Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of MexicoBishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
General
Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico
Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
Boats and boating; Mississippi River -- Description and travel; Ohio River -- Description and travel
The next picture of New Orleans is in 1792. It has passed into other
hands now, for the king of France has ceded it, with the territory of
Louisiana, to his cousin of Spain, and has in fact, with a single
stroke of the pen, stripped himself of possessions extending from the
mouth of the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence. The type of civilization
is now changed, and we see things moving in the iron groove of Spanish
bigotry. The very architecture changes with the new rule, and the
houses seem grim and fortress-like, while the cadaverous-cheeked
Spaniard stands in the gloom with his hand upon his sword, one of the
six thousand souls now within this ill-drained city. Successive
Spanish governors hold their sway under the Spanish king; and then the
Spaniard goes his way.
Spanish civilization cannot take so firm a hold in New Orleans as the
French, and many privately pray for the old banner, until at last
France herself determines to again possess her old territory. Spain,
knowing opposition to be useless, and heartily sick of this distant
colony, so hard to govern and so near the quarrelsome Americans, who
seem ready to fulfil their threat of taking New Orleans by force if
their commercial interests are interfered with, yields a ready assent.
The city becomes the property of Napoleon the Great; but hardly have
the papers been signed, when, in 1803, it is ceded to the United
States. Half a generation later the conflicting national elements are
settled into something like harmony, and the state of Louisiana has a
population of fifty thousand souls.
In 1812 war is declared between Great Britain and the United States.
Soon after, General Andrew Jackson wins a victory over the English on
the lowlands near New Orleans, when, with the raw troops of the river
states, he drives off; and sends home, fifteen thousand skilled
British soldiers. Bowing his laurel-crowned head before the crowd
assembled to do him honor, the brave American general receives the
benediction of the venerable abb, while his memory is kept ever fresh
in the public mind by the grand equestrian statue which now stands a
monument to his prowess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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