DIVISION OF NEW ORLEANS INTO MUNICIPALITIES.
American Hotel—Introduction of Steamboats—Faubourg St. Mary—Canal Street—St. Charles Hotel—Samuel J. Peters—James H. Caldwell— Fathers of the Municipality—Bernard Marigny—An Ass—A.B. Roman.
Forty years ago there was not a public hotel in the city of New Orleans which received and entertained ladies. There was but one respectable American hotel in the city. This was kept by John Richardson, who still lives, and was on Conti Street, between Chartres and the levee. About that time Madame Heries opened the Planter's Hotel on Canal Street, which some years after fell and crushed to death some thirty persons. There were many boarding-houses, where ladies were entertained, and to these were all ladies visiting the city constrained to resort. Some of these were well kept and comfortable, but afforded none or very few of the advantages of public hotels. They were generally kept by decayed females who were constrained to this vocation by pecuniary misfortunes. The liberal accommodation afforded in hotels, especially built and furnished for the purpose, was not to be found in any of them.
At this period all the means of travel between Mobile and New Orleans, across the Lake, consisted of one or two schooners, as regular weekly packets, plying between the two cities. It was about this time that the tide of emigration which had peopled the West, and the rapid increase of production, was stimulating the commerce of New Orleans. It was obeying the impulse, and increasing in equal ratio its population. This commerce was chiefly conducted by Americans, and most of these were of recent establishment in the city. That portion of the city above Canal Street, and then known as the Faubourg St. Mary, was little better than a marsh in its greater portion. Along the river and Canal Street, there was something of a city appearance, in the improvements and business, where there were buildings. In every other part there were shanties, and these were filled with a most miserable population.
About this time, too, steamboats were accumulating upon the Western waters—a new necessity induced by the increase of travel and commerce—affording facilities to the growing population and increasing production of the vast regions developing under the energy of enterprise upon the Mississippi and her numerous great tributaries. It seemed that at this juncture the whole world was moved by a new impulse. The difficulties of navigating the Mississippi River had been overcome, and the consequences of this new triumph of science and man's ingenuity were beginning to assume a more vigorous growth.
The Ohio and its tributaries were peopling with a hardy and industrious race; the Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers, too, were filling with a population which was sweeping away the great wild forests, and fields of teeming production were smiling in their stead. New Orleans was the market-point for all that was, and all that was to be, the growth of these almost illimitable regions. It was, as it ever is, the exigencies of man answered by the inspirations of God. The necessities of this extending population along the great rivers demanded means of transportation. These means were to be devised, by whom? The genius of Fulton was inspired, and the steamboat sprang into existence. The necessity existed no longer, and the flood of population poured in and subdued the earth to man's will, to man's wants. Over the hills and valleys, far away it went, crowding back the savage, demanding and taking for civilized uses his domain of wilderness, and creating new necessities—and again the inspired genius of man gave to the world the railroad and locomotive.
The great increase in the production of cotton in the West, and which went for a market to New Orleans, necessitated greater accommodations for the trade in that city—presses for compressing, and houses for merchants, where the business could be conducted with greater facility and greater convenience. American merchants crowded to the city, and located their places of business above Canal Street, beyond which there was not a street paved. There was not a wharf upon which to discharge freights, consequently the cotton bales had to be rolled from the steamers to the levee, which in the almost continued rains of winter were muddy, and almost impassable at times for loaded vehicles. Below Canal Street the levee was made firm by being well shelled, and the depth of water enabled boats and shipping to come close alongside the bank, which the accumulating batture prevented above.
The French, or Creole population greatly preponderated, and this population was all below Canal Street. They elected the mayor, and two-thirds of the council, and these came into office with all the prejudices of that people against the Americans, whom a majority of them did not hesitate to denominate intruders. The consequence was the expenditure of all the revenue of the city upon improvements below Canal Street. Every effort was made to force trade to the lower portion of the city. This was unavailing. The Faubourg St. Mary continued to improve, and most rapidly. Business and cotton-presses sprang up like magic. Americans were purchasing sugar plantations and moving into the French parishes, drawing closer the relations of fellow-citizens, and becoming more and more acquainted with the feelings and opinions of each other, and establishing good neighborhoods and good feelings, and by degrees wearing out these national prejudices, by encouraging social intercourse and fraternity. They were introducing new methods of cultivation, and new modes of making sugar; pushing improvements, stimulating enterprise, and encouraging a community of feeling, as they held a common interest in the country. In the country parishes these prejudices of race had never been so strong as in the city, and were fast giving way; intermarriages and family relations were beginning to identify the people, and this to some extent was true in the city. But here there was a conflict of interest, and this seemed on the increase. The improvements made in the Faubourg were suggested by the necessities of commerce, and this naturally went to these. There was a superior enterprise in the American merchant, there was greater liberality in his dealings: he granted hazardous accommodations to trade, and made greater efforts to secure it. This had the effect of securing the rapidly increasing commerce of the city to the American merchants, and of course was promoting the settlement and improvement of the Faubourg St. Mary. It excited, too, more and more the antipathies of the ancient population. These, controlling the city government constantly in a most envious spirit, refused to extend the public improvements of the Faubourg.
There was not, forty years ago, or in 1828, a paving-stone above Canal Street, nor could any necessity induce the government of the city to pave a single street. Where now stands the great St. Charles Hotel, there was an unsightly and disgusting pond of fetid water, and the locations now occupied by the City Hotel and the St. James were cattle-pens. There was not a wharf in the entire length of the city, and the consequence was an enormous tax levied upon produce, in the shape of drayage and repairs of injuries to packages, from the want of these prime necessities.