Description
Book SynopsisIn 1795, New Orleans was a sleepy outpost at the edge of Spain's American empire. By the 1820s, it was teeming with life, its levees packed with cotton and sugar. New Orleans had become the unquestioned urban capital of the antebellum South. Looking at this remarkable period filled with ideological struggle, class politics, and powerful personaliti
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2015 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association "Multicultural New Orleans maintains a mystique that stems from its unique development under governments of France, Spain, and Thomas Jefferson's U.S., argues musician-turned-history teacher Faber in this remarkable and thorough history."--Publishers Weekly "This well-researched snapshot of a brief period of the city's lengthy history richly details personalities and events, offering a valuable perspective to history students and anyone who has experienced the Crescent City's vibrant ways of life."--Library Journal "Faber explains how exotic New Orleans became somewhat less exotic after the Louisiana Purchase... The author also provides information about the powerful individuals who were part of the transition."--Choice "An original and complex analysis of New Orleans during that transformative period in its history and details the political and economic integration of the city into Jeffersonian America... This book effectively presents an important, and hopefully provocative, historical, geographical, and political argument: the histories and geographies of New Orleans and the early United States are inseparable. Whatever their differences, compromises and common interests generally prevailed."--Case Watkins, Journal of Historical Geography
Table of ContentsNotes on Terminology xi Introduction: The City and the Nation 1 1 Mississippi Schemes: The Making of a Colonial Elite, 1717-1803 23 2 New Orleans, 1803: Infant City under the Gaze of Three Empires 50 3 The Passion of Citizen Laussat: New Orleans Is Ceded from Spain to France to the United States 83 4 Pathways to the Place d'Armes: The Generation of 1804 118 5 Quel Triste Gouvernement: The Early Crisis of American Rule, 1804 155 6 Liberty in Louisiana: Accomplishments and Compromises of American Rule, 1804-1805 185 7 Creoles and Americans: Confrontations and Accommodations, 1805-1807 215 8 A Strong Case of Wanton Oppression: Livingston, the Corporation, the President, and the Batture 246 9 Creation of an Un-American Republic: Rebellion, Reaction, and the Anxious Road to Statehood 282 10 January 1815: Louisiana Is Still American 312 Appendix 1. New Orleans Exports, 1804-1820 343 Appendix 2. Parish Populations: White, Slave, and Free People of Color, 1810-1820 344 Abbreviations 347 Notes 349 Bibliography 401 Acknowledgments 425 Index 429
