887), 583–605, 601. 99 Edward Everett Hale and Susan Hale, A Family Flight through Mexico (Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1886), 59–60. 100 John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 35–6.

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101 Ari Kelman, A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 155. 102 Stanonis, Creating, 214–15. 103 King, Memories, 51, 53. 104 Miller, Complete, 137. 105 King, Memories, 63, 80, 85. 106 King, Memories, 60. 107 Vera McWilliams, Lafcadio Hearn (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970), 173. 108 “Treasurer Burke’s Crime,” New York Times (January 19, 1890), 2.

Notes to Chapter 6: “Par excellence a city of fun”: Segregation and Sex at the End of a Century 1 Belle Hunt, “New Orleans, Yesterday and To-Day,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, 31:6 (June 1891), 641–55, 646. 2 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 295–6. 3 Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and ‘Inventor of Jazz’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 10. 4 George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes, J. M. Barrie ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1898), xi. 5 Joy Jackson, New Orleans in the Gilded Age: Politics and Urban Progress 1880–1896 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 14. 6 Cable, Grandissimes, xi, xv. 7 Dale Somers, “Black and White in New Orleans,” Journal of Southern History, 40:1 (February 1974), 19–42, 21. 8 Somers, “Black and White,” 35, 38. 9 George Washington Cable, “The Freedman’s Case in Equity,” Century, 29:3 (January 1885), 409–18, 409, 413–14. 10 George Washington Cable, “The Silent South,” Century, 30:5 (September 1885), 674–92, 674, 676, 679. 11 Lawrence N. Powell, The New Orleans of George Washington Cable: The 1887 Census Office Report (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 17. 12 Louis D. Rubin, George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 177. 13 Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 248. 14 Elliott, Color-Blind, 249. 15 Elliott, Color-Blind, 265. 16 Garry Boulard, Louis Prima (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 1. 17 “C.S.,” “Social Life in Italy,” Living Age, 227:2947 (December 29, 1900), 835–43, 838. 18 Hunt, “New Orleans,” 642. 19 Boulard, Prima, 2. 20 George E. Cunningham, “The Italian, a Hindrance to White Solidarity in Louisiana, 1890–1898,” Journal of Negro History, 50:1 (January 1965), 22–36, 24. 21 Jackson, Gilded, 18. 22 Henry C. Castellanos, New Orleans As It Was: Episodes of Louisiana Life, Judith Kelleher Schafer ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 163. 23 David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 2000), 186.

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24 Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863–1923 (Urbana, IL: Illini Books, 1994), 44. 25 Tom Smith, The Crescent City Lynchings (Guildford, CT: Lyons Press, 2007), xxiv. 26 Richard Gambino, Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History (Ontario: Guernica Editions, 2000), 35. 27 James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999), 138, 145. 28 Smith, Crescent, 34. 29 Gambino, Vendetta, 23. 30 Kevin Fontenot, “Times Ain’t Like They Used To Be: Rabbit Brown, New Orleans Songster,” Jazz Archivist 13 (1998–1999), 1–6, 2. 31 Smith, Crescent, 83. 32 James Bryce, M.P., “Legal and Constitutional Aspects of the Lynching at New Orleans,” Living Age, 189:2449 (June 6, 1891), 579–85, 584. 33 “The New Orleans Affair,” New York Times (March 16, 1891), 4. 34 Edward Wakefield, “The Brand of Cain in the Great Republic,” Living Age, 192: 2479 (January 2, 1892), 27–36, 28. 35 Bryce, “Legal,” 579. 36 Gambino, Vendetta, 4. 37 Theodore Roosevelt, Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 1870 to 1918 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), 116. 38 Louise McKinney, New Orleans: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 88. 39 Keith Weldon Medley, We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2003), 141. 40 Brook Thomas, Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford, 1997), 29. 41 Elliott, Color-Blind, 291. 42 Elliott, Color-Blind, 293–4. 43 Jackson, Gilded, 318. 44 Craig E. Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 81, 94. 45 Lomax, Mister, 103. 46 J. W. Buel, Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities (St. Louis: Historical Publishing Co., 1883), 590. 47 Al Rose, Storyville, New Orleans (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 21, 36. 48 Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 73. 49 Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865–1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 117. 50 James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 16. 51 Long, Babylon, 129. 52 Long, Babylon, 196–7. 53 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 231. 54 Lomax, Mister, 103. 55 Long, Babylon, 116. 56 Rose, Storyville, 1. 57 Rose, Storyville, 31.

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

221

Long, Babylon, 158. Lomax, Mister, 49. Lomax, Mister, 50. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz by the Men Who Made It (London: Penguin, 1962), 26. Lomax, Mister, 50. Rose, Storyville, 61. Lomax, Mister, 25. Rose, Storyville, 48. Long, Babylon, 149–50. Roach, Cities, 225. Rose, Storyville, 40–1. Lomax, Mister, 127. Roach, Cities, 227. William Ivy Hair, Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), 79. Lomax, Mister, 25, 49. Gill, Lords, 138, 167. Rose, Storyville, 106. Bill C. Malone and David Stricklin, Southern Music/American Music (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 53. Bryan Wagner, Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power After Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 97, 100. Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear, 19. Lomax, Mister, 23–5, 127. Lomax, Mister, 127, 42, 50, 43. Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear, 31. Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), 176. Brothers, Louis, 136–7. Charles Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 118. Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34. Lomax, Mister, 80. Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear, 48. Lomax, Mister, 60. Donald M. Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden, First Man of Jazz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 56. Lomax, Mister, 57. Lomax, Mister, 58. Brothers, Louis, 143. Marquis, Buddy, 100. Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear, 44. Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear, 50. Marquis, Buddy, 80. Hersch, Subversive, 83. Marquis, Buddy, 62. Brothers, Louis, 155. Marquis, Buddy, 82. Gill, Lords, 138.

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101 Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 116. 102 Lomax, Mister, 14. 103 Grace King, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 192. 104 Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (New York: Knopf, 2009), 228. 105 Emily Toth, Kate Chopin (London: Century, 1990), 326. 106 Ian Frederick Finseth, The American Civil War: An Anthology of Essential Writings (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 534. 107 “American Fiction,” Living Age, 188:2435 (February 28, 1891), 515–33, 529–30. 108 Charles W. Coleman, “The Recent Movement in Southern Literature,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 74:444 (May, 1887), 837–55, 838–9, 841. 109 Catharine Cole [Martha Field], Louisiana Voyages: The Travel Writings of Catharine Cole, Joan B. McLaughlin and Jack McLaughlin eds (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 192. 110 Finseth, Civil War, 534. 111 Robert Bush, Grace King: A Southern Destiny (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 51. 112 Bush, King, 61. 113 Grace King, Monsieur Motte (New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1888), 106. 114 King, Motte, 326. 115 Bush, King, 98. 116 Grace King, Balcony Stories (New York: Century Co., 1893), 1–2. 117 Bush, King, 147. 118 Grace King, New Orleans: The Place and the People (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1896), xvi–xxi. 119 Christopher Benfey, Degas in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 240. 120 Toth, Chopin, 125–6. 121 Toth, Chopin, 127. 122 Helen Taylor, “Walking through New Orleans: Kate Chopin and the Female Flâneur,” Symbiosis, 1:1 (April 1997), 69–85, 77. 123 Kate Chopin, A Night in Acadie (Chicago: Way & Williams, 1897), 155. 124 Taylor, “Walking,” 76, 84. 125 Kate Chopin, The Awakening (Chicago: Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1899), 127, 140, 160, 274–5. 126 Chopin, Awakening, 278. 127 Taylor, “Walking,” 84. 128 Toth, Chopin, 341. 129 Anne Razey Gowdy, “Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” in The History of Southern Women’s Literature, Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks eds (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 225–30, 227. 130 Gloria T. Hull, Color, Sex & Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 40. 131 Gowdy, “Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” 227. 132 Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Violets (Boston: Monthly Review, 1895), in Gloria T. Hull ed. The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 45–6, 80, 57. 133 Alice Dunbar-Nelson, The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1899), in Gloria T. Hull ed. The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 21, 23, 25, 33.

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134 S. Frederick Starr, Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 42. 135 King, New Orleans, 340. 136 Castellanos, New Orleans, 158. 137 King, New Orleans, 340. 138 Castellanos, New Orleans, 159. 139 King, New Orleans, 340–1. 140 Castellanos, 158, 90. 141 King, New Orleans, 340. 142 George Washington Cable, “Creole Slave Dances: The Dance in Place Congo,” Century, 31:4 (February 1886), 517–32, 518–22. 143 Starr, Gottschalk, 42. 144 Cable, “Dances,” 522, 525, 528. 145 Benfey, Degas, 34. 146 Castellanos, New Orleans, 53–5. 147 Castellanos, New Orleans, 61–2. 148 George Washington Cable, Strange True Stories of Louisiana (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889), 193–4, 211, 219. 149 Cable, Strange, 219–21, 225–6. 150 George Washington Cable, “A Reply,” Century, 39:6 (April 1890), 959–60. 151 Julian Ralph, “New Orleans, Our Southern Capital,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 86:513 (February 1893), 364–86, 382. 152 Jackson, Gilded, 9. 153 Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1880,” 1998. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab11.txt (accessed August 26, 2010); Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900,” 1998. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/ tab13.txt (accessed August 26, 2010). 154 Albert Phelps, “New Orleans and Reconstruction,” Atlantic Monthly, 88:525 (July 1901), 121–31, 122, 129–30. 155 Phelps, “New Orleans,” 122, 130–1. 156 J. Mark Souther, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 8. 157 Gotham, Authentic, 76, 74. 158 Anthony J. Stanonis, Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 26. 159 Stanonis, Creating, 19. 160 Souther, New Orleans, 7. 161 Cable, Strange, 192. 162 Elizabeth Cumings, “Where it is Summer in February,” Music, 7:6 (April 1895), 613–17, 614. 163 Cole, Louisiana, 193. 164 “O. Henry on Himself, Life, and Other Things,” New York Times, (April 4, 1909). 165 Jeanette Covert Nolan, O. Henry: The Story of William Sydney Porter (New York: Julian Messner, 1943), 157. 166 O. Henry [William Sydney Porter], The Trimmed Lamp (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1918), 103–4. 167 Julian Ralph, “In Sunny Mississippi,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 90:540 (May, 1895), 819–36, 819. 168 Ralph, “New Orleans,” 365.

224 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

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Ralph, “New Orleans,” 376, 372–3, 376–7. Hunt, “New Orleans,” 641–2, 651. Hunt, “New Orleans,” 646, 655. Samuel Wilson Jr. and Leonard V. Huber, The Cabildo on Jackson Square (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1970), 93. Centennial Celebration of the Louisiana Transfer, December, 1903 (New Orleans: Louisiana Historical Society, 1904), 71. Jackson, Gilded, 321. Hair, Carnival, 100. Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 204. Wagner, Disturbing, 46. Hair, Carnival, 119. Hair, Carnival, 137. Hair, Carnival, 1. Hair, Carnival, 171. Williamson, Crucible, 207. Somers, “Black and White,” 42. Hair, Carnival, 178. Wells-Barnett, Selected, 256–7. Wells-Barnet, Selected, 314. Lomax, Mister, 57. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954), 7–8, 14. Armstrong, Satchmo, 23. Armstrong, Satchmo, 31–2, 46, 59, 95–7. Armstrong, Satchmo, 97, 137, 226, 228, 240.

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Wade, Richard C., The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). Wagner, Bryan, Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power After Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Walker, Daniel E., No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Watson, Charles S., The History of Southern Drama (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997). Watson, Thomas D., “Staging the ‘Crowning Achievement of the Age’ — Major Edward A. Burke, New Orleans and the Cotton Centennial Exposition: Part I,” Louisiana History, 25:3 (Summer 1984), 229–59. ——, “Staging the ‘Crowning Achievement of the Age’ — Major Edward A. Burke, New Orleans and the Cotton Centennial Exposition: Part II,” Louisiana History, 25:4 (Fall 1984), 341–67. Williamson, Harold Francis, Edward Atkinson: The Biography of an American Liberal, 1827–1905 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934). Williamson, Joel, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Wilson, Carol, The Two Lives of Sally Miller (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007). Wilson, Douglas L. and Rodney O. Davis eds, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998). Wilson, Samuel, Jr., “Early History of Faubourg St. Mary,” in New Orleans Architecture: The American Sector (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1998). Wilson, Samuel, Jr. and Leonard V. Huber, The Cabildo on Jackson Square (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1970). Woodward, C. Vann, Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951).

Index

Adams, Charles 109 Adams, Henry 109 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 123–4, 126–7 Alexander, James Edward 5, 81, 92, 99 Allen, Michael 60 American War of Independence 10 Ames, Fisher 19 Anderson, Tom 163, 168 Andry, Manuel 30 Arlington, Josie 168–9 Armstrong, Louis 189–90 Arnesen, Eric 136, 162 Arthur, Stanley Clisby 60 Asbury, Herbert 88 Ashe, Thomas 22–3, 66 Ashkenazi, Elliot 105 Atkinson, Edward 138 Audubon, John James 59–61 Audubon, Lucy 61 Bailey, John 95 Baily, Francis 14–15 Baird, Robert 50, 55, 57, 60, 62 Banks, Major General Nathaniel 115–16 Bannister, Nathaniel Harrington 81 Barataria Bay 32–4, 38 Barbé-Marbois, François 55 Barber, John and Elizabeth 71 Barker, Danny 170 Barlow, Joel and Ruth 34 Barnum, P. T. 81 Barnwell, Robert Gibbes 79–80 Barrie, J. M. 159 Bartlett, Napier 123 Basin Street 166, 168 Battle of New Orleans 3–4, 36–43, 45, 47, 50, 62, 110 Battle of Shiloh 105 Beaujour, Felix de 37 Beauregard, General P. G. T. 104–6, 113, 143 Bell, Caryn 8 Bell, Ninian 58

Benfey, Christopher 3, 120–1, 131, 176, 181 Berquin-Duvallon, Pierre-Louis 15–16 Bienville, Jean-Baptist Le Moyne, Sieur de 7 Birkbeck, Morris 58 Blane, William 60 Blassingame, John 116–17 Bloom, Khaled 136 Bolden, Buddy 171–3, 190 Bonaparte, Napoleon 15, 18–19, 21, 27, 32, 43 Boucicault, Dion 81, 94 Boulard, Garry 162 Brace, Jack 84 Brady, Patricia 137 Bremer, Frederika 96–7 Brothers, Thomas 3, 170, 172–3 Brown, Charles Brockden 17 Brown, James 26 Brown, Richard 163 Brown, William Wells 87, 93, 95–6 Bryant, William Cullen 126 Bryce, James 163–4 Buckingham, James Silk 78, 83–4, 86, 88 Buel, J. W. 165–6 Buntline, Ned 89 Burke, Major Edward A. 139–40, 142, 146, 152, 157 Burr, Aaron 25–7, 30, 37 Bush, Robert 175 Butler, General Benjamin Franklin 110–15, 121 Byron, George Lord 33–4 Cable, George Washington 3, 79, 102, 104–8, 131–6, 140–5, 148, 151, 153–6, 159–61, 174–5, 179–82, 184–5, 187 Caldwell, James 51, 80 Campanella, Richard 24, 76 Camp Street 51–2 Canal Street 24, 88–9, 103, 120, 127, 130, 134, 137, 143, 146, 163, 166–7, 170, 186 Candler, Isaac 49, 63 Caribbean 6, 10, 15, 87, 91

INDEX

carnival 82–3, 122, 127, 143 antebellum 82 balls 16, 173 behaviors 82 mask 2, 4, 125, 127 reemergence of 120 response to 122 and satire 121 season 21, 82, 130, 169, 185 Carrigan, Jo Ann 90–1 Cartwright, Samuel 92 Carver, Jonathan 13 Castellanos, Henry C. 162, 179–82 Cavelier, René-Robert 6 Chambers, Henry Edward 36 Champney, J. Wells 128, 131 Charles, Robert 187–9 Charlevoix, Pierre de 7 Chesnut, Mary 108 Child, Lydia Maria 66, 124 Choctaws 7, 14, 29, 40, 52–3, 62 Chopin, Kate 174–8 Chopin, Oscar 176–7 Christy, Edwin Pearce 69 Civil War 2–4, 6, 43, 48–9, 71–4, 76, 79, 83, 99, 101–10, 120, 125–6, 135, 147, 154, 187 Claiborne, Governor William 17, 19–21, 25–33, 38–9, 43 Clapp, Rev. Theodore 2, 75, 90–1 Clark, Emily 8 Clark, John Garretson 7, 50 Clark, Joshua 2, 4 Clark, Rufus Wheelwright 84 Clark, Thomas 50 Clarke, Mary Bayard 109–10 Clay, C. C., Jr. 83 Clemens, Samuel see Twain, Mark Cochrane, Admiral Sir Alexander 37, 40 Cole, Arthur 55 Cole, Catharine 174, 184 Coleman, Charles 174 Coleman, William H. 152 colonization 3, 6–10, 13, 16 Colten, Craig 2–3, 165 Conder, Josiah 78 Congo Square 68–9, 170, 178–80 Cooke, Captain John Henry 41 corruption 8, 16, 116, 125, 128, 136, 141, 151, 163 Corsan, William 112, 115 cotton 9, 13, 31, 50, 64, 73–4, 92, 137–8 exports 136–7, 182 manufacturers 138 Craft, William 95

243

Cramer, Zadok 11, 19 Creecy, James 74, 94 Creole 5, 21–4, 26–7, 51–2, 61, 64, 73, 78–9, 88, 102, 113, 124, 134, 151, 159, 170–1, 185 culture 50, 123, 128, 135, 141, 151, 156, 161, 174, 177, 184 music 171, 173 population 28, 40, 189 Crété, Liliane 50–1 Cuba 9, 27, 29, 87–8 culture 4, 6, 160 African 180 American 69, 78 antebellum 93, 169 French 28 literary 79–81 local 3, 6, 128, 130–1 musical 169–70 national 123 popular 89, 93, 121, 126, 182 West Indian 180 Cumings, Elizabeth 184 Cunningham, George 162 Curtis, George William 151 Darby, William 54–5 Dargo, George 21 Davis, Jefferson 105, 163 Davis, Mollie Moore 134, 142, 156, 174 Davis, Rebecca Harding 154–5 Davis, Thomas Edwards 134–5 Davis, William 31–2, 39 Dawdy, Shannon Lee 3, 6, 8 De Bow, J. D. B. 101 Deckert, Emil 147 De Forest, John W. 110, 115, 124–5 Desdunes, Daniel 161, 164 Desdunes, Rodolphe 161 Deslondes, Charles 30–1, 34, 37 Dessens, Nathalie 28–9 de Tocqueville, Alexis 49, 67, 70 Devol, George 104–5, 107, 115 disease 18, 22–3, 56, 72, 86, 90–2, 124, 130, 136–7, 141, 144, 162, 167 Donaldson, Gary 68 Dormon, James 24, 29–30 Dorsey, Florence 136 Downs, Robert 128 dueling 25, 51, 83, 86, 90, 123 Dufour, Charles 103, 105, 107 Dunbar-Nelson, Alice 175, 177–8 du Pont, Pierre Samuel 16 Durell, Edward 85

244

INDEX

Eads, James B. 136–7, 139 economy 6–7, 9–10, 50, 72–4, 76–7, 85, 101–3, 117–18, 120, 126, 128, 132, 135–8, 140, 143, 147, 152, 156, 162, 167, 182–3 education 6, 16, 117–18, 123, 148, 155 Eggers, Dave 3 electricity 144, 168 Ellicott, Andrew 14 Ellis, John 136 emancipation 1, 4, 65, 67–8, 85 Emerson, Jesse Milton 72, 74, 78, 83–4, 92, 101 Engels, Frederick 114 Erickson, Paul Joseph 86 Esposito, Giuseppe 163 Farragut, Admiral David Glasgow 106–8, 111 Faubourg Marigny 51, 61, 76–7 Faubourg St. Mary 24, 51, 76–7 Faubourg Tremé 164 Faulkner, William 3 Faust, Drew Gilpin 114 Faux, William 58 Fearon, Henry 60, 64 Feldman, Jay 35 Fenner, Erasmus Darwin 91–2 Ferguson, Judge John Howard 164 filibustering 88 Fischer, Roger 137 Flint, Timothy 50–1, 56–8, 67 Flügel, J. G. 60, 68–9 Ford, Lacy 31 Ford, William 95 Fort Jackson 105–6 Fort St. Charles 16 Fort St. Philip 42, 103, 105–6 foundation (of New Orleans) 5–9 France 6–8, 13, 15–19, 21, 27, 32, 34, 37, 40, 45, 66, 77, 80 Francis, Governor David 187 Freehling, William 87 free people of color 9, 23–4, 28–9, 31, 66, 93–4 French Market 100, 128, 142, 166, 174, 185 French Quarter 2, 7–9, 24, 53, 68, 77, 128, 131, 134, 142, 144, 154–5, 162, 164, 166, 177, 183–6 Frink, Sandra 71 Frost, John 49 Fulton, Robert 34, 36, 39 Fussell, Elizabeth 76 Gaiety Theatre 80, 82 Gambino, Richard 163–4 gambling 23, 68, 71–2, 83–5, 89, 92–3, 104–5, 107, 111, 125, 137

Garden District 2, 77, 124, 131, 176, 184 Garland, Senator Augustus Hill 139 gas lighting, installation of 52 Gayarré, Charles 80, 128, 141, 153, 161 German Coast 30 Gerstäcker, Friedrich 90 Gilder, Richard Watson 131, 156 Gill, James 82, 115, 120–1, 163, 169 Gioia, Ted 171 Girod Street 60, 163 Gleeson, David T. 76 Gleig, George Robert 40–1 Gotham, Kevin Fox 3, 82, 120, 137, 147–8, 152, 154, 166, 183 Gottschalk, Louis Moreau 178 Grant, President Ulysses S. 120–1 Gravier, Beltram 24 Gravier Street 51, 137, 166 Greenslet, Ferris 123 Greeson, Jennifer Rae 126 Grimsted, David 87 Gruesz, Kirsten Silva 80, 87 Guadeloupe 32 Guice, John 50 Gulf of Mexico 2–3, 6, 31, 87 Hair, William Ivy 188–9 Haiti 18 Hale, Edward Everett and Susan 155 Hall, Abraham Oakley 74–5, 80 Hall, Gwendolyn 10 Hall, James 50 Hambleton, Samuel 31 Hamilton, Alexander 25 Hamilton, Thomas 48, 63, 65 Hampton, General Wade 30 Hanger, Kimberly 9 Hanks, John 61 Hattori, Ichizo 156 Hayne, Paul Hamilton 113 Hearn, Lafcadio 2–4, 133–6, 142, 151–3, 156 Heidler, Jeanne and David 36 Heineman, Helen 67 Hennessy, David 162–3 Henry, O. see Porter, William Sydney Hersch, Charles 171, 173 Hesse-Wartegg, Ernst von 143 Hildreth, Richard 98 Hill, Jim Dan 106 Hodgson, Adam 63–4 Hogue, James 116, 118, 120 Hollandsworth, James 119 Hose, Sam 188 Houzeau, Jean-Charles 117, 119

INDEX

245

Howe, Daniel Walker 42, 45 Howe, John 55–6 Howe, Julia Ward 151, 156 Howe, Maud 154, 156 Hull, Gloria 177 Humphreys, Margaret 137 Hunt, Belle 1, 162, 185, 187 Hunter, Louis 36 Hurricane Katrina 2–3, 5 hurricanes 2, 6, 37, 187

Kentucky 10, 17, 26, 38, 58 Ker, Henry 23–4, 50, 58 Kidder, Tristram 7 Kilpatrick, John E. 56 King, Edward 128–31 King, Grace 3, 99, 128, 132, 151–3, 155–6, 174–6, 178–81 Kissel, Susan S. 68 Know-Nothings 79, 87, 89, 119 Kukla, Jon 15, 18

Illinois 58, 61, 70 immigrants 5, 28, 54, 56, 79, 82, 85, 91, 93, 147, 162, 177 German 30, 60, 76, 80 Irish 76 Italian 162, 181 opposition to 79, 91 immorality 5, 67, 127, 167, 177 Indiana 26, 61, 131 indigo 8–9, 13 Ingersoll, Thomas 3, 8–9, 28–30, 66 Ingraham, Joseph Holt 34, 49, 73, 78, 84, 94 insurrection 9, 24, 29–31, 111 Irving, Washington 72, 78

Lachance, Paul 10, 18, 27 Lafayette, Marquis de 26, 45, 62, 187 Lafayette Square 110 Lafitte, Jean 31–4, 37–8 Lafitte, Pierre 31–3, 38 Lake Pontchartrain 7, 144 Lambert, John 24 Larson, Susan 83 Latour, Arsène 32, 40, 42 Latrobe, Benjamin 35, 48, 52–4, 64, 66, 69 Latrobe, Charles Joseph 72–4, 6 Latrobe, Henry 52 Latrobe, John 35 Laussat, Pierre de 19–20 Laveau, Marie 29 Law, John 7–8, 30 Leavitt, Mel 51 Leclerc, Charles 18 Lee, Robert E. 160 Lee, Spike 3 Le Grand, Julia 109, 115 Levasseur, Auguste 62 Lewis, Peirce 3–4, 6, 51 Lincoln, Abraham 61, 103, 173 Lincoln Park 173 Lind, Jenny 81, 187 Little Saxony 76 Livingston, Edward 34, 36, 40 Livingston, Robert 17–18, 34 Lloyd, Charles 49 Logan, James 74, 78, 80, 83, 86–8 Lomax, Alan 167 Long, Alecia 3, 85, 167–8 Longstreet, James 120 Lopez, Narciso 88–9 Louisiana Purchase 17–20, 24, 29, 34, 37, 55, 83, 141–2, 178, 187 Louisville 10, 35, 139, 161 Lovell, General Mansfield 105, 107 Lozières, Louis des 15 Ludlow, Noah 47–8, 80 Lyles, Etta Reid 151 lynching 163–4, 188–9

Jackson, Andrew 25–6, 37–43, 47–9, 53, 134 Jackson, Joy 105, 142, 152, 162, 165, 182, 187 Jackson, Rachel 51 Jackson Square 3, 77, 87, 134, 142 Jackson, Tony 170 Jacobinism 9 jazz 4–5, 155, 168–71, 173, 190 Jefferson, Thomas 16–17, 28 Johnson, Emma 168 Johnson, Jerah 80 Johnson, Robert Underwood 131 Johnson, Walter 95 Johnston, General Albert Sidney 105 Johnston, John D. 61 Kastor, Peter 15, 18, 25, 30 Kautz, Albert 108 Keating, John 136 Keats, George 59–60 Keats, John 59–60 Keeler, Ralph 126–8, 131 Kellogg, Governor William P. 120 Kelman, Ari 3, 36, 74, 78, 91, 155 Kendall, John 136 Kennedy, Hugh 135 Kennedy, J. Gerald 54 Kennedy, Richard 3 Kennedy, Thomas 47

246 Macdonald, Donald 51, 60 Madison, James 21, 26–7, 29, 43, 45 Mafia 163–4 Malone, Bill 169 manumission 31, 94 Mardi Gras 4, 6, 81–2, 100, 103, 120–3, 127, 130, 140, 143–4, 169, 173, 178, 184–5 Marigny, Bernard de 24, 51, 61 Marquis, Donald 171, 173 Marryat, Frederick 75 Martin, François-Xavier 55 Martin, Joan M. 66 Martineau, Harriet 64–7, 88, 181 Martinet, Louis 161 Martinique 32 Marx, Karl 114 Matthews, Bill 172 McGoldrick, Stacy 87 McKinley, President William 138 McKinney, Louise 2, 164 McKiven, Henry M. 91 McWilliams, Vera 156 Medley, Keith 164 Melish, John 24, 55 Melton, Buckner 25 Merrill, Ellen 76 Mesick, Jane 58, 62 Michaux, André 11 Miller, Edward 87 Miller, Joaquin 156 Miller, Sally 94, 181 Mississippi (State) 17, 38 Mississippi Company 7 Mississippi River 1, 6–7, 10, 13, 17, 19, 25–6, 60–1, 63–4, 101 and health 125 navigation on 34–6, 39, 56–8, 62, 74, 177 Mississippi Valley 6, 25, 50, 54–6, 101, 183 Mitchell, Reid 82, 120–1, 173 Mobile 42, 139 Moore, Theophilus 23 Moore, Thomas O. 105, 111 morality 14, 56, 68 Morehead, Franklin C. 138 Morse, Jedidah 23 Morton, Jelly Roll 4–5, 168–73, 189 Mumford, W. M. 111 Murray, Charles Augustus 78 Mystic Krewe of Comus 82, 100, 103, 120–1 Napoleon see Bonaparte, Napoleon Nashville 11, 139 National Cotton Planters’ Association 138–9 Native Americans 7, 28, 38, 177

INDEX

nativist movement 79, 162 Neufeld, Josh 3 New World 1, 6–8, 15, 47, 49, 62–3, 67, 94, 176 Nicaragua, invasion of 88–9 Nichols, George Ward 126 Nicholson, Eliza 174 Niles, Hezekiah 33 Nixon, Richard 139 Nolan, Jeanette Covert 184 Nolte, Vincent 24, 36–8, 40–2 Norman, B. M. 72 Northup, Solomon 95 occupation (by Union forces) 110–20 Ohio River 10, 25, 34–5, 60, 70, 101–2 Old World 1, 31, 33, 40, 47, 50 Olmstead, Frederick Law 76 O’Reilly, Alejandro 9 organized crime 162–3 Paine, Thomas 18 Pakenham, Sir Edward 41 Parton, James 111 Patterson, Commodore Daniel 33, 38–9 Paulding, James Kirke 63, 89–90 Payne, Buckner H. 101–2 Penick, James Lal 35 Peters, Samuel 51 Phelps, Albert 7, 183 Pickett, Albert 74–5 Pierce, Lenard 188 Pinckney’s Treaty 10 piracy 31–3, 38, 40, 58, 71, 88 see also privateers Pitkin, John R. G. 139 Pitot, James 9, 15 Pittsburgh 11, 14, 34–5, 58, 62, 70 plaçage 66 Plessy, Homer 164–5 Pointe Coupee 10, 29 Pond, George 122 Pontalba, Célestin Delfau de 77 Pontalba, Micaela Almonester 77 population (of New Orleans) 1, 4–7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 24, 27–9, 31, 50–1, 54, 60, 62, 64, 70–8, 94, 102, 115–17, 159–60, 165, 182 Porter, Commander David Dixon 106–7, 109 Porter, William Sydney 184 poverty 6, 115, 121, 131, 135–6, 141, 147, 151, 154, 168, 176, 178, 187 Power, Tyrone 74, 81, 89 Poyas, Catharine 106 Poydras, Julien 10 Poydras Street 51–2, 80

INDEX

Prévost, Abbé Antoine 8 privateers 31–3, 39, 42 see also piracy prostitution 85, 166–7 public health 136, 162 racial dynamics 5, 22–3, 64 identity 64 politics 116, 141 segregation 2 tapestry 5, 160 tension 104, 120, 160 violence 130, 163 railroads 76, 101–2, 137, 143, 154, 161 Rainey, Sue 126 Ralph, Julian 5, 182, 185 Rampart Street 24, 51, 68, 166 Reconstruction 1, 3–4, 103–32, 135, 160, 165, 171, 175 Rees, James 81 Reid, Thomas Mayne 94 Reid, Whitelaw 116–18, 126 Reilly, Robin 37 Reinders, Robert 78, 80, 85 Reizenstein, Baron Ludwig von 93 Remini, Robert 39, 41–3, 45, 51 Republicans, activities against 121 Rhodes, Richard 61 Rice, Dan 81 riots 1, 27, 87, 121, 177 Ripley, Eliza 104 Roach, Joseph 83, 96, 167, 169 Roberts, John Storm 155 Robertson, Thomas 45 Robichaux, John 173 Robin, C. C. 20 Robinson, William L. 86 Rochefoucault-Liancourt, Duc De La 15 Rodriguez, Junius 37 Roediger, David 162 Rohrbough, Malcolm 13 Roosevelt, Lydia 35 Roosevelt, Nicholas 34–5, 52 Roosevelt, Theodore 164 Roppolo, Joseph P. 99 Rose, Al 166–7, 169 Ross, James 17 Ross, Michael 135, 137, 152 Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne 42 Rothert, Otto 22 Royal Street 134, 159, 174, 181 Rubin, Louis D. 131, 161 Russell, William Howard 49, 103–4 Ryan, Mary 77–8

247

Sacher, John 79 Saint-Domingue 9–10, 15, 18, 27–8, 30–2, 37 Sala, George Augustus 143 Sanité Dédé, John 29 Sargent, Epes 111 Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Duke of 65, 67 Saxon, Lyle 135 Schafer, Judith Kelleher 3, 85, 94–5 Scroggs, William 89 Sealsfield, Charles 64–5, 69–70, 74 secession 103 segregation 2, 5, 77, 116, 118, 137, 160–2, 164–7, 169–70, 173–4, 188, 190 Separate Car Act 161, 164 Shakespeare, Joseph 137 Shaw, Captain John 30 Shipton, W. Edwyn 84 Short, John Rennie 55 Showalter, Elaine 174 Shreve, Henry 39 Silber, Nina 154 Simon, David 3 Simpson, Paul 87 Singleton, Arthur 68 slaveholders 10, 29, 76, 93, 97, 114 slave market 4, 72, 93, 95–9, 169 slavery 1, 4–5, 10, 14, 29, 61, 64–8, 72, 87, 92–5, 97–9, 101–2, 160, 175, 179–81 abolition of 10, 102, 116 slaves 32, 50, 56, 67, 85, 114, 116, 175 arrival of 7, 9, 29 and community 8–9, 14, 68, 179 escapes by 8 fear of 10 and freedom 9 and insurrection 30–1 population 28 treatment of 56, 65–6, 76, 181 Smalley, Eugene 147, 151 Smith, John K. 33 Smith, Michael P. 146 Smith, Solomon 80 Somers, Dale 81, 116, 159–60, 188 Souther, J. Mark 2–3, 184 Southwood, Marion 107–8, 110–11, 115 Spain 9–10, 15, 17–18, 27–8, 38 sport 14, 53, 81, 84 St. Cyr, Johnny 165, 167 Stanley, Henry Morton 85–6 Stanonis, Anthony 3, 5, 120, 154, 156, 184 Stanton, Edwin 111 Starr, S. Frederick 76–7, 142, 178, 180 statehood, Louisiana’s admission to 31 steamboat 34–6, 39, 50, 57, 62, 71, 74, 126, 135

248

INDEX

Stoddard, Amos 23 Stone, Kate 104, 110, 113 Story, Sidney 166 Storyville 5, 166–71, 173, 184, 189–90 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 68, 99 Stricklin, David 169 Stuart, James 48 Stuart, Ruth McEnery 174 Sublette, Ned 3, 9, 28–9, 31 sugar 9, 10, 29, 64, 73–5, 85, 92, 107, 115–16, 136 Sullivan, Edward 87–8, 93–8 Sullivan, John 163 Surdam, David 103 Talmage, Rev. De Witt 145 Tasistro, Louis 85, 97 Taylor, Helen 177 Taylor, Joe Gray 117 temperance movement 85 Tennessee 10, 26, 38 Testus, Charles 80 Texas 25–6, 88, 134, 137, 143 Revolution 87 Thackeray, William Makepeace 85 Thorpe, Thomas Bangs 126 tobacco 8–9, 13, 121, 137 Toth, Emily 176 Tourgée, Albion 161, 165, 174–5 tourism 2–3, 5, 54, 62–4, 125–6, 128, 135, 147–8, 152, 154–7, 159–60, 169, 174, 182–5, 187 Tower, Rev. Philo 83 trade 10, 13, 29, 31, 36, 49–51, 54–7, 74–5, 87, 95, 102, 135, 137 illicit 32 slave 8–9, 95 Treaty of San Ildefonso 15 Tregle, Joseph 21 Trollope, Frances 64, 67–8 Trowbridge, John Townsend 118, 135 Tunnell, Ted 116, 118 Turner, Arlin 130–1, 141, 148 Turner, Nat 30, 69 Twain, Mark 2, 100–1, 141–4, 156 Twigge, General David E. 105 Tyler, Bruce 10

Usner, Daniel 53 Van Buren, President Martin 89 Van Deburg, William L. 93 Vella, Christina 77 vice 56, 60, 62, 83–6, 93, 167, 184 Vieux Carré 24 Villeré, General Jacques 40 Vincent, Ellerton 121 voodoo 4, 28–9, 179 Wade, Richard 50 Wagner, Bryan 169, 188 Wakefield, Edward 163 Waldo, James Curtis 122 Walker, William 88–9 Warmoth, Governor Henry Clay 125 Warner, Charles Dudley 148, 156 Watson, Charles 80–1 Watson, Thomas 139–40, 146 Waud, Alfred 126 Weld, Isaac 10 Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 189 White League 120–1, 177, 182 Whitman, Walt 76 Whittier, John Greenleaf 98 Wilburn, George T. 125 Wilde, Oscar 143–4 Wilkinson, General James 19, 25–6 Williams, Clarence 168, 172 Williamson, Harold Francis 138 Williamson, Joel 188 Wilson, Alexander 11 Wilson, Carol 94 Wilson, Samuel 24, 187 Woodward, C. Vann 138 Woodward, William and Ellsworth 155 Woodworth, Samuel 47–8, 65 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition 5, 133–57, 175, 183 Wren, Dr. John V. 90 Wright, Frances 63, 67 Württemberg, Duke of 51, 56 yellow fever 2, 7, 52, 54, 62–4, 70–2, 86, 90–3, 113, 123, 136–7, 143–4, 187