rance's control over Louisiana would not last long, however, and life in New Orleans would be changed forever with the events that were unfolding in 1803. Recent defeats for Napoleon caused him to re-think France's place in the new world, and he couldn't think of a better buyer than the main rival to his enemy England. So in order to fund his extensive military campaigns, France's territory of 828,000 square miles was sold to the United States for 15 million dollars in one of the largest land deals in history. New Orleans was finally a part of the fledgling United States, now only 26 years old. The newly arrived Americans who were pouring into New Orleans, however, were shunned by the existing Creole society as barbarians, and were forced to purchase land on the other side of Canal Street, the western boundary of the French Quarter. This area, which came to be known as the "American Sector", stretched from Canal Street westward, and would remain separate from the Creole quarter for years to come. The new residents built lavish mansions and town houses in what is now the Central Business and Garden Districts. Many still remain to illustrate the wealth that the Americans brought to the city.

Yankee resourcefulness and commercialism, however, won the day as the rivalries between the two groups disappeared and they began to work together. The Americans brought much needed industry and wealth to the city, and began to transform New Orleans into one of the most important cities in the country. The population was finally forced to work together, what with hurricanes, floods, yellow fever epidemics, mosquitoes, and even an invasion by the British! One of the primary objectives for the British in the War of 1812 was America's major ports, of which New Orleans was one. It had already blockaded other east coast ports, defeated the American forces at Detroit, and burned Washington D.C. to the ground. Now it was time to capture the most important city on the mighty Mississippi. In 1814 as word reached New Orleans of the impending invasion, General Andrew Jackson was sent down to protect the city and to break up any Indian insurrections nearby. He enlisted the aid of Jean Lafitte and his pirates who, together with an "army" of 5000 civilians, Choctaw Indians, free Blacks, and even Kentuckians and Tennessians, built up the defenses around the city and prepared for the onslaught. When the Battle of New Orleans was finished, the British found themselves totally defeated with 2000 casualties and their general dead. Jackson's army had sustained only seven losses! Curiously the battle had been fought two weeks after a peace treaty had been signed in Belgium, but it wasn't to go into effect until it was ratified a month after the battle. It was a devastating loss for the British, and was one of the most important battles ever fought on American soil. It would signal the last time a foreign power would ever invade the United States.

From the early 1800s to the Civil War, New Orleans enjoyed a newfound prosperity of wealth and culture unmatched anywhere else in the country, and became one of the most influential cities in the world. Large cotton and sugar plantations grew along the Mississippi,each resembling European estates with their gardens and furnishings, and New Orleans hosted numerous festivals, theater, banquets, parades, operas in an extravagant opera house, and spectacular balls for its wealthy and cultured populace. Canals and levees were constructed to keep the flooding down, and steamboats plied the river with their cargoes of cotton and other goods, filling the city's docks to bursting. Between 1825 and 1830, the number of merchants in the city grew from 60 to 272, and in 1827 there were already five banking institutions. In 1831 the first ever railroad west of the Alleghenies, the Pontchartrain Railroad, ran all the way from the lower end of the French Market to the lake via Elysian Fields Avenue.