Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (24 page)

CHAPTER VIII

New Orleans, an Occupied City:
1862-76

A picture of New Orleans in the decade before the Civil War
is pre-requisite to an understanding of why certain events took place
here
rather than elsewhere. In 1860, New Orleans was the largest city in the South and the largest cotton market in the world, handling in that one year two million bales of cotton. Thirty-five hundred steamboats docked at its wharves, and its total trade amounted to $3.24 million. It was a trans-shipment center for all exports coming down the Mississippi, and the port held a virtual monopoly on trade in the interior of the country. New Orleans was slow in building railroads, however, having built only eighty miles of rails when the war began. And although the steamboat had made its first voyage earlier in the century, there were still impediments to shipping, such
as snags and low water points, especially at the mouth of the river. The
service of bar pilots was unsatisfactory, and the rates for towing were prohibitive.

New Orleans, with a population of 168,000, was sixth in size among urban cities in the nation. An urban aristocracy existed by the middle of the nineteenth century, to which one belonged by virtue of birth or property. Citizens whose ancestors had been in the city several generations called themselves “Creoles,” a term whose definition is still much in dispute. According to
Jewell’s Crescent Illustrated,
the local directory of 1873, it meant simply to be “born here” (15). If this is so, in 1860, there were Creole French, Creole Irish, Creole Jews, and Creole blacks.

The middle class consisted of businessmen, skilled workers, clerks, and grocers. The proletariat consisted mainly of Germans and Irish, who had arrived too recently in the city to have earned places among the upper classes and were considered a laboring class of the lowest level. In the fourth social class were the blacks, who enjoyed considerable freedom in New Orleans in the twenty years before the Civil War. Many were skilled workers or house servants. If they were slaves, they were sometimes hired out by their masters; if they were free, they could easily get work. Free blacks included small businessmen and skilled artisans, many of whom were well-to-do. As the slavery issue grew more conflicted, the state legislature put more restrictions on free persons of color and finally forbade manumission in 1857, causing some free blacks to immigrate to Haiti and all blacks who remained to welcome the Federals when they arrived in 1862.

In 1853, as we have seen, the worst yellow fever epidemic ever to hit New Orleans took the lives of ten thousand people. But yellow fever was not the only “sickness” from which the city suffered. Drinking was widespread, prostitution was accepted and even advertised, and gambling a way of life. Political corruption and illegal voting, especially among immigrants, was tolerated.

And yet, it was a city of contrasts. The architecture in the richer parts of town was beautiful, the homes of the wealthy exquisitely furnished, the cuisine superb. Pleasures abounded during the Mardi Gras season. There was a regular opera season, and at any time of the year, there were plays at the Théâtre d’Orl
é
ans. Staged concerts featured well-known artists. There was horse racing at the Metairie Track and hunting and fishing within easy reach of the city. Even blacks had their enjoyment on Sunday afternoons, when they danced uninhibitedly in the Congo Square (in front of the present Municipal Auditorium). Most citizens were Catholics. Others were Episcopalian, Methodist, or Jewish. Fraternal organizations had already been formed to assist the immigrants in coping with their difficulties of adjusting to a new country.

New Orleans’s citizens were opposed to secession. This was not because they opposed slavery. On the contrary, they defended it vehemently. But they were afraid that secession would destroy the city’s trade with the upper Mississippi valley, which was paramount to its prosperity.

To New Orleanians, secession did not seem to be necessary to protect the institution of slavery. When Lincoln was elected, however, sentiments changed rapidly. Lincoln had said that he favored non-extension of slavery. The handwriting was on the all: eventually, he would see to it that it was wiped out altogether. In 1861, Louisiana had to decide whether to follow the other southern states and make
a final break with the Union or attend a convention of southern states to make one last attempt at compromise. Louisiana voted for secession.

The problems of the Confederacy were numerous. There was no organized government at the time of the outbreak of the war. A Confederate cabinet had to be appointed, agencies set up for coordination, and decisions made for strategy. There was a minimum of ships and war materials and no factories to produce more. President Jefferson Davis decided, for this reason, to fight a defensive war.

Battle of the Forts

A major episode of the War Between the States was the Battle of the Forts at the mouth of the river in April 1862 that culminated in the fall of New Orleans. Not until Vicksburg fell in July 1863 was the conquest of the Mississippi River really complete, but the events of the intervening fifteen months were disastrous to the people of New Orleans.

No area in the country was so exposed to attack as the Mississippi valley, where there were no mountains, but the mouth of the river was thought to be well-protected by forts that had existed for a long time. There were shallow areas in the river that were hard to navigate and swamp lands that were difficult to penetrate. New Orleanians felt that their defenses were impregnable.

Even when the flotilla of Flag Officer
David G. Farragut
had crossed the bar at the mouth of the river in April 1862, the
Times-Picayune
newspaper announced that “Forts Jackson and St. Philip had 170 guns . . . that navigation of the river was stopped by a dam about a quarter of a mile from the forts . . . that no flotilla on earth could force the dam in less than two hours, during which time it would be within cross range of the 170 guns of the highest calibre.”

Many New Orleanians were not in the city but fighting in Virginia, since no one had expected an invasion from the “well-protected” mouth of the river. The remaining able-bodied men built breastworks around the city, giving special attention to the Chalmette Battlefield. They sunk obstructions in the bayous leading into the city and prayed their defenses would hold.

But disasters were to befall the city. When Farragut’s flotilla came to the area of the forts, the guns were discovered to be too small and their shells fell short. The dam, or “boom,” of cypress logs that had been built across the river was broken by the rising water, which was soon to be in flood stage. The fleet simply cut through the rebuilt boom and sailed on toward New Orleans. Also, the ironclads under construction in the South were not finished in time for Farragut’s arrival. There were more Union losses than Confederate losses at the Battle of the Forts, but the fleet continued on its way to its destination.

Federal Fleet passing Forts Jackson (on left) and St. Philip.
(Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

On April 24, the day before the city fell, state officials moved archives by railroad and steamer to other cities. On the levee, citizens burned fifteen thousand bales of cotton to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Yankees. The dry-docks on the Algiers side of the river were sunk by order of General Lovell, and privately owned steamboats were set on fire by their owners to drift downriver. On Canal Street, there was a bonfire of records of the Custom House. Normal business ceased. The criminals of the city and the poor looted warehouses on the riverfront of sugar, molasses, and food. That night, the governor and other state officials left the city by steamer and railroad, abandoning the residents.

On the morning of April 25, General Lovell sent his small force to Camp Moore, seventy miles north of New Orleans, to prevent the bombardment of the city. He believed that the fort had fallen, and that it would be absurd to confront a flotilla of forty vessels equipped with more than one hundred large caliber guns with less than three thousand militia armed with shotguns. Mayor Monroe urged storekeepers to open their shops. People gathered on the levee to watch the flotilla sail up to the docks. Farragut disembarked and joined the mayor to make his demands.

After a week of unsuccessful negotiations between Mayor Monroe and Captain Farragut, the US flag had still not been raised before the US Mint, the Custom House, or City Hall. Farragut had no desire to bombard the city. For one thing, he would not have had enough ammunition left for his attacks on Baton Rouge and Vicksburg.

What brought matters to a head were the actions of an irresponsible and impulsive group of New Orleanians, who could not resist showing open defiance to the Yankees. On a Saturday morning, a week after the arrival of the flotilla, the captain of the
Pensacola
took a small party ashore and raised the US flag over the federal mint, which was at the end of Esplanade Avenue near the river. He warned the mob that his ship would fire howitzers loaded with grapeshot if the flag was molested. Almost immediately,
William B. Mumford,
a local
gambler, went up to the roof and lowered the flag. He and his friends dragged
the flag to Lafayette Square, where they tore it to bits and distributed it
as souvenirs. Farragut replied with an ultimatum to remove the women and children from the city within forty-eight hours.

The city council protested that bombardment was inhuman and that it was impossible to evacuate in so short a time. Then, Farragut received word that the forts had fallen. The southern provisions ran low, so the Jackson garrison mutinied and left in small boats. The men at Fort St. Philip did the same. It was possible for General Butler’s troops to come up an undefended river and take command of the city.

Mayor Monroe now agreed to the raising of the American flag at City Hall, and the military occupation of New Orleans began. It was to last fourteen years, the longest amount of time any American city was ever occupied by a hostile power. Loss of control of the Mississippi River and of the largest city in the South was a major blow to the Confederacy. It boosted Northern morale and had a tremendous effect on the attitude of Europe. England and France otherwise might have recognized the independence of the Confederacy or even entered the war for economic reasons due to a cotton embargo.

“Banks Map” of 1863 shows routes into the city to be used by the Union Army for military purposes during the Civil War. Settlement is shown only along the natural levee of the Mississippi and along the small levee of the Bayous Metairie and Gentilly.
(Courtesy Louisiana Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Library)

General Benjamin Butler, Commander of the
Department of the Gulf

Of all the traditional villains in Southern history, none are painted blacker than William T. Sherman, who marched through Georgia, and General Benjamin Franklin Butler, who served as military commander of New Orleans for seven months in 1862. Since there were no precedents to follow, commanders of occupied territories arbitrarily created policy as they went along, using as a guide the legislation passed in Washington, such as the Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Emancipation Act of the same year.

General Benjamin Franklin Butler,
forty-two years old at the outset of the war, was a fat man with a brilliant mind and a driving
political ambition who had made a name for himself in Boston fighting
for the rights of labor and later representing men of great wealth. Energetic, shrewd, and often unscrupulous, he had decided from the beginning that he would employ harsh treatment with the Rebels, as he considered them traitors and felt that he had been robbed of the glory he deserved as Occupation Commander of New Orleans, since it was Farragut who had lowered the Confederate flag over City Hall before he left the city. Butler was determined to make his power felt.