beyond their means of producing at home. The soil and climate
were not only auspicious to the production of cotton, tobacco, and
indigo--then a valuable marketable commodity--but every facility for
rearing without stint every variety of stock. These settlements were
greatly increased by emigration from Pennsylvania, subsequently to the
conclusion of the war, as well as from the Southern States.

Very many who, in that war, had sided with the mother country from
conscientious, or mercenary views, were compelled by public opinion, or
by the operation of the law confiscating their property and banishing
them from the country, to find new homes. Those, however, who came
first had choice of locations, and most generally selected the best;
and bringing most wealth, maintained the ascendency in this regard, and
gave tone and direction to public matters as well as to the social
organization of society. Most of them were men of education and high
social position in the countries from which they came. Constant
intercourse with New Orleans, and the education of the youth of both
sexes of this region in the schools of that city, carried the high
polish of French society into the colony.

Louisiana, and especially New Orleans, was first settled by the
nobility and gentry of France. They were men in position among the
first of that great and glorious people. Animated with the ambition for
high enterprise, they came in sufficient numbers to create a society,
and to plant French manners and customs, and the elegance of French
learning and French society, upon the banks of the Mississippi.

The commercial and social intermingling of these people resulted in
intermarriages, which very soon assimilated them in most things as one
people, at least in feeling, sentiment and interest. From such a stock
grew the people inhabiting the banks of the Mississippi, from Vicksburg
to New Orleans. In 1826, young men of talent and enterprise had come
from Europe, and every section of the United States, and, giving their
talents to the development of the country, had created a wealth,
greater and more generally diffused than was, at that time, to be found
in any other planting or farming community in the United States. Living
almost exclusively among themselves, their manners and feelings were
homogeneous; and living, too, almost entirely upon the products of
their plantations, independent of their market-crops, they grew rich so
rapidly as to mock t