The new government was bi-cameral, with two chambers: one of aldermen, elected by the districts; the other of assistant aldermen, elected by the wards. This system continued until 1870, though suspended in 1862, when Union forces took control of the city. The American Sector, with its steamboat traffic on the New Basin Canal and its thriving commercial enterprises, had sufficient clout in 1852 to have the seat of government moved from the Cabildo in the Vieux Carré to the Second Municipality Hall on St. Charles Avenue (thereafter called City Hall, now called Gallier Hall).
Irish and German Immigrants
The two largest groups of immigrants to settle in New Orleans in the two decades before the Civil War were the Irish and the Germans.
Before 1820, the Irish are hard to trace in population figures, since ports in the New World lumped British, Irish, and Scottish immigrants all together. From 1846 to 1856, because of the famines in Ireland, one-third of the immigrants entering America were from that country. By 1860, there were twenty-five thousand Irish living in New Orleans.
The Irish vied with the blacks for jobs digging ditches, collecting refuse, or stevedoring on the riverfront. As a group, they were viewed with disdain, not only because of the work they did but also because they were rowdy, boisterous, clannish, hot tempered, hard-drinking, and always eager for a fight. Their intemperate dispositions had, no doubt, been honed on the razor edge of hunger.
Besides the Irish colonies already mentioned on Tchoupitoulas, Julia, and Girod Streets near the riverfront, many of the Irish settled in an area now referred to as the Irish Channel, which is in the lower Garden District and may be bounded roughly by Magazine Street, the river, Jackson Avenue, and Felicity Street. Some say the boundaries extend as far as Louisiana Avenue, in which case it takes in no less than one hundred city squares.
Actually, the Irish Channel was originally only one street—Adele Street—that ran two blocks from St. Thomas Street to Tchoupitoulas Street and lay between Josephine Street and St. Andrew Street.
One version of how it got its name is from the story of the Irish seamen coming up the river, who would see the light outside Noud’s Ocean Home saloon on Adele Street and cry out, “There’s the Irish Channel!” Another version is that Adele Street was often flooded after a rain. In reality, it was probably called the Irish Channel because so many Irish lived there.
Statue of Margaret Gaffney Haughery, friend of orphans. She sits on an old chair, dressed in a calico gown and shawl. (Courtesy Tracy Clouatre)
In 1850, an Irishman could earn five dollars per day as a “screwman” on the riverfront, “screwing,” or packing, cotton into the ship’s hold. Their reputation as fighters often made the difference in obtaining these coveted jobs. Many claimed to be Irish even if they weren’t, so as to be thought handy with their fists.
The Irish lived simply in small cottages. Often, when Creoles abandoned their big homes on the riverfront to build finer mansions on St. Charles Avenue, the Irish moved into these riverfront homes. In time, they became known as the “lace-curtain” Irish.
Irish families were large, and their food was coarse but wholesome: corned beef and cabbage, Irish stew, potato pancakes, and red beans and rice. The neighborhood itself was respectable, but the riverfront saloons gave it a bad reputation: Mike Noud’s Ocean Home, the Bull’s Head Tavern, and the Isle of Man. Today, Parasol’s Bar on Constance Street represents that green channel still present to entice Irishmen to celebrate their heritage.
One field in which the Irish excelled was fighting. The first official prize fight in New Orleans was between James Burke (alias Deaf) and Sam O’Rourke on May 6, 1836. Burke operated a club, the Boxiana, in which he taught the art of self-defense. John L. Sullivan trained at Carrollton Gardens. New Orleans was host to a fight between Sullivan and Jim Corbett in 1892 in the Olympic Club on Royal Street; Corbett won. They fought with gloves, because bare-knuckled boxing had been outlawed. In 1889, in Richburg, Mississippi, Sullivan fought an illegal fight of seventy-five rounds with Jack Kilrain. Most of the fans had come from New Orleans. The referee was John Fitzpatrick, who later became mayor of New Orleans.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), the reporter who discovered Mr. David Livingstone in Africa on November 10, 1871, had a home on the site of the orange groves of the Jesuit Plantation on Orange Street. Born in Denbigh, Wales, and christened John Rowlands, he was orphaned early, and at age seventeen sailed to New Orleans, where he was adopted by Henry Morton Stanley, who gave him his name.
The statue of Margaret Gaffney Haughery (1813-82), the first person anywhere in the United States to be treated as a celebrity, can be found in a triangular park bounded by Camp, Prytania and Clio Streets. It is the seated image of a woman sculpted in Carrara marble. The woman, in a calico dress and shawl, looks down on a child leaning against her chair. It bears the simple inscription, “Margaret.” After the death of her husband and child, Margaret Haughery devoted herself to doing good works and helping orphaned children. She established a dairy and bakery, both of which brought in unexpected profits. She gave most of her earnings to the poor. She signed her name with an X, never having learned to read or write, and at her death, she left $30,000 to charity. With this bequest, St. Theresa’s Orphanage on Camp Street was begun.
In the 1840s, the largest number of Germans arrived in New Orleans. By 1860, there were almost twenty thousand Germans living in the city. The first German immigrants had come to Louisiana in the colonial days in response to John Law’s circulars. We have seen that they settled in what was to be known as the German Coast, which ran from what is now Norco to Reserve, partly in St. John the Baptist Parish and partly in St. Charles Parish, on both sides of the Mississippi River. These Germans knew how to make use of the lushness of the land and farmed it successfully.
Many spread at an early time into neighboring districts: St. James Parish and the Parishes of Assumption, Ascension, and Iberville. They spread into Donaldsonville and settled on Bayou Lafourche, marrying into Acadian families. Over the course of time, great cultural changes occurred among these descendants of the early Germans. They spoke French fluently and were confused about their ancestry, trying to trace their origin as Cajuns and discovering their German background. Over the generations, the name Foltz became Folse, Herbert became Hebert.
One of the reasons for this shift is believed to be that after the Thirty Years’ War, the Germans who inhabited the Palatinate lived in such abject misery for the next fifty years that it is unlikely that there were any schools. German immigrants to the New World could probably not write their names, and may not even have pronounced them correctly but according to the dialect of the area. French and Spanish immigration officials wrote them as they heard them. Thus, Chaigne became Schoen. A German named Zweig might point to a limb of a tree to tell the meaning of this name and a French official might write Labranche, christening Zweig forevermore with a new French name.
In 1848, many waves of German immigrants came to America to escape political turmoil and revolution in Germany. Many were professionals and well educated. Many were redemptioners, immigrants who worked off their passage in New Orleans as metal workers, draymen, brewmasters, carpenters, and bricklayers.
Germans were the largest group of foreign-speaking people in New Orleans from 1848 to 1900. They lived in Carrollton, Lafayette City, the Ninth Ward, and Mechanicsville (Gretna).
Because of the large German population, beer making became an important business. One beer garden named Tivoli was described as having “a large yard shaded by trees . . . little rustic tables and benches . . . beer men . . . with beer jugs . . . an orchestra . . . five cents is paid by each male partner for the privilege of a waltz . . . the ‘frauen’ pay nothing, heaven bless them!”
Between 1850 and 1855, 126,000 Germans came through the port of the city. Most of them did not stay in New Orleans but moved on to towns where land was cheaper and there was no annual threat of yellow fever. Competition with slave labor (slaves in New Orlean
s were often leased by their owners) was discouraging to newcomers. Many Germans moved on to Texas, Arkansas, Central America, and other places south and west.
From 1876 to 1880, Fritz Jahncke constructed the first paved streets of the city. Canal Street and others had previously been paved with Belgian block, cobblestones, or flatboat wood. He also brought about the formation of the Sewerage and Water Board and developed the New Basin Canal, bringing in sand and shells from the lake.
Other famous Germans to come to New Orleans were Philip Werlein in 1853, who published Dan Emmet’s composition “Dixie;” Peter Laurence Fabacher in 1891, a brewer; Jacob Schoen, a mortician; and Ashton Frey, a butcher in the French Market. All of these men were on the board of the Jackson Brewery, which thrived in the city from 1891 until the 1970s.
The Land of “Dixie”
Mention of the song “Dixie” should not be dismissed without a word about the derivation of the word “Dixie.” It was originally a nickname for New Orleans, a variation of the word “dix,” what people called the ten dollar bill printed in the 1800s for use in New Orleans. One side of the bill indicated the denomination in English: ten; the other side, in French: “dix” (pronounced “dees” by the French, but “dix” by the Americans). Since New Orleans was the only place the Dix was used, it was New Orleans that was referred to as “Dixie.”
“Dixie” was not the only music tied to New Orleans at this time. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-69), a Creole of German and French descent, was considered the leading pianist-composer of his day. He gave concerts throughout the world. “The Dying Poet” and “The Lost Hope” are probably his most famous works. He also wrote “La Bamboula” from memories of the music and dancing of the slaves in Congo Square.
The Yugoslavs
The Yugoslavs of Orleans and Plaquemines Parishes have prospered as a result of their cultivation of the Louisiana oyster. They came from Yugoslavia to New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York in the middle of the nineteenth century, seeking freedom from oppression and better economic conditions. After living near the French Market for a time, they found in the Plaquemines area a brackish water with the right mixture of fresh and salt water to produce good oysters and developed techniques of improving their quality. For more than one hundred years, they have been oystermen on the aquatic boundaries of our state: the Atchafalaya River, the Sabine River, and the Pearl River. They settled in Plaquemines Parish toward the mouth of the river and cultivated the Louisiana oyster in Bayou Cook, Bayou Chutte, and Grand Bayou.
Slavery
Blacks have always been a large part of the population of the city. They came here first with Bienville as slaves for his colony to join forces with the Indians, the earliest slaves in New Orleans.
Slaves came to New Orleans and Louisiana from West Africa, Haiti, Belize, Virginia, and South Carolina. They arrived at Algiers Point, across the river from New Orleans.
Algiers Point, on the west bank of the river, had been granted to the city-founder, Bienville, in 1719, when a slave corral was housed on the Point, and African slaves were sold from it to the colonists. The Point was also the site of the French colony’s slaughterhouse and was sometimes called Slaughterhouse Point during the colonial period. Powder Street in Algiers Point is evidence that colonists also held their powder magazines there. It was probably named for the original Algiers, from which pirates terrorized the Mediterranean Sea. General O’Reilly had led an expedition against pirates in the Mediterranean before becoming the Governor of Louisiana in 1769. A ferry route between Algiers and New Orleans was established in 1827, and Algiers began to develop; by 1870, it was named the Fifth District of New Orleans.
The slaves in New Orleans and their white masters exchanged cultural modes of expression and began a process of amalgamation early in the city’s history, although this process was delayed in other parts of the South. The paternalistic French and Spanish rulers encouraged African culture among their slaves, allowing West African dancing, music, cooking, and architecture to survive without interference. Also, New Orleans slaves, living as they did in such close proximity to their white masters in a city of limited size surrounded by water, experienced a greater knowledge of the whites than the plantation slave, and in the city, the two cultures overlapped.
In New Orleans, slavery was viewed with a unique attitude. A slave was bought for his brawn, which enabled him to work, but he was also appreciated for his cuisine, his humor, and his many cultural aptitudes.
The term “Blacks of Louisiana” does not accurately describe the blacks of our state or city, in the beginning or in the present. After the Haitian insurrection in 1791, incoming people of color (gens de couleur) ranged in their racial mix. A number of terms developed to distinguish heritage, including mulattoes (half-black), quadroons (one-quarter black), and octoroons (one-eighth black). The term “café au lait” was used to describe people with a lighter skin tone, meaning coffee with cream or black with white.
A slave coming to New Orleans did not necessarily remain a slave. Occasionally, he was manumitted by his master to enter free society as an indentured servant. On rare occasions, he could work off his slavery as a redemptioner.
In New Orleans, both black people and white people owned slaves. Slaves were called “blacks;” free persons of color were called “colored.” Africans, who appeared to the white citizens as brutes upon arrival in the city could, within one generation, become transformed into dutiful Christians and skilled laborers.
Slaves were identified as Africans and Creoles. The former had been born in Africa and transported to America. The latter were children of Africans who had been born in Louisiana. Also, if a slave was from Louisiana, he was referred to as a Creole slave, meaning simply a native of Louisiana. (Sometimes the term was confused and thought to refer strictly to a black person.)
In the city, there were many free blacks with slaves of their own. Between 1804 and 1809, many free persons of color came to Louisiana from their homeland in Saint Domingue to escape hostile action by the island’s ex-slaves following the bloody slave insurrection of 1791. This more than doubled Louisiana’s free black population. These rebellions made slaveholders in America fearful and, in most cases, more liberal and generous in the treatment of their own slaves.
“The slaves of New Orleans were perhaps the most sophisticated group of bondsmen since the days of ancient Rome” (Taylor 1984, 60). Many were tradesmen who were working off their slavery and could foresee a free future for themselves and their families. In order to earn money, slaves could rent themselves out for hire on Sundays, as dictated by the Code Noir. The “Slave for a Day” rental service was generally frequented by country patrons who did not wish to bring their slaves with them to the city.
The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney fastened slavery onto the South. An institution that would have died out because of its cost, which was insupportable, now became a feasible investment. The free labor of slaves, together with a machine that could clean cotton as fast as fifty men working by hand, was to make cotton king of the South and create a southern aristocracy of planters.
By 1860, approximately twenty-five thousand blacks lived in New Orleans. Of these, eleven thousand were slaves, owned by whites or free blacks. Some were awaiting sale on the auction blocks at the Cabildo, the St. Charles or St. Louis Hotels, or at Maspero’s Exchange on Chartres Street. To make them appear more attractive, slave dealers sometimes dressed the men in top hats and evening clothes and the women in long dresses and tignons.
Slaves brought into eastern ports were frequently sold down the river in New Orleans. The expression had ominous overtones. Many discovered on arrival, however, that for a slave, it was a better place to live then most other southern cities. They enjoyed a mixture of people, excitement, and places of amusement (such as Place Congo, or Congo Square, where they danced on Sunday afternoons). They liked shopping for their masters in the colorful markets and shops. They enjoyed the looseness of the reins that held
them in captivity and the hope that they could buy or earn their freedom.
John McDonogh
A Scotsman born in Baltimore, John McDonogh, was one of the city’s outstanding philanthropists. He was one of the founders of the American Colonization Society, which assisted three hundred slaves in the city in obtaining their freedom. Freedom could be purchased, worked for, or simply granted. In some cases, the state legislature granted freedom to slaves for some particular service.
John McDonogh owned a plantation in Algiers. He bought slaves, but unlike other slave-owners, he did not sell them. Instead, he educated them in a craft and then freed them. He helped many freed slaves leave Louisiana. Almost two decades before the Civil War, he helped eighty of his liberated slaves make their departure for Africa. He saw to it that they had money, clothes, household goods, and farm tools to establish themselves there as free men. Others worked for him as free men on his sugar plantation under the supervision of other blacks. He treated them all like human beings, and for this he was called a radical. When he died in 1850, his estate was valued at $3 million. He left $1.5 million to the cities of New Orleans and Baltimore for schools for the poor.
Free Men of Color
From the time of the Spanish period on, free men of color enjoyed both economic and educational advantages in New Orleans. They had full freedom to conduct business and to enter into contracts. Free blacks even had their own schools. They added substantially to the literate sector of Louisiana. By 1803, there were 1,355 free men of color out of a population of 10,000. Some of the men were tailors, mechanics, carpenters, or owners in small business. Some opened schools or performed in theaters. They were sober, law-abiding, and industrious. In 1860, the holdings of free men of color in New Orleans were between $13 million and $15 million. There were, at this time, 114,000 free persons of color in a population of 168,000 in New Orleans.
Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Page 11
