Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Read online

  [January 30, 1804:] On my arrival in New Orleans, I found the people very Solicituous to maintain their Public Ball establishment, and to convince them that the American Government felt no disposition to break in upon their amusements. Gen. Wilkinson and myself occasionally attended these assemblies . . . I fear you will suppose that I am wanting in respect in calling your attention to the Balls of New Orleans, but I do assure you, Sir, that they occupy much of the public mind . . . (Claiborne, 22).

  Joseph Dubreuil, one of the wealthiest planters in Louisiana wrote:

  It is not unknown here, after reading over Northern public papers, that the ceded territory has been described to Congress as some sort of “Tower of Babel,” suffering from a confusion of tongues, and Louisianians as men stupefied by despotism or ignorance, and therefore unable to elevate themselves for a long time to the heights of a free constitution.

  Dubreuil and others like him considered Claiborne wholly incompetent and entirely dependent on the English-speaking people for this information. He considered the governor a stranger in New Orleans—a stranger as far as the soil was concerned, its local interests, its customs, its habits, and even the language of the inhabitants, and therefore without the most absolutely necessary knowledge to govern.

  The city government, created by charter in 1805, provided for a mayor, treasurer, recorder, and a city council of fourteen aldermen. The mayor was to preside over the council and head the police force and fire department, both of which were largely voluntary. The new government did its best to clean up New Orleans. It outlawed cockfights and forbade the dumping of human waste into the river. It reorganized the police force, inspected ships for disease, added street lights, and repaired roads and bridges. It purchased more fire-fighting equipment and enacted a building code. In the first decade of the American Era, however, five epidemics of yellow fever raged.

  The years 1803-5 constituted a period of conversation. The natives of New Orleans had been firmly French or Spanish. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, they had become American, but they needed time to adjust, to let go of their European ways, and to learn what it meant to be a part of a democracy.

  It was a period of confusion. Most New Orleanians spoke only French; their governor spoke only English. Communication was difficult, and many of the impressions Claiborne first expressed were due to a lack of understanding. Because of the language difference, there had to be an English court and a French court, an English police force and a French police force, and interpreters everywhere.

  It was a period of legal confusion and conflict. The American government wished to impose British Common Law upon its new territory, the law which was practiced in England and throughout the rest of America. According to Common Law, once a precedent had been established, any similar case was decided on the basis of that precedent. New Orleanians fought tenaciously to retain their Civil Law, in which the courts interpreted the law and were not bound by previous decisions.

  The fight for Civil Law was not just an emotional demand. The welfare of the citizens depended upon it. Their property rights, the rights of illegitimate children, and the rights of the free people of color forced heirship—all of these were protected under the Civil Code existing then in Louisiana; under Common Law, they would have had to be re-determined.

  Slaves in New Orleans could work for hire. Urbanization had made them less deferential to whites and more defiant of the French Code Noir, which had continued to govern them during the Spanish period. And yet, the Code Noir gave more rights to slaves than they enjoyed anywhere else. Slave owners could be brought to court by other slave owners if they mistreated their slaves. Masters were forced to abide by the Code Noir.

  About one-third of the blacks in New Orleans in 1805 were free people of color (f. p. c.) who enjoyed a legal and economic status unparalleled among black people in the American slave states at the time. They had full freedom to enter into business contracts and to own and transfer property, and they had full competence in civil and criminal litigation against blacks and whites alike. If Louisiana would have lost its Civil Code and been forced to accept Common Law, all blacks would have thereafter been treated alike. Rights and privileges would have disappeared, and a revolt like that of the Saint Domingue uprising would not have been difficult to imagine.

  In Louisiana, unlike the rest of America, illegitimate children also had legal rights. Bastards could be legitimized by marriage and could inherit as if born during marriage. This directly opposed British legal thinking, which was best expressed by Blackstone as “for he can inherit nothing, being looked upon as the son of nobody” (Blackstone 1765-69, Chapter 16).

  The people of Louisiana fought to keep their Civil Law and in the end were permitted to do so. Louisiana’s Civil Code of 1808 and the Code of Practices of 1824 were based on Roman rather than English law. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 provided the framework, but other elements contributed to its development.

  Culture shock was another experience felt by both natives and new American immigrants. Most Americans had had few business dealings with free people of color, for one thing. Americans were also not prepared for the French Creoles, who were poorly educated and provincial but haughty and proud of their heritage. The Creoles considered themselves a breed apart and far more cultured with their theater and their opera than the Americans with whom they were now doing business. They were different and cultured in those areas considered by them to be important. By American standards, they were culturally backwards, but the Creoles were not interested in using American standards or being measured by them.

  The Creoles, like the colony itself, were not money-makers to any great extent. Creoles such as Bernard de Marigny could have learned much from entrepreneurs such as the American Samuel J. Peters and the English actor James H. Caldwell, who, in 1828, offered to buy and develop the Marigny Plantation and to build hotels, theaters, and gas works. The offer was declined. That they had the know-how to carry out such projects was later proved, not in Faubourg Marigny but in Faubourg Ste. Marie on the upriver side of Canal Street.

  When the Americans began arriving in large numbers, they settled in Faubourg St. Mary, as they called it. They lived along the natural levee, crowding into sugar plantations that had existed for decades. In the first ten years after the Louisiana Purchase, enmity between Creoles in the Vieux Carré and Americans in the Faubourg St. Mary came alive.

  Canal Street: Never a Canal

  Canal Street was laid out at 171 feet wide, 50 feet of which was allotted for a canal. It is shown in the planning stage on some old maps, but it never materialized. The canal was designed to tie the river with the Carondelet Canal (the Old Basin Canal), which ran to Bayou St. John and then to Lake Pontchartrain. Industrialists envisioned a river-to-lake waterway. They hoped that the lake would become important commercially, but on the New Orleans side, it never did. There was a drainage ditch down Canal Street for a time, but that was as close as it ever came to being a canal.

  Canal Street, the widest street in the United States, became a kind of boundary line between the feuding Creoles in the Old Town and the Americans in Faubourg St. Mary. The wide median down the center was called the “neutral ground,” a sign of a truce that existed, however fragilely, between the hostile residents of the two communities. In time, all medians in New Orleans came to be called neutral grounds.

  In the early territorial period, fear of war with Spain was another disturbing element. After the Louisiana Purchase, the Spanish soldiers were still in New Orleans, as we have seen in Claiborne’s letters to Madison. They were also in the Spanish cities in and around New Orleans: Baton Rouge, Covington, and Mandeville north of Lake Pontchartrain, and Mobile and Pensacola to the east. The United States must have realized that they could not continue to hold on to New Orleans if they did not have control of West Florida. A main concern was whether or not West Florida was included in the Louisiana Purchase. At one point, the United States insisted that it was indeed included. (West Flo
rida consisted of the parishes of St. Helena, the Felicianas, East Baton Rouge, and St. Tammany.) This area was inhabited by many Americans and English who had migrated down from the thirteen colonies when West Florida was not included in the Louisiana Purchase, and to make sure of this, they delayed acknowledging the transfer.

  In 1810, the people living in the West Florida parishes revolted against Spain, taking over Fort San Carlos in Baton Rouge in a minor skirmish and declaring their independence from Spain. They established the West Florida Republic. The flag of the new republic was blue with a white star, and its president had the unlikely name of Fulwar Skipwith. Within six weeks, he asked to have his republic united with the Territory of Orleans. Evidently, he was too late, because Claiborne had already received orders from President Madison to take possession of West Florida. He did, and West Florida was annexed to the Territory. Spain and Great Britain protested the annexation, but it was all in vain.

  Louisiana Becomes a State

  When Claiborne was appointed governor in 1803, the territory he was to govern was the Territory of Orleans, which was later to become part of the state of Louisiana. From the beginning, the people of the Territory of Orleans wanted statehood. They wanted the benefits of American citizenship and pressured Congress for help in this effort.

  In 1810, the Territory of Orleans had a population of 76,500. A population of 60,000 was required for statehood. In January 1811, Julien Poydras, the territory’s delegate to Congress, proposed statehood for Louisiana. The next month, Congress authorized the territory to draw up a constitution. Delegates drew up the constitution, and on April 8, 1812, Congress ratified it. It did not include the West Florida parishes, which had been annexed to the territory in 1810, but were added to the state by an amendment on April 14, 1812.

  The Territory of Orleans became the state of Louisiana on April 30, 1812, which became the eighteenth star on the flag. A gubernatorial election was held, and Claiborne, who had by this time endeared himself to the people of Louisiana, won easily over Creole Noel Destrehan. His efforts to overcome his personal losses and to win the respect of the haughty Creoles had been rewarded.

  His opinion of the people had also changed. By 1812, he was quick to say that the natives of Louisiana had a natural ability; they might not have had much schooling, but they were very right, intense people who knew how to do things and what they were about.

  Several major events in the history of the city occurred during this period. Shortly after Louisiana had been retroceded to France, the Ursuline nuns became terrified that since France was now under the Emperor Napoleon, the French government might not honor the Catholic Church. So great was their fear that some of the nuns left New Orleans and went to Cuba. Those who stayed, knowing New Orleans was now to become American, wrote to Thomas Jefferson, asking if they were going to be allowed to practice the Catholic religion. Jefferson wrote them a beautiful letter, allaying their fears, enumerating the many services the Ursulines had rendered in the past, and stating his wish that they would continue to serve the territory in the future. Reassured, the nuns remained.

  The Legislative Council attempted to divide the Territory into areas called counties. Municipal districts were called counties in the rest of the United States, and it seemed logical to call them that in Louisiana. From the beginning, however, boundaries of church parishes had been used to mark off municipal divisions in Louisiana. (Boundaries of the original parishes in New Orleans are not known.)

  In 1805, the year the city of New Orleans was incorporated, counties were established in the territory. For a few years, counties and parishes existed side by side, and the courts labored under the confusion that resulted. In 1807, parishes were legalized by the Territorial Government, but not incorporated into the State Constitution until 1845, after which counties were forever abolished in Louisiana.

  The Aaron Burr Conspiracy

  Aaron Burr, born in 1765 and elected Vice President in 1801, ended his political career when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. While vice president, Burr had become a candidate in the gubernatorial election in New York in 1804 and was defeated due to Hamilton’s efforts. He challenged Hamilton to a duel and killed him. The coroner declared that Hamilton had been willfully murdered by Burr. Burr fled and began recruiting an army, allegedly conspiring with Gen. James Wilkinson to wrest Louisiana and other western states from the United States or a part of Mexico from Spain in order to set up his own country. Burr was tried for treason in 1807 and acquitted. He went to Europe, still attempting to get support for his Mexican scheme. He returned to the United States under an assumed name in 1812 and practiced law in New York until his death.

  In the summer of 1805, Burr met in New Orleans with Edward Livingston, Daniel Clark, and a group of adventurers who wanted to invade Mexico. In 1806, rumors flew about Burr’s developing army. Many believed the Spanish in West Florida were working with Burr.

  Claiborne accused Daniel Clark, then United States congressman, of complicity with Burr. Clark challenged Claiborne to a duel and succeeded in wounding Claiborne, adding to the confusion of American conversion.

  The Code Duello

  Rules governing Affairs of Honor were compiled in the Code Duello. Many duels were fought beneath the Dueling Oaks in today’s City Park. (Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

  The two duels just mentioned in the Burr story make it clear how widespread the practice of dueling was at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Duels could result from any accusation or breach of etiquette, real or imagined, serious or slight. Rules for fighting were spelled out in the Code Duello. Creoles in New Orleans never fought with fists, as the Kaintocks did, but with weapons, and they were trained by weapons masters whose academies were established on Exchange Alley. The duel was called an affair of honor. It sometimes resulted in death, but more often, the offended party’s honor was satisfied by merely wounding his opponent. Under the “Dueling Oaks” at the Allard Plantation, now City Park, or in Père Antoine’s garden, behind the Cathedral, thousands of duels were fought using everything from swords and rapiers to rifles and shotguns.

  The Introduction of Steamboats

  The advent of the steamboat had a lasting effect upon the lives of the people who lived along the Mississippi. Of particular interest was the maiden voyage of the steamer New Orleans, the first steamboat on the Western territorial waters. It was built in 1811 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by Nicholas Roosevelt, pioneer in steam navigation, former associate of Robert Fulton’s, and great-grand-uncle of the future president Theodore Roosevelt. Nicholas Roosevelt was on board for the maiden voyage, which was eventful, to say the least. The boat, 116 feet long and 20 feet wide, left Pittsburg in September 1811 and did not arrive in New Orleans until January 1812. Anything calamitous or extraordinary that could happen did.

  A baby was born to Mrs. Nicholas Roosevelt (daughter of architect Benjamin Latrobe) in Cincinnati during a month’s layover, while the passengers waited for the water to rise. The earthquake of 1811 occurred, frightening the Indians and causing them to attack the steamboat. (The Indians thought the smoke-burping ship had caused the earthquake.) In the midst of all this, the ship caught fire. And when the ship landed in New Orleans in January 1812, the captain wooed and married Mrs. Roosevelt’s maid.

  Until this time, there were mostly flatboats and keelboats on the river. There were few boats coming up from the mouth of the river. Now that the steamboat had been invented, keelboatsmen who sold their boats with their merchandise in New Orleans could travel back upriver by steamboat if they could afford it or have their merchandise shipped by steamer. At last, traffic both ways on the same vessel was possible.

  The Embargo Act of 1807

  In 1807, war was being fought on the Atlantic Ocean between England and France. Although the United States was a neutral power, its ships had repeatedly been seized by both warring nations. Appeals by President Jefferson had been made and ignored. Therefore, Congress passed the Embargo Act of 18
07, prohibiting the shipment of American goods to either England or France.

  Port cities such as New Orleans suffered greatly because of the Embargo Act. Imports and exports dropped to one-third of their former volume. Businesses closed. Smuggling resulted. By 1812, the injustices of the British in impressing American seamen, blockading American ports, and encouraging Indian attacks on settlers moving westward led to American involvement in the European war. In addition, War Hawks in Congress were convinced that victory over the British would win Canada and Spanish Florida for the United States. New England states were opposed to the nation’s entry in a war for which it was ill-prepared. Nevertheless, within days after Louisiana became a state, the United States declared war against England.

  The Battle of New Orleans

  Early in the war, the British enjoyed far more successes than the Americans. The British continued to blockade American ports. They defeated the Americans at Dearborn and Detroit and captured and burned Washington, DC. In spite of Oliver Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, most Americans began to realize the state of unpreparedness of the new nation and to abandon hopes of owning Canada.

  Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Governor Claiborne prepared for a defensive war. Early in 1814, General Andrew Jackson was assigned to march south to calm the Creek Indians, who had been encouraged by the British to massacre white settlers on the Alabama River.

  Word reached New Orleans in the spring of 1814 that the British would attack the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. In September 1814, the British ship Sophia sailed into Grand Terre, the stronghold of the privateer-smuggler Jean Lafitte. The Captain had been empowered to offer Lafitte the rank of Captain in the British military and other monetary rewards if he would fight with the British against the Americans. Lafitte refused and informed Claiborne of the offer.

  Stories are confused at this point. Some historians claim that Claiborne believed the buccaneer and interceded with federal authorities on his behalf. Others say that it was Claiborne, with the Committee of Defense, that sent a force of United States soldiers to bombard Grand Terre and capture Lafitte. Whatever the case, most of the buildings of Lafitte’s compound and many of his ships were destroyed. Lafitte and his brother, Pierre, disappeared into the swamps.