The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949 Page: 369

Book Reviews 369
Southwest meant that "political power was moving away from
the old tobacco kingdom ... into the land of cotton where (ex-
cepting South Carolina) democracy was rampant and where the
secession movement was to find most of its strength."
In this scholarly, well-written volume, notably free from bias,
Professor Sydnor has contributed greatly to a better understand-
ing of the southern mind and character of i860 and of the South
of today. The book is ably documented and indexed, and there
is a helpful critical essay on authorities. Certainly no student of
American history and no future historian of the South can afford
to overlook this work.
JEFFERSON DAVIS BRAGG
Baylor University
Fabulous New Orleans. By Lyle Saxon. New Orleans (Robert
L. Crager & Company), 1947. Pp. xiv+334. Illustrations by
E. H. Suydam. $7.50.
This is a different kind of a book just as New Orleans is a
different kind of a city. Indeed, the people of New Orleans were
for a long time different from those of nearly all if not of every
city in the nation. First French, then Spanish, then French again
for a few years, New Orleans became American territory by the
Louisiana Purchase, but it took a good number of years for the
American element to make a definite impression upon the other
groups in the city. The author lends color to the view that the
city was different when he says: "New Orleans was neither better
nor worse than other settlements in Colonial America. But it
was different. One must remember that there were no Quakers,
no Puritans in New Orleans. These were Latins and they brought
with them their Latin frankness as to eating and drinking and
as to matters pertaining to sex."
The book first appeared in 1928, and in 1939 its pencil illus-
trations by E. H. Suydam received a copyright. In its present
edition there are eight new illustrations, making a total of forty,
not including the front and back lining papers. In its organiza-
tion the book sets off its thirty-five chapters-"a series of impres-
sions" the author calls them in the introduction-into four parts
under the headings of Mardi Gras, French Town and Spanish
City, Gaudy Days, and These Times.