New Orleans

New Orleans, largest city in Louisiana and chief port of the Gulf states, is situated on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, 100 miles above its mouth. The site was known to survivors of De Soto's expedition, and to La Salle, Tonty, and Iberville, prior to the city's founding (1718) by the French governor Sieur de Bienville. Louisiana was ceded to Spain by the Treaty of Paris (1763), but reverted to France (1803) and in 1803 came into the possession of the U.S. by the Louisiana Purchase. The city's population was augmented by the real‐estate scheme known as the Mississippi Bubble, and the opening of the West brought it new prosperity when it became capital of the state (1812). It is a city steeped in European culture, whose Latin character, enhanced by the semi‐tropical climate, is evident in its Vieux Carré or French Quarter and its exotic ways of life with lively parties, opera, theater, and Mardi Gras celebrations drawing on a Creole and Cajun heritage. During the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans was the final engagement and a decisive American victory. The advent of steam navigation soon made New Orleans both the queen city of the Mississippi and a lawless river town, a center for showboats, gamblers, plantation owners, and slave and cotton traders. During the Civil War it was a strategic point in the Confederate defense until its surrender (1862), when it was placed under the harsh military governorship of Benjamin Butler. It suffered under the pressure of carpetbaggers and scalawags during Reconstruction, and, besides the civic strife, the diminishing of river trade caused a partial loss of the former commercial importance of the city. During the present century, when the population has increased to over a half‐million, New Orleans was long under the virtual dictatorship of the political machine of Huey Long and his successors. The home of Tulane University (founded 1845), it is represented in the arts by its distinctive architecture, many of whose landmarks still survive; by the Creole and Cajun songs that influence the sentimental compositions of Gottschalk, and the black music that has had its effect on jazz; by the paintings of Audubon and Vanderlyn in the early 19th century; and by its literature. The early literature was predominantly French and, in the tradition of Chateaubriand, largely romantic. The flush period prior to the Civil War was depicted by Vincent Nolte and, in Life on the Mississippi, by Clemens. Newspapers have included the Crescent, for which Whitman worked briefly, and the New Orleans Picayune. The city was one of the centers of the local‐color movement, and its romantic past figured in the works of Cable, Hearn, Grace King, Kate Chopin, and Ruth Stuart. A more mystical but less sentimental view was expressed by the Rouquette brothers. After World War I, a more realistic attitude was inaugurated by the little magazine Double Dealer, whose contributors included Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner. Other modern authors who have used the city's background include Roark Bradford, Lyle Saxon, Tennessee Williams, Hamilton Basso, Truman Capote, and John Kennedy Toole.