chosen, and a new
impetus was given the Faubourg St. Mary, which was now, under this
law, the second municipality. Extensive wharves were erected along the
front of the municipality; streets were paved, and the whole trading
community felt the improvements were assuming gigantic proportions,
and trade relieved of onerous and vexatious impositions. Property rose
in value rapidly; Canal Street grew speedily into importance. The
dry-goods trade, hitherto confined almost exclusively to Chartres
Street, came out upon this magnificent street as rapidly as it could
be accommodated. From an almost deserted suburb, it became the centre
of business and the great boulevard of the city. A company built the
great St. Charles Hotel, and here were first opened hotel
accommodations for ladies in New Orleans, thirty-one years ago.

The commercial crisis of 1837 retarded temporarily the improvements,
but only for a day as it were, and in a few years there was a great
American city, fashioned by American energy and American capital from
the unsightly and miserable mire of the Faubourg St. Mary.

To the enterprise and perseverance of two men was mostly due this
rapid improvement of the city and its new and extended accommodations
to commerce--Samuel J. Peters and James H. Caldwell. Mr. Peters was a
native of Canada, and came when quite a youth to New Orleans. He
married a Creole lady, a native of the city; and, after serving as a
clerk for some time in the business house of James H. Leverick & Co.,
commenced business as a wholesale grocer. In this business he was
successful, and continued in it until his death. He was a man of
splendid abilities and great business tact, great energy and
application, and full of public spirit. New Orleans he viewed as his
home; he identified himself and family with the people, and his fame
with her prosperity. To this end he devoted his time and energies;
around him congregated others who lent willingly and energetically
their aid to accomplish his conceptions, and to fashion into realities
the projections of his mind. I remember our many walks about the
second municipality--when, where now is the City Hall, and Camp and
Charles streets, and when these magnificent streets, now stretching
for miles away, ornamented with splendid buildings and other
improvements, were but muddy roads through open lots, with side-walks
of flat-boat gunwales, with only here and there a miserable shanty,
with a more miserable