Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 61)

HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION L Frank Leslie’s Illustrated depicted Union troops raising the U.S. flag over Louisiana’s State Capitol following its capture on December 17, 1863. ouisiana seceded from the United States on January 26, 1861, and, for a brief period of two months, was an independent republic. It then joined with its Southern sisters to create the Confederate States of America. This fledgling nation lost its first and only war and returned, conquered, to the United States in 1865. Louisiana and the other Southern states were eventually “reconstructed” and regained their prior status among their peers. It seems so simple, and yet, it was complex and often traumatic. Most Louisianians are taught these facts, but the process is generally ignored. How did Louisiana secede? Was there debate? Was secession fever overwhelming? In typical Louisiana fashion, the story behind the history was filled with political intrigue, obscure players, a tainted balloting process, and the results that were anything but well known. During the 1850s Louisiana ran against the grain of the intensifying crisis over slavery fueled by cotton economy. Of all the Southern states, Louisiana had the most to lose by leaving the United States. Geography and economic interests closely tied it to the upper Midwest, New York, and New England. New Orleans was the largest city in the South, its population diverse in ethnicity and political views. A huge influx of immigrants, particularly Irish and Germans, made the Crescent City more like New York than any other Southern metropolis. Situated near the mouth of the Mississippi River, the city provided the warehouses and port facilities for almost all of the goods and raw materials created in the interior of the country. Most of the goods moved through New Orleans went to New York, and the largest portion of the cotton crop went to Boston. Although cotton was certainly “king” with its economic muscle, large areas of the state were not capable of growing the white gold. The hill parishes of north central Louisiana and the sugar cane growing areas along the lower river were not major areas of cotton production. The deep delta parishes, except Orleans, held huge numbers of agricultural slaves, but cries for secession were tempered by federal protection in the form of sugar tariffs. The debate over secession was most heated in the cotton-growing regions across the South. As the decade passed, cries for states’ rights rang from the pulpits across the state every Sunday, but the most vitriolic calls for secession came from the rich cottongrowing parishes in the Red River Valley and along the Mississippi River north of Baton Rouge. Clearly, there was no consensus about what the state should do. As the national debate over slavery degraded into a shouting match between abolitionists and “fire-eaters,” South Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 61

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.