Antebellum Race and Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of New Orleans Laissez-Faire African American Un-“Expectant” Capitalists

In antebellum America, the largest number of free black businesspeople lived in New Orleans, where some 8% had established enterprises in both the formal and informal sectors of the nation’s preindustrial mainstream business community. Significantly, of the top twenty-one antebellum free blacks in business who had accumulated wealth in excess of $100,000, all but three lived in Louisiana. While most were large slave plantation holders, there were those living in New Orleans who not only held substantial real estate but also were involved in the banking, finance and investments sectors of the antebellum economy. Indeed, the New Orleans-based Soulie brothers, listed in the R. G. Dun and Company Mercantile Credit records as ‘‘capitalist,’’ ‘‘broker,’’ and ‘‘merchant” ranked third in this list of antebellum wealthy blacks.  Their combined wealth was recorded as $500,000. Also in New Orleans, the Lacroix brothers—Francois, whose occupation was listed as a ‘‘tailor’’ was worth $300,000; and Julien, listed as a grocer, was worth $250,000. Also, among the seven blacks who accumulated wealth from $100,000 to $149,999, there was a woman, Madame Cecee McCarty—a merchant who had accumulated $155,000 by 1848.  She was not the only black women involved in finance. Extensive real estate holdings provided money for investment for Marie Louise Panis in New Orleans who owned $49,000 in shares of capital stock in the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana until 1836. Suzanne Belazaire Meullion, a black woman cotton planter, held stock in the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad Company.  Why and how did free blacks in Louisiana accumulate such tremendous wealth? Proceeding from Bray Hammond’s “The Jacksonians: Expectant Capitalists,” this paper will assess economic factors in both the private and public sectors that contributed to the rise and fall of wealthy free blacks as capitalists in New Orleans before the Civil War.