The Lost German Slave Girl

by John Bailey

  Although Creole males revered the ideal of the virtuous wife, they saw no inconsistency in indulging in a highly formalized and uniquely Louisianan system of concubinage. Called plaçage, the institution saw white men of wealth place young colored women (called the placée) in a semipermanent relationship as their exclusive mistress. The arrangements were often made at the quadroon balls under the supervision of the placée’s mother, usually an ex-courtesan herself. Dressed in exquisite finery, the women were put on display with the intention of catching a man of quality, by coquettish conversation and dainty dancing. According to James Silk Buckingham, an Englishman on a grand tour of America in 1842:

  [The quadroon balls] furnish some of the most beautiful women that can be seen, resembling in many respects, the higher order of women among the Hindoos, with lovely countenances, full, dark, liquid eyes, lips of coral and teeth of pearl, long raven locks of soft and glossy hair, sylph-like figures, and such beautifully rounded limbs and exquisite gait and manner, that they might furnish models for a Venus or a Hebe to the chisel of a sculptor.44

  Only light-skinned colored women were admitted to the quadroon balls; pure Africans of both sexes were excluded, and the presence of white women was unthinkable. The price of admission was fixed so high that only men of means could afford to attend. If a man was entranced by what he saw, negotiations began. To the young woman’s mother a desirable catch was a gentleman with sufficient wealth to provide her daughter with a house (customarily, one of the neat white houses set in a row along the Ramparts), attendant slaves, money and, if she was particularly beautiful or he excessively rich, a cabriolet.

  The arrangement was described as a left-handed marriage. According to the singular mores of New Orleans, a placée was considered virtuous if she was faithful to her provider, never, ever approached his wife, home, or children, and was decorous in her declining years as his ardor waned. She could never expect to be taken by her gentleman into polite society, nor could she dare risk arousing his jealousy by cavorting in public. The permanency of the relationship depended on the honor of the gentleman (always an unreliable commodity), although if he abandoned the relationship without just cause, he was expected to maintain her, or set her up in some modest business such as millinery or dressmaking. No one expected him to take responsibility for her children. Her daughters, yet another shade lighter, were available for a similar arrangement when they grew up, while her sons were left to fend for themselves. Not surprisingly, placage was one of the few Creole customs adopted by American males of wealth.

  The Creoles and the Americans resolved their mutual dislike by living in different parts of the city. The Americans found green fields upriver of Canal Street where they built mansions in spacious gardens. They created a square in Lafayette, not overlooked by a cathedral, a governor’s residence, and a priest’s house as in the French Quarter, but with banks, a Masonic lodge, and nonconformist churches. By the 1820s the Americans had installed gas lighting to guide patrons to the fabulous American Theater on Camp Street built by James H. Caldwell, actor, impresario, and property developer. In 1837 he built the even grander St. Charles Hotel, taking up an entire block. It was one of the great hotels of its era and its landmark white dome was an unmistakable navigation beacon for miles up and down the river. Five blocks away in the Vieux Carré, the French built the equally grand St. Louis Hotel. The two nationalities then proceeded to build separate markets, canals, docks, and railway lines. The broad thoroughfare of Canal Street (the canal was never built) served as the neutral ground between the feuding sides.

  By the late 1830s the breakdown in relations between the Creoles and Americans was so complete that divorce, rather than separation, became necessary. Put aside was the fact that a little over two decades earlier they had stood together to rout the British in the Battle of New Orleans. The Crescent City was cut into three areas of governance. The result, looking very much like wedges of a pie, created the First Municipality, centered on the Vieux Carré (primarily French); the Second Municipality upriver (primarily American, but with Irish and German migrants on the riverfront); and downriver the Third Municipality, inhabited by the poor of all nationalities. To add to this troika of overgovernance, a mayor and a general council from the three municipalities sat once a year in the Cabildo to discuss matters of overall concern to the city. New Orleans was always ripe for the picking and, with three municipalities, the opportunities for graft, kickbacks, and bribery tripled. Only propertied white men could vote (thus disenfranchising over two-thirds of the population), on the grounds that only they had the requisite good sense, a doubtful proposition since they consistently voted into office the most corrupt band of robber barons in all of America. Politicians of all persuasions created a complex system of patronage, so that government officials, the police, and contractors owed their appointment to a particular political party. On election days, gangs of ruffians roamed the streets, carrying billyclubs and intimidating voters into supporting their particular candidate.

  Kept apart by culture, religion, and politics, the Creoles and the Américains mingled for food, sex, and amusement. They rubbed shoulders in the elegant coffeehouses, in the plush bordellos, at the quadroon balls, and in the tiered cockfighting pits of the French Quarter. They met over the green felt of the gambling tables, and on the horse track at Metairie. They were also likely to meet on the dueling field.

  Nowhere was the Code of the Duello held in greater veneration than in New Orleans. Pride, passion, and honor hung in the air whenever gentlemen met, and the least slur upon a person’s character, or the merest slight on a woman’s reputation, whether intended or not, could lead to an invitation to settle the matter on the dueling fields. No man, if he wished to be considered a gentleman of character, could refuse. Duels were sometimes fought merely as an expression of courtly behavior. The historian Charles Gayarré relates the story of how six young men returning from a ball, upon observing the moon lighting an expanse of grass, remarked what a beautiful night it would be for a joust. They paired off, drew their swords, and after a fine display of skill with the blade, two of the youths lay dying.

  Duels were held in the gardens behind St. Louis Cathedral, under the trees on Metairie Road or beside the Dueling Oak in Louis Allard’s plantation. In colonial times, duels were fought with the colichemarde, the rapier, and the broadsword, and only occasionally with pistols. Honor was satisfied when blood was drawn (the merest scratch would suffice) and deaths were few. All this changed when the Americans entered the scene armed with pistols or shotguns, and a serious intention to kill. The city’s golden age of dueling was in the decades following 1830. It is said that on one Sunday morning in 1837 under Louis Allard’s oaks, ten sets of opponents, with their seconds and supporters in watchful attendance, lined up for ten duels, fought one after the other, resulting in the deaths of three men.

  In 1818, when Salomé Müller arrived in New Orleans, the city’s population was predominantly black. About a third of the population were slaves, a quarter were free persons of color, with whites making up the remainder.45

  They may have been counted in the census, but the state of Louisiana didn’t regard free persons of color (called gens de couleur libres by the French) as its citizens. They couldn’t vote or stand for public office. They couldn’t serve on juries. Prejudice and practice meant that they were excluded from the professions and government positions, and the only schools available to their children were a few run by the nuns or organized by black communities. A myriad of petty affronts emphasized their subordinate status: they were segregated in theaters and on omnibus lines, they were banned from most hotels and restaurants, they couldn’t carry a firearm without official approval, and intermarriage with whites was forbidden. A provision in the Louisiana Black Code stamped their social inferiority into law:

  Free people of color ought never to insult or strike white people, nor presume to conceive themselves equal to the white; but, on the contrary, they ought to yield to them i
n every occasion, and never speak or answer to them but with respect, under the penalty of imprisonment, according to the nature of the offence.46

  Yet Louisiana accorded free persons of color many rights denied black people in the slave-free North: they could leave property by wills, they could sue in court, even where the defendant was a white person, and they could be witnesses in court cases against whites. There was no prohibition on free blacks owning slaves, and many did so.* A thriving middle class of free black people lived in the Faubourg Tremé (located in the First Municipality), which lays claim to being the oldest black urban neighborhood in the United States. They ran small businesses, the men working as tailors, bricklayers, day laborers, gardeners, carpenters; the women as seamstresses, laundresses, and tavern proprietors. A few became wealthy enough to send their children to schools in France and to build large houses for themselves.

  And there were slaves.

  In no state was the chattel nature of slavery expressed in more forthright terms than in Louisiana:

  A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labor: he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to the master.47

  This definition could equally apply to a horse.

  Southern law regarded slaves as property, and just about every transaction involving property could be accomplished with slaves. They were hired out. They were given as security for loans. They were left to relatives in wills. They were seized by creditors. They were given as wedding presents. A “Negro girl, thirteen years of age, of good size” was once bartered away for twenty-nine dollars in pork.48“With us, nothing is so usual as to advance children by gifts of slaves. They stand with us instead of money,” said a judge in old Virginia.49

  Governments provided slaves to the widows of heroes who died in wars.50 They were donated to charities. They were stolen. Like all valuable property, they were insured. They were squabbled over in divorce proceedings. Masters were taxed for owning slaves; traders were taxed for selling them; freed slaves were taxed for the privilege of being free.

  In 1819 a man announced in the Louisiana Courier that he was holding a lottery of only fifty tickets at twenty dollars each, the prize being Amelia, his thirteen-year-old Negro girl.51 In 1843 a man named Thomas took a boy to the races at the Metairie track in New Orleans and bet him on Lady Dashwood. The charger won Thomas five hundred dollars. The affair ended up before the courts because Thomas had promised one of his backers a half share of the winnings. The judge made no particular comment about wagering boys, but Thomas (a cad for not honoring his word as a Southern gentleman) was ordered to share his winnings.52

  Several people might jointly own a slave. For example, Ann Williams of North Carolina once owned one-third of a slave.53 Miss Hamilton of Kentucky held a quarter share of over 100 slaves.54 A slave in Kentucky, named Fleming Thompson, once had five owners. They argued among themselves because three wanted to free him, while the other two didn’t. Could Thompson be three-fifths free?*

  Slave babies were given to little white girls as pets to be brought up. In the traditional ceremony, the hand of the slave was placed in the white child’s hand and the black child was told she now belonged to the other, and it was the duty of one to obey and serve, and the other to command and care.55 Even yet-to-be-born children could be sold, with consignment delayed until the birth. The Supreme Court of North Carolina upheld such a provision in 1833. Clement Arnold owned a female slave who had produced six children for him. While she was pregnant with a seventh, he bargained her away with four of her children, “including the unborn one … at a price of $1,000.” Under the agreement, he was “allowed to select, at his choice, three of the children to be kept by himself”; delivery “was to be made as soon as the mother should recover after the birth of the next child.”56Louisiana was unique among the American slave states in prohibiting the sale of children aged under ten apart from their mothers.

  Unborn children were also left by wills, especially where a man with no great range of assets wanted to treat his children equally— typically the deceased left a female slave to one child, and the slave’s progeny (including those yet to be conceived) to another.57 A person named Nelson wrote such a will, which was upheld by a court in North Carolina in 1843. He had three daughters. He left his slave, Leah, to one, and wrote: “And if there should be any increase from my negro woman Leah, I want that equally divided, between my three daughters Jane Magee, Elizabeth, and Aley Amanda; some to buy and pay the others as I would not wish any sold out of the family.”58

  The law may have designated slaves as property, but legislation has never been able to change human nature. No property was more rational and intelligent. None was more devious and emotional. Slaves became the confidants of family members. Slave women acted as wet nurses and read to white children at bedtime. They nursed the elderly. Slaves became the agents of their master in business dealings. They accumulated wealth. They committed crimes at the behest of their owners.* They got into bed at night with their masters and had the master’s children and were named in divorce proceedings. A few, away from prying eyes, committed the illegal act of behaving as if they were married to their master or mistress.

  It was the slaves’ very humanity that made them such desirable property. The most expensive slaves were young, tractable males of obvious African appearance, who well understood the need to demean themselves before whites. Uncle Toms were especially valuable. Slaves who were uppity, runaways, or violent were marked down in value. The old, diseased, or very young were worth even less. In 1821, at the Virginian markets, a crippled slave was sold for a shilling.59 White colored slaves were of reduced value because they were unlikely to be questioned if they ran away. Albert, a slave who fled to Canada (or was it Ohio?—there were multiple sightings),“could not be distinguished from a white man.” Witnesses said that “they did not consider him to be worth more than half as much as other slaves of the ordinary color and capacities.”60

  Generally, women were worth less than men. An exception was pretty, honey-colored females. Life could be a lottery for them—some were purchased to look after children in grand homes, while others were sold to masters looking for a concubine. The value of slaves might stall during a general economic downturn, but the market never fell as hard as other holdings, and always bounced back higher. In 1820, at the slave auction in New Orleans, a good, medium-sized slave aged fifteen could be bought for three hundred dollars. A decade later, the same slave would fetch between four hundred and six hundred dollars. In 1837, at the height of an economic boom in New Orleans, a girl, “remarkable for her beauty and intelligence” sold for seven thousand dollars.61 A white laborer would have to toil for a lifetime to earn as much.

  In an admirable mixed metaphor, a commentator once described New Orleans as a melting pot of humanity in a dismal swamp. Or as Colonel Creecy put it, in the poem that heads this chapter:

  “A progeny of all colors—

  An infernal motley crew!”

  When the German redemptioners arrived in 1818, New Orleans was little bigger than the original grid planned by Bienville a century earlier. Over the next two decades it more than tripled in size. From a city entirely within the call of the bullfrog, it became a metropolis, and it would take a man more than half a day to walk it from end to end.

  The first steamboat had come down the river in 1812; by 1835, over one thousand steamers docked each year. Vessels with double smokestacks, three stories in height, and huge paddle wheels could churn their way from the falls of the Ohio River at Louisville to New Orleans in an astonishing five days. Some were pleasure palaces, filigreed with fretwork, cupolas, and wrought-iron lace, carpeted with Belgium weave and lit by sparkling crystal gasoliers, and carrying musicians, barbers, chefs, Southern belles, and fancily dressed riverboat gamblers.

  New Orleans reveled in its newfound wealth. Day and night it was a show town.
Theaters produced plays in English, French, and German. Rival opera houses were established in the French and American quarters. Dancing was the passion, enlivened by spicy food, wine, and low bodices. There were costumed balls and gaiety. Ice was brought downriver from the frozen North and sold for five dollars a ton. On sunny afternoons the levee provided the city with a promenade where men and women of fashion could stroll and be seen. Fortunes were being made, and great houses were being built. Real estate values rocketed, and river land that ten years earlier had been sugar plantations was subdivided for housing and sold for three times its price.

  But for all its affluence, apart from a few streets in the American Quarter, the roads of New Orleans were still unpaved in 1830. Depending on the weather, they were either gluey with black mud or dust beds cut with deep ruts. Drainage was still a problem, and in wet weather city blocks were marooned by ditches of gamy water into which, each morning, householders deposited their sewage and food scraps. In the more established areas, pedestrians could walk on raised paths of thick planks, called banquettes—the wood obtained by breaking up flatboats, those huge, lumbering vessels that carried cargo downriver on a once-only journey. Because the Mississippi was higher than much of the metropolis, gardeners digging in their backyard usually found a puddle of brown water a few feet down. Flash floods, and not prayer, could raise the dead in New Orleans, and holes had to be bored in coffins, and black men employed to stand on them, to make sure they stayed sunk during burials. Those determined to keep their relatives dry in the afterlife built vaults (called ovens) into six-foot-thick cemetery walls.