| Popis: |
This chapter describes the society and culture that Julia Ward Howe would have encountered in New Orleans in 1884. The locals were no strangers to power, as they had seen it seized perversely. There was no timidity in a city where, when occupied during the Civil War, it became legendary that some ladies crossed streets rather than share sidewalks with Union soldiers, exposed their pantaloons rather than their faces to troops below their balconies, and emptied chamber pots on the heads of their enemies. By 1884, if a contemporary novel accurately portrayed “New Orleans manners, customs, habits and social features,”, men still considered it “honorable” to settle disputes with swords or pistols, and flirtatious women still incited duels by pitting men's affections against one other. Newspaper reports told how pugnacious affairs really were in a city where the most common crimes were burglary and assault and where men, women, and sometimes children carried weapons or at least kept them handy. |
