The Daily Dispatch: March 9, 1863., [Electronic resource]

The richest man in Louisiana.

‘ There are none of the leaders of fashion here.--The ladies who moulded society have moved into the Confederacy; their husbands and sons--"in the ranks of death you will find them." Many merchants, to ture, have sat cut the rebellion with folded arms, waiting patiently for the solution.--Mr. John Burnside is one of these. He is, I presume the richest man in Louisiana. He owns numerous plantations, and his mansion on Washington avenue — with its park, as large as your Boston Public Garden, and its pictures and marble illustrations of taste and wealth, and its ever-blooming flowers — is one of the loveliest homes in America. It was ordered for James Robb, but when he failed it fell into the hands of Mr. Burnside. It is a place, and its possessor is a king. He is an Irishman and a bachelor, with ways so winning, hospitality so beautiful, that the mystery is that he is a bachelor. He is a retired merchant; still he finds much to do to keep and save what he has during a life of honorable venture gained. Already hundreds of his negroes have been enticed away from his cotton and sugar fields; and the guerilla have destroyed one of his plantations.--the finest one on the abundant banks of the Mississippi. Mr. Burnside's experience is the experience of all the planters in the South. He has too much wealth to be impoverished.

’