Greenbacks, Car Tickets, And the Pot of Gold: The Effects of Wartime Occupation on The Business Life of New Orleans, 1861-1865

Dr. Doyle is Assistant Professor of History at Wheeling College, Wheeling, W.Va. She is currently at work on a study of Southern sympathizers in England during the CivU War. Thisarticle isthe result of considerable research done on New Orleans during the war. Greenbacks, Car Tickets, And the Pot of Gold The Effects of Wartime Occupation on The Business Life of New Orleans, 1861-1865 ELISABETH JOAN DOYLE the THiRTY-FiHST Massachusetts and the Fourth Wisconsin regiments of United States troops went ashore at New Orleans on the first day of May in 1862.l The landing was unopposed—by armed force, at least— and with the arrival of the troops began a strange chapter in American history: the story of the occupation of a large, American city, over a protracted period of time, by a body of"enemy** troops who were themselves Americans. This wartime occupationwas to affect every aspect of New Orleans life, and none more widely than its business Ufe. It is doubtful that Major General Benjamin F. Butler, who commanded the occupyingforces when they went ashore at New Orleans in 1862, had a full realization of the importance of the plum that dropped so quickly and easily into his lap. But if he did not he was not unique in his lack of appreciation; not even the Confederate leaders at Richmond had been able to evaluate correctly its importance to the Confederacy , and no help had been sent to the citywhile there was still time. Second only to New York in size and importance as an American trading and financial center, New Orleans was indeed a rich prize to come by with so little effort. Though the more or less successful blockade by the Federal Navy had made serious inroads upon the city's 1 James Parton, General Butler in New Orkans (New York, 1864), p. 280. 347 348ELISABETH JOAN DOYLE prosperity, it was in normal times a flourishing center of business activity that had grown enormously in the decades just before the war. Strategically located on a bend of the Mississippi, the city—protected on three sides by its high, curved levee—was a major American port for both foreign and domestic trade. To the wharves that lined the river side of the levee in the year 1860 came products of the upper Mississippi Valley and the settled regions of the west valued at more than $185 milhon; foreign imports amounted to another $21 million; and experts of both foreign and domestic products amounted to over $108 milbon. Almost 2000 sea-going vessels and 3566 river steamers, with an aggregate tonnage of 1,212,029, tied up at the noisy, bustling levee during this last year before the war. The streets along the river were lined with great warehouses and with the huge cotton presses that made the city the chief cotton export center of North America.2 New Orleans was a rich city. Its banks were among the soundest in the country. Its citizens, white and free Negro, owned real and personal property valued in 1861 at more than $125 milhon—a figure that had been climbing steadily for a decade. Butthe city which was thegreat commercial heart of the Confederacy when the war began had, by the time Butler arrived, been transformed into an economic ghost town. Its many shops and stores were closed; its banks had shipped all their gold and silver into the Confederacy for fear it would be confiscated by the invaders; along Carondelet, Tchoupitoulas , and Levee streets, its great warehouses, cotton presses, and commission merchants' offices were locked and empty; crowds of the unemployed roamed the streets and gathered restlessly at the levee tc survey the Federal fleet. Around them were the blackened ashes of the great stock of sugar and cotton which the Confederates, unable to ship through the blockade in time, had burned rather than let fall into Yankee hands. In many places the wharves themselves had been so badly damagedbyfire tbat theywereunsafe.3 "Business of every kind still continues at a stand, and the trade of the city is virtually closed for the present," reported the True Delta three days after Butler had issued a proclamation...