il, and was now
disaffected. The neglect had "soured them considerably with the
American government."[59]

Claiborne, however, determined to procure a census of free people of
color in the city. He estimated that there were five hundred capable
of bearing arms, and added that he would do all in his power to
conciliate them, and secure a return of their allegiance to the
American government. One Stephen, a free black man, had appeared
before Claiborne and declared on oath that the people of color were
being tampered with by the Spanish government.[60] This caused the
governor to redouble his energies toward conciliating the doubtful
militia. Louisiana bordered on the Spanish territory, Texas, and a
constant desertion of people of color to this foreign land continued,
Spain doing all in her power to make the flight of these free men and
slaves interesting. Colored men were furnished the Spanish cockades,
and dances were given in their honor when they escaped over the
border. The disaffected adherents of Aaron Burr on the border-land of
Texas kept up the underhand warfare against the government, through
these people of color. Perhaps it was as a means of protection that
Louisiana and a much restricted Louisiana was admitted as a State in
1812.

Writers describing the New Orleans of this period agree in presenting
a picture of a continental city, most picturesque, most un-American,
and as varied in color as a street of Cairo. There they saw French,
Spaniards, English, Bohemians, Negroes, mulattoes; varied clothes,
picturesque white dresses of the fairer women, brilliant cottons of
the darker ones. The streets, banquettes, we should say, were bright
with color, the nights filled with song and laughter. Through the
scene, the people of color add the spice of color; in the life, they
add the zest of romance.[61]

Such was the situation in the city of New Orleans. The condition of
the free people of color in Louisiana as a whole, however, and the
form of slavery which existed in that state are somewhat difficult to
determine because of the conflicting statements of observers who did
not distinguish between the conditions obtaining in the metropolis and
those obtaining in the parishes. All seem to agree, however, that on
account of the extensive miscegenation so common in the French
colonies there had been produced in that state various classes of
mixed breeds enjoying degrees of freedom in conformity with their
proximity o