Ebook: Louisiana, a history

From the earliest colonists through the latest Mardi Gras, Louisiana has had a history as exotic as that of any state. Even its political corruption—extending from French governors for whom office was exploitable property through the "Louisiana Hayride" following the death of Huey Long—seems to have had a glamorous side.Handing the colony of Louisiana back and forth between their empires, the French and Spanish left a legacy that lives in such forms as the architecture of the Vieux Carre and a civil law deriving from the Napoleonic Code. Acadian refugees, German farmers, black slaves and free blacks, along with Italians, Irish, and the "Kaintucks" who helped Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans added to the state's distinctiveness. Made rich by sugar cane, cotton, and Mississippi River commerce before the Civil War, Louisiana faced poverty afterward. Battles between Bourbon Democrats and Reconstruction Republicans followed, ultimately involving the Custom...