There was a 'Louisiana Territory' before there was a United States of America - it had existed alongside the 'colonies' as a foreign land, and its major city, New Orleans, had reigned as a 'Xanadu on the Mississippi' for over 100 years before the Territory and its crown jewel were purchased from France... With the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans arrived into the United States as a glistening, flamboyant, fully-grown enigma of imperialism, with Catholicism an imposed state religion, and newly classified as a slave-state...the populace had been betrayed again. The French citizenry wanted no part of this upstart nation, but were now invaded by opportunists and adventurers from an antiroyalist, Anglo-Saxon-Protestant nation...its wealth, customs, religion and language totally setting it apart from the rest of the country. The city of New Orleans, more than any other portion of the Louisiana Territory, became a 'foreign' outpost on 'American' soil and a target for every exploiter of humanity from the infant union.