Gambling in New Orleans

The character of raw inland ports like Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez derived in large part from the archetypal riverfront town of New Orleans.

Unlike many of the communities upstream, New Orleans was no longer a full-fledged frontier town, but it shared with other river settlements certain elements that linked the towns in an unholy alliance.

The Crescent City had its own waterfront district, the 'Swamp', located inside the Old Quarter of the metropolis, that differed in size from landing districts' upriver, but catered just as successfully to the thousands of boatmen and steamer passengers arriving each year.

In addition, although Americans 'pioneered' New Orleans less by migration than by diplomacy, the city did comprise a unique ethnic frontier for Spanish, French, English, African, Creole, Mexican, and American cultures.

People from a variety of backgrounds learned the customs of different groups and came to tolerate heterogeneous attitudes and behavior regarding betting.

French and Spanish settlers of the eighteenth century had cultivated gambling extensively in New Orleans and the surrounding lowlands. Many of these colonists viewed Louisiana as a temporary residence, an outlook that heightened the impermanent character of the place and reinforced the willingness to take chances.

In addition, the pestilential environment of the lower Mississippi made New Orleans but a seasonal home for some, and encouraged a sort of secular fatalism that elicited further by the gambling instinct.

Crowds of visitors naturally regarded the Crescent City as a resort. Its streets always seemed to be filled with male travelers--- merchants, boatmen, soldiers, sailors, and planters.

Early nineteenth century observers of the port seldom failed to mention the quadroon balls, the promiscuous dancing, the violations of the Sabbath, and the dens of drinking and gambling for which the city became so notorious to the English-speaking world.

If observers were shocked at the apparent sinfulness of the town, they nonetheless understood quite well that gambling flourished more successfully in New Orleans than elsewhere in the United States, and sought to explain why.

The first colonists from France and Spain had introduced wide-open betting to the vicinity, but the metropolis became the American center for gambling only with the explosive growth initiated through the takeover of the town by the United States in 1803.

Yankee newcomers could hardly resist the unfamiliar temptations that Louisiana offered.

By 1810, New Orleans reportedly had as many gaming halls as the four largest American cities combined, and by 1815, the city had begun to license and tax gambling dens, forwarding the revenues to charity.