Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (9 page)

Charles III of Spain died in 1788 and was succeeded by Charles IV, a weak and ineffectual ruler. Soon after,
Father Antonio de Sedella
(known as Père Antoine to the French) was sent to Louisiana as a representative of the dreaded Inquisition to introduce this tribunal to New Orleans. Governor Miró had the Commissary of the Inquisition arrested at night, put on board a ship, and taken back to Spain. In his official dispatch to the Spanish government, Miró commented: “When I read the communication of the Capuchin, I shuddered . . . The mere name of the Inquisition uttered in New Orleans would not only be sufficient to check immigration . . . but would also be capable of driving away those who have recently come . . .” (Gayarré 1974, 185).

Father Antonio (Père Antoine) returned in 1795 and spent the rest of his life in New Orleans, where he assumed the role of pastor. Although he was a thorn in the side of the hierarchy, he was much loved by his parishioners. He died in 1829 at the age of eighty-one, mourned by Protestants and Catholics alike.

In 1789, the foundation of the new St. Louis Cathedral was laid, to be built by the munificence of Don Andr
è
s Almonester. The Cathedral, built at a cost of 100,000 pesos, was designed by the French architect Gilberto Guillemard. The central tower was built in 1819 by Benjamin Henry Latrobe to house the clock. The bell in the Cathedral is inscribed to commemorate the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. In 1825, Zapari, an Italian, decorated the interior of the Cathedral.

Labor on this and other philanthropic projects sponsored by Don Almonester was completed by his slaves, who were masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and brick makers. Much of the raw material, such as lime and timber, came from his own forests.

Also, due to the generosity of Almonester, the new Charity Hospital, named in honor of the Spanish king and costing more than 100,000 pesos, was completed in 1786. Almonsester endowed it with property, rents, and slaves, and drew up a list of hospital regulations which were very advanced for his day:

The doctors must have studied at the colleges of Cadiz, Madrid or Barcelona . . . Special attention was to be given to the “poor in real distress” . . . Incurable or infectious patients were not to be admitted . . . All patients were to be supplied with a wooden bed, a table, bed clothing and garments for hospital wear. Almonester prepared a complete list of menus, which included a ration of meat.

Treatment of disease . . . was designed to rid the body of corruption .
. . and depended largely upon bleeding, sweating, blistering, purging, and vomiting (Davis 1971, 148).

Physicians seemed to believe that the more loathsome the remedy, the quicker the cure. “Such remedies as crabs’ eyes, dried toads and urine were prescribed along with mercury, arsenic, antimony, camphor, opium, ammonia, alum, quinine, calomel, ipecac, hemlock, much wine and brandy, rhubarb, licorice and myrrh” (Davis 1971, 148).

The cost of bleeding a patient was fifty cents; purging, one dollar; dressing a wound, fifty cents; and liquid medicine, twenty-five cents to one dollar.

The disease of leprosy reached serious proportions in the early 1780s. On Mir
ó
’s recommendation, a leper hospital was built on Metairie Ridge behind New Orleans in 1875, to which Almonester contributed generously. The wild, primitive area soon came to be known as
La Terre des Lepreux
(Lepers’ Land). By the end of the Spanish period, the disease had almost completely disappeared.

Baron de Carondelet

In 1791,
Francisco Luis Hector, Baron de Carondelet,
known in Louisiana history as the City-Builder, began his administration. The civic improvements made during his term were many. A lighting system was created for New Orleans and a night police force was established, which was, necessarily, bi-lingual. To meet these expenses, a tax of $1.12½ was laid on every chimney. Consequently, the same chimney was used on all floors of a three-story house, thus stamping the Quarter, having been rebuilt after two fires, with a homogeneous architectural appearance.

Carondelet built the Carondelet Canal (later called the Old Basin Canal), with the turning basin behind the present site of the Municipal Auditorium, which connected New Orleans with Bayou St. John, and thereby with Lake Pontchartrain, facilitating trade with the Gulf Coast cities that had been founded around the same time as New Orleans.

To guard the city against attack, Carondelet built forts, redoubts, batteries, and deep ditches around the city. He made treaties with the Indians in the area, established a policy of free trade, and began the first newspaper in Louisiana,
Moniteur de la Louisiane.

The year 1795 saw the beginning of the granulation of sugar by Étienne de Boré
, whose plantation was approximately six miles above New Orleans at the site of the present Audubon Park
. Sugarcane had first been introduced in 1751 by the Jesuits
. From it, syrup was made and a liquor called
taffia.
Granulation now opened up a tremendous market for sugar.

In 1797, Carondelet left the city, having governed with outstanding ability. His successor,
Brigadier-General Manuel Luis Gayoso de Lemos,
died of yellow fever in 1799 and is the only Spanish governor to be buried in New Orleans.

The Spanish governors after Gayoso were
Marques de Casa Calvo
,
who served as acting governor from 1799 to 1801, and
Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo,
who served from 1801 to 1803, even though the Treaty of San Ildefonso had been signed in 1800, giving Louisiana back to France.

The Treaty of San Ildefonso: Louisiana Retroceded to France

Napoleon Bonaparte, after his glorious campaigns of 1796 and 1797, returned to France in 1799. He gathered an army, crossed the Alps into Italy, and in June 1800, defeated the Austrian army. Peace with Austria followed, and it seemed certain that peace with England would come soon.

Napoleon now wished to revive France’s empire, chiefly Louisiana, which had been ceded to Spain by Louis XV. On October 1, 1800, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Charles IV, king of Spain, retroceded
Louisiana to France. Historians are not clear as to why Charles agreed,
but it was a demand made by a powerful ruler with recent conquests to his credit, which could not easily be denied. For whatever reason, this treaty, too, was kept secret, as peace had not yet been declared between France and England.

In October 1801, preliminaries of peace were signed between
England and France, and the retrocession of Louisiana to France became
known in the United States. The news caused great excitement in the colony. When the Peace of Amiens was signed between England and France in March 1802, Napoleon began to prepare for the occupation and government of Louisiana.

In the last decade of Spanish rule, there were forts on the four corners of the city and behind the Cathedral. Later, in the 1800s, they were demolished, but at this time, there were mounted guns in each fort, a moat (either natural or man-made), and barracks for one hundred men. When the forts were in use, the gates were closed at nine each night. The back gates led to the suburbs, which were almost as big as the city (composed of two hundred to three hundred houses). The Bayou Gate led to Gentilly, Metairie, and Grand Bayou. Metairie was comprised of “moi-toi” (you and me) partnerships between owner and farmer.

The streets of the Vieux Carré
were wide and straight, thanks to Pauger
. Houses were made of wood until the two fires, then of brick. In the suburbs, there were generally beautiful houses belonging to people from all over the world. The Creoles
dominated society and business, but within the next decade, the Americans would begin to control more trade and commerce than the Creoles. In the 1790s, there were ocean-going vessels in the river, as well as coastal schooners, barges, and pirogues (the cypress dugout canoe adapted from the Indians).

The Right of Deposit

The Right of Deposit, the right to place goods on the docks in New Orleans awaiting shipment to Europe and South America, was vital to American merchants. Spain and the Americans had been on the verge of war ever since the Treaty of Paris in 1783, when Great Britain gave the Americans the right to free navigation on the Mississippi, a right that Spain did not consider theirs to give, since the mouth of the Mississippi was in Spanish Louisiana. Hostilities grew worse, and in 1784, trade was ordered to cease between Spain and the Americans. Governor Miró, however, disregarded the orders, knowing that his colonists needed what the Americans had to sell. In this matter, he was in constant conflict with his Intendant, Juan Morales.

The Treaty of San Lorenzo

In 1795, Spain and America signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo
, in which Spain granted Americans the right of free navigation on the Mississippi River and the right of deposit at New Orleans for three years. Although the right of deposit expired in 1798, the privilege continued until 1802, when Morales ordered it stopped.

Flatboatsmen and Keelboatsmen

After the American Revolution, much of the goods coming into New Orleans and subject to the right of deposit were carried in on the keelboats and flatboats of the New Americans. The men were called “Kaintocks” by the Creoles, and they were a dirty, noisy bunch of rogues and scalawags. For more than four decades, keelboatsmen were on the river bringing flour, coffee, soap, textiles, and shoes to the people of New Orleans.

They traveled in canoes, rafts, ferryboats, and scows, all manpowered or pulled by mules on the river banks. They came from Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Ohio, areas whose population was increasing rapidly. They were strong, practical, and tough. Physical strength was needed to push, pull, and maneuver the loaded ships to their destination. Flatboats were propelled with two great oars. Keelboats were moved by one long oar in the center of the boat. Crewmen also used poles to push the boat along, which was steered by a giant rudder. These men often sold their boats with the goods and then traveled back upriver on horseback, following the old Indian trail, the Natchez Trace.

Their flatboats were then broken up and the gunwales, the long fore- and aft- planes, were sold for paving streets and
banquettes
(sidewalks) and for house construction. The rest of the timber was sold for firewood.

Keelboatsmen had appetites to match the roughness of their trade. On reaching port, they sold their merchandise. Then, they were ready for their whiskey, women, and gambling. Dens of vice, such as those on Tchoupitoulas Street near the river, on Gallatin Street, and in the “swamp” on Girod Street at the river’s edge, supplied their needs. Fistfights were inevitable. The Creoles
deplored these men. They considered all Americans to be like the “Kaintocks
” in the beginning, and thus the battle lines were drawn between the Creoles and the Americans.

Insurrection in Saint Domingue

Until now, we have used the name Santo Domingo to refer to the island of Hispaniola, discovered by Columbus in 1492 and claimed for Spain, who called their colony Santo Domingo. In the 1600s, French colonists settled the western part of the island, which Spain gave to France in 1697 through the Treaty of Ryswick. The French called their colony Saint Domingue. It was a sugar-growing colony where a bloody insurrection occurred in 1791.

The successful slave uprising was led by Toussaint L’Ouverture against the white plantation owners, whom they outnumbered ten to one. After a Voodoo ceremony of crazed dancing and the drinking of animal blood, a half million black slaves revolted against fifty thousand whites and an equal number of privileged mulattoes. Plantations were destroyed, and two thousand white islanders were killed.

By 1804, shiploads of whites and free men of color from the island poured into New Orleans. Many of these
gens de couleur libres
were artisans, craftsmen, and sculptors, who would add to the talent and literacy of the city’s population and help to build the beautiful monuments, tombstones, and iron balconies that still grace its streets. The quadroon women were to become the beautiful concubines of song and story, so desired by the Creole men of the city.

Social Improvements

Living standards were high for those who could afford them. There were handsome houses, lavish furnishings, and elegant clothes. The most important piece of furniture in the Creole household was the armoire. The next in importance was the iron or brass bed. In fact, part of the volunteer firemen’s equipment was a large key worn on the belt to unlock the bed, so that it could be removed in case of fire. The armoire was made to come apart so that it could be taken out of the house in pieces by one man.

During this period, there were some attempts at fire prevention already in place. Each house was required to have at least one good leather bucket and a ladder long enough to reach the top of the house. The first fire insurance was a donation of money to a volunteer fire group, in exchange for a fire mark, which the donor displayed prominently. In case of a general fire, which most fires were in those days, the volunteer firemen would concentrate their efforts on the houses displaying the fire mark of their group.

One example of the high living of the day was said to have occurred in 1798, when Gayoso had three visitors from the Court of France: Louis
Philippe
, Duc d’Orléans, future king of France; Duc de Montpensier; and the Comte de Beaujolais, all brothers and all great-great-grandsons of the namesakes of New Orleans, Philippe, Duc d’Orléans. Entertaining these guests was Pierre Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville
, who arranged lavish dinners for them. A story is told that special gold tableware was used, which was thrown into the river after one such elaborate meal, indicating that no one else was worthy of using it. De Marigny placed both his home and his purse at their feet, and they accepted both. The historian Grace King
tells us that later on, Bernard de Marigny
, in financial straits, appealed to the court of France for the return of some of his money.