government again was here (in 1864–1882) and New Orleans was the centre of dispute and organization in the struggle between the races for the control of government. Notable events of that struggle in city history were: the street riot of the 30th of July 1866, at the time of the meeting of the radical constitutional convention; and the “revolution” of the 14th of September 1874, when the White League worsted the Republican metropolitan police in pitched battle and forced the temporary flight of the Kellogg government. The latter was reinstated in power by the United States troops, and by the same power the Democrats were frustrated in January 1875, after they had wrested from the Republicans the organization of the state legislature. Nevertheless, the “revolution” of 1874 is generally regarded as the independence day of Reconstruction, although not until President Hayes withdrew the troops in 1877 and the Packard government fell did the Democrats actually hold control of the state and city. The financial condition of the city when the whites gained control was very bad. The tax-rate had risen in 1873 to 3%. The city defaulted in 1874 on the interest of its bonded debt, later refunding this ($22,000,000 in 1875) at a lower rate, so as to decrease the annual charge from $1,416,000 to $307,500. Among events in the decade 1880–1890 were the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884–1885 (celebrating the centennial of the cotton industry of the country), and the introduction of electric lighting (1886); in the decade 1890–1900 the introduction of electric transit, the latest charter and the improvements in public works already detailed. The lynching of Italian subjects by a mob in 1891[1] caused serious international complications.
Among the many floods from which the city has suffered those of 1849 and 1882 were the most destructive.
Bibliography.—For description see the Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans . . . compiled by several leading writers of the New Orleans Press (New York, 1885); B. M. Norman, New Orleans and Environs (New Orleans, 1845); Grace King, New Orleans, the Place and the People (New York, 1895); and the novels and magazine writings of G. W. Cable. The Picayune publishes a guide, frequently revised. For administration, Manual of the City of New Orleans (periodical); W. W. Howe, “Municipal History of New Orleans,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies, series vii., No. 4 (Baltimore, 1889); for accounts of the worst of the yellow-fever epidemics, W. L. Robison’s Diary of a Samaritan, by a member of the Howard Association of New Orleans (New York, 1860); Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans on the Epidemic Yellow Fever of 1853 (New Orleans, 1854); and for much miscellaneous information, 10th Census of the United States (1880), Social Statistics of Cities. History and Present Condition of New Orleans . . . by G. E. Waring and G. W. Cable (Washington, 1881).
NEW PHILADELPHIA, a city and the county-seat of Tuscarawas county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Tuscarawas River and near the Ohio canal, about 75 m. S. by E. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890) 4456; (1900) 6213 (554 foreign-born); (1910) 8542. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio (the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling Division), and the Pennsylvania (Cleveland & Pittsburgh Division) railways, and by an inter-urban electric system. The city has a level site in the midst of a good agricultural country, which abounds in coal and fire-clay. In the public square is a soldiers' monument, and the city has a public library and a park. Its principal manufactures are steel, enamelled ware, clay goods, brooms, flour and carriages. The first settlement in the vicinity was made in May 1772, when Moravian Indian converts migrated from Pennsylvania (Friedenshütten, Bradford county, and Friedenstadt, Lawrence county) to Schoenbrunn, called by the Indians Welhik-Tuppeek, a spring (now dry) a little south of the present New Philadelphia. Under David Zeisberger (1721–1808) and
Johann Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder (1743–1823) other missionary villages were planted at Gnadenhütten (October 1772), Lichtenau (1776) and Salem (1780), all in the present county of Tuscarawas. After the massacre of Christian Indians at Gnadenhütten in 1782 the Indians removed to Michigan and in 1791 to Fairfield, Ontario; in 1798 some of them returned to Tuscarawas county and settled Goshen, where Zeisberger is buried. New Philadelphia was laid out in 1804 and was named by its founder, John Knisely, after Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; it was incorporated as a village in 1815, and was first chartered as a city in 1896.
See Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly for April 1909 (Columbus, Ohio) for several articles on the early settlement by Moravian Indians.
NEW PLYMOUTH, a municipality and seaport on the west coast of North Island, New Zealand, capital of the provincial district of Taranaki, 258 m. N.N.W. of Wellington by rail. Pop. (1906) 5141. The town slopes to the ocean, with a background of forest surmounted by the snow-clad volcanic cone of Mount Egmont (8270 ft.). The district is not unjustly termed “the garden of New Zealand.” It is highly fertile, cereals and fruits growing well; and dairy products are extensively exported. In the town are leather-works, timber-works and flour-mills, with freezing-works for export dairy produce. The settlement was founded in 1841 by the Plymouth Company under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, and chiefly consisted of emigrants from Devonshire and Cornwall. On the seashore in the neighbourhood are extensive deposits of ironsand.
NEW POMERANIA (Ger. Neu-Pommern, formerly New Britain, native Birara), an island of the Bismarck Archipelago, N.E. of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean, about 6° S., 150° E., in the administration of German New Guinea. It is crescent shaped, about 330 m. long, and, except where the Willaumez Peninsula projects northward, nowhere more than 60 m. wide. The north-eastern extremity consists of the broad, irregular Gazelle Peninsula, joined to the main mass by a narrow neck. The total area is about 9500 sq. m. The island is in great part unexplored. The coasts are in some parts precipitous; in others the mountains recede inland, and the coast is flat and bordered by coral reefs. The formation appears otherwise to be volcanic, and there are some active craters. The greatest elevation occurs towards the west—about 6500 ft. There is a rich tropical vegetation, and a number of considerable streams water the island. The chief centre is Herbertshöhe at the north of the Gazelle Peninsula; it is the seat of the governor of German New Guinea (see New Guinea).
The natives are Melanesians, resembling their Papuan kinsmen of eastern New Guinea, and are a powerful well-formed race. Their villages are clean and well kept. Unlike their Papuan relatives, the islanders are unskilled in carving and pottery, but are clever farmers and fishermen, constructing ingenious fishing weirs. They have a fixed monetary system consisting of strings of cowries. They perform complicated surgical operations with an obsidian knife or a shark’s tooth. The common dead are buried or exposed to sharks on the reefs; bodies of chiefs are exposed in the fork of a tree. Justice is executed, and taboos, feasts, taxes, &c., arranged by a mysterious disguised figure, the duk-duk. The population is divided into two exogamous classes. The children belong to the class of the mother, and when the father dies go to her village for support, the land and fruit trees in each district being divided between the two classes. There are several dialects, the construction resembling Fijian, as in the pronominal suffixes in singular, triad and plural; the numerals, however, are Polynesian in character.
NEWPORT, a market town and municipal borough, the chief town of the Isle of Wight, England. Pop. (1901) 10,911. It is situated near the centre of the island, at the head of the navigation of the Medina River, 5 m. S. from its mouth at Cowes. It is the chief centre of the railway system of the island. The church of St Thomas of Canterbury, rebuilt in 1854 in the Decorated style, contains many interesting old monuments, and one by Marochetti to the princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I., erected by Queen Victoria. The guildhall, erected in 1816 from the designs of Nash, includes the town-hall in the upper story with the market-place below. There are a corn exchange and museum. The grammar school (the scene of
- ↑ In October 1890 the chief of police was assassinated, and before he died charged the crime to Italians. He had been active in proceedings against certain Italians accused of crime, and his death was popularly attributed to the Mafia. Nineteen Sicilians were indicted, and of nine put on trial six were acquitted and three escaped conviction on the ground of a mis-trial. On the 14th of March 1891 a mob broke into the jail and lynched eleven of the accused. The Italian government demanded that the lynchers should be punished, entered claims for indemnity in the case of the three Sicilians who had been Italian subjects, and, failing to secure as prompt an answer as it desired, withdrew its ambassador from Washington. In 1892 the United States paid an indemnity of $25,000 to Italy.
