Chapter XXX

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.

The navigation of the Bayou St. John commanded for the lower portion of the city the commerce crossing the lake, and to monopolize the profits of travel, a railroad was proposed from the lake to the river, and speedily completed. The people of the Faubourg, to counteract as much as possible these advantages, constructed a canal from the city to the lake, which was to enter the city, or Faubourg St. Mary, at the foot of Julia Street, one of the broadest and best streets in that quarter of the city. This was of sufficient capacity for schooners and steamboats of two hundred tons burden. When this was completed, with great difficulty the authorities were prevailed upon to pave Julia Street; still the greatly increasing demands of commerce were neglected, and while by these refusals the population of the city proper was doing all it could to force down to the city this increasing trade, they neglected to do anything there for its accommodation. The streets were very narrow; the warehouses small and inconvenient; the merchants close and unenterprising, seemingly unconscious of the great revolution going on in their midst.

From the growing greatness of the surplus products of the immense Valley, this was quadrupling annually. The cotton crop of the United States, forty years ago, scarcely reached half a million of bales, and of this New Orleans did not receive one-third; but in five years after, her receipts were very nearly one-half of the entire crop. At the same period, the sugar crop did not amount to more than twenty thousand hogsheads; five years thereafter, it had quadrupled, and the commerce from the upper rivers had increased a hundred-fold, and was going on in all the products of the soil to increase in like ratio. At this time the antipathy was at its acme between the two races or populations.

Then the Legislature held its sessions in New Orleans, and the American residents, merchants, and property-holders determined to apply to the Legislature for an amendment of the city charter. A bill was introduced accordingly, proposing to divide the city into three municipalities, making Canal and Esplanade streets the lines of division; giving the city proper and each faubourg a separate government: in truth, making three cities where there had been but one. The excitement in the city became intense, and sectional animosities increased in bitterness. To the American population it was a matter of prime necessity; to the property-holders and merchants of the city proper it was a matter of life and death. To these it was apparent that the moment this bill became a law, and the Faubourg St. Mary controlled her own finances, her streets would be paved and warehouses spring up to meet every demand--wharves would be constructed, the quay or levee would be sheltered, capital would flow to the Faubourg, and, in a moment as it were, she would usurp the entire domestic trade of the country: in other words, the Faubourg St. Mary would become the City of New Orleans.

After carefully canvassing the Legislature, it was found very doubtful whether the bill would pass or not; the attempt had heretofore proved eminently unsuccessful, but now it was apparent that it had gained many friends, and it was not certain it could be defeated. Under these circumstances, overtures were made by the city government, to expend all the revenue in improvements above Canal Street, which should be collected from the inhabitants of that quarter. This proposition was declined, and the bill after a most exciting struggle became a law. Under its provisions a new council and recorder were chosen, and a new impetus was given the Faubourg St. Mary, which was now, under this law, the second municipality. Extensive wharves were erected along the front of the municipality; streets were paved, and the whole trading community felt the improvements were assuming gigantic proportions, and trade relieved of onerous and vexatious impositions. Property rose in value rapidly; Canal Street grew speedily into importance. The dry-goods trade, hitherto confined almost exclusively to Chartres Street, came out upon this magnificent street as rapidly as it could be accommodated. From an almost deserted suburb, it became the centre of business and the great boulevard of the city. A company built the great St. Charles Hotel, and here were first opened hotel accommodations for ladies in New Orleans, thirty-one years ago.

The commercial crisis of 1837 retarded temporarily the improvements, but only for a day as it were, and in a few years there was a great American city, fashioned by American energy and American capital from the unsightly and miserable mire of the Faubourg St. Mary.

To the enterprise and perseverance of two men was mostly due this rapid improvement of the city and its new and extended accommodations to commerce--Samuel J. Peters and James H. Caldwell. Mr. Peters was a native of Canada, and came when quite a youth to New Orleans. He married a Creole lady, a native of the city; and, after serving as a clerk for some time in the business house of James H. Leverick & Co., commenced business as a wholesale grocer. In this business he was successful, and continued in it until his death. He was a man of splendid abilities and great business tact, great energy and application, and full of public spirit. New Orleans he viewed as his home; he identified himself and family with the people, and his fame with her prosperity. To this end he devoted his time and energies; around him congregated others who lent willingly and energetically their aid to accomplish his conceptions, and to fashion into realities the projections of his mind. I remember our many walks about the second municipality--when, where now is the City Hall, and Camp and Charles streets, and when these magnificent streets, now stretching for miles away, ornamented with splendid buildings and other improvements, were but muddy roads through open lots, with side-walks of flat-boat gunwales, with only here and there a miserable shanty, with a more miserable tenant--to contemplate and talk of the future we both lived to see of this municipality. Stopping on one occasion in front of what is Lafayette Square, at the time the bill was pending for the division of the city into municipalities, he said: "Here must be the City of New Orleans. You can pass the bill, now before the Legislature; and if you will, I promise you I will make the Faubourg St. Mary the City of New Orleans." Only a few months before his death, we stood again upon the same spot, surrounded by magnificent buildings--Odd-Fellows' Hall, the First Presbyterian Church, the great City Hall, and grand and beautiful buildings of every character. "Do you remember my promise made here?" he said. "Have I fulfilled it? Many days of arduous labor and nights of anxious thought that promise cost me. You did your part well, and when I thought it impossible. Have I done mine?" I could but answer: "Well, and worthily!" I never saw him after--but I shall never cease to remember him as a great, true man.

James H. Caldwell was an Englishman, and by profession a comedian. It was he who first brought a theatrical company to the West. He had built the first theatres in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and first created a taste for theatricals in the great West. Possessing fine natural abilities, and wonderful enterprise, he pushed his fortunes, as a theatrical manager, successfully for a number of years. He built the Camp Street Theatre, and made it exceedingly profitable. Away back, forty-five years ago, I remember my first meeting with him at Vicksburg, then a little hamlet, with but few houses and many hills, abrupt, and ugly. He and his company were descending to Natchez, and thence, after a short season, to New Orleans. Edwin Forrest, then a youth, was one of his company, which also included Russell and wife, Sol. Smith and brother, with their wives, Mrs. Rose Crampton, and, as a star, Junius Brutus Booth. How wild was the scene around us! The river was low and sluggish; the boat small and dirty; the captain ignorant and surly; the company full of life, wit, and humor. Slowly we labored on. The dense forest came frowning to the river's brink, with only here and there, at long intervals, an opening, where some adventurous pioneer had cut and burned the cane, and built his shanty. The time was whiled away with song, recitation, anecdotes, and laughter, until midnight brought us to Natchez. It was a terrible night--dark, and beginning to rain. Under the hill at Natchez, forty-five years ago, was a terrible place. The road up the bluff was precipitous and muddy. There were no accommodations for decent people under the hill. The dance-houses were in full blast. Boisterous and obscene mirth rang from them; men and women were drunk; some were singing obscene songs; some were shouting profanity in every disgusting term; some, overcome with debauchery, were insensible to shame, and men and women, rushing from house to house, gathered a crowd to meet us as we landed. One tremendous slattern shouted, as she saw us come on shore: "There are the show-folks; now we'll have fun!" If Mrs. Farren--the daughter of Russell--still lives, I will say to her that this was her advent to Natchez. Up that hill, through mire and rain, I bore her in my arms, on that terrible night. Caldwell alone was cheerful; Sol. Smith joked, and Russell swore.

"How many, many memories
Sweep o'er my spirit now!"

It was a peculiarity of James H. Caldwell to do whatever he did with all his might. No obstacle seemed to deter or impede the execution of any public or individual enterprise of his. Beside being a splendid performer, he was an accomplished gentleman, and a fine, classic scholar. His reading was select and extensive. At a very early day, he was impressed with the future importance of New Orleans as a commercial city, and commenced to identify himself with the American population, and to make this his future home. His ideas on this subject were in advance of those of many whose business had always been commerce, and they were generally deemed Utopian and extravagant; but his self-reliance was too great to heed any ridicule thrown upon any thought or enterprise of his. He invested his limited means in property in the second municipality, and lent himself, heart and soul, in connection with Peters, to its development into the proportions his imagination conceived it was ultimately capable of attaining, should the extent of its commerce reach the magnitude he supposed it would. Immediately upon the amendment of the city charter, creating the municipalities, and making independent the second, Caldwell conceived the idea of lighting the city with gas, and, at the same time, of building a city hall, and the establishment of a system of public schools.

Edward York, a merchant of the city, gave this idea his special attention, and co-operated with Peters and Caldwell in every project for the advancement of the interests of the municipality. Caldwell set to work in the face of difficulties, which really seemed insurmountable, to effect his scheme of lighting the city with gas. I was at that time a member of the Legislature. Caldwell's scheme was to obtain a charter for a bank, and with this carry into execution rapidly his scheme. He came to me, and opened up his views. He wanted my aid so far as assisting him in drafting the charter, and undertaking its passage through the Legislature. There was no delay, and in a short time the gas-light and banking company was chartered, the stock taken, and the bank in successful operation. Caldwell, though entirely unacquainted with the practical necessities of constructing the proper works to complete his plan, went energetically to work to acquire this, and did so, and in a few months everything was systematically and economically moving forward to completion. He alone conceived, planned, and superintended the whole work. Nor did he abate in energy and perseverance one moment until all was completed. All this while he was a member of the council, and giving his attention to many other matters of prime importance to the municipality.

Peters, Caldwell, and York may justly be said to have been the fathers of the municipality. To Edward York is justly due the system of public schools, which is so prominent a feature in the institutions of New Orleans. These three have passed away, and with them all who co-operated with them in this enterprise, which has effected so much for the city of New Orleans. They were unselfish public benefactors, and deserve this commemoration.

Among the remarkable men of New Orleans, at this period, was Bernard Marigny, a scion of the noble stock of the Marigny de Mandevilles, of France. His ancestor was one of the early settlers of Louisiana, and was a man of great enterprise, and accumulated an immense fortune, which descended to Bernard Marigny. This fortune, at the time it came into the hands of Marigny, was estimated at four millions. His education was sadly neglected in youth; so was his moral training. He was a youth of genius, and proper cultivation would, or might, have made him a man of distinguished fame and great usefulness. Coming into possession of his immense estate immediately upon his majority, with no experience in business matters, flushed with youth and fortune, courted by every one, possessing a brilliant wit, fond to excess of amusements, delighting in play, and flattered by every one, he gave up his time almost entirely to pleasure. A prominent member of the Legislature for many years, he had identified himself with the history of the State, as had his ancestor before him. He was the youngest member of the convention which formed the first Constitution of the State, and was the last survivor of that memorable body. Soon after succeeding to his fortune, and when he was by far the wealthiest man in the State, Louis Philippe, the fugitive son of Louis Égalité, Duke of Orleans, came to New Orleans, an exile from his native land, after his father had perished by the guillotine. Marigny received him, and entertained him as a prince. He gave him splendid apartments in his house, with a suite of servants to attend him, and, opening his purse to him, bade him take _ad libitum_. For some years he remained his guest, indeed until he deemed it necessary to leave, and when he went, was furnished with ample means. Long years after, when fortune had abandoned the fortunate, and was smiling upon the unfortunate--when the exile was a monarch, and his friend and benefactor was needy and poor--when Louis Philippe was king of France and the wealthiest man in Europe, they met again. Their circumstances were reversed. Marigny was old and destitute. The monarch waited to be importuned, though apprised of his benefactor's necessities and dependence, and answered his appeal with a snuff-box, and the poor old man learned that there was truth in the maxim, "Put not your trust in princes."

Wasteful habits, and the want of economy in every branch of his business, wrought for him what it must for every one--"ruin." During the discussion in the Legislature upon the bill dividing the city into municipalities, Marigny, then a member, exerted himself against the bill. He viewed it as the destruction of the property of the ancient population in value, and their consequent impoverishment, and threw much of his wit and satire at those who were its prominent supporters. Among them was Thomas Green Davidson, a distinguished member of Congress, (still living, and long may he live!) Robert Hale, and myself. Ridicule was Marigny's _forte_. Upon the meeting of the House, and before its organization for business, one morning, the writer, at his desk, was approached by Alexander Barrow, a member--and who afterward died a member of the United States Senate--who read to me a squib which Marigny was reading, at the same moment, to a group about him. It read thus:

"Sparks, and Thomas Green Davidson,
Rascals by nature and profession:
Dey can bos go to hell
Wid Colonel Bob Hailles."

I saw that the group would, with Marigny, soon approach me, and made haste to reply. It was only a day or two before we were to adjourn. When they came, and the squib was read, I read the following reply:

"Dear Marigny, we're soon to part,
So let that parting be in peace:
We've not been angered much in heart,
But e'en that little soon shall cease.

"When you are sleeping with the dead,
The spars we've had I'll not forget:
A warmer heart, or weaker head,
On earth, I'll own, I never met.

"And on your tomb inscribed shall be,
In letters of your favorite brass,
Here lies, O Lord! we grieve to see,
A man in form, in head an ass."

He arched his brow, and, without speaking, retired. An hour after, he came to me, and said: "Suppose you write no more poetry. I shall stop. You can call me a villain, a knave, a great rascal: every gentleman have dat said about him. Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, General Jackson, all have been call so. You can say dat; but I tell you, sir, I not like to be call ass."

He was the aggressor, and, though offended, was too chivalrous to quarrel. He had fought nineteen duels, and I did not want to quarrel either.

For many of his latter years he was destitute and miserable. He had seen all his compeers pass away, and he felt that he was in the way of a generation who knew nothing of him, or his history, and who cared nothing for either. At nearly ninety years of age he died in extreme poverty. Nature had done much for Bernard Marigny. His mind was of no ordinary stamp. He was a natural orator, abounding in humor and wit, and was the life of society. His person was symmetry itself, about five feet ten inches, and admirably proportioned; and, to the day of his death, he was truly a handsome man, so symmetrical and well-preserved were his features, and the sparkling light in his eyes. He long enjoyed the luxuries of life, and lived to lament its follies in indigence and imbecility.

Of all the Creole population, A.B. Roman was, at this time, the most prominent, and the most talented. In very early life he was elected Governor of the State, and discharged the duties of the office with great ability, and, after Claiborne, with more satisfaction to the people than any man who ever filled the office. The Constitution did not admit of his being elected a second time as his own successor, but he might be again chosen to fill the chair after the four years' service of another. He was elected to a second term, and when it expired, he was chosen president of the draining company, in which office he rendered most important services to the city, in planning and effecting a system of drainage which relieved the city of the immense swamp immediately in its rear.

In all the relations of life, A.B. Roman was a model--gentle and affable in his manners, punctiliously honorable, faithful in all his transactions, affectionate and indulgent as a husband and father, kind and obliging as a neighbor, faithful to all the duties of a citizen; and ambitious to promote the best interests of his native State, he gave his time and talents for this purpose, wherever and whenever they could be of service. The war, in his old age, left him destitute and heart-broken. I had the opportunity of several conversations with him, and found him despondent in the extreme. Our last interview was the week before his death.

"In my old age," he said, "I am compelled, for a decent support, to accept a petty office--recorder of mortgages--and I feel humiliated. I see no future for me or my people. My days are wellnigh over, and I can't say I regret it."

Only five days after, he fell dead in the street, near his own door. A wise and good man went to his God when A.B. Roman died. He was one of a large and respectable family, long resident in the State, and surely was one of her noblest sons.