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 65
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75
UNITED CONFEDERATE VETERANS' ASSOCIATION.
The United Confederate Veterans' Association of Louisiana is composed of sixty camps, located in various sections of the State, five of the principal camps being in New Orleans. These five are the Benevolent Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, Camp No. 1; the Association of the Army of Tennessee, Camp No. 2; the Confederate States Cavalry Association, Camp No. 9; the Wash- ington Artillery Veterans' Association, Camp No. 15; and the Henry St. Paul Battalion, Camp No. 16.
These camps were organized soon after the close of the war, as benevolent associations, for the purpose of caring for unfortunate comrades, who were sick, wounded or destitute and burdened with debt. Several of them have built tasteful tombs in the new Metairie cemetery for the interment of their deceased members, among which are the beautiful vault of the Army of Northern Virginia at the lower end of the cemetery, surmounted by a tall granite shaft, upon whose summit stands a statue of General Stonewall Jackson; and an attractive tomb of the Army of Tennessee, located at the right side of the entrance to the cemetery, surmounted by a magnificent equestrian statue of General A. S. Johnston, and the tomb of the Washington artillery, which presents an imposing appearance in the center of the grounds.
Through the instrumentality of these city camps a soldiers' home was estab- lished in the year 1882, and is located on the banks of the historic Bayou St. John, known as Camp Nicholls, in honor of the warrior statesman, governor, now supreme judge, Francis T. Nicholls. This home has been a grand boon to the crippled and otherwise unfortunate among the Confederate veterans, as it has comfortably housed and fed thousands since its establishment. Until 1899 it was managed by officers of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee; but inasmuch as the State of Louisiana has regularly made appropriations to sustain the institution it is now managed conjointly by the officers of the camps of veterans in New Orleans and a number of appointees by the governor of the State. The building has a capacity for 150 inmates, and the board of directors,
626
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
in addition to improving the grounds, have built in one of the eemeteries a substan- tial stone tomb for the interment of the dead. On the 6th of April each year, when memorial exercises are held at the Confederate monument, the veterans' associa- tions form a line and visit each of the tombs named above, fire a military salute and listen to addresses appropriate to the oceasion.
The Ladies' Confederate Memorial Association, the oldest association of the kind in the South, was organized immediately after the war for the purpose of eolleeting the remains of the fallen heroes of the Southern eause and seeuring their interment in a spot over which now stands the first Confederate monument ever built, and known as the Confederate monument, in Metairie cemetery. It is of marble and supports a tall shaft upon the top of which stands a private soldier at parade rest. On four sides of its base are likenesses of four of the principal leaders of the Southern armies, viz .: General Robert E. Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, General Albert Sidney Johnston and General Leonidas Polk. Mrs. Sarah Polk Blake, daughter of General Polk, has for many years been the President of the association, Mrs. J. Y. Gilmore being the Recording Secretary and Miss Daisy Hodgson the Corresponding Secretary.
The Daughters of the Confederacy have within the last two years effeeted an organization in Louisiana with Mrs. J. Pinekney Smith, President of the Louisiana Division, U. D. C., and Miss Cora Richardson, Seeretary. The New Orleans Chapter is presided over by Mrs. W. H. Hiekson.
The United Sons of Confederate Veterans have also effeeted an organization throughout the State, this taking place during the year 1899, with W. H. MeClel- land commander of the Louisiana Division, the camp in New Orleans being named Beauregard.
These several organizations co-operate with the Louisiana Division of the United Confederate Veterans, which division at its last convention, held at Baton Rouge, July 3 and 4, 1899, elected J. Y. Gilmore, Major-General, for the ensuing year, and he appointed Colonel Lewis Guion Adjutant-General and chief of staff. This division is in the department of the Army of the Tennessee, of which General Stephen D. Lee is the Commander, and is under General John B. Gordon as Grand Commander, who has been at the head of the organization sinee the formna- tion of the Confederate eamps of the South into one grand association at a con- vention of sueh bodies of organized Confederate veterans, held at New Orleans in 1889. Commanders of the Louisiana Division, beginning with 1892, of the United Confederate Veterans have been as follows: W. J. Behan, 1892; John Glyn, Jr.,
627
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
1893; J. O. Watts, 1894; B. F. Eshleman, 1895; W. G. Vincent, 1896; John McGrath, 1897; C. H. Lombard, 1898; W. H. Tunnard, 1899; and J. Y. Gilmore, 1900.
For more than twenty years, in the exercises of the Confederate Veterans, the organizations of Federal Veterans in New Orleans have participated, reciprocating a similar courtesy shown them on their Decoration day by the Confederate Veterans, thus doing on both sides what they can to assuage the once bitter feeling of the war.
GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC.
The Grand Army of the Republic was first organized in Louisiana in 1867, with H. C. Warmoth, department commander ; but as little attention was given to reports at that period the records furnish but meager information as to the number and strength of posts. Then, too, the unsettled condition of affairs in the State hastened a general breaking up of the organization.
A reorganization of the Grand Army was effected in the State in 1872, Joseph A. Mower Post, No. 1, being chartered April 10, that year. As this was the only organized post in the State for a number of years it performed a good deal of work among the Federal soldiers who had settled in Louisiana and adjoining States, and the friendly association of its members with similar organizations among the Confederate soldiers aided largely in allaying the bitter feelings that had been engendered by the war.
The first encampment of the Gulf was held in New Orleans, May 15, 1884, with William Roy commander. By general orders dated June 13, 1884, the title was changed to the Department of Louisiana and Mississippi. Early in 1890 nine posts were chartered by Commander Gray, whose motives in thus suddenly bringing into existence these new posts, composed, as they were, largely of colored members, were seriously questioned, and in the department encampments of 1890 and 1892 these newly ereated posts were allowed no representation. The ease being brought on appeal before the national encampment, the principle was elearly enuneiated, by two national eneampments, that the colored ex-soldier was entitled to all the privileges and benefits enjoyed by the white cx-soldiers, in the Grand Army of the Republic. Orders having been issued by Commander-in-Chief Palmer for the recognition of these new posts by the department, a special department en- campment was eonvened in Mareh, 1892, and the department organization was dissolved and the charter forwarded to national headquarters, while five of the eight white posts also surrendered their charters. Past Department Commander A. S.
-
628
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
Badger was appointed eommander, and the charter returned to him, with instruc- tions to reorganize the department. A temporary organization was effected and a department eneampment held in August, 1892, at which eneampment the depart- ment was again regularly organized with twelve posts and a full eomplement of offieers. Charles W. Keeting was elected department eommander at the annual encampment held in March, 1894, and has been annually re-elected to the same offiee ever sinee. The department now has forty-nine posts, with an aggregate of 1,000 members.
Following are the names of the posts located in New Orleans: Joseph A. Mower Post, No. 1; Andre Cailloux Post, No. 9; C. J. Barnett, No. 10; U. S. Grant, No. 11; John H. Crowder, No. 12; Osear Orillion, No. 14; Ellsworth, No. 15; R. G. Shaw, No. 18; Farragut, No. 21,-the average membership being somewhat more than thirty.
MISCELLANEOUS.
L'Athenee Louisianais was ineorporated January 12, 1876, at which time a constitution was adopted and offieers eleeted. The founders of this society were : Dr. Labin Martin, General G. T. Beauregard, Dr. Armand Mereier, Dr. Just Tonatre, Dr. Alfred Mereier, Colonel Leon Queyrouze, Dr. Charles Turpin, James Auguste, Oliver Carriere, Paul Fourehy, Dr. Jean G. Hava and Judge Arthur Sau- eier. The objeets of this society were to eultivate the study of the French language, to disseminate the results of literary research and to encourage local talent. The latter two objeets were aeeomplished by the establishment and publieation of a periodieal ealled the Comptes Rendus de l'Athenee Louisianais. As the members of this society were and are men of education and ripe seholarship, they have, for the years during which the society has been in existenee, prepared and published many papers on a great variety of subjeets, valuable in a loeal and general way, but too numerous to present even a list of them in this work.
L'Union Francaise, or the French Union, was organized in 1872, and ineor- porated October 5, of that year. Its objeet was to aid sueh natives of Alsaee and Lorraine as might desire to leave their native land rather than live under the German government, those two provinees having been taken from Franee by Ger- many after the war of 1870-71. However, it resulted that there were fewer of sueh people seeking Louisiana as a home than had been expected, and the Union turned its attention to the sueeoring of those needing aid beeause of the yellow fever epidemie of 1878, the society earing for 845 persons, of whom only 58 died, and spending in its benevolent work $16,807.65.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CARNIVAL OF NEW ORLEANS.
BY HENRY RIGHTOR.
T HE Carnival of New Orleans is holiday in spirit and practical in fact; and right here is the charm and the strangeness of the thing. It is a heritage from the Latin Old World to its most faithful children of the New World. It can not be imitated nor reproduced elsewhere, nor can the blue skies which swing above the glare and brass of its masks and revels. The inspiration lies deep in the genius of the people. Life is held sweet in New Orleans. Money is for life, not life for money. The Carnival is not a commercial expedient. If it were, it would not escape the fate that befalls whatever is insincere. It is the expression of a genuine emotion. It is the embodiment of care thrown to the winds. It is no more a hypocrisy than the glance of a maiden's brown eye or the blush which mantles her cheek. Yet it sets in motion powerful commercial activities. If it did harm it might not endure. It not only docs no harm, but on the contrary is productive of much good; so it is supported heartily, not only by those who are impelled by the carnival spirit, but as well by those who, from motives of philanthropy or public spirit, perceive in its perpetuation a benefit to the city and its people.
There is no measure of the advantages of the Carnival to be found in the im- mediate results to tavern-keepers, street cars and tradesmen. The effects are cumulative-establishment of new conditions, new wants created, opportunities dis- cerned, mistakes rectified. It is a crucible from which emanate strange crystals. That is a narrow view which insists upon putting the finger upon results. The Carnival to be good must be genuine, and to be genuine it must be taken with the simple faith of those worthy roysterers who started it here in their joyous way this century ago. There are enemies of this Carnival; not those chill-hearted, shrivel-skins who frown it down as a device of the devil; not the clergy, nor any overt opposition. It is the innovators who are to be feared, they who do not under- stand the carnival spirit, and seek to have it new. This striving to have the people · point and cheer will some time kill the Carnival. Once let it get into the hands
630
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
of the Philistines and it is gone. It is a Latin institution. The genius of the Car- nival is a madcap whose face is smeared with the lees of wine. It is gay and mad and rollicking, and over it all broods the ghost of the grotesque. It wots nothing of the prim and formal. It is not beautiful. Its elements are contrast, not harmony. It is laughter and youth and forgetfulness and humanity. It is, in fine, the Carnival, and as such should escape the clumsy, dispiriting, despoiling, profaning hands of vandals and innovators.
In its earlier days the New Orleans Carnival was formless and inchoate. It represented merely the hey-dey spirit of the time, a gorging for the fast. The streets were filled with a pleasing tumult and the imaginations of the people ran riot in the search for grotesque and unusual disguises. While there has never been in New Orleans entirely the license which characterized the primitive revelries of the Greeks and Romans, nor even as great a degree of abandonment to pleasure as prevailed in the Italian Carnival before the Church laid its refining and com- promising finger upon the ceremonies, the people have ever, even to this day, thrown themselves into the pleasures and immunities of the time with an enthusiasm and genuineness, impossible to any save those of Latin blood. The evolution of the Carnival has been natural and normal. Its continuance has accentuated and re- fined the qualities of mind and temperament which gave it birth. The ardent and uncultivated imagination which, at the dawn of the century, manifested itself in the creation of a mere motley of color and diversity of form, has developed, by grad- ual stages, into an aestheticism which, consulting the lore of all the ages and exploring the treasures of every art, spreads before the wondering gaze of the multitude, a series of gorgeous and symmetrical spectacles, inspired by imagination, directed by art, and embodying within themselves fidelity to history, mythology and all the harmonies. Where before was the flash of color, the hoot, the shout and the cheer of the undiscerning rabble, to-day is found the well-considered pageant passing in orderly review before observant and informed cosmopolitan audiences, quick and critical as the auditors in a theatre. And all this peopling of the streets with good and evil genii, with tales of enchantment and figures stalking out of the silent and mysterious solitudes of the past, has exerted upon the already nimble and expansive imaginations of the people, an influence rendering them sprightly, charming and different from any other people of the continent, while at the same time preparing them for the production of works of art and literature which shall some day come to surprise the world with their fertility of fancy and singular originality.
631
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
It is not to be understood that the old mad spirit of the Carnival has entirely passed away. It has been refined, etherealized and more or less system- atized as to the masses ; yet lurking in odd corners and among quaint peoples, the old Carnival is still to be found. And, oddly enough, it is the negroes who preserve in its truest essence the primitive spirit of the Carnival. In the vicinities of the St. Bernard and Tremé markets, in Frenchman street and elsewhere in the densely populated neighborhoods of the Old Quarteer, the Carnival runs as mad and rollick- ing in the season as it did when the old Orleans Theatre was the focus and culmination of its revelries a half century ago. The favorite disguise with the negroes is that of the Indian warrior, doubtless from the facility with which it lends itself to a complete transformation of the personality without the use of the encumbering and embarrassing mask ; and in war paint and feathers, bearing the tomahawk and bow, they may be seen on Mardi Gras running along the streets in bands of from six to twenty and upwards, whooping, leaping, brandishing their weapons, and, anon, stopping in the middle of a strcet to go through the move- ments of a nimic war-dance, chanting the while in rhythmic cadence an outlandish jargon of no sensible import to any save themselves. With undiminished spirit and energy, and with the utmost good humor, these negro maskers continue their pranks and capers till night falls, when they repair to the hall they have selected for their ball, where they are joined by their women, and new accessions of maskers and dance away the hours till the Carnival spirit has died within them from sheer fatigue.
At such a ball the hall is usually decorated with garlands and festoons of colored tissue paper, which contribute a very animated appearance to the scene. Near the entrance is to be found a kind of bar, at which are dispensed liquid refreshments of various kinds-lemonade, beer and more ardent liquors. At the rear or on the floor below is located a primitive kind of café communicating with a little kitchen, in which enormous cauldrons of gumbo are boiling, platters of which with a liberal allowance of boiled rice, are served to the bucks and their wenches for a small sum.
On Mardi Gras night, fatigue, leagued with a proper regard for the Church's decree that Lent begins at midnight, usually brings these negro balls to a close in respect of the majority of the attendants, before the first hour of the morning of Ash Wednesday. But the negro mask balls usually begin at least a weck before the day of Mardi Gras proper. The Saturday preceding Mardi Gras will find a dozen of them in progress at such halls as Hope Hall, on Tremé and Dumaine, and
632
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
Economy Hall, on Usurlines, near Vileere. At these pre-Mardi Gras balls, the dancers being subject only to the casual fatigues of the work-a-day world, it is not uncommon to find them breaking up well into the glare of day.
There is another feature of the season, typical enough in its way, which may be considered representative of the more vicious tendencies of the Carnival. This consists in the balls given by the class corresponding to that of the gladiators and hetarae of antiquity. These balls, usually two in number, one given on the Sat- urday night preceding Mardi Gras, the other on the night of Mardi Gras proper, have been celebrated for many years at the Odd Fellows' Hall, in Camp street. Here resort the courtesans of the town, as well as those whom opportunities for diversion and excitement attract to the city from distant places during this period of lavish expenditure and abandonment to pleasure. The women who attend these balls are most commonly masked, though some of the more brazen, garbed in silks and jewels which might well put to blush the handsomest toilettes seen at the balls of virtue and fashion, make the occasion one for the exhibition and advertisement of their charms. The balls are essentially democratic in respect of the personalities of those who attend, the test being only Caucasion blood and a reasonable degree of decorum ; and, being under the eye of the police, they are characterized by far less ribaldry than is commonly supposed. It is a common thing for the jeunesse doree, who have spent the earlier hours of the night, in conformity with the proprieties, at some of the exclusive balls of the patrician class, to wind up the night at these easier affairs of the demi monde. It is considered a license of the period for bachelors to attend these balls and strangers of the sterner sex who do not at best get a glimpse of the floor consider that they have missed one of the sights of the Carnival. The men do not, as a rule, mask, although there are many exceptions who prowl round the room mysteriously garbed in black from head to heels, like hangmen. There were several striking figures upon the floor at one of these balls given during the Carnival of 1900. One of the most conspicuous was a very tall and shapely woman whose identity baffled all surmises. She represented Mephistopheles, and was garbed in flame-colored fleshings with a hideous mask and horns. Two little women, disguised as clowns, advertised a brand of champagne, and cut ridiculous capers. Another woman represented a toreador, while a tall man strutted round in the costume of a matador. There were also a Marguerite and a Faust, both women, an empress, a dozen flower girls, a Red Riding Hood, a Dolly Varden, a Pocahontas and innumerable princesses. The price of admission to these balls is usually sev- eral dollars, and wine, as well as other refreshments, are sold at extravagant figures. The balls usually endure until dawn.
1
633
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
To the great mass of the people, the Carnival means the street pageantries, and chiefly those of Rex and his satellites. All the other events of the Carnival are more or less class affairs, but these street processions are the common property of the well-to-do and the proletariat, and all the year round the children and working folk look for- ward to them as beautiful dreams that come once a year.
The evolution of the New Orleans Carnival has not yet reached a stage where definite limitations to the season have been fixed. Under one construction it is possible to assume the Carnival season beginning as early as the night of January the 6th, when the ball of the Twelfth Night Revelers is celebrated. This is upwards of a month earlier than Mardi Gras ever occurs, yet it is a carnival ball in this, that it is a masked ball, with all the customs prevailing which characterize the balls of the acknowledged Carnival season. On the other hand, the Carnival is a matter concerning the people in the widest and most democratic sense, and the ball of the Twelfth Night Revelers is essentially a class and patrician affair. It would therefore scem a distortion of the true meaning of the word, to have it that the Carnival begins at Twelfth Night, or that it begins, indeed, at any time anterior to the cele- bration of the first street parade. And as these street parades are not constant in their appearances year by year, with the exception of Rex, Comus and Proteus, no prescribed beginning of the Carnival has yet been fixed, nor is susceptible of being fixed, until a definite date, so many days before Mardi Gras, be set for the first pageant. In the year 1900 the Carnival season began with the electric street pageant of Nereus, which took place on the night of Wednesday, February 21st, six days before Mardi Gras. The balls of the Twelfth Night Revelers, Atlanteans, Con- sus and the Elves of Oberon had already been given, during the course of the pre- vious fortnight, but these were exclusive affairs not open to strangers and the general public, excepting upon the warranty of personal cards of invitation, and were, therefore, not essential factors in the great popular celebration.
We are told that the Carnival in Louisiana harks back to a period as remote as Bienville's ascent of the Mississippi, and are given a picturesquely circumstantial account of those hardy discoverers mooring their boats to the reedy banks of the river and celebrating the Carnival with great spirit and abandon upon the virgin soil. But I take it that this is at best apocryphal and intended to accentuate the roman- ticism of our history and cast a certain glamour over the genesis of the Carnival. Records of the origin of the Carnival in New Orleans are meager, but the com- munity having been from its inception Latin and Catholic, it is highly probable that desultory masking on feast days was not unusual so early as the time of tlie first influx of colonists or refugees from the Spanish possessions.
634
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
In the time of Louis Philippe, all Paris went mad with the Carnival. It was the height of the city's gayety and splendor. Louisiana at that time was pros- perous and the sons of wealthy planters and merchants were sent to Paris to complete the educations begun in the parochial schools at home. In Paris these young men imbibed the spirit of the Carnival. The tang of the mad time was sweet to their Latin blood, and they brought the custom home. We have accurate information that in 1827 a number of these young Creole gentlemen, fresh from their Parisian experiences, effected something like an organization of the wandering and nondescript maskers who peopled the balconies and sidewalks, and paraded - in very bad order and with worse discipline-the principal streets of the city. There appears to have been no further organization of maskers until 1837, when there were even more maskers in line than before.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.