History of New Orleans
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The history of New Orleans, Louisiana traces its development from its founding by the French, through its period under Spanish control, then back to French rule before being sold to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. It has been one of the most important cities in the South for most of its history.
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Colonial Era
New Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French as Nouvelle-Orléans, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. The site was selected because it was a rare bit of natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi, and was adjacent to a Native American trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John (known to the natives as Bayou Choupique). A community of French fur trappers and traders had existed along the bayou (in what is now the middle of New Orleans) for at least a decade before the official founding of the city. Nouvelle-Orléans became the capital of French Louisiana in 1722, replacing Biloxi in that role. The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans. The priest-chronicler Charlevoix described it in 1721 as a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators; he seems to have been the first, however, to predict for it an imperial future. In 1722 New Orleans was made the capital of the vast province of Louisiana. Much of the population in early days was of the wildest and, in part, of the most undesirable character: deported galley-slaves, trappers, gold-hunters and city scourings; and the governors letter's are full of complaints regarding the riffraff sent as soldiers as late as Kerlerecs administration (1753-1763). Two of the lakes in the vicinity commemorate respectively Louis Phelypeaux, Count Pontchartrain, minister and chancellor of France, and Jean Frederic Phelypeaux, Count Maurepas, minister and secretary of state; a third is really a landlocked inlet of the sea, and its name (Lake Borgne) has reference to its incomplete or defective character.
In 1763, the colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire as a secret provision of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, confirmed in the Treaty of Paris, but no Spanish governor came to take control until 1766. Some of the early French settlers were never quite happy with Spanish rule, and repeatedly petitioned to be returned to French control. A fire destroyed 856 buildings in the city on March 21, 1788, and another destroyed 212 buildings in December 1794; after this brick replaced wood as the main building material. In 1795-1796 the sugar industry was first put upon a firm basis. The last twenty years of the 18th century were especially characterized by the growth of commerce on the Mississippi, and the development of those international interests, commercial and political, of which New Orleans was the centre.
The population of New Orleans also suffered from epidemics of yellow fever, malaria, and smallpox, which would periodically return throughout the 19th century until the successful suppression of the city's final outbreak of yellow fever in 1905. In 1795, Spain granted the United States "Right of Deposit" in New Orleans, allowing Americans to use the city's port facilities. Louisiana reverted to French control in 1801 after Napoleon's conquest of Spain, but in 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana (which then included portions of more than a dozen present-day states) to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. At this time the city of New Orleans had a population of about 10,000 people.
Early 19th century
The next dozen years were marked by the beginnings of self-government in city and state; by the excitement attending the Aaron Burr conspiracy (in the course of which, in 1806-1807, General James Wilkinson practically put New Orleans under martial law); by the immigration from Cuba of French planters; and by the American War of 1812. From early days it was noted for its cosmopolitan polyglot population and mixture of cultures. The city grew rapidly, with influxes of Americans, French and Creole French, many of the latter fleeing from the revolution in Haiti.
During the War of 1812 the British sent a force to try to conquer the city, but they were defeated by forces led by Andrew Jackson some miles down river from the city at Chalmette, Louisiana on January 8, 1815 (commonly known as the Battle of New Orleans). The city was attacked by a conjunct expedition of British naval and military forces from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and other points. The American government managed to obtain early information of the enterprise and prepared to meet it with forces (regular and militia) under Maj.-Gen. Andrew Jackson. The British advance was made by way of Lake Borgne, and the troops landed at a fishermans village on 23 December 1814, Major-General Sir E. Pakenham taking command there on the 25th. An immediate advance on the still insufficiently prepared defences of the Americans might have led to the capture of the city, but this was not attempted, and both sides remained inactive for some time awaiting reinforcements. At last in the early morning of the 8th of January 1815 (after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed) a direct attack was made on the now strongly entrenched line of the defenders at Chalmette, near the Mississippi River. It failed disastrously with a loss of 2,000 out of 9,000 British troops engaged, among the dead being Pakenham and Major-General Gibbs. The expedition was soon afterwards abandoned and the troops embarked for England.
The population of the city doubled in the 1830s and by 1840, the city's population was around 102,000, fourth largest in the U.S, the largest city away from the Atlantic seaboard, as well as the largest in the South.
The introduction of natural gas (about 1830); the building of the New Orleans and Pontchartrain Railway (1820-1830), one of the earliest in the United States; the introduction of the first steam cotton press (1832), and the beginning of the public school system (1840) marked these years; foreign exports more than doubled in the period 1831-1833. Travellers in this decade have left pictures of the animation of the river trade more congested in those days of river boats and steamers and ocean-sailing craft than today; of the institution of slavery, the quadroon balls, the medley of Latin tongues, the disorder and carousals of the river-men and adventurers that filled the city. Altogether there was much of the wildness of a frontier town, and a seemingly boundless promise of prosperity. The crisis of 1837, indeed, was severely felt, but did not greatly retard the city's advancement, which continued unchecked until the Civil War. In 1849 Baton Rouge replaced New Orleans as the capital of the state. In 1850 telegraphic communication was established with St. Louis and New York City; in 1851 the New Orleans & Jackson Railway, the first railway outlet northward, now part of the Illinois Central, and in 1854 the western outlet, now the Southern Pacific, were begun.
In 1836 the city was divided into three municipalities: The First being the French Quarter, the Second being Uptown (then meaning all settled areas upriver from Canal Street) and the Third being Downtown, the rest of the city below Canal. For decades the three Municipalities were essentially governed as seperate cities, with the office of Mayor of New Orleans having only a minor role in facilitiating discussions between Municipal governments.
The importance of New Orleans as a commercial center was reinforced when the United States Federal Government established a branch of the United States Mint there in 1838, along with two other Southern branch mints at Charlotte, North Carolina and Dahlonega, Georgia. Such action was deemed necessary largely because in 1836 President Andrew Jackson had issued an executive order called a specie circular which demanded that all land transactions in the United States be conducted in cash, thus increasing the need for minted money. In contrast to the other two Southern branch mints, which only minted gold coinage, the New Orleans Mint produced both gold and silver coinage, which perhaps marked it as the most important branch mint in the country.
The mint produced coins from 1838 until 1861, when Confederate forces occupied the building and used it briefly as their own coinage facility until it was recaptured by Union forces the following year.
On 3 May 1849, a Mississippi River levee breech at Sauve's Crevasse (upriver from the city, around modern Kenner, Louisiana) created the worst flooding in terms of area covered under water in the city's history. While Hurricanes, severe storms, and breaks in levees around Lake Pontchartrain and drainage canals have flooded parts of city a number of times since, the city has not suffered from floods due the the River since (though it had a narrow escape in 1927).
New Orleans was the capital of the state of Louisiana until 1849.
As a principal port it had a leading role in the slave trade, while at the same time having North America's largest community of free persons of color.
Late 19th Century: Civil War and Reconstruction
Early in the American Civil War it was captured by the Union without a battle, and hence was spared the destruction suffered by many other cities of the American South. It retains a historical flavor with a wealth of 19th century structures far beyond the early colonial city boundaries of the French Quarter.
The political and commercial importance of New Orleans, as well as its strategic position, marked it out as the objective of a Union expedition soon after the opening of the Civil War. Captain D.G. Farragut was selected by the Union government for the command of the Western Gulf squadron in January 1862. The four heavy ships of the squadron (none of them armoured) were with many difficulties brought up to the head of the passes, and around them assembled nineteen smaller vessels (mostly gunboats) and a flotilla of twenty mortar-boats under Commander D.D. Porter. The main defences of the Mississippi consisted of the two permanent forts, Jackson and St. Philip. These were of masonry and brick construction, armed with heavy rifled guns as well as smooth-bores, and placed on either bank so as to command long reaches of the river and the surrounding flats. In addition, the Confederates had some improvised ironclads and gunboats, large and small. On the 16th of April, after elaborate reconnaissances, the Union fleet steamed up into position below the forts, and on the 18th the mortar-boats opened fire. Their shells fell with great accuracy, and although one of the boats was sunk and two disabled, Fort Jackson was seriously damaged. But the defences were by no means crippled even after a second bombardment on the 19th, and a formidable obstacle to the advance of the Union main fleet was a boom between the forts designed to detain the ships under close fire should they attempt to run past. At that time the eternal duel of ship versus fort seemed to have been settled in favor of the latter, and it was well for the Union government that it had placed its ablest and most resolute officer at the head of the squadron. Gunboats were repeatedly sent up at night to endeavour to destroy the boom, and the bombardment went on, disabling only a few guns but keeping the gunners of Fort Jackson under cover. At last the gunboats Pinola and Itasca ran in and broke a gap in the boom, and at 2 AM on the 24th the fleet weighed, Farragut in the corvette Hartford leading. After a severe conflict at close quarters, with the forts and with the ironclads and fire rafts of the defence, almost all the Union fleet (except the mortar-boats) forced its way past. At noon on the 25th, Farragut anchored in front of New Orleans; Forts Jackson and St. Philip, isolated and continuously bombarded by the mortarboats, surrendered on the 28th; and soon afterwards the military portion of the expedition occupied the city. The commander, General Benjamin Butler, subjected New Orleans to a rigorous martial law so tactlessly administered as greatly to intensify the hostility of South and North. In the city Butler was nicknamed "The Beast", or "Spoons Butler" (the latter arising from silverwear looted from local homes by some Union troops, though there was no evidence that Butler himself was personally involved in such theivery). Butler's administration did have benefits to the city, which was kept both orderly and due to his massive cleanup efforts unususally healthy by 19th century standards. Towards the end of the war General Natanial Banks held the command at New Orleans.
The city again served as capital of Louisiana from 1865 to 1880.
Throughout the years of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period the history of the city is inseparable from that of the state. All the constitutional conventions were held here, the seat of government again was here (in 1864-1882) and New Orleans was the center of dispute and organization in the struggle between the races for the control of government. Notable events of that struggle in city history included the street riot of the 30 July 1866, at the time of the meeting of the radical constitutional convention.
On 14 September 1874, when the White League defeated the integrated Republican metropolitan police and their allies in pitched battle in the French Quarter and along Canal Street. The White Leage forced the temporary flight of the William P. Kellogg government, installing John McEnery as Governor of Louisiana. Kellogg and the Republican administration were reinstated in power 3 days later by the United States troops. Early 20th century segregationists would celebrate the short-lived triumph of the White League as a victory for "white supremacy" and dubed the conflict "The Battle of Liberty Place". For decades a monument commemorating the event stood near the foot of Canal Street.
U.S. troops also blocked the White League Democrats in January 1875, after they had wrested from the Republicans the organization of the state legislature. Nevertheless, the revolution of 1874 is generally regarded as the independence day of Reconstruction, although not until President Hayes withdrew the troops in 1877 and the Packard government fell did the Democrats actually hold control of the state and city. The financial condition of the city when the whites gained control was very bad. The tax-rate had risen in 1873 to 3%. The city defaulted in 1874. On the interest of its bonded debt, later refunding this ($22,000,000 in 1875) at a lower rate, so as to decrease the annual charge from $1,416,000 to $307,500.
The New Orleans Mint was reopened in 1879, minting mainly silver coinage, including the famed Morgan silver dollar from 1879 to 1904.
Among events in the decade 1880-1890 were the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884-1885 (celebrating the centennial of the cotton industry of the country), and the introduction of electric lighting (1886); in the decade 1890-1900 the introduction of electric transit, the latest charter and the improvements in public works already detailed. The lynching of Italian subjects by a mob in 1891 caused serious international complications.
The city suffered flooding in 1882.
The city hosted the 1884 World's Fair, called the World Cotton Centennial.
On 15 October 1890, Chief-of-Police David C. Hennessy was shot, and reportedly his dying words informed a collegue that he was shot by "Dagos", an insulting term for Italians. On 13 March 1891 a group of Italian Americans on trial for the shooting were aquitted. However a mob stormed the jail and lynched the accused and a number of other Italian-Americans. Local historians still debate whether some of those lynched were connected to the Mafia, but most agree that a number of innocent people were lynched during the Cheif Hennessy Riot.
With a large educated "colored" population that had long interacted with the "white" population, racial attitudes were comparitively liberal for the deep south. Many in the city objected to the government of the State of Louisiana's attempt to enforce strict racial segregation, and hoped to overturn the law with a test case in 1892. The case found its way to the United States Supreme Court in 1896 as Plessy v. Ferguson which resulted in upholding segregation, which would be enforced with ever growing strictness for over half a century.
In 1897 the quasi-legal red light district called Storyville opened and soon became a famous attraction of the city.
1900 the Robert Charles Riots occured in July of 1900. Well armed African-American Robert Charles held off a group of policemen who came to arrest him, killing several of them. A White mob started a race riot, terrorizing and killing a number of African Americans unconnected with Charles. The riots were stopped when a group of White businessmen quickly printed and nailed up flyers saying that if the rioting continued they would start passing out firearms to the Colored population for their self-defence.
20th century
Much of the city is located below sea level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, so the city is surrounded by levees. Until the early 20th century, construction was largely limited to the slightly higher ground along old natural river levees and bayous, since much of the rest of the land was swampy and subject to frequent flooding. This gave the 19th century city the shape of a crescent along a bend of the Mississippi, the origin of the nickname The Crescent City. In the 1910s engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood enacted his ambitious plan to drain the city, including large pumps of his own design which are still used when heavy rains hit the city. Wood's pumps and drainage allowed the city to expand greatly in area.
In 1905 Yellow Fever was reported in the city, which had suffered under repeated epidemics of the disease in the previous century. As the role of mosquitos in spreading the disease was newly understood, the city embarked on a massive campain to drain, screen, or oil all cisterns and standing water (breeding ground for mosquitos) in the city and educate the public on their vital role in preventing mosquitos. The effort was a success and the disease was stopped before reaching epidemic proportions. President Theodore Roosevelt visited the city to demonstrate the safety of New Orleans. The city has had no cases of Yellow Fever since.
In 1909 the New Orleans Mint ceased coinage, with active coining equipment shipped to Philadelphia.
New Orleans was hit by major storms in the 1909 Atlantic hurricane season and again in the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season.
In 1917 the Department of the Navy ordered the Storyville District closed, over the opposition of Mayor Martin Beherman.
In the 1920s an effort to "modernize" the look of the city removed the old cast-iron balconies from Canal Street, the city's commercial hub. In the 1960s, another "modernization" effort replaced the Canal Streetcar Line with buses. Both of these moves came to be regarded as mistakes long after the fact, and the streetcars returned to a portion of Canal Street at the end of the 1990s, and construction to restore the entire line was completed in April of 2004.
The City's river levees narrowly escaped being topped in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
In 1927 a project was begun to fill in the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain and create levees along the lake side of the city. Previously areas along the lakefront like Milneburg were build up on stilts, often over water of the constantly shifting shallow shores of the Lake.
There have often been tensions between the city, with its desire to run its own affairs, and the government of the State of Louisiana wishing to control the city. Perhaps the situation was never worse than in the early 1930s between Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long and New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley, when armed city police and state troopers faced off at the Orleans Parish line and armed conflict was only narrowly avoided.
The suburbs saw great growth in the second half of the 20th century; the largest suburb today is Metairie, which borders New Orleans to the west.
The 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane hit the city in September of 1947. The levees & pumping system succeeded in protecting the city proper from major flooding, but there was many areas of the new suburbs in Jefferson Parish were deluged, and Moisant Airport was shut down under 2 feet of water.
In January of 1961 a meeting of the city's white business leaders publically endorsed desegregation of the city's public schools. That same year Victor H. Schiro became the city's first mayor of Italian-American ancestry.
In September of 1965 the city was hit by Hurricane Betsy. Windows blew out of television station WWL while it was broadcasting. In an effort to prevent panic, mayor Vic Schiro memorably told tv and radio audiences "Don't believe any false rumors, unless you hear them from me." A breech in the Industrial Canal produced catestrophic flooding of the city's Lower 9th Ward. President Lyndon Johnson quickly flew to the city to promise Federal aid.
In 1978 City Councilman Ernest N. Morial became the first person of African-American ancestry elected mayor.
While long one of the U.S.'s most visited cities, tourism boomed in the last quarter of the 20th century, becoming a major force in the local economy. Areas of the French Quarter and Central Business District which were long oriented towards local residential and business uses switched to largely catering to the tourist industry.
A century after the Cotton Centennial Exhibition, New Orleans hosted another World's Fair, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition.
The city experienced severe flooding in the May 8th 1995 Louisiana Flood when heavy rains suddenly dumped over a foot of water on parts of town faster than the pumps could remove the water. Water filled up the streets, especially in lower lying parts of the city. Insurance companies declared more automobiles totaled than in any other United States incident up to that time.
On the afternoon of Saturday, December 14, 1996, the Bright Field freightliner/bulk cargo vessel slammed into the New Orleans Riverwalk mall and hotel complex on Poydras Street Wharf along the Mississippi River. Amazingly, nobody died in the accident, although about 116 were injured. 15 shops and 456 hotel rooms were demolished. The freightliner was unable to be removed from the crash site until January 6, 1997, by which time the site had become something of a "must-see" tourist attraction.
21st century
In 2002, businessman Ray Nagin was elected mayor. Unaligned with any of the city's traditional political blocks, many voters were attracted to his pledges to fight corruption and run the city on a more business like basis.
In September of 2004, tens of thousands of residents evacuated when projected tracks of Hurricane Ivan included a possible major hit of the city.
Hurricane Katrina
- Main article: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans
The city suffered from the effects of a major hurricane on and after August 29, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the gulf coast near the city.
On August 26th, tracks which had previously indicated the hurricane was heading towards the Florida Gulf Coast shifted, the city became aware that a possible major hurricane hit threatened. In the Gulf of Mexico, grew to a devestating Category 5, as it turned north towards New Orleans. Voluntary evacuation was reccomended on Saturday the 27th. The city government issued a mandatory evacuation of the entire city, the first such order ever issued in New Orleans. Some 80% of the population succeeded in leaving before the storm. Interstate highways were made outbound on both sides in an emergency "contraflow" plan first used the (much less smoothly) the previous year for Hurricane Ivan. The evacuation no doubt saved tens of thousands of lives. However, due to the lack of transportation planning, particularly in respect to the thousands in New Orleans without cars, many residents were simply left stranded in the city. Because the eye of the storm missed the city by only 10 to 15 miles, strong winds ravaged the city, shattering windows, spreading debris in many areas, and bringing heavy rains and flooding to the eastern areas of the city.
The situation worsened when levees of three of the city's canals were breeched. The Industrial Canal was breeched by storm surge via the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, and the London Avenue Canal, and the 17th Street Canal, were breached by the elevated waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Some areas that initally seemed to suffer little from the storm found themselves flooeded by rapidly rising water on 30 August. As much as 80% of the city, much of which is below sea level, was flooded, with water reaching a depth of 25 feet (7.6 meters) in some areas. Water levels were similar to those of the 1909 Hurricane, but as many areas which were swamp or farmland in 1909 had become heavily settled since, the effects were massivly worse. The most recent estimates of the damage from the storm, by several insurance companies, are 10 to 25 billion USD [1], while the total economic loss from the disaster has been estimated at 100 billion USD. If the storm damage totals reach the estimated maximum, it will surpass Hurricane Andrew as the costliest hurricane in United States history. [2]
More that 1,000 have died in Louisiana alone, though a final count has not yet been possible. Three weeks later, some areas of the city were re-flooded by Hurricane Rita. The city government at first declared the city off-limits to residents and warned that those remaining may be removed by force, for their health and safety. However, the city was slowly repopulated starting in late September.
While residents and businesses returned to the task of rebuilding the city, especially in less severely damaged sections, the effects of the Hurricane on the economy and demographics of the city are expected to be dramatic and long term, although as of November, 2005, many details are yet to be clear. The City government is essentially bankrupt from the disaster, relying on Federal and State aid.
References
This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.
