The commercial crisis of 1837 retarded temporarily the improvements, but only for a day as it were, and in a few years there was a great American city, fashioned by American energy and American capital from the unsightly and miserable mire of the Faubourg St. Mary.

To the enterprise and perseverance of two men was mostly due this rapid improvement of the city and its new and extended accommodations to commerce—­Samuel J. Peters and James H. Caldwell.  Mr. Peters was a native of Canada, and came when quite a youth to New Orleans.  He married a Creole lady, a native of the city; and, after serving as a clerk for some time in the business house of James H. Leverick & Co., commenced business as a wholesale grocer.  In this business he was successful, and continued in it until his death.  He was a man of splendid abilities and great business tact, great energy and application, and full of public spirit.  New Orleans he viewed as his home; he identified himself and family with the people, and his fame with her prosperity.  To this end he devoted his time and energies; around him congregated others who lent willingly and energetically their aid to accomplish his conceptions, and to fashion into realities the projections of his mind.  I remember our many walks about the second municipality—­when, where now is the City Hall, and Camp and Charles streets, and when these magnificent streets, now stretching for miles away, ornamented with splendid buildings and other improvements, were but muddy roads through open lots, with side-walks of flat-boat gunwales, with only here and there a miserable shanty, with a more miserable tenant—­to contemplate and talk of the future we both lived to see of this municipality.  Stopping on one occasion in front of what is Lafayette Square, at the time the bill was pending for the division of the city into municipalities, he said:  “Here must be the City of New Orleans.  You can pass the bill, now before the Legislature; and if you will, I promise you I will make the Faubourg St. Mary the City of New Orleans.”  Only a few months before his death, we stood again upon the same spot, surrounded by magnificent buildings—­Odd-Fellows’ Hall, the First Presbyterian Church, the great City Hall, and grand and beautiful buildings of every character.  “Do you remember my promise made here?” he said.  “Have I fulfilled it?  Many days of arduous labor and nights of anxious thought that promise cost me.  You did your part well, and when I thought it impossible.  Have I done mine?” I could but answer:  “Well, and worthily!” I never saw him after—­but I shall never cease to remember him as a great, true man.