The New Orleans Plaçage System
Buried deep under the Mardi Gras beads, flashing lights of the French Quarter and the good ole jazz played in Jackson Square , is a city grown and cultivated out of its rich history and unique past. The city of New Orleans, or the Crescent City as called by many, had a population of individuals called gens de couleur libres or free people of color who were very different and unique from any seen elsewhere. Under the French and Spanish rule, the city of New Orleans was molded into a unique type of society that thwarted into existence a Creole population unmatched by any of its time. The lenient restrictions that the French and Spanish had on its people of color was one of the factors that allow the practice of plaçage to flourish in New Orleans as oppose to other cities like Biloxi, Mobile, St. Augustine, and Pensacola that practiced it as well.
Plaçage comes from the French term placer which means "to place with". This practice inadvertently came out of need for the men who had been sent to Louisiana to help colonize to have women. The men had virtually no women there with them, other than those that were scrapped off the streets of Paris, unitl France decided to send women over for their men. France quickly noticed that it was difficult to get reputable women to leave and go to Louisiana, so France started to get women from the orphanges and church convents known as "Casket Girls." Because these girls were from these religious institutions it was almost certain that they were pure or virgins. This would end up becoming a source of pride and something to be perserved.
{The image below is the contract of a "Casket Girl" sent to Louisiana}
Despite France efforts to send women over for its countrymen, they still out numbered the women in the colony. The first slave ships arrived in 1719, and soon slaves became the majority of the population creating an early Africanized colonization. French settlers tolerated the relative independence of slaves because they became and remained the minority of the population, they depended on Africans and their descendants for nearly the entire colony's agricultural labor and craft work. This created a unique situation for the master and the slaves in that the slaves had the upper hand because who where the French needed them for the work.
This type of dependent relationship between the French and Africans created more than just a need for work, it created a need for inter-racial harmony between the two in order to get things accomplished. With this understanding, it led to relationships beyond the work fields into the quarters of slave cabins with masters as lovers and slaves as mistresses. In this environment common-law marriages between Africans and French became very frequent. In doing this the master’s fairly regularly manumitted it African lovers and their illegitimate children. This same accommodation for the African slaves and free people of color continued under the Spanish with more regularity, because when the French handed the Louisiana territory over to them slaves still were the majority population. By contrast, it was during the Spanish period that the Louisiana’s free people of color achieved sufficient numbers and political importance that enabled them to mature into a community. Natural increase, but more important, the greater ease with which manumission could be accomplished under Spanish administration… raised the 165 or more free people of color in the colony at the end of the French period to almost 1,500 by the end of the Spanish period.
By the time America was handed Louisiana in 1803, following a twenty-one day period of renewed French administration, it was a unique social structure and culture of which America had never seen. The Americans soon
adopted many of the practices set before America took the territory, and many ventured far from home to build a new life. Merchants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, stocks, clerks, missionaries, mechanics, carpenters, river men, editors, laborers, all saw in New Orleans an irresistible lure, whose pull kept them coming decade after decade.
A tradition in New Orleans during the antebellum period was masked balls; however, public masked ball became a fixture of New Orleans life during the ensuring period of Spanish domination from 1763-1803.
{This picture was drawn at a ball on St. Joseph's Night in New Orleans 19th century}
In 1805, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, Santiago Bernardo Couquet organized the first quadroon ball officially sanctioned by the U.S. Government, and by 1809, the entertainments reached the status of “institution.” The quadroon balls were dances that admitted white males and free women of color to mingle and court. The demographic pattern of the city encouraged such inter-racial liaisons. Not only was almost one-third of the population of free people of color, the male-female imbalance in the overall population that prevailed in the colonial times continued throughout the antebellum period . For example, according to an 1820 census, New Orleans had 3,492 white men and only 2,935 white women, but 3,805 free women of color to only 2,432 free men of color. Having this unbalance in the gender make up of New Orleans played heavily on the condoning of the institution of plaçage. Miscegenation became so common in Louisiana that interracial marriages were outlawed. In place of legal and religious marriage came plaçage, a highly stable common law union between a white man and a colored woman . For the young, single American men who were flocking to New Orleans after 1803 in search of opportunity, plaçage, proved particularly attractive. Plaçage offered an opportunity for these men who were not yet married to engage in pre-marital sex, because it was unconceivable to have sex with a white woman before marriage.
{Sketch of a quadroon woman}
Quadroon balls served as the pusher or the display for women who participated in the practice of plaçage. These extravagant gatherings went on quite frequently and were held in many parts of the city. In the twenties and early thirties, these balls were restricted to the Creole women of color and white men. The more distinguished of these balls served as favored meeting grounds for beautiful, accomplished free women of color and comfortably wealthy white men. The high entry free of two dollars assured wealthy clientele. Once the members of a couple successfully courted each other, a “perfectly understood and accepted formula… about the manner in which such affaires should be conducted” was executed. From what is to be understood from the practice of plaçage is that it is a structured system. The placée would be accompanied to the ball by a guardian or their mothers. After the connection the male would visit the placée house in an arranged meeting with the family. During this meeting they would come up with a contract that detailed the economic terms of the relationship. This would include a house, furniture, and a yearly allowance set up in a bank account for the placée, or any children produced during the union is the male were to abandon them. The practice of plaçage not only benefitted the white male, it also benefitted the free black woman. For the free black woman this produced a dream of aristocracy. The union between a well established white male was beneficial in that the contract would provide for the woman so that she would not have to endure hardships nor the children that were produced from the union. Some of the fathers even put money away for their illegitimate children to go to school in Europe after they turned eighteen years of age.
In the plaçage system these girl were reared sometimes from birth to be refined and to show class to mirror that of a white woman. An example of this is Henriette Delille who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father was Jean-Baptiste de Lille, who was born in France and her mother was Marie-Josèphe Díaz who was a quadroon free woman of color also born in New Orleans. Henriette’s parents were said to be a product of the plaçage system, along with her grandparents and sisters as well. She was tra ined by her mother to take her place in the plaçage system. She was raised very well by her mother and trained in French literature, music, dancing and nursing. It has also been said that she attended many quadroon balls. However, Delille resisted the idea of marrying a wealthy white man and becoming his mistress; instead, she spoke out on the institution of plaçage on the grounds that it violated the Catholic sacrament of marriage
Often times the men who participated in the plaçage practice had a white wife while having the placée as his mistress, or the men who only had the placée at first would eventually marry a white women and leave the placée. With this multi-faceted relationship that was carried on by the white male, and children being produced by both the white female and the creole female; problems coul d almost be assured. There are many occasion to which white irate white heirs brought suits to the Louisiana Supreme Court during the antebellum period to deny Creole mistresses, slave mistresses, and illegitimate children of the white male their inheritance that he had left them in his will; majority of the time the white heirs won. On the contrary, there were those men who did leave their illegitimate kids and mistresses’ property that was not contested and they were quite generous in their leavings. In the will of Philippe du Closlange [image below], he leaves his mistress Rulalie Bacchus and his illegitimate children high valued possessions. In his will he states…
[I make the above bequest and abandon under the express condition that no opposition nor objection shall be put forth… In recognition and recompense for care and goods rendered by the aforementioned free negress Rulalie Bacchus, I bequeath, to enjoy during her lifetime three lots on dquare 78 with building and establishments thereon, the whole after her to my illegitimate children… I leave to the same said Rulalie Bacchus, my negress Rosette with her child or children to serve her.]
For the people of New Orleans, the institution of plaçage offered a remedy to many of the issued that both black women and white men faced. The free Creole black women wanted security and an identity in a society that did not accept them. Whit e men wanted to keep the strong hold on dominance of black life, and by controlling the highest of all black women by taking them as their concubine offered this assurance to their ego.
The quadroon balls and the institution of plaçage withstood the pressure of American scrutiny, eventually bringing Americans to succumb and join in on the party. Even the mayor of the city brought issue up about the balls and the ballrooms where shut down for short period of time because of the public’s demand for it. In the issue of the New Orleans Bee on December 29, 1827, it talks about the mayor opening the ball rooms again and the public’s excitement. Only in New Orleans, is this able to flourish to the degree that it did. We can see many of these relationships developed from the institution of plaçage and the infamous quadroon ball evident in most family genealogy today. Not until after the Civil War in the late 1860’s do we see the practice began to collapse. Most of the knowledge and research on the practice of plaçage today is limited; however, myths and memories are passed down to the generation of today. Hopefully one day, buried under all of the Mardi Gras beads, paper and trash of the bustling city of New Orleans, we will find a memoir of a placée that gives us a first account of the plaçage system. However, in the mean time we can enjoy that good ole historic jazz of New Orle ans!
