The streets were very narrow; the warehouses small and
inconvenient; the merchants close and unenterprising, seemingly
unconscious of the great revolution going on in their midst.
From the growing greatness of the surplus products of the immense
Valley, this was quadrupling annually. The cotton crop of the United
States, forty years ago, scarcely reached half a million of bales, and
of this New Orleans did not receive one-third; but in five years
after, her receipts were very nearly one-half of the entire crop. At
the same period, the sugar crop did not amount to more than twenty
thousand hogsheads; five years thereafter, it had quadrupled, and the
commerce from the upper rivers had increased a hundred-fold, and was
going on in all the products of the soil to increase in like ratio. At
this time the antipathy was at its acme between the two races or
populations.
Then the Legislature held its sessions in New Orleans, and the
American residents, merchants, and property-holders determined to
apply to the Legislature for an amendment of the city charter. A bill
was introduced accordingly, proposing to divide the city into three
municipalities, making Canal and Esplanade streets the lines of
division; giving the city proper and each faubourg a separate
government: in truth, making three cities where there had been but
one.
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