THE CRESCENT CITY.
On the morning of January 1st, 1866, I arrived at New Orleans.
It was midwinter; but the mild sunny weather that followed the first
chill days of rain, made me fancy it May. The gardens of the city were
verdant with tropical plants. White roses in full bloom climbed upon
trellises or the verandas of houses. Oleander trees, bananas with their
broad drooping leaves six feet long, and Japan plums that ripen in
February, grew side by side in the open air. There were orange-trees
whose golden fruit could be picked from the balconies which they half
concealed. Magnolias, gray-oaks and live-oaks, some heavily hung with
moss that swung in the breeze like waving hair, shaded the yards and
streets. I found the roadsides of the suburbs green with grass, and the
vegetable gardens checkered and striped with delicately contrasting rows
of lettuce, cabbages, carrots, beets, onions, and peas in blossom.
The French quarter of the city impresses you as a foreign town
transplanted to the banks of the Mississippi. Many of the houses are
very ancient, with low, moss-covered roofs projecting over the first
story, like slouched hat-brims over quaint old faces. The more modern
houses are often very elegant, and not less picturesque. The names of
the streets are Pagan, foreign, and strange. The gods and muses of
mythology, the saints of the Church, the Christian virtues, and modern
heroes, are all here. You have streets of “Good Children,” of “Piety,”
of “Apollo,” of “St. Paul,” of “Euterpe,” and all their relations. The
shop-signs are in French, or in French and English. The people you meet
have a foreign air and speak a foreign tongue. Their complexions range
through all hues, from the dark Creole to the ebon African. The
anomalous third class of Louisiana—the respectable free colored people
of French-African descent—are largely represented. Dressed in silks,
accompanied by their servants, and speaking good French,—for many of
them are well educated,—the ladies and children of this class enter the
street cars, which they enliven with the Parisian vivacity of their
conversation.
The mingling of foreign and American elements has given to New Orleans a
great variety of styles of architecture; and the whole city has a light,
picturesque, and agreeable appearance. It is built upon an almost level
strip of land bordering upon the left bank of the river, and falling
back from the levee with an imperceptible slope to the cypress and
alligator swamps in the rear. The houses have no cellars. I noticed that
the surface drainage of the city flowed _back_ from the river into the
Bayou St. John, a navigable inlet of Lake Ponchartrain. The old city
front lay upon a curve of the Mississippi, which gave it a crescent
shape: hence its poetic _soubriquet_. The modern city has a river front
seven miles in extent, bent like the letter S.
The broad levee, lined with wharves on one side and belted by busy
streets on the other, crowded with merchandise, and thronged with
merchants, boatmen, and laborers, presents always a lively and
entertaining spectacle. Steam and sailing crafts of every description,
arriving, departing, loading, unloading, and fringing the city with
their long array of smoke-pipes and masts, give you some idea of the
commerce of New Orleans.
Here is the great cotton market of the world. In looking over the cotton
statistics of the past thirty years, I found that nearly one half the
crop of the United States had passed through this port. In 1855–1856
(the mercantile cotton year beginning September 1st and ending August
31st) 1,795,023 bales were shipped from New Orleans,—986,622 to Great
Britain (chiefly to Liverpool); 214,814 to France (chiefly to Havre);
162,657 to the North of Europe; 178,812 to the South of Europe, Mexico,
&c.; and 222,100 coastwise,—151,469 going to Boston and 51,340 to New
York. In 1859–1860, 2,214,296 bales were exported, 1,426,966 to Great
Britain, 313,291 to France, and 208,634 coastwise,—131,648 going to
Boston, 62,936 to New York, and 5,717 to Providence. This, it will be
remembered, was the great cotton year, the crop amounting to near
5,000,000 bales.
One is interested to learn how much cotton left this port during the
war. In 1860–1861, 1,915,852 bales were shipped, nearly all before
hostilities began; in 1861–1862, 27,627 bales; in 1862–1863, 23,750; in
1863–1864, 128,130; in 1864–1865, 192,351. The total receipts during
this last year were 271,015 bales. From September 1st, 1865, to January
1st, 1866, the receipts were 375,000 bales; and cotton was still coming.
The warehouses on the lower tributaries of the Mississippi were said to
be full of it, waiting for high water to send it down. There had been
far more concealed in the country than was supposed: it made its
appearance where least looked for; and such was the supply that
experienced traders believed that prices would thenceforth be steadily
on the decline.
A first-class Liverpool steamer is calculated to take out 3000 500-pound
bales, the freight on which is 7–8ths of a penny per pound,—not quite
two cents. The freight to New York and Boston is 1 1–4th cents by
steamers, and 7–8ths of a cent by sailing-vessels.
I put up at the St. Charles, famous before the war as a hotel, and
during the war as the head-quarters of General Butler. It is a
conspicuous edifice, with white-pillared porticos, and a spacious
Rotunda, thronged nightly with a crowd which strikes a stranger with
astonishment. It is a sort of social evening exchange, where merchants,
planters, travellers, river-men, army men, (principally Rebels,)
manufacturing and jobbing agents, showmen, overseers, idlers, sharpers,
gamblers, foreigners, Yankees, Southern men, the well dressed and the
prosperous, the rough and the seedy, congregate together, some leaning
against the pillars, and a few sitting about the stoves, which are
almost hidden from sight by the concourse of people standing or moving
about in the great central space. Numbers of citizens regularly spend
their evenings here, as at a club-room. One, an old plantation overseer
of the better class, told me that for years he had not missed going to
the Rotunda a single night, except when absent from the city. The
character he gave the crowd was not complimentary.
“They are all trying to get money without earning it. Each is doing his
best to shave the rest. If they ever make anything, I don’t know it.
I’ve been here two thousand nights, and never made a cent yet.”
I inquired what brought him here.
“For company; to kill time. I never was married, and never had a home.
When I was young, the girls said I smelt like a wet dog; that’s because
I was poor. Since I’ve got rich, I’m too old to get married.”
What he was thinking of now was a fortune to be made out of labor-saving
machinery to be used on the plantations: “I wish I could get hold of a
half-crazy feller, to fix up a cotton planter, cotton-picker,
cane-cutter, and a thing to hill up some.”
He talked cynically of the planters. “They’re a helpless set. They’re
all confused. They don’t know what they’re going to do. They never did
know much else but to get drunk. If a man has a plantation to rent or
sell, he can’t tell anything about it; you can’t get any proposition out
of him.”
He complained that Northern capital lodged in the cotton belt; but
little of it getting through to the sugar country. He did not know any
lands let to Northern men. “They hav’n’t got sugar on the brain; it’s
cotton they’re all crazy after.”
He used to oversee for fifteen hundred dollars a year: he was now
offered five thousand. He was a well-dressed, rather intelligent,
capable man; and I noticed that the planters treated him with respect.
But his manner toward them was cool and independent: he could not forget
old times. “I never was thought anything of by these men, till I got
rich. Then they began to say ‘Dick P—— is a mighty clever feller;’ and
by-and-by it got to be ‘Mr. P——.’ Now they all come to me, because I
know about business, and they don’t know a thing.”
Like everybody else, he had much to say of the niggers. “A heap of the
planters wants ’em all killed off. But I believe in the nigger. He’ll
work, if they’ll only let him alone. They fool him, and tell him such
lies, he’s no confidence. I’ve worked free niggers and white men, and
always found the niggers worked the best. But no nigger, nor anybody
else, will work like a slave works with the whip behind him. You can’t
make ’em. I was brought up to work alongside o’ niggers, and soon as I
got out of it, nothing, no money, could induce me to work so again.”
Speaking of other overseers, he said: “I admit I was about as tight on
the nigger as a man ought to be. If I’d been a slave, I shouldn’t have
wanted to work under a master that was tighter than I was. But I wa’n’t
a priming to some. You see that red-faced feller with his right hand
behind him, talking with two men? He’s an overseer. I know of his
killing two niggers, and torturing another so that he died in a few
days.” (I omit the shocking details of the punishment said to have been
applied.) “The other night he came here to kill me because I told about
him. He pulled out his pistol, and says he, ‘Dick P——, did you tell
so-and-so I killed three niggers on Clark’s plantation?’ ‘Yes,’ I says,
‘I said so, and can prove it; and if there’s any shooting to be done, I
can shoot as fast as you can.’ After that he bullied around here some,
then went off, and I hav’n’t heard anything about shooting since.”
Among the earliest acquaintances I made at New Orleans was General Phil.
Sheridan, perhaps the most brilliant and popular fighting man of the
war. I found him in command of the Military Division of the Gulf,
comprising the States of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida. In Florida he
had at that time seven thousand troops; in Louisiana, nine thousand; and
in Texas, twenty thousand, embracing ten thousand colored troops at
Corpus Christi and on the Rio Grande, watching the French movements.
It was Sheridan’s opinion that the Rebellion would never be ended until
Maximilian was driven from Mexico. Such a government on our borders
cherished the seeds of ambition and discontent in the minds of the late
Confederates. Many were emigrating to Mexico, and there was danger of
their uniting either with the Liberals or the Imperialists, and forming
a government inimical to the United States. To prevent such a
possibility, he had used military and diplomatic strategy. Three
thousand Rebels having collected in Monterey, he induced the Liberals to
arrest and disarm them. Then in order that they should not be received
by the Imperialists, he made hostile demonstrations, sending a pontoon
train to Brownsville, and six thousand cavalry to San Antonio,
establishing military posts, and making extensive inquiries for forage.
Under such circumstances, Maximilian did not feel inclined to welcome
the Rebel refugees. It is even probable that, had our government at that
time required the withdrawal of the French from Mexico, the demand,
emphasized by these and similar demonstrations, would have been complied
with. Maximilian is very weak in his position. Nineteen twentieths of
the people are opposed to him. There is no regular, legitimate taxation
for the support of his government, but he levies contributions upon
merchants for a small part of the funds he requires, and draws upon
France for the rest. His “government” consists merely of an armed
occupation of the country; with long lines of communication between
military posts, which could be easily cut off and captured one after
another by a comparatively small force.
The Southern country, in the General’s opinion, was fast becoming
“Northernized.” It was very poor, and going to be poorer. The planters
had no enterprise, no recuperative energy: they were entirely dependent
upon Northern capital and Northern spirit. He thought the freedmen’s
affairs required no legislation, but that the State should leave them to
be regulated by the natural law of supply and demand.
Phil. Sheridan is a man of small stature, compactly and somewhat
massively built, with great toughness of constitutional fibre, and an
alert countenance, expressive of remarkable energy and force. I inquired
if he experienced no reaction after the long strain upon his mental and
bodily powers occasioned by the war.
“Only a pleasant one,” he replied. “During my Western campaigns, when I
was continually in the saddle, I weighed but a hundred and fifteen
pounds. My flesh was hard as iron. Now my weight is a hundred and
forty-five.”
He went over with me to the City Hall, to which the Executive department
of the State had been removed, and introduced me to Governor Wells, a
plain, elderly man, affable, and loyal in his speech. I remember his
saying that the action of the President, in pardoning Governor
Humphreys, of Mississippi, after he had been elected by the people on
account of his services in the Confederate cause, was doing great harm
throughout the South, encouraging Rebels and discouraging Union men.
“Everything is being conceded to traitors,” said he, “before they have
been made to feel the Federal power.” He spoke of the strong Rebel
element in the Legislature which he was combating; and gave me copies of
two veto messages which he had returned to it with bills that were
passed for the especial benefit of traitors. The new serf code, similar
to that of Mississippi, engineered through the Legislature by a member
of the late Confederate Congress, he had also disapproved. After this, I
was surprised to hear from other sources how faithfully he had been
carrying out the very policy which he professed to condemn,—even going
beyond the President, in removing from office Union men appointed by
Governor Hahn and appointing Secessionists and Rebels in their place;
and advocating the Southern doctrine that the Government must pay for
the slaves it had emancipated. Such discrepancies between deeds and
professions require no comment. Governor Wells is not the only one, nor
the highest, among public officers, who, wishing to reconcile the
irreconcilable, and to stand well before the country whilst they were
strengthening the hands and gaining the favor of its enemies, have
suffered their loyal protestations to be put to some confusion by acts
of doubtful patriotism.
At the Governor’s room I had the good fortune to meet the Mayor of the
city, Mr. Hugh Kennedy, whom I afterwards called upon by appointment. By
birth a Scotchman, he had been thirty years a citizen of New Orleans,
and, from the beginning of the Secession troubles, had shown himself a
stanch patriot. He was appointed to the mayoralty by President Lincoln;
General Banks removed him, but he was afterwards reinstated.
I found him an almost enthusiastic believer in the future greatness of
New Orleans. “It is certain,” he said, “to double its population in ten
years. Its prosperity dates from the day of the abolition of slavery.
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. We
have two new cotton-mills just gone into operation. The effect upon the
whole country will be similar. Formerly planters went or sent to New
York and Boston and laid in their supplies; for this reason there were
no villages in the South. But now that men work for wages, which they
will wish to spend near home, villages will everywhere spring up.”
Living, in New Orleans, he said, was very cheap. The fertile soil
produces, with little labor, an abundance of vegetables the year round.
Cattle are brought from the extensive prairies of the State, and from
the vast pastures of Texas: and contractors had engaged to supply the
charitable institutions of the city with the rumps and rounds of beef at
six cents a pound.
The street railroads promised to yield a considerable revenue to the
city. The original company paid only $130,000 for the privilege of
laying down its rails, and an exclusive right to the track for
twenty-five years. But two new roads had been started, one of which had
stipulated to pay to the city government eleven and a half per cent. of
its gross proceeds, and the other twenty-two and a half per cent. “In
two or three years an annual income from that source will not be less
than $200,000.”
From Mr. Kennedy I learned that free people of color owned property in
New Orleans to the amount of $15,000,000.
He was delighted with the working of the free-labor system. “I thought
it an indication of progress when the white laborers and negroes on the
levees the other day made a strike for higher wages. They were receiving
two dollars and a half and three dollars a day, and they struck for five
and seven dollars. They marched up the levee in a long procession, white
and black together. I gave orders that they should not be interfered
with as long as they interfered with nobody else; but when they
undertook by force to prevent other laborers from working, the police
promptly put a stop to their proceedings.”