USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Standard history of New Orleans, Louisiana, giving a description of the natural advantages, natural history settlement, Indians, Creoles, municipal and military history, mercantile and commercial interests, banking, transportation, etc. > Part 56
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It made its impress even upon the size and draft of vessels. It was seen during the middle of the century that freight could be carried far more cheaply in large vessels of great tonnage than in the smaller ones that had formerly been used. The ship-builders everywhere commenced building larger vessels, and therefore ves- sels of greater draft. The increase in size of the average sea-going vessel was marked from year to year, but was suddenly checked. The ship-builders explained that this check was due to the bars in the Mississippi river. As New Orleans was so important a port it would not pay, they said, to build ships of so great a draft that they could not sail up the Mississippi. It was thus the conditions prevailing at New Orleans which held back for some years the development and growth in size of the merchant marine, not of America alone, but of the whole world.
Of the earlier epochs of New Orleans commerce it is unnecessary to say anything here. The French political economists of the day saw a brilliant future for the colony, but it was merely a dream as far as they were concerned. Nothing practical was accomplished, and the whole matter was badly mismanaged. The city and colony were of no importance in the commerce of the world and were actually a drag and a heavy expense upon France and afterward on Spain, when Louisiana was transferred to it.
Law's great Mississippi scheme, watered as badly as some of the railroad stock of to-day, did nothing for the colony. The early colonists, like those on the Atlantic coast, came to Louisiana looking for easy fortunes, which they expected to make from the gold mines and pearl fisheries they believed to exist in El Dorado, and with no desire or intention of cultivating the soil or developing the resources of the country, or doing any similar slow and hard work.
They found in the Mississippi a splendid water way opening to them the commerce of a continent ; but as there were no settlements of any moment on that river or its tributaries, this water way was of little practical value to them. As early as 1705 the Mississippi had suggested itself as a means of communication between the far North and the Gulf of Mexico. In that year, only six years after Bienville had first visited New Orleans and had seen in it the best site for the capital of the new colony and for the port of the great valley, the first cargo came down the Mississippi. As might be expected, it consisted neither of the product of the field or the factory, but altogether of the fruits of the chase. A number of French voyageurs settled in the Indian country around the Wabash, collected from the several hunting posts in the neighborhood 10,000 deer and 5,000 bear skins and shipped them down the Mississippi as the only way by which they could reach Europe, as it was
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impossible to pack them across the country and over the mountains to Canada or Philadelphia. It was a wild experiment, but one that had a most important influence, since it contributed largely to the success of Bienville's plan to have New Orleans made the capital of the colony, as well as to the ultimate settlement of the Mississippi Valley, for it showed that colonists upon the great river had an outlet to the markets of the world, as short in time and less expensive and difficult than packing their products by horse or wagons over the mountains to the Atlantic seaboard.
The Canadian voyageurs who brought down their first cargo on the Mississippi traveled 1,400 miles without seeing a settlement or a white man, and through a country filled with hostile Indians. It took them nearly six months to make the trip, but they got through all the difficulties and reached the Gulf in the early part of 1706. As New Orleans did not exist then or until twelve years later, these primitive merchants floated down the Mississippi only as far as Bayou Manchac, then a navigable stream (it was closed by Gen. Jackson in 1815 as a protection against the British fleet), and sailed through Bayou Manchac and Iberville (now Amite) river into Lake Pontchartrain. Thence they went through Mississippi Sound to Mobile (then known as St. Louis des Mobiles), where their cargo was marketed. The furs were sold in France and the voyageur merchants made a handsome profit, but they did not care to repeat the experiment. They did not return home, but settled in Louisiana.
The experiment produced important results. It inflamed the speculative craze, just then so prevalent in France. The French Western Company, organized by Anthony Crozat, was formed to operate the colony and received a monopoly of its trade for 25 years, on the condition of spending a large sum annually in the development of the country and settling so many families there annually. The movement proved an unprofitable one. The amount of commerce handled via the Mississippi was small; the people whom the company brought over to the colony did not care to cultivate the land or did not know what crops to cultivate, and the country selected for settlement-the coast of Mississippi Sound-proved sandy and unfertile. After losing considerable money on his investment, Crozat surren- dered his charter or contract in 1717 and turned the colony over to the French crown. The change enabled Bienville to carry through his far more practical ideas, which were to transfer the French settlements to the Mississippi and to make New Orleans, whose commercial possibilities he foresaw, the capital.
During the first years of the new city its trade consisted almost exclusively
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in the products of the chase, and these figured very prominently in its business for nearly half a eentury afterward. During all of this early time New Orleans was one of the chief entrepots of the Northwestern and Canadian fur trade. About 1720 it began receiving other products by river, from the French settlements on the Illinois and at the mouth of the Missouri. These shipments, as to-day, con- sisted largely of food products, the country around New Orleans being not self- supporting in the matter of food at the time, growing mainly indigo and similar articles, so that it had to get its food supply abroad. In 1720 the exports from New Orleans were valued at only $62,000 a year, of which 65 per cent was in the shape of skins from the upper country.
The early French domination in Louisiana saw little improvement in the commercial conditions of New Orleans, for while there was no monopoly of the trade as there had been under Crozat, it was bound by so many limitations that it was anything but free, the colony not being allowed to sell or buy in the open market, but being compelled to ship to France alone. This restriction proved as injurious to the government as to the colony. At no time was Louisiana self- supporting as the British colonies on the Atlantic were, but France was eom- pelled to make good an annual deficit in the revenues.
In 1763 Louisiana was ceded to Spain. The commerce of New Orleans at that time amounted to only $304,000 a year, less than the value of a sin- gle cargo shipped from the eity to-day. Of these exports only half came from the country around New Orleans. The items are as follows: Indigo (raised in Louisiana proper, and the main product of the colony at that time), $100,000; decr skins and furs from the Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio, $80,000; lumber, $50,000; naval stores, $12,000; riee, peas and beans, $4,000 ; tallow, $4,000. The smuggled trade was put down as $54,000, but may have been more. Most of this was in the hands of the English, whose commereial influence in the colony was very great. As for the food products brought down from the Illinois country they were all consumed in and around New Orleans and did not find their way abroad.
With Spanish rule the commerec of New Orleans advanced rapidly. This was due less to the policy pursued by the Spanish government than to the situation of the city itself. The importance of the Mississippi, with its 20,000 miles of navigable water-ways stretching into all parts of the continent, began to be realized and appreciated, and the great powers of Europe played an exeiting game of intrigue for its control.
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Spain took Louisiana in 1763, not from any particular desire to own the country, but as a protection against British aggression on her Mexican possessions. She was never able to overcome the prejudices of the original French settlers, although she dealt more liberally with Louisiana than with any of her Spanish- speaking colonies and spent far more on it than she got in return. Her commercial policy, however, was the same Spanish policy which has lost her all her colonial possessions in America-the restriction of all trade to Spain alone. New Orleans was shut out from every market in the world except certain specified ports of Spain- markets in which the merchants of New Orleans were completely at the mercy of the Spanish merchants, and could neither sell their goods to advantage nor purchase what was needed in Louisiana. It was prohibited even from trading with the neighboring port of Havana, although that also was under Spanish rule.
The natural result of these restrictive regulations was to defeat themselves and build up a smuggling trade, which was almost as large as the legitimate commerce and far more profitable. From one-fifth to one-half of the imports received in New Orleans were smuggled in; and this business was easily enough conducted because by treaty Great Britain had reserved to itself the right for British ships to enter the Mississippi and supply the British settlements on the east bank of the river, above Bayou Manchac, with such articles as they needed. These vessels were supposed to be handling the trade of the English settlements in West Florida and in what is now the State of Mississippi; but their voyages up the Mississippi gave them a splendid opportunity of dealing with the colonists below Fort Bute, the southernmost British port (at the junction of the Mississippi river and the Manchac). British trading vessels on the way to Fort Bute or Baton Rouge landed part of their cargoes in Louisiana. The center of this smuggling trade was at a point about six miles above the city of New Orleans, where entire cargoes were disembarked and where the city merchants had their agents and representatives to purchase the British contraband goods. The slave trade formed a very con- siderable proportionof this smuggling, and the Louisiana planters were supplied with "Guinea negrocs" mainly by the British vessels. In all the carlier commercial reports this smuggling was spoken of openly. There was, indeed, very little secrecy about it, and during the French regime it was winked at by the authorities, many of whom found it personally profitable. Popular sentiment was very warmly in favor of the contraband trade, which was so profitable to the country and which enabled the Louisianians to get many goods that would otherwise have never reached the colony.
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When the Spaniards took possession of New Orleans they set to work to break up this smuggling, which not only cut down the colonial revenue, but injured the mother country. Governor O'Reilly found the commerce of the city very much demoralized by this contraband trade. He reported to the Spanish government that he found the foreign commerce of New Orleans almost wholly in the hands of the English. "They have their traders and their ships here," he reported, "and they pocket nine-tenths of all the money spent in New Orleans and Louisiana."
The extreme measures of O'Reilly soon broke up the business and ousted the British from their commercial supremacy, which, however, was never quite as great as he asserted. All foreign vessels were prohibited and prevented from trading with the Louisianians. This Chinese policy did not continue very long in the face of the popular protest. New Orleans was granted absolutely free trade with Havana and all the Spanish ports instead of being restricted to a few ; and the non-intercourse act was ultimately so modified as to permit two vessels per year to enter New Orleans from France, so that the natives could get the fashions and costumes of Paris, to which they still clung.
The Spanish government grew steadily more lenient in its commercial policy, in the vain hope that it would win by these means the good will of the people of Louis- iana. Under Unzaga, who succeeded O'Reilly, smuggling through British vessels again became common. It enriched the planters and enabled them to greatly in- crease the number of their slaves. Unzaga, seeing that the Louisiana Creoles, be- cause of their French origin, preferred dealing with France rather than England, gave the former country all the opportunities he could; and during his regime the control of the colonial trade passed into the hands of French merchants and so con- tinued for many years, until the irrepressible American came on the scene.
The British traders found themselves treated with rigor by Unzaga, while the French were favored and encouraged. Soon afterward, in 1778, when Galvez, the greatest of all the Spanish governors of Louisiana, and the most interested in its welfare, was at the head of the colony, he issued a proclamation giving New Or- leans the right to trade with any port of France, and a little later included among the ports with which New Orleans was allowed to carry on free and unlimited in- tercourse the thirteen American colonies, just then struggling for independence. Thus it was that New Orleans entered into business with the country of which it was destined soon to be a part. At that time Spain was at war with England, and Galvez was leading a Louisiana army against the British port of Pensacola (which
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he captured). In consideration of the bravery of the Louisiana troops, the com- mercial facilities of New Orleans were still further extended, and it was also allowed to trade with Mexico, which country had heretofore been completely closed to it.
During this period, with the relaxation of the severe commercial restrictions that had prevailed, the trade of New Orleans had grown very rapidly. It added to the diversity of its exports. In 1750 it, for the first time, shipped a little cotton, and in 1765 some sugar. Its fur trade had grown to over $100,000 a year, all going to Europe. It did a considerable business in lumber, supplying, indeed, most of the Havana demands, and furnishing the boxes in which the Cuban sugar was shipped to market. In 1770 the exports of New Orleans had risen to $631,000 a year, having more than doubled during the short period of seven years of Spanish rule.
In the meanwhile events were occurring that completely changed the commerce of New Orleans and ultimately the ownership and flag of the colony. All the river trade of the city had hitherto been downward, but with the settlement of the Ohio Valley some business sprang up in the way of supplying the people of Kentucky and Ohio with calicoes and such other manufactured goods as they needed.
The first commercial relations between New Orleans and the Americans were of a very friendly nature. During O'Reilly's governorship, when provisions rose very high in price, and there was an actual scareity of flour and other food products, in consequence of the non-arrival of the Spanish supply ships upon which the peo- ple of Louisiana depended exclusively, one Oliver Pollock, of Baltimore, entered the port of New Orleans with a cargo of flour, which he sold to the governor for $15 a barrel, two-thirds of the then current price, in return for which O'Reilly granted Pollock the right of free trade with New Orleans during his life-time. Pollock was the first American merchant to establish himself in New Orleans, and had his agents and representatives in the city, who did a very large business. This com- mercial venture proved of the utmost importance to the American cause in the end, as much of the ammunition and arms furnished the Continental army was ob- tained through Governor Galvez, being carried by boat up the Mississippi and Ohio to Pittsburg, and thence distributed to the American forces. At the close of the Revolutionary war New Orleans was receiving produce to the value of $225,000 a year from the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky, mainly flour, tobacco and similar produce, and was supplying in return manufactured goods, principally cot- tons and other dry goods, imported from France. At that time there were several American merchants in New Orleans engaged in that character of business, most of them from Philadelphia and Baltimore.
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Governor Galvez, who always showed himself deeply interested in the pros- perity of the colony, and particularly of New Orleans, was anxious to make that port a free one, with the right to do business with any country. The traditional Spanish colonial policy would not permit this ; but Spain made exceptional concessions, ap- parently realizing the commercial possibilities of the city.
By a royal decree made public in New Orleans in the spring of 1782, the re- shipment to any South American colony of goods received from Spain was per- mitted, but this was not permissible with goods from other countries. Negroes were allowed to be imported free of duty from the colonies of neutral or allicd powers, save from Martinique, whose negroes had the reputation of being too partial to voudouism. Foreign vessels could be bought and registered as Spanish bottoms. The export duty on staves shipped to Spain, which trade had reached very large pro- portions then, and has continued large to this day, was renewed, but other duties were advanced in order to produce a war revenue.
The importance of the Mississippi commercially was now fully recognized by all the countries interested; and in the next twenty years American politics centered around "the Father of Waters" and New Orleans. The treaty of Ghent, which re- stored peace between Great Britain, France, Spain and the United States, provided that the Mississippi river from its source to its mouth should forever remain free to the United States and Great Britain.
This stipulation was never carried out in good faith by Spain ; but it became the origin of a series of Spanish and American intrigues, the aim of the Spaniards being to keep the Yankees away from New Orleans, and of the Americans to secure the free use of the river, if not to annex New Orleans and the adjacent territory, as necessary for the prosperity of the country above, whose outlet was through "the Crescent City." In 1786 a large number of American flatboats loaded with pro- visions and breadstuffs, which had been floated down from the Ohio and the Cum- berland, were seized at New Orleans and confiscated by the Spanish government on the ground that they had violated some of the revenue laws of the colony. In 1787 General James Wilkinson succeeded in obtaining valuable commercial con- cessions from Governor Miro, and the flatboatmen were no longer interfered with. He also succeeded in shipping several cargoes of manufactured goods up the Mis- sissippi to the American settlers above. The uncertainty of the trade, however, and the obstacles placed in the way of the American flatboatmen, led the Ohio set- tlers to demand of Congress that it show itself more interested in their affairs and better protect their interests ; indeed the demand was coupled with threats, and the
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Kentucky pioneers talked secession very loudly at the time and threatened to sever their connection with the Atlantic States, with which they had free commercial re- lations. The result of their agitation was the treaty of St. Ildefonso in 1795, the first treaty made by the United States with Spain. It defined the boundaries between the two countries, but the most important provision it contained was in regard to the Mississippi. This was not only made free to the Americans, but they were given the right of deposit for three years at New Orleans, without the payment of any duties or charges, save for storage. It was also provided that at the end of these three years a new arrangement of some kind should be made, where- by their right of deposit could be continucd, Spain reserving the right to select another point than New Orleans where American goods could be stored.
At that time, which was only thirty-two years from the date of the Spanish acquisition of the colony, the trade of New Orleans had increased more than four- fold, and had very radically changed. Indigo no longer constituted the largest item in the exports, for indigo was fast disappearing as a paying crop in Louisiana and sugar was taking its place. The largest single item was Western produce, which con- stituted more than one-third of the total. The several items were as follows: Cot- ton (200,000 pounds), $50,000; furs, $100,000; boxes (shipped to Cuba for the sugar crop), $225,000; sugar (40,000,000 pounds), $320,000; indigo (100,000 pounds), $100,000; tobacco (200,000 pounds), $10,000; timber, $50,000; rice (2,- 000 barrels), $50,000; Western produce, $500,000. Total, $1,421,000. The furs came from the North and Northwest ; the sugar, indigo, rice and timber from the Spanish possessions in Louisiana ; and the rest from Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio.
The treaty of San Ildefonso and the opening of the Mississippi gave a stimulus to the American trade through New Orleans. In 1798 the Western produce re- ceived there was valued at $975,000, and was increasing at the rate of $300,000 a year with the heavy emigration then pouring into the Ohio Valley. For some reason, however, when the three years during which the right of deposit at New Orleans was to continue expired, Spain made no provisions for carrying out the other con- ditions of the treaty, to fix another depot. Her attention was called to this by the American government ; but no action was taken. The Kentuckians became dis- turbed over this condition of affairs and called for action. If Spain did not want them to come to New Orleans let her fix another depot, they said. But the Spanish intendant, Morales, declined to do so. He interpreted the treaty to mean that with the lapse of three years the Americans lost all right of deposit at New Orleans. It was a fatal decision for Spain and lost her New Orleans within a few years. If
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Señor Morales had seen the consequences, or understood the sentiments of the peo- ple of Kentucky and Tennessee, he would never have been guilty of so great a folly which hastened the expulsion of Spain from America. The freedom of the Missis- sippi became at once the aim of American diplomacy; and the United States was convinced that the stability of the republic and the commercial necessities of the West required the possession of New Orleans as the port of this new country that was being opencd to civilization. For the next four years the problem of the Mis- sissippi river and the purchase of Louisiana were the chief subjects of discussion in Congress, and the American statesmen at home and abroad worked earnestly to prevent New Orleans, from which so much was expected commercially, falling from the hands of a weak power like Spain into those of a strong one like England or France, both of which had their eyes on the city and the rich and fertile valley whose port it was and whose wealth the world was just beginning to recognize.
For some time it looked as though the closure of New Orleans as a depot and a port to the people of the upper valley would plunge the United States into war. There was loud talk of an expedition to seize the city, and it was estimated that there were 20,000 men ready for this filibustering expedition. Petitions innumerable poured into Congress, beginning with the declaration "The Mississippi is ours by the law of nature." The difficulty was definitely settled by the action of President Jefferson in purchasing Louisiana, and the people of the Mississippi Valley were more than satisfied; for not only was the great river thrown open to them, but it belonged to them exclusively.
During the period from 1795 to 1802, while the Americans and Spaniards were discussing the navigation of the Mississippi and the right of deposit at New Orleans, the outward ocean commerce of the city was also undergoing important changes, favorable to the Americans. At the time that the Spaniards took possession of Louisiana, and for some little while afterward, the dominant influence com- mercially had been the English, mainly through a smuggling and contrabrand trade. The Revolutionary war, but more particularly the war between France and Spain on the one side and Great Britain on the other, naturally cut off the English from trading with the Spanish colony of Louisiana, and the New Orleans merchants, who were almost all of French descent, made their purchases in France. But again the lines of commerce were changed. The success of the Revolution in France and the British blockade of French ports broke up most of the trade between Louisiana and these ports ; and the Americans profited by it. Marseilles, Nantes and Bordeaux lost their hold on the commerce of New Orleans, to be succeeded by Philadelphia,
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