Early New Orleans

The city of New Orleans was founded in 1718, and was built with the labor of imported white European convicts and African slaves (Fussell 2007). With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States gained owership of New Orleans, then the ninth largest city in the country (Fussell 2007). In 1809, 10,000 refugees of the Haitian rebellion arrived, joining Afrian slaves and white Europeans to create a unique culturally and ethnically diverse city (The Institute of New Orleans History). 

According to the 1810 Census, New Orleans was one-third white Europeans of mostly German, Italian and Irish descent, one-third free people of color known as "les gens de couleur libres" and now identified as Creole, and one-third African slaves (Fussell 2007). From its founding through the start of the Civil War, high rates of immigration from Europe and through the slave trade spurred the rapid growth of New Orleans (Marler 2010).

The Civil War was economically disastrous for the city, and in the post-Civil War period several factors combined to cause further economic decline in New Orleans. These included economic change leading to increased competition, political instability, an unwillingness to embrace the railroad as an important new form of transportation, the decline of the powerful merchant class as well as the financial institutions they controlled, disinvestment in the port, continued dependence on cotton, and widespread corruption (Marler 2010). In spite of this, New Orleans continued to have the largest population of any city in the Deep South through WWII (Marler 2010).