Nature or Nurture: New Orleans's Decline in National Importance from 1850–1910

New Orleans went from fifth place in population among American cities in 1850 to fifteenth in 1910.  Granted, the Civil War had immense impact.  However, in the decades after the end of the conflict, the city continued to decline, and has never recovered its status as one of the five top cities in the nation.

            How much is the importance and vitality of a city due to nature: its climate, its site, and its situation? And, how much is due to that city’s nurture: the choices its people make and the choices forced upon it from outside?

            Nature, after the Eads jetties opened Mississippi river transport and yellow fever epidemics ceased, seemed under control at that time, although its water-ringed location and the possibility of hurricanes and floods continued. 

            However, it was predominantly a range of unfortunate civic choices that kept the city out of the first rank. These would include lack of a manufacturing base; lack of a locally-owned group of major shipping lines; increasing marginalization from national norms because of racial discrimination; a restrictive upper social structure unwelcoming to newcomers; a regional agricultural base beset with major physical and economic problems; a lack of aggression in embracing new economic trends as in seeking local corporate control of the rising petroleum industry; and a banking and finance structure not flexible enough to take advantage of growth opportunities.