unhealthiness of New-Orleans as strenuously as some of its inhabitants
deny its immorality. To me it appears that everything depends on what is
understood by Morals and Health. As to the morals of the city, I have
elsewhere stated the principal facts on which my unfavourable judgment
is founded.[17] In regard to another department of morals, the
honourable fact of the generous charity of New-Orleans to strangers
should be stated. Great numbers of sick and destitute foreigners are
perpetually thrown upon the mercy of the inhabitants, and that mercy is
unbounded. I have reason to believe that the sick are not merely nursed
and cured, but provided with funds before departing. When I visited the
hospital, it contained two hundred and fifty patients, not above fifty
of whom were Americans. As to the health of the place, I believe the
average is good among that portion of the population which can afford to
remove northward for the hot months; but very low if the total white
population be included. The pamphlet which I read argues that, though
the fever is very destructive during a portion of the year, mortality
from other diseases is much below the common average; that the
variations of temperature are slight, though frequent; and that the
average of children and old persons is high. All this may be true; but a
place must be called peculiarly unhealthy whose inhabitants are
compelled, on pain of death, to remove for three or four months of every
year. Instead of arguing against such a fact as this, many citizens are
hoping and striving to put an end to the necessity of such a removal.
They hope, by means of draining and paving, to render their city
habitable all the year round. Plans of drainage are under consideration,
and I saw some importations of paving-stones. The friends of the
New-Orleans people can hardly wish them a greater good than the success
of such attempts; for the perpetual shifting about which they are
subjected to by the dread of the fever is a serious evil to sober
families of an industrious, domestic turn. It is very injurious to the
minds of children and to the habits of young people, and a great
hardship to the aged. I was struck with a remark which fell from a lady
about her children's exercise in the open air. She said that she always
took them out when the wind blew from over the lake, and kept them at
home in warm weather when it blew from any other quarter, as it then
only made them "more languid" to go out. This did not tend to confirm
the doctrine of the pamphlet; but I was not surprised at the remark when
I looked abroad over the neighbouring country from the top of the
hospital. Thence I saw the marsh which was given to Lafayette, and which
he sold, not long before his death, to a London firm, who sold it again.
On this marsh, most of which was under water, the city of New-Orleans
was begun. A strip of buildings was carried to the river bank, where the
city spread.
Footnote 17: Ibid, p. 326.
In the midst of the flooded lots of ground stood the gas-works;
surrounded by stagnant ponds lay the Catholic cemetery. The very
churches of the city seemed to spring up out of the water. The blossomy
beauties of the swamp could not be seen at this height, and all looked
hideously desolate in the glaring sun. The view from the turret of the
Cotton-press is much more advantageous. It commands many windings of the
majestic river, and the point where it seems to lose itself in the
distant forest; while below appears everything that is dry in all the
landscape: the shipping, the Levée, the busy streets of the city, and
the shady avenues of the suburbs.
The ladies of New-Orleans walk more than their countrywomen of other
cities, from the streets being in such bad order as to make walking the
safest means of locomotion. The streets are not very numerous; they are
well distinguished, and lie at right angles, and their names are clearly
printed up; so that strangers find no difficulty in going about, except
when a fall of rain has made the crossings impassable. The heat is far
less oppressive in the streets than in the open country, as there is
generally a shady side. We were never kept within doors by the heat,
though summer weather had fairly set in before our arrival. We made
calls, and went shopping and sight-seeing, much as we do in London; and,
moreover, walked to dinner visits, to the theatre, and to church, while
the sun was blazing as if he had drawn that part of the world some
millions of miles nearer to himself than that in which we had been
accustomed to live. It is in vain to attempt describing what the
moonlight is like. We walked under the long rows of Pride-of-India trees
on the Ramparts, amid the picturesque low dwellings of the Quadroons,
and almost felt the glow of the moonlight, so warm, so golden, so soft
as I never saw it elsewhere. We were never tired of watching the
lightning from our balcony, flashing through the first shades of
twilight, and keeping the whole heaven in night-long conflagration. The
moschetoes were a great and perpetual plague, except while we were
asleep. We found our moscheto-curtains a sufficient protection at night;
but we had to be on the watch against these malicious insects all day,
and to wage war against them during the whole evening. Many ladies are
accustomed, during the summer months, to get after breakfast into a
large sack of muslin tied round the throat, with smaller sacks for the
arms, and to sit thus at work or book, fanning themselves to protect
their faces. Others sit all the morning on the bed, within their
moscheto-curtains. I wore gloves and prunella boots all day long, but
hands and feet were stung through all the defences I could devise. After
a while the sting of the moscheto ceases to irritate more than the
English gnat-sting; but, to strangers, the suffering is serious; to
those of feverish habit, sometimes dangerous.
Sunday is the busiest day of the week to the stranger in New-Orleans.
There is first the negro market to be seen at five o'clock. We missed
this sight, as the mornings were foggy, and it was accounted unsafe to
go out in the early damp. Then there is the Cathedral to be attended, a
place which the European gladly visits, as the only one in the United
States where all men meet together as brethren. As he goes, the streets
are noisy with traffic. Some of those who keep the Sunday sit at their
doors or windows reading the newspapers or chatting with their
acquaintance. Merchants are seen hastening to the counting-house or the
wharf, or busy in the stores. Others are streaming into the church
doors. There are groups about the cathedral gates, the blacks and the
whites parting company as if they had not been worshipping side by side.
Within the edifice there is no separation. Some few persons may be in
pews; but kneeling on the pavement may be seen a multitude, of every
shade of complexion, from the fair Scotchwoman or German to the
jet-black pure African. The Spanish eye flashes from beneath the veil;
the French Creole countenance, painted high, is surmounted by the neat
cap or the showy bonnet; while between them may be thrust a gray-headed
mulatto, following with his stupid eyes the evolutions of the priest; or
the devout negro woman telling her beads--a string of berries--as if her
life depended on her task. During the preaching, the multitude of
anxious faces, thus various in tint and expression, turned up towards
the pulpit, afforded one of those few spectacles which are apt to haunt
the whole future life of the observer like a dream. Several Protestants
spoke to me of the Catholic religion as being a great blessing to the
ignorant negro, viewing a ritual religion as a safe resting-place
between barbarism and truth. Nothing that I saw disposed me to agree
with them. I saw among Catholics of this class only the most abject
worship of things without meaning, and no comprehension whatever of
symbols. I was persuaded that, if a ritual religion be ever a good, it
is so in the case of the most, not the least, enlightened; of those who
accept the ritual as symbolical, and not of those who pay it literal
worship. I could not but think that, if the undisguised story of Jesus
were presented to these last as it was to the fishermen of Galilee and
the peasants on the reedy banks of Jordan, they would embrace a
Christianity, in comparison with which their present religion is an
unintelligible and effectual mythology. But such a primitive
Christianity they, as slaves, never will and never can have, as its
whole spirit is destructive of slavery.
Half a year before my visit to New-Orleans, a great commotion had been
raised in the city against a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Joel
Parker, on account of some expressions which he had been reported to
have used, while on a visit in New-England, respecting the morals of
New-Orleans, and especially the desecration of the Sunday. Some
meddlesome person had called a public meeting, to consider what should
be done with the Rev. Joel Parker for having employed his constitutional
freedom of speech in declaring what almost everybody knew or believed to
be true. Many gentlemen of the city were vexed at this encroachment upon
the liberty of the citizen, and at the ridicule which such apparent
sensitiveness about reputation would bring upon their society; and they
determined to be present at the meeting, and support the pastor's
rights. Matters were proceeding fast towards a condemnation of the
accused and a sentence of banishment, when these gentlemen demanded that
he should be heard in his own defence, a guarantee for his personal
safety being first passed by the meeting. This was agreed to, and Mr.
Parker appeared on the hustings. Unfortunately, he missed the
opportunity--a particularly favourable one--of making a moral impression
which would never have been lost. A full declaration of what he had
said, the grounds of it, and his right to say it, would have turned the
emotions of the assemblage, already softened in his favour, towards
himself and the right. As it was, he did nothing wrong, except in as far
as that he did nothing very right; but there was a want of judgment and
taste in his address which was much to be regretted. He was allowed to
go free for the time; but the newspapers reported all the charges
against him, suppressed his replies, and lauded the citizens for not
having pulled the offender to pieces; and Mr. Parker's congregation
were called upon, on the ground of the resolutions passed at the public
meeting, to banish their pastor. They refused, and appealed to all the
citizens to protect them from such oppression as was threatened. No
further steps were taken, I believe, against the pastor and his people;
his church flourished under this little gust of persecution; and, when I
was there, a handsome new edifice was rising up to accommodate the
increased number of his congregation. I wished to hear this gentleman,
and was glad to find that his flock met, while the building was going
on, in the vestry of the new church; a spacious crypt, which was crowded
when he preached. I had not expected much from his preaching, and was
therefore taken by surprise by the exceeding beauty of his discourse;
beauty, not of style, but spirit. The lofty and tender earnestness of
both his sentiments and manner put the observer off his watch about the
composition of the sermon. I was surprised to perceive in conversation
afterward tokens that Mr. Parker was not a highly-educated man. I was
raised by the lofty tone of his preaching far above all critical
vigilance.
I had much opportunity of seeing in the United States what is the
operation of persecution on strong and virtuous minds, and I trust the
lesson of encouragement will never be lost. As it is certain that the
progression of the race must be carried on through persecution of some
kind and degree; as it is clear that the superior spirits to whom the
race owes its advancement must, by their very act of anticipation, get
out of the circle of general intelligence and sympathy, and be thus
subject to the trials of spiritual solitude and social enmity--since
thus it has ever been, and thus, by the laws of human nature, it must
ever be--it is heart-cheering and soul-staying to perceive that the
effects of persecution may be, and often are, more blessed than those of
other kinds of discipline. Many quail under the apprehension of
persecution; some are soured by it; but some pass through the suffering,
the bitter suffering of popular hatred, with a strength which intermits
less and less, and come out of it with new capacities for enjoyment,
with affections which can no longer be checked by want of sympathy, and
with an object in life which can never be overthrown. Mr. Parker's case
was not one of any high or permanent character; though, as far as his
trial went, it seemed to have given calmness and vigour to his mind. (I
judge from his manner of speaking of the affair to me.) The
abolitionists are the persons I have had, and always shall have, chiefly
in view in speaking of the effects of persecution. They often reminded
me of the remark, that you may know a philanthropist in the streets by
his face. The life, light, and gentleness of their countenances, the
cheerful earnestness of their speech, and the gayety of their manners,
were enough to assure the unprejudiced foreign observer of the integrity
of their cause and the blessedness of their pilgrim lives.
The afternoon or evening Sunday walk in New Orleans cannot fail to
convince the stranger of the truth of the sayings of Mr. Parker, for
which he afterward was subjected to so fierce a retribution. Whatever
may be thought of the duty or expediency of a strict observance of the
Sunday, no one can contend that in this city the observance is strict.
In the market there is traffic in meat and vegetables, and the groups of
foreigners make a Babel of the place with their loud talk in many
tongues. The men are smoking outside their houses; the girls, with broad
coloured ribands streaming from the ends of their long braids of hair,
are walking or flirting; while veiled ladies are stealing through the
streets, or the graceful Quadroon women are taking their evening airing
on the Levée. The river is crowded with shipping, to the hulls of which
the walkers look up from a distance, the river being above the level of
the neighbouring streets. It rushes along through the busy region,
seeming to be touched with mercy, or to disdain its power of mischief.
It might overwhelm in an instant the swarming inhabitants of the
boundless level; it looks as if it could scarcely avoid doing so; yet it
rolls on within its banks so steadily, that the citizens forget their
insecurity. Its breadth is not striking to the eye; yet, when one begins
to calculate, the magnitude of the stream becomes apparent. A steamboat
carries down six vessels at once, two on each side and two behind; and
this cluster of seven vessels looks somewhat in the proportion of a
constellation in the sky. From the Levée the Cathedral looks well,
fronting the river, standing in the middle of a square, and presenting
an appearance of great antiquity, hastened, no doubt, by the moisture of
the atmosphere in which it stands.
The Levée continues to be crowded long after the sun has set. The
quivering summer lightning plays over the heads of the merry multitude,
who are conversing in all the tongues, and gay in all the costumes of
the world.
Another bright scene is on the road to the lake on a fine afternoon.
This road winds for five miles through the swamp, and is bordered by
cypress, flowering reeds, fleurs-de-lis of every colour, palmetto, and a
hundred aquatic shrubs new to the eye of the stranger. The gray moss
common in damp situations floats in streamers from the branches. Snakes
abound, and coil about the negroes who are seen pushing their canoes
through the rank vegetation, or towing their rafts laden with wood along
the sluggish bayou. There is a small settlement, wholly French in its
character, where the ancient dwellings, painted red, and with broad
eaves, look highly picturesque in the green landscape. The winding white
road is thronged with carriages, driven at a very rapid rate, and full
of families of children, or gay parties of young people, or a company of
smoking merchants, going to the lake to drink or to bathe. Many go
merely as we did, for the sake of the drive, and of breathing the cool
air of the lake, while enjoying a glass of iced lemonade or sangaree.
It was along this road that Madame Lalaurie escaped from the hands of
her exasperated countrymen about five years ago. The remembrance or
tradition of that day will always be fresh in New-Orleans. In England
the story is little, if at all, known. I was requested on the spot not
to publish it as exhibiting a fair specimen of slaveholding in
New-Orleans, and no one could suppose it to be so; but it is a
revelation of what may happen in a slaveholding country, and can happen
nowhere else. Even on the mildest supposition that the case admits of,
that Madame Lalaurie was insane, there remains the fact that the
insanity could have taken such a direction, and perpetrated such deeds
nowhere but in a slave country.
There is, as every one knows, a mutual jealousy between the French and
American creoles[18] in Louisiana. Till lately, the French creoles have
carried everything their own way, from their superior numbers. I believe
that even yet no American expects to get a verdict, on any evidence,
from a jury of French creoles. Madame Lalaurie enjoyed a long impunity
from this circumstance. She was a French creole, and her third husband,
M. Lalaurie, was, I believe, a Frenchman. He was many years younger
than his lady, and had nothing to do with the management of her
property, so that he has been in no degree mixed up with her affairs and
disgraces. It had been long observed that Madame Lalaurie's slaves
looked singularly haggard and wretched, except the coachman, whose
appearance was sleek and comfortable enough. Two daughters by a former
marriage, who lived with her, were also thought to be spiritless and
unhappy-looking. But the lady was so graceful and accomplished, so
charming in her manners and so hospitable, that no one ventured openly
to question her perfect goodness. If a murmur of doubt began among the
Americans, the French resented it. If the French had occasional
suspicions, they concealed them for the credit of their faction. "She
was very pleasant to whites," I was told, and sometimes to blacks, but
so broadly so as to excite suspicions of hypocrisy. When she had a
dinner-party at home, she would hand the remains of her glass of wine to
the emaciated negro behind her chair, with a smooth audible whisper,
"Here, my friend, take this; it will do you good." At length rumours
spread which induced a friend of mine, an eminent lawyer, to send her a
hint about the law which ordains that slaves who can be proved to have
been cruelly treated shall be taken from the owner, and sold in the
market for the benefit of the State. My friend, being of the American
party, did not appear in the matter himself, but sent a young French
creole, who was studying law with him. The young man returned full of
indignation against all who could suspect this amiable woman of doing
anything wrong. He was confident that she could not harm a fly, or give
pain to any human being.
Footnote 18: Creole means _native_. French and American creoles are
natives of French and American extraction.
Soon after this a lady, living in a house which joined the premises of
Madame Lalaurie, was going up stairs, when she heard a piercing shriek
from the next courtyard. She looked out, and saw a little negro girl,
apparently about eight years old, flying across the yard towards the
house, and Madame Lalaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand. The lady saw
the poor child run from story to story, her mistress following, till
both came out upon the top of the house. Seeing the child about to
spring over, the witness put her hands before her eyes; but she heard
the fall, and saw the child taken up, her body bending and limbs hanging
as if every bone was broken. The lady watched for many hours, and at
night she saw the body brought out, a shallow hole dug by torchlight in
the corner of the yard, and the corpse covered over. No secret was made
of what had been seen. Inquiry was instituted, and illegal cruelty
proved in the case of nine slaves, who were forfeited according to law.
It afterward came out that this woman induced some family connexions of
her own to purchase these slaves, and sell them again to her, conveying
them back to her premises in the night. She must have desired to have
them for purposes of torture, for she could not let them be seen in a
neighbourhood where they were known.
During all this time she does not appear to have lost caste, though it
appears that she beat her daughters as often as they attempted in her
absence to convey food to her miserable victims. She always knew of such
attempts by means of the sleek coachman, who was her spy. It was
necessary to have a spy, to preserve her life from the vengeance of her
household; so she pampered this obsequious negro, and at length owed her
escape to him.
She kept her cook chained within eight yards of the fireplace, where
sumptuous dinners were cooked in the most sultry season. It is a pity
that some of the admiring guests whom she assembled round her hospitable
table could not see through the floor, and be made aware at what a cost
they were entertained. One morning the cook declared that they had
better all be burned together than lead such a life, and she set the
house on fire. The alarm spread over the city; the gallant French
creoles all ran to the aid of their accomplished friend, and the fire
was presently extinguished. Many, whose curiosity had been roused about
the domestic proceedings of the lady, seized the opportunity of entering
those parts of the premises from which the whole world had been hitherto
carefully excluded. They perceived that, as often as they approached a
particular outhouse, the lady became excessively uneasy lest some
property in an opposite direction should be burned. When the fire was
extinguished, they made bold to break open this outhouse. A horrible
sight met their eyes. Of the nine slaves, the skeletons of two were
afterward found poked into the ground; the other seven could scarcely be
recognised as human. Their faces had the wildness of famine, and their
bones were coming through the skin. They were chained and tied in
constrained postures, some on their knees, some with their hands above
their heads. 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 stepladder on which this fiend stood while flogging her
victims, in order to lay on the lashes with more effect. Every morning,
it was her first employment after breakfast to lock herself in with her
captives, and flog them till her strength failed.
Amid shouts and groans, the sufferers were brought out into the air and
light. Food was given them with too much haste, for two of them died in
the course of the day. The rest, maimed and helpless, are pensioners of
the city.
The rage of the crowd, especially of the French creoles, was excessive.
The lady shut herself up in the house with her trembling daughters,
while the street was filled from end to end with a yelling crowd of
gentlemen. She consulted her coachman as to what she had best do. He
advised that she should have her coach to the door after dinner, and
appear to go forth for her afternoon drive, as usual; escaping or
returning, according to the aspect of affairs. It is not told whether
she ate her dinner that day, or prevailed on her remaining slaves to
wait upon her. The carriage appeared at the door; she was ready, and
stepped into it. Her assurance seems to have paralyzed the crowd. The
moment the door was shut they appeared to repent having allowed her to
enter, and they tried to upset the carriage, to hold the horses, to make
a snatch at the lady. But the coachman laid about him with his whip,
made the horses plunge, and drove off. He took the road to the lake,
where he could not be intercepted, as it winds through the swamp. He
outstripped the crowd, galloped to the lake, bribed the master of a
schooner which was lying there to put off instantly with the lady to
Mobile. She escaped to France, and took up her abode in Paris under a
feigned name, but not for long. Late one evening a party of gentlemen
called on her, and told her she was Madame Lalaurie, and that she had
better be off. She fled that night, and is supposed to be now skulking
about in some French province under a false name.