Building the Land of Dreams: New Orleans and the Transformation of Early America

by Eberhard L. Faber

Overview

The history of New Orleans at the turn of the nineteenth century

In 1795, New Orleans was a sleepy outpost at the edge of Spain's American empire. By the 1820s, it was teeming with life, its levees packed with cotton and sugar. New Orleans had become the unquestioned urban capital of the antebellum South. Looking at this remarkable period filled with ideological struggle, class politics, and powerful personalities, Building the Land of Dreams is the narrative biography of a fascinating city at the most crucial turning point in its history.

Eberhard Faber tells the vivid story of how American rule forced New Orleans through a vast transition: from the ordered colonial world of hierarchy and subordination to the fluid, unpredictable chaos of democratic capitalism. The change in authority, from imperial Spain to Jeffersonian America, transformed everything. As the city’s diverse people struggled over the terms of the transition, they built the foundations of a dynamic, contentious hybrid metropolis. Faber describes the vital individuals who played a role in New Orleans history: from the wealthy creole planters who dreaded the influx of revolutionary ideas, to the American arrivistes who combined idealistic visions of a new republican society with selfish dreams of quick plantation fortunes, to Thomas Jefferson himself, whose powerful democratic vision for Louisiana eventually conflicted with his equally strong sense of realpolitik and desire to strengthen the American union.

Revealing how New Orleans was formed by America’s greatest impulses and ambitions, Building the Land of Dreams is an inspired exploration of one of the world’s most iconic cities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691180700
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Eberhard L. Faber teaches history and music industry studies at Loyola University, New Orleans. Previously, he spent twelve years leading the New York-based rock band God Street Wine. He blogs on New Orleans history and other topics at www.crescentcityconfidential.com.

Table of Contents

Notes on Terminology xi

Introduction: The City and the Nation 1

1 Mississippi Schemes: The Making of a Colonial Elite, 1717−1803 23

2 New Orleans, 1803: Infant City under the Gaze of Three Empires 50

3 The Passion of Citizen Laussat: New Orleans Is Ceded from Spain to France to the United States 83

4 Pathways to the Place d’Armes: The Generation of 1804 118

5 Quel Triste Gouvernement: The Early Crisis of American Rule, 1804 155

6 Liberty in Louisiana: Accomplishments and Compromises of American Rule, 1804−1805 185

7 Creoles and Americans: Confrontations and Accommodations, 1805−1807 215

8 A Strong Case of Wanton Oppression: Livingston, the Corporation, the President, and the Batture 246

9 Creation of an Un-American Republic: Rebellion, Reaction, and the Anxious Road to Statehood 282

10 January 1815: Louisiana Is Still American 312

Appendix 1. New Orleans Exports, 1804–1820 343

Appendix 2. Parish Populations: White, Slave, and Free People of Color, 1810–1820 344

Abbreviations 347

Notes 349

Bibliography 401

Acknowledgments 425

Index 429

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In this brilliant book, Eberhard Faber reveals how the creole elite of colonial New Orleans adapted to American rule on their own terms. With thorough research and vivid prose, Building the Land of Dreams illuminates American expansion in exciting new ways."—Alan Taylor, author of The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832

"This outstanding book takes up a large and absorbing story: Louisiana's incorporation into the American Union as a constitutional equal with other states. Faber untangles this intricate history with admirable clarity and lots of good judgment. In his sensitive hands a cast of characters ranging from Spanish dons and creole warhorses to American newcomers comes to life. Building the Land of Dreams is a fine work of distinction."—Lawrence N. Powell, Tulane University

"Imaginatively researched and elegantly written, this book puts stubborn ideas about early nineteenth-century New Orleans to rest and alters our understanding of Jeffersonian America in a significant way. It introduces readers to intriguing personalities and stories, and undertakes a new interpretation of the incorporation of New Orleans into the economy and body politic of the United States. This is a landmark book on the history of the early American republic."—Daniel H. Usner, Vanderbilt University

"Building the Land of Dreams presents the history of New Orleans and its environs from the end of Spanish rule to after statehood in 1812, from frontier outpost to one of the United States' most populous and thriving cities. This important book is filled with considerable primary research and advances a number of significant debates."—Robert L. Paquette, Alexander Hamilton Institute

Editorial Reviews

"Faber explains how exotic New Orleans became somewhat less exotic after the Louisiana Purchase. . . . The author also provides information about the powerful individuals who were part of the transition."

Choice

"Multicultural New Orleans maintains a mystique that stems from its unique development under governments of France, Spain, and Thomas Jefferson's U.S., argues musician-turned-history teacher Faber in this remarkable and thorough history."

Publishers Weekly

An original and complex analysis of New Orleans during that transformative period in its history and details the political and economic integration of the city into Jeffersonian America. . . . This book effectively presents an important, and hopefully provocative, historical, geographical, and political argument: the histories and geographies of New Orleans and the early United States are inseparable. Whatever their differences, compromises and common interests generally prevailed.---Case Watkins, Journal of Historical Geography


Deeply researched, vibrant, and passionately honest. . . . Historians of early Louisiana will be debating Faber's book for years to come.---David E. Narrett, Journal of Southern History


Faber's book retires much of the folklore embedded in New Orleans's historiography.---George Edward Milne, American Historical Review


This book . . . joins a formidable scholarship on political re-imaginings following the Louisiana Purchase. . . . [Building the Land of Dreams] shows an intimate sensitivity to chronology, tracing the ways events communicated with each other on tight timelines. . . . Ultimately, Building the Land of Dreams highlights the ways New Orleans and the early American republic entered the antebellum period in tandem, informing one another on issues of slavery, expansionism, and national identity.---Kristin Condotta Lee, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society


"In this brilliant book, Eberhard Faber reveals how the creole elite of colonial New Orleans adapted to American rule on their own terms. With thorough research and vivid prose, Building the Land of Dreams illuminates American expansion in exciting new ways."—Alan Taylor, author of The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832


"This outstanding book takes up a large and absorbing story: Louisiana's incorporation into the American Union as a constitutional equal with other states. Faber untangles this intricate history with admirable clarity and lots of good judgment. In his sensitive hands a cast of characters ranging from Spanish dons and creole warhorses to American newcomers comes to life. Building the Land of Dreams is a fine work of distinction."—Lawrence N. Powell, Tulane University


"Imaginatively researched and elegantly written, this book puts stubborn ideas about early nineteenth-century New Orleans to rest and alters our understanding of Jeffersonian America in a significant way. It introduces readers to intriguing personalities and stories, and undertakes a new interpretation of the incorporation of New Orleans into the economy and body politic of the United States. This is a landmark book on the history of the early American republic."—Daniel H. Usner, Vanderbilt University


"Building the Land of Dreams presents the history of New Orleans and its environs from the end of Spanish rule to after statehood in 1812, from frontier outpost to one of the United States' most populous and thriving cities. This important book is filled with considerable primary research and advances a number of significant debates."—Robert L. Paquette, Alexander Hamilton Institute

From the Publisher

"This well-researched snapshot of a brief period of the city's lengthy history richly details personalities and events, offering a valuable perspective to history students and anyone who has experienced the Crescent City's vibrant ways of life."

Library Journal