Historic Louisiana

CHAPTER III
LOUISIANA AND THE UNITED STATES
Though the past two centuries have witnessed a world-wide homogenizing of peoples,
Louisiana has retained a sense of its individual origin and identity. Louisiana’s relationship to the
American government has been distinctive. As part of the South, Louisiana experienced what the
rest of the United States did not, the loss of a war. On the other hand, in 1815 it was the site of
the Battle of New Orleans that ratified America’s independence. While it often sought to be aloof,
it truly needed the resources and power of the Federal Government to develop its economy. The
Civil War created a powerful new federal government that wielded tariffs to protect the steel and
sugar industries, that leveed the Mississippi River, and that fought yellow fever, a particular scourge
of Louisiana.
In 1803 the United States purchased an unwilling Louisiana. She was the first people to be
forced into the Union. But the only evidence of discontent came from the African Americans. At a
time of Napoleons and kings, people were more resigned to their fate then they are today. For the
next ten years Louisiana remained a territory, virtually a colony, of the young republic.
Ironically, Americans were the last group of settlers to arrive in Louisiana. Some were refugees
from the American Revolution, Tories whose loyalty to their Mother Country made life in the new
United States impossible. Point Coupée received a wealthy South Carolina planter and surveyor
named Benjamin Farrar. His son and two daughters became prominent members of the Anglo
planting class along the Mississippi River. At the other end of the political spectrum was one David
Bradford of western Pennsylvania. He was a lawyer and a leader of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1795.
He judged it prudent to escape the clutches of the new United States, and settled near Bayou Sarah
in West Feliciana Parish, where he prospered. Judge John Perkins, a Maryland native, was a
representative Louisiana cotton planter throughout the antebellum years. He came to Louisiana in
1802 In 1813, Governor W. C. C. Claiborne appointed Perkins parish judge for Concordia Parish,
where he began acquiring plantations south of Bayou Vidal. All were contiguous, and eventually
his “Somerset Estate,” as he called it, totaled 17,500 acres. On April 7, 1857, the judge donated
his estate, valued at more than $600,000, to his son John Perkins, Jr., in return for an annuity.
John, Jr., served as secretary of the Louisiana Historical Society and even journeyed to France to
collect documents pertaining to Louisiana history. He played an important role in the Civil War
government of Jefferson Davis and fled to Mexico upon its conclusion.
A wave of American officeholders also invaded the territory, setting off a scramble for position
between the French, the Creoles, and the new Americans. President Thomas Jefferson appointed
William Charles Cole Claiborne governor of the new territory. The ambitious young man had
begun his career as a clerk in the brand-new United States House of Representatives. He then
commenced a legal practice in territorial Tennessee aided by political appointments facilitated by
his national contacts. As a member of the House of Representatives from Tennessee, he voted for
Thomas Jefferson in 1801 after the electoral college deadlocked. As soon as Jefferson took office,
he appointed Claiborne to be territorial governor of Mississippi, followed in 1803 by his
appointment to Louisiana. Former New York City Mayor Edward Livingston came to town to
rebuild his fortune. Brothers John and Thomas Slidell moved to Louisiana in the 1820s. The sons
of a New York City merchant, they were extremely able lawyers who reached the pinnacle of
political power in Louisiana, John Slidell as United States Senator and tutor of President James
Buchanan, and Thomas Slidell as chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.
While these Americans embraced Creole society, others despised it. Wade Hampton made a
fortune growing cotton in South Carolina. Then, the U.S. government sent him to Louisiana as a
general in the U.S. Army, where he quickly purchased one of the largest land holdings along the
✧
The Riverlake Sugar House by Adrien
Persac, c. 1858. This painting shows the
process of harvesting sugarcane in the
nineteenth century. Workers cut the cane,
loaded it onto carts, and then drove them to
the sugarhouse. On the left is the sugar shed
where the cane was dumped. In the center is
the conveyor that carried the cane under the
rollers. Steam engines supplied the motive
power. Slaves cut wood to fuel the engines.
This plantation belonged to Arthur Denis, a
prominent New Orleans lawyer whose wife,
Antoinette Decuir, inherited the plantation
from her father, Antoine Decuir. The
sugarhouse in the painting burned in 1870.
Antoine and Joseph Decuir were prominent,
wealthy planters on the lower False River in
Pointe Coupée Parish. Both men
established families with free women of
color, families that led to many free people
of color in Louisiana.
COURTESY OF CHARLES DENIS FOURIER.
CHAPTER III
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