June 11, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
The Crescent City must present a dreary and doleful appearance. The Picayune says that a general desire is evinced on the part of the members for the commercial community to withdraw from the city for a time. The great streets, Plydras, Tchoupitoulas, and New Levee, where the great Western trade is done, are deserted, not a dozen old merchants to be met with in those localities. Nothing but rows of vacant stores and tenantless warehouses are to be seen. Magazine and east of it is as a wilderness of brick and mortar, and Common and Gravier present nothing but closed doors and empty counting rooms. Already the city is deserted, and the few stragglers that are here and there seen wandering where commerce and trade once flourished, remind the passer by of the lingerers in a city cursed with plague or pestilence.
The great Levee, where, in other days, we could stand and view the ships from all parts of the earth, and be jostled from early morn till dewy eve by the crowds of business men, has nothing now to remind the observer of the former greatness and commercial importance of New Orleans. Even the supplies of the staff of life are limited, and prices far above Northern quotations. Flour, $13 to $14 per barrel at the family groceries, and larger dealers have no demand further than a few dray loads at a purchase. Corn $2 per bushel, and hay 3 1/2 cents per pound. Salted meats, says the Picayune, have not touched famine prices, but fresh meats have ruled for months at starvation rates – 40 cents for beef per pound, which, in ordinary times, would be thrown into the Mississippi River as unsaleable, and mutton and pork command the same high rates. Seventy-four bales cleared, 654 sacks in the seed, was all the cotton (and it stolen no doubt) which for one week had arrived. We suppose since the taking of the Teche country, there has been a greater supply of beef and other things sent to New Orleans than they before had. Some sugar and cotton no doubt. It is a bad thing to think that our city, the city which the people of the South prized, boasted of, delighted to visit, presents such a melancholy appearance, and is still in the hands of the detested Yankees. We hope to see the day before long when familiar faces will be plenty again in the Queen city, and the importance of her trade and position increased as the chief city of the Southern Confederacy.