Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild by Lee Sandlin

Author:Lee Sandlin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Sociology, Social Science, Mississippi River - Description and travel - 19th century, NC, Community life - Mississippi River Region - History - 19th century, WI), Mississippi River - History - 19th century, Mississippi River Valley, Social History, River life - Mississippi River - 19th century, FL, Customs & Traditions, Midwest (IA, LA, Community life, Mississippi River - Social life and customs - 19th century, ND, NE, River life, TN, Mississippi River - Geography, Mississippi River, 19th Century, VA, Social change - Mississippi River Region - History - 19th century, Environmental Science, Science, Mississippi River - Environmental conditions, Social change, Mississippi River Valley - Civilization, United States, Disasters - Mississippi River Region - History - 19th century, AR, South (AL, GA, IN, History, State & Local, IL, OH, MO, MN, MI, Disasters & Disaster Relief, General, KS, WV), MS, SC, KY, Mississippi River Valley - History - 19th century, Mississippi River Region, SD
ISBN: 9780307378514
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-19T06:35:19.285822+00:00

If there was a heart to the city, it was down from the old French Quarter, behind the warehouse district at the southwest curve of the waterfront crescent. This was the American Quarter. Its great landmark was the St. Charles Hotel, a neoclassical construction with an enormous dome—the first sight of the city skyline for travelers coming downriver. It was the hotel of choice for planters in town to meet with their local brokers and factors. It was also where buyers went when they were in the market for cheap slaves. A regular auction was held in the hotel rotunda. The slaves sold there were the most defiant, the most recalcitrant, the sickliest, and the feeblest in New Orleans; the bidding would start at two or three hundred dollars and rarely went much higher. But then, the buyers weren’t particular. Most of them were looking for fresh fodder for the sugarcane plantations of the lower delta, where conditions were notoriously brutal and where slaves didn’t have a long life expectancy. It was largely because of these sugar plantations that the New Orleans public auctions were universally viewed by the slaves with such horror: all through the valley, the threat of being “sold down the river” was seen as tantamount to a death sentence.

Most of the slaves who passed through New Orleans weren’t sold at auction, though, but at the slave yards. The big yards were mainly clustered in the side streets around the St. Charles. They were called yards because they were old-style French buildings with open-air courtyards. They were decorated and maintained with dignified good taste. When customers arrived, the slaves for sale would be brought out into the courtyard (or, if the weather was foul, into a long interior hall or ballroom) and arranged in rows so they could be inspected. The mood was generally low-key, even pleasant. The slaves were well dressed—the women in gorgeous calico dresses with rainbow-spattered bandannas, the men in dark blue suits with ties and vests and dignified beaver hats. On sunny days when there were no customers, they would be sent out to the sidewalk, where they would tease and laugh and pass the time of day with passersby.

Not all the customers were charmed by the show. The Swedish traveler Fredrika Bremer toured several of the yards near the St. Charles. She found them to be civilized-seeming institutions—the slaves all appeared happy and well treated—not resembling at all the sadistic hellholes described by the most rabid of the Northern abolitionists. “I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places,” she wrote, “excepting the whole thing.”

The geniality of the atmosphere was of course a charade. Henry Bibb, who was sold at one of the yards, described in his autobiography how the slaves were prepared to play their part. By ten o’clock each morning they had to be spiffed up, their hair combed and their faces washed. “Those who were inclined to look dark and rough, were compelled to wash in greasy dish water, in order to make them look slick and lively.

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