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“A very difficult people to manage”: The Battles for New Orleans
LOUISIANA, an immense country, along the banks of the Mississippi, the limits of which are undetermined. The only place of note is the small town New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi.
Alexander Adam1
Had Orleans fallen — alas! what woe had been,
Had Orleans fallen — how many a horrid scene.
The enemy talk’d of plunder — wealth and spoil,
Of beauty’s charms to recompense their toil […]
But oh! what words can speak, what tongue can tell,
The sweet sensation you remember well,
When from the south the joyful tidings came,
Of JACKSON’s vict’ry — JACKSON great in fame.
Thomas Kennedy2
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, New Orleans was a small colonial backwater that was also one of the most coveted spots on the globe. Already a place unlike any other in the continental United States, the city was a vital lynchpin around which a variety of forces circulated. At heart, as Malcolm Rohrbough put it, New Orleans in 1800 “was a potpourri of peoples on the trans-Appalachian frontier, brought together in the search for wealth through trade.”3 Though still under Spanish control at the beginning of the century, New Orleans looked a tantalizing — and eminently snatchable — prospect for a variety of nations. France, Britain, and America all looked greedily at the place that was already seen as the key to the interior of the continent. Soon enough, New Orleans would be under new ownership. But the turbulence that the city experienced in the early years of the nineteenth century — driven by internal and external tensions — would reverberate for some time.
As New Orleans entered the nineteenth century, travel writers helped to fuel a new fascination with the city, both revealing and reinforcing their separate nations’ imperial desires for the place. American commentators weren’t shy about expressing their profound interest in the city. As early as 1778, American explorer Jonathan Carver evangelized that settlers along the Mississippi “will find the country towards the south almost spontaneously producing silk, cotton, indigo, and tobacco.” Even better, the river presented itself as a natural highway: “These articles […] may be transported to the Ocean through this river.” The only problem, of course, was that the Spanish were “in possession of the mouth of it,” and thus “may obstruct the passage of it, and greatly dishearten those who make the first attempts” at shipping goods down the river. But that could only be a temporary situation, even though its solution would come at a certain price: “[W]hen the advantages that will certainly arise to settlers are known, multitudes of adventurers, allured by the prospect of such abundant riches, will flock to it, and establish themselves, though at the expense of rivers of blood.”4 Less ominous, though no less telling, was the 1799 description of the city by a traveler who had voyaged down the western waters from Pittsburgh. The account pictured a Sunday afternoon in New Orleans that was marked by its cosmopolitan vibrancy:
[T]he stalls in the streets covered with merchandize, the mechanicks engaged at their work […] vast numbers of negro slaves, men, women, and children, assembled together on the levee, drumming, fifing, and dancing […] gentlemen playing at billiards […] an Indian encampment of the Choctaw nation […] We traversed round the whole city, which afforded me much amusement.5
At the same moment, Andrew Ellicott, an American surveyor attempting to determine the boundary between the United States and Spanish-controlled territories in the late eighteenth century, was also adamant that “New Orleans has now become a place of very considerable importance, both on account of its population and commerce, and some gentlemen of respectable talents are looking forward with pleasure to a period, which they conceive not distant, when it will be annexed to the United States.” As Ellicott put it, “No place upon this continent, and perhaps in the world, can command the trade of an equal extent of fertile country as that of New Orleans; and as that vast country increases in population, so must that city in magnitude, wealth and commerce.” However, Ellicott himself could not “see any advantage we could derive from the possession of it at present […] The United States are already in a great degree possessed of its commerce, and draw from it annually a very large sum in specie, and that probably, with much more ease than if it was in our possession.” But he also made it clear that this was only the case “while it is in the possession of his Catholic Majesty.” If it should end up in the hands of any other “power in Europe,” Ellicott judged, “I should think it our interest to possess it.”6
While Americans looked longingly at the growing city at the end of one of their most significant commercial arteries, British observers were no less avaricious. In town in 1797, English astronomer Francis Baily was disapproving of the city’s morality. “Scarcely had the priest pronounced his benediction,” he complained, “ere the violin or the fife struck up at the door, and the lower classes of the people indulged themselves in the gaiety and mirth of juvenile diversions. Singing, dancing, and all kinds of sports were seen in every street; and in the evening the play-house and assembly-room were thrown open, to crown this scene of dissipation.” He was equally critical that the inhabitants seemed to demonstrate an “unconquerable disposition towards indolence and a love of ease, united to its never-failing attendant, — slavery.” But he, too, was convinced of the city’s political and economic desirability, and went as far as making detailed “observations on the fortifications of this place […] at the extreme hazard of my person.” Having documented the various redoubts and counted the cannons, Baily’s conclusion was clear: “Upon the whole, I think this a place which might easily be taken […] I would recommend the landing of a body of men under cover of the night on the open levée, or marching them round to the back of the town, (which is quite defenceless,) to carry the place by assault.” Not only would either of these plans “have the desired effect” but also they would be welcomed, since the inhabitants “are heartily tired of the Spanish yoke” and would welcome “the Americans or British.”7
American and British concerns aside, perhaps the most keenly interested travelers to reach the city at this point were the French. Their desire to reclaim New Orleans and its territories was immediately evident. As Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières proclaimed imperiously, “Nous allons rentrer en possession de la Louisiane” — We will reclaim possession of Louisiana.8 James Pitot complained, significantly, “The errors of the Spanish government are those that perpetuate the mediocrity of a country […] Such an administration restrains commerce, restricts populations, and does not encourage agriculture.”9 And the Duke De La Rochefoucault-Liancourt declared enthusiastically, and tellingly, “The commercial advantages, which Louisiana holds out to an active and intelligent nation, are uncommonly great.” Working Louisiana into a vision of a resurgent French empire, he embellished his assertion: “The depôt to be formed at New Orleans of all these products of the western states of America would necessarily secure the supply to the islands; and the barter carried on with these states, which should furnish themselves with European goods at New Orleans, would form a political connexion, which no nation, to which Louisiana belonged, ought to neglect.” There would be other tactical benefits: “[T]he possession of Louisiana by the French would set bounds to the childish avarice of the Americans, who wish to grasp at every thing.” “France, therefore,” he concluded, “is in the most favourable situation of any country in the world, to obtain Louisiana from Spain.”10
In 1800, they, and many other French commentators, got their wish: in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, Napoleon convinced Spain to retrocede possession of Louisiana to France, not least because, as Jon Kukla describes, “France could do a better job of defending Louisiana from the United States or Great Britain than could Spain.”11 New Orleans was, once again, a French city (even though for the time being it would remain under the day-to-day control of the Spanish authorities). But it is important to note that Napoleon’s desire for Louisiana, as Peter Kastor highlights, was less to do with its own potential than its value as part of a clear imperial plan that would bind New Orleans to France’s other New World holdings: “[H]e knew that Louisiana had been an unprofitable colony — but he believed it would provide vital raw materials and foodstuffs to France’s immensely lucrative holdings in the Caribbean” — namely, Saint-Domingue, which Napoleon also planned to recover from the slave rebels.12 Such sudden shifts of ownership were nothing new in Louisiana’s turbulent history. This time, however, it would set off a chain of events that would bring the issue of its ownership to a head.
But, before then, there was still time for the city to sit for another portrait. This one, however, was less than flattering. Pierre-Louis Berquin-Duvallon arrived in the city in 1802 as an exile from the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue. Embittered by what he considered to be “the hideous […] proceedings of the Louisianans towards the unfortunate colonists of St. Domingo” — namely, their refusal to admit Saint-Dominguan slaves — he snobbishly scorned Louisiana and its inhabitants.13 According to his American translator, his account of the city “acquired great notoriety at Paris.”14 Little wonder: Berquin-Duvallon had little that was pleasant to say about a place which, he felt, “deserves rather the name of a great straggling town, than of a city; though even to merit that title, it would be required to be longer.” Ferociously prejudicial, his comments nonetheless give a pungent sense of the city as it entered the nineteenth century. He complained about the proliferation of wooden houses. He lamented the condition of the streets: “[D]uring a great part of the year, they are a common sewer; a sink of nastiness, dirt, and corruption.” He mocked the city’s carnival balls: “[T]he ensemble is so wretched, that every emulation of embellishment would be ridiculous.” He felt that Fort St. Charles “would provoke the risibility of an engineer.”15
The people fared little better. In his judgment, “The society of New-Orleans is not desirable.” For Berquin-Duvallon, the city lacked “delicacy”: “All is grossness, and noise, and uproar. Wine, not conversation is sought.” Lying was endemic: “No people in the world have such a tendency to hyperbolic amplification.” There was no concern for education, merely profit: “A librarian would starve in the midst of his books, unless he could teach his reader the art of doubling his capital at the end of the year.” The inhabitants were, he felt, “devoid of moral energy.” But then, none of this was really surprising, since their ancestors were “all of base extraction […] illiterate, ignorant and rude.” “In fact,” he asserted, “the mind can, I think, scarcely image to itself a more disagreeable place on the face of the whole globe; it is disgusting in whatever point of view it be contemplated, both as a whole, separately, and the wild, brutish aspects of its suburbs.” And yet, he marveled, “it is the only town in the whole colony, and, in the ardour of admiration, it is called by the inhabitants the capital, the city!” But still, cutting through even Berquin-Duvallon’s prejudices, was one salient fact: “It must however be acknowledged that New-Orleans is destined by nature to become one of the principal cities of North America, and perhaps the most important place of commerce in the new world.” And, too, there was something to be said for its cosmopolitan population: “[T]here is, perhaps, no place in the globe, where the human species may be seen in greater diversity than at New-Orleans, in the months of January, February and March; it is then interest assembles this motley crew in the city.” Even Berquin-Duvallon could not deny the sense of excitement, of potential, embodied in this ramshackle colonial town.16
“Infinite space”
When news of the restoration of Louisiana to the French became common knowledge, it caused consternation throughout America. In April 1802, Thomas Jefferson warned his friend Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours ominously, “[T]his little event, of France’s possessing herself of Louisiana […] is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic, and involve in its effect their highest destinies.”17 Then, in October 1802, the situation worsened: the Spanish authorities who were still officially in charge of the city decided to once again suspend the American right of deposit at New Orleans, closing the city to American trade. Panic ensued. The Monthly Magazine reported, “Anglo-Americans behold with alarm the cession of Louisiana to France, and the exclusion, at the same time, of their ships trading on the Mississippi from the benefits of a free port at New Orleans.”18 A concerned William Claiborne, then governor of the Mississippi territory, asserted, “This late act of the Spanish government at New Orleans has excited considerable agitation.”19 The most pressing fears of the West had been realized.
What was to be done? The renewed clamor for war was profound. Gothic novelist Charles Brockden Brown, despairing that “New-Orleans is shut against us,” urged immediate, decisive action from Thomas Jefferson ...
