New Orleans

New Orleans, capital of Spanish Louisiana (1763–1803). In 1718 the governor of Louisiana, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, selected a site along the banks of the Mississippi River for a new settlement. Four years later the French colony's capital was moved from Biloxi to New Orleans. The limited prosperity the colony enjoyed under the French prompted its cession to Spain on 13 November 1762.

Spain was slow to take possession: The first official Spanish ship to reach New Orleans did not arrive until 5 March 1766, carrying a new governor, Don Antonio de Ulloa, and a small number of Spanish officials. Less than two and a half years later, during the Revolt of 1768, Ulloa was forced out of the colony by dissident French groups. To put down the rebellion, a sizable expedition commanded by Alejandro O'Reilly reached New Orleans on 18 August 1769. After reestablishing Spanish control and executing the ringleaders of the revolt, O'Reilly set to work to establish Spanish institutions in the colony. For the city of New Orleans he abolished the French superior council and replaced it with one of Spain's ancient municipal institutions, the cabildo (town council), whose first meeting was held 1 December 1769.

In 1769 the city consisted of sixty-six blocks, eleven fronting the river by six squares in depth, of which thirty had been subdivided into lots and had houses or buildings. Most of the buildings were constructed of wood and were in bad repair. There was no public lighting, no drainage system, no fire department, and no night watch. The stockade that surrounded part of the city, fronted by a small ditch, was dilapidated.

Entirely rebuilt after the great fires of 1788 and 1794, the city boasted many well-built houses and public buildings by 1803 and was much better fortified with an earthwork and five small forts. City regulations issued after 1788 required that all houses more than one story be constructed of brick.

Stimulated by a special "free trade" cedula of 1782, exports from New Orleans, principally indigo, tobacco, lumber, and pelts, reached 313,549 pesos in 1784. The cedula also encouraged the growth of merchant companies in the city. Prominent among these were Juan Baptista Macarty, Pablo Segond, Jerome Lachapelle, and Reaud and Fortier Company.

By 1803, when Louisiana was ceded first to France and then sold to the United States, the city's population stood at some 11,000, with most of the growth coming from immigration from Spain, Ireland, Acadia, and England.

The presence of more than 380 regular troops in the city made drinking, gambling, and dancing popular affairs, especially on All Saints Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Holy Week. Public dances originally held in the king's warehouse before 1782 moved to the Tremoulet Hotel around 1784. The famous Conde Street Ballroom opened 4 October 1792 on the site of the former public market. By 1800 there were so many ballrooms that an attempt was made to restrict them. The first public theater opened 4 October 1792 on St. Peter Street. Four years later, on 22 May 1796, the first opera premiered, a performance of Sylvain by André Gretry. The earliest parades date from 1787 and occurred with regularity on Mardi Gras and other holidays.

On 30 November 1803, Spanish authority in the city and colony officially ended when the colony was transferred to France at a ceremony held in the Cabildo. Twenty days later, following the sale of Louisiana to the United States, William Clairborne and General James Wilkinson accepted the city and colony for the United States.

See alsoSpanish Empire .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Research on Spanish New Orleans has been accelerating in recent years although few monographs have as of 2007 been published. John G. Clark, New Orleans 1718–1812. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970, describes its economy principally from printed sources. Edwin A. Davis, Louisiana: A Narrative History, 3d ed. Baton Rouge: Claitor's Book Store, 1971, has chapters on social and cultural life in the city and on the economy. The best accounts, however, are in dissertations: John Harkins, "The Neglected Phase of Louisiana's Colonial History: The New Orleans Cabildo" (Ph.D. diss., Memphis State University, 1976), and Thomas Ingersoll, "Old New Orleans: Race, Class, Sex, and Order in the Early Deep South, 1718–1819" (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1990). Two travelers, Captain Philip Pittman, The Present State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi: With a Geographical Description of That River. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1977, and James Pitot, Observations on the Colony of Louisiana, from 1796 to 1802. Baton Rouge: Published for the Historic New Orleans collection by the Louisiana State University Press, 1979, describe the city at the beginning and end of the Spanish period.

Additional Bibliography

Baker, Liva. The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred-year Struggle to Integrate the Schools. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996.

Hirsch, Arnold R; Logsdon, Joseph. Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Hollandsworth, James G. An Absolute Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Montero de Pedro, José. Españoles en Nueva Orleans y Luisiana. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica del Centro Iberoamericano de Cooperación, 1979.

Schafer, Judith Kelleher. Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

                                           Brian Coutts