Hardly. New York may have been mapped in the 1500's but it wasn't settled as a city until about 1625. The Mississippi River was first explored in 1541 not long after New York harbor was discovered. New Orleans was settled as a city in 1718, making the difference with New York City less than a hundred years.
New York also had the historical advantage of being defendable from the sea, and not being situated near other potentially hostile foreign powers.
New York was no further from Europe than any other east coast port and in fact was closer to European colonial settlements (Canada) than Charleston ever was. New Orleans was indeed within the boundaries of another country but that ceased after the Louisiana Purchase.
the Mississippi delta on which it was built was a swampy geologic region with no high ground, prone to excessive heat, annual floods, hurricanes, heavy rains, mosquitoes, and disease.
Heat can be dealt with by the human body in a significantly greater capacity than freeze. Rain, unlike snow, does not tend to shut down or significantly impair transportation. Floods may be easily dealt with by geographic identification of the flood plains before construction or, in the case of New Orleans, a system of levies an dams to control them. Hurricanes are bad but they are also chance events that happen once a decade or less. One or more major snowstorm hits the north without fail every single winter. And having been hit by two major hurricanes and several blizzards, I can tell you that the latter shuts down far more stuff and has a far wider range of impact. Oh, and disease - yes, mosquitos do tend to exacerbate that...but no more than the rats, urine, and excrement that flow freely on the sidewalks of New York and every other urban cesspool in yankeeland.
I suppose someone who thinks, when its 20 degrees out, its too cold to work
Try visiting the northeast coast the next time a big freeze hits. They've been coming once every week or two of late so that shouldn't be too hard for you to find. The schools close down, the governments go on liberal leave, the trains and subways go on delayed schedules, corporations tell their workers not to come in, all but the largest of roads become difficult to travel on etc. etc. etc. It seldom lasts more than a day at a time but those ice storms quickly add up and in doing so deprive the entire region of several days work. It's particularly noticeable when a major blizzard hits, as happened last winter. Washington D.C. was for all practical purposes shut down for about four days straight under about four feet of snow and temperatures that did not rise above 30 degrees for the duration. Similar conditions occurred all the way up the coast to Boston. Transit cut back its schedules then shut down entirely, the federal government ran on a skeleton crew for a week, schools shut down for a week and as a result had to extend their schedules into the summer...heck, I even remember trying to go to Safeway and McDonalds during the middle of the thing only to find them all closed midday - and McDonalds NEVER closes. I've gone through the McDonalds drive through line during a tropical storm before and it stayed open. I also recall driving I-95, the major north-south interstate of the east coast, during last year's storm. In parts it was down to only one lane in either direction with mounds of plowed snow covering the other two lanes on each side. Traffic ground to a halt.
New Orleans was an island in the middle of a swamp surrounded by a leaky three foot levee in 1718. John Law's land scheme was a dismal failure for thousands of Frenchmen. New Orleans didn't begin to grow signifigantly until the early 1800s, and only then after importation of thousands of African slaves.
Floods may be easily dealt with by geographic identification of the flood plains before construction or, in the case of New Orleans, a system of levies an dams to control them.
As opposed to a natural, sheltered, deep water harbor that doesn't need constant dredging and is free of ice year round? (lol)
Heat can be dealt with by the human body in a significantly greater capacity than freeze.
The death toll differences between the northern and southern colonies tell a different story, at least among the northern european settlers.