In the 1970s, David Goldfield called for historians to study southern urban centers with a regional focus. Although few took the lead in doing this, a number of scholars have offered comparative analyses of southern cities. These include Richard Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820-1860 (New York, 1964); Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (Urbana, 1978); Some of Goldfield's essays, revised and expanded, are collected in Goldfield, Region, Race, and Cities: Interpreting the Urban South (Baton Rouge, 1997). Most studies of urban centers in the south have focused on the twentieth century. Raymond Mohl laments the fact that case studies of groups, institutions, problems, and events have dominated the field of urban history rather than studies that focus on the link between city and region. Raymond A. Mohl, "City and Region: The Missing Dimension in U.S. Urban History," Journal of Urban History 25 (1998): 3-21. Kenneth Scherzer, in his review essay of recent southern urban histories, demonstrates that the issue of southern urban "exceptionalism" has not disappeared. Scherzer, "Southern Cities-How Exceptional?" Journal of Urban History 26 (2000): 692-706.
2.
Joseph R. Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York, 1996), 10. Historians of New Orleans disagree over when the city became "American," dating it to 1803 and the transfer of the territory to the United States, to 1815 and the Battle of New Orleans, to 1825 with the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette, to 1852, when Anglo-Americans in the city wrested political power from the Latin Creoles, and even to the 1857 celebration of Mardi Gras. See, for example, Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and American's First Military Victory (New York, 1999), 187-90; Joseph Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718-1819 (Knoxville, 1999), xix; Patricia Brady, "Carnival of Liberty: Lafayette in Louisiana," Louisiana History 41 (2000): 23-40; Joseph G. Tregle, Jr., "Creoles and Americans," in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, eds., Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge, 1992), 173; James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (Jackson, MS, 1997). The unique ethnic composition of New Orleans must be taken into consideration when discussing the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the city experienced the same forces of urbanization and immigration common to other large port cities in the United States. For a similar view, see Joseph Logsdon, "Immigration through the Port of New Orleans," in Mark Stolarik, ed., Forgotten Doors: The Other Ports of Entry to the United States (Philadelphia, 1988), 105-8.
3.
Tregle, "Creoles and Americans," 131-88; also see, e.g., Albert Fossier, New Orleans: The Glamour Period, 1800-1840 (1957; rpt., Gretna, LA, 1998); Grace King, New Orleans: The Place and the People (New York, 1915).
4.
Virginia Dominquez, White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana ( New Brunswick, 1986), 148.
5.
Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans , 1846-1862 (Baton Rouge, 2003).
6.
Steve Chapman, "Relocating May Be Better Than Rebuilding," Chicago Tribune, August 30, 2007.
7.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History ( Boston, 1995), 15.
