ABSTRACT
Travelogues testify to the extraordinary ethnic diversity of early-19th-century New Orleans. "No city perhaps on the globe," wrote one visitor in 1816, "presents a greater contrast of national manners, language, and complexion, than does New Orleans." Racial geographies in antebellum New Orleans resembled those in other Southern cities. The domestic nature of urban slavery drove a spatially heterogeneous racial distribution pattern, in which enslaved blacks usually lived adjacent to their enslavers, often in appended quarters. This so-called "early Southern," "back alley" pattern of low-density intermingling has been documented in Charleston, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and elsewhere. For most of the years between 1837 and the Civil War, more immigrants arrived at New Orleans than any other Southern city. Nationally, New Orleans routinely ranked second only to New York in immigrant arrivals. Although urbanization occurred almost entirely on the higher, better-drained natural levee abutting the Mississippi River, not all sections of that feature were equally valued.
