Plus Ça Change – May 27, 2026
In 1830 the Louisiana legislature passed a series of racist restrictions on both slaves and free people of color. Among these, a requirement that free people of color who had arrived after statehood (1812) and before Jan 1, 1825, must register their presence to be allowed to stay in the state. Anyone who arrived from 1825 onward had to leave the state or be imprisoned. This included any emancipated slaves. This was all part of a serious attempt to reduce the population of free colored people. The white elite saw them as dangerous, showing slaves what was possible. And we couldn’t have that. This is part of the culture war between the European sensibilities of old New Orleans (Spanish and French) and the American way.
The Register of Free Colored Persons Entitled to Remain in the State exists from 1840 onward. It must have existed in 1830, since that’s when the law went into effect, but I couldn’t find any. However, I’ve searched the registers from 1840 on. There is no Glapion or Laveaux. I did see a handful of people who are noted as registering prior to 1840, and a couple of characters I know are coming. There are very old people (80) and very young (1). So parents registered children. OK. Them’s the facts.
From the perspective of historical fiction, I can go a couple of ways.
In one, I can have the entire Laveaux family: Christophe (who is pretending to be a free man of color), Marie, their daughter Heloise, Gran, Uncle Joseph, all go down to city hall to sign up. It’s a great scene, bureaucracy built on top of fear of people of color; the oppression by the white elite; while they go along with this nonsense to get along. This is fiction, but plausible. In truth, the law does not apply to them—except for Heloise, who was born after 1812. So if Marie Laveaux was being a good doobie and obeying this oppressive law, she’d have registered her daughter Heloise in 1830.
The other path is, they don’t and she doesn’t. The law does not apply to her family except for her 3-year-old. This is more in keeping with the complete absence of anyone in the family in any of the 1840+ registers. So we have here an opportunity for Marie to flout this particular law. But what do I do for a narrative? AHA! says writer boy. We have introduced the young Ludger Bougille as Heloise’s tutor, and dangled the idea that come fall, perhaps Marie and Christophe will set up a school for orphans in the dormitory out back. That’s what I’m going to do. AND… in the process, because it matters to the narrative downstream, we cover the transition of Christophe from owner of jobbed slaves to stock investor. There are two efforts coming up in 1830 that would pull in his money.
One is the creation of the first railroad west of the Appalachians. The Pontchartrain RR was incorporated in 1830, it starts horse-drawn operation in 1831, and uses a steam engine in 1832. It is only five miles long, carrying freight back and forth between a new port on the lake and downtown New Orleans. This is truly revolutionary technology. It’s going to show up downstream when Abe Lincoln is back in town. This is industrialization, and the capitalists hire Irish immigrants, who drop dead on a regular basis putting a railroad through what was, until now, impenetrable cypress swamp.
The other is the birth of the New Orleans sugar district. An American industrialist and financier has an idea for a sugar refinery. So I can slip in some local color for expansion of the batture, new docks and wharves, a sugar market, and the coming technology that will move refining off the plantation and into a factory. Perhaps… we will have a belief that this will reduce the need for slaves on plantations, because the boiling is very inefficient. What happened really is that production skyrocketed, and the slave population grew.
Not sure whether this will show up downstream, but for history, the man who invented a better way to refine cane sugar was the son of a rich white plantation owner, and his Black placée mistress. His name was Norbert Rillieux. He was educated at the best school in Paris, and came back a chemical engineer. This is the same cultural dynamic that birthed Marie’s father, and is the world in which she lived.
From a narrative perspective, two things are happening here. First, we have the braid that is oppression: the law, the need for Marie and Christophe to provide their own school solution, the “you don’t belong” that is the central tenet of the American attitude toward people of color. The other is the emergence of the financial side of the family, and that will be central in coming chapters. Because, history.
And on the backdrop of history, you know, taking some group of people whom you think are scum, and making them register so you know who they are and where they live, make them wear the Star of David… that never ends well. The American Bill of Rights? It didn’t apply to slaves and people of color. Among the laws they passed in 1830? The death penalty for anyone speaking in any place, public or private, in such a way as to create discontent among the slaves and free colored people. Death. For speaking.
