Smuggler Nation (17 page)

The war with England made the Laffites even more ambitious, aspiring to control every stage of the business, from capturing goods on the high seas to distributing and selling smuggled merchandise. The war conditions created the opportunity. As William Davis writes, the Laffite brothers sought to take “advantage of the shortages caused by the war and the British blockade, and the distraction of the authorities thanks to the war.”
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The Laffites didn’t even bother to try to obtain a legitimate letter of marque for their vessels; and even if they had secured a privateering commission, it was still easier, faster, and more profitable to dispose of their captured cargoes illegally via Barataria.
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But while the wartime business boomed for the Laffites, their blatant lawbreaking brought with it more government attention and concern. The more open and brazen their piracy and smuggling activities, the more embarrassing it was for the authorities. “As regards the principal offenders I am persuaded that nothing short of the most vigorous measures will put a stop to their evil practices and a resort to force is in my opinion indispensible,” Louisiana Governor William C. Claiborne told General Wilkinson in 1813.
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The customs collector for New Orleans reached the same conclusion and put in a formal request for the army and navy to assist in suppressing the Barataria smuggling operation.
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At least for the time being, these pleas fell on deaf ears. Claiborne also appealed to the citizens of New Orleans to boycott Laffite merchandise, but the smugglers enjoyed considerable local support, especially among the French and Creole communities. As Claiborne put it, ladies would,
in conversation, respond to his denouncements of the smugglers as criminals by simply saying, “
That is impossible; for my grandfather, or my father, or my husband, was, under the Spanish government, a great smuggler, and he was always esteemed an honest man
.”
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In March 1813 Claiborne issued a formal proclamation against the “banditti” from Barataria “who act in contravention of the laws of the United States … to the evident prejudice of the revenue of the federal government.” He called on all officers “to seize and apprehend every individual engaged in these criminal practices.”
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The Laffites nevertheless remained openly contemptuous of the authorities. When Claiborne offered a $500 reward for the capture of Jean Laffite in 1813, the pirate-smuggler mockingly countered by posting a signed handbill offering a $1,000 reward for the capture of the governor. Laffite’s proclamation was apparently in jest, but the governor was not amused.
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Although the governor’s proclamation and award offer did not lead to the capture of Jean Laffite, in 1814 the local authorities managed to arrest and indict Pierre Laffite in New Orleans. Shortly after, Jean Laffite appealed directly to the public’s consumer self-interest in a letter to a local newspaper. He charged that his opponents were simply monopolists wishing to do away with market competition by denying the citizens of New Orleans access to his discounted goods. He even suggested establishing “a press in the Empire of Barrataria” so that the public could be kept better informed of the arrival of new merchandise for sale. The not-so-subtle subtext of this message to the public, historian William Davis notes, was that “if Pierre were convicted and Barataria broken up, everyone would be the poorer for paying more for their imported goods thereafter. Favorable opinion might make it difficult to assemble a jury that would convict.”
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Even as Louisiana officials were trying to put the Laffites out of business, the British were hoping to entice Jean Laffite and his men to join their cause. The growing animosity between the government authorities and Baratarians, the British calculated, would make them more amenable to joining the British in their planned attack on New Orleans. While Pierre Laffite sat in jail in early September 1814, the British dispatched messengers to Barataria to try to bribe his brother Jean to fight on the British side.
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Laffite stalled, telling the British he needed fifteen days to consider the terms of the offer. He then quickly forwarded the
offer letter to a trusted intermediary in New Orleans in the hopes that the authorities would view this as a sign of his true patriotism and be lenient on his brother.

Along with the British offer letter, Laffite enclosed his own note, stating, “You will see from their contents the advantages I might have derived from that kind of association.” He went on to defend himself: “I may have evaded the payment of duties to the custom house; but I have never ceased to be a good citizen; and all the offence I have committed, I was forced to by certain vices in our laws.” Laffite then turned to the issue of his brother’s arrest, indicating that he hoped to secure his release by providing information about British intentions (this proved unnecessary, since Pierre had just broken out of jail).
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Jean Laffite also wrote a letter to Governor Claiborne, assuring him of his loyalties and offering his services:

Monsieur:

… I offer to return to this State many citizens who perhaps have lost to your eyes that sacred title. I offer … their efforts for the defense of the country.

This point of Louisiana that occupies great importance in the present situation, I offer myself to defend it.… I am the lost sheep who desires to return to the flock … for you to see through my faults such as they are....

In case, MonSieur Le Gouverneur, your reply should not be favorable in my ardent wishes I declare to you that I leave immediately so not to be held to have cooperated with an invasion.… This cannot fail to take place, and puts me entirely on the judgement of my conscience.

I have the honor to be, MonSieur Le Gouverneur,

Laffite
.
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Unfortunately for Laffite, his appeal was not enough to stop an already planned U.S. naval expedition to destroy the Barataria smuggling base. The September 16 flotilla assault met no resistance; the base was looted and dismantled after the Laffite brothers and most of their men scattered. Apparently, the Laffites had already made plans to abandon the base and relocate operations.
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But all was not lost for the fugitive Laffites and their crew. In October 1814, Governor Claiborne, worried about the lack of coastal defenses, wrote to the attorney general that “the Baratarians might be advantageously employed against the enemy.”
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General Andrew Jackson arrived on the first of December to quickly organize the defense of the city against an expected British invasion. The city was woefully unprepared, and with British troops only sixty miles away, by mid-month Jackson was eager for any help he could find. The general was at first skeptical when Claiborne informed him of the Laffite offer but warmed to the idea, given the desperate circumstances. Jackson, who at first denounced the Laffites and the Baratarians as “hellish banditti,” now embraced them, even if reluctantly.
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Jean Laffite apparently even “got along so well with Jackson that he became the general’s unofficial aide-de-camp.”
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Both Laffite brothers were assigned to Jackson’s
headquarters staff.
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Ironically, the Baratarians would now be fighting side by side with the very military officers that had looted and destroyed their smuggling base just a few months earlier.

Figure 5.1 Depiction of the pirate and smuggler Jean Laffite meeting with General Andrew Jackson and Louisiana Governor William Claiborne. From Charles Ellms’s
The Pirates Own Book, 1837
(Harvard College Library).

The Laffites, along with as many as four hundred of their fellow Baratarians, had much to offer in exchange for full pardons. Although numerically a tiny percentage of Jackson’s defense force, they were exceptionally skilled artillerymen, knew the local terrain intimately, and provided much-needed supplies. Particularly crucial, the Laffites offered 750,000 gunflints, making up for an otherwise extreme shortage. Given the open terrain, artillery was especially decisive in the defense effort. Laffite’s lieutenants, Dominique You and Renato Beluche, proved to be invaluable gunners. After the battle, a grateful Jackson reportedly exclaimed, “Were I ordered to storm the very gates of hell with Dominique You as my Lieutenant, I would have no misgivings as to the outcome.”
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On January 8, 1815, General Andrew Jackson and his forces—an assortment of regulars, militia, and volunteers, along with the Barataria smugglers, privateers, and pirates—overwhelmingly defeated five thousand British regulars. It was easily the most lopsided and impressive American victory of the war, and it could not have come at a better time.
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In his congratulatory address to the army, Jackson praised You, Beluche, and the Laffites: “Captains Dominique and Belluche, lately commanding privateers at Barataria, with part of their former crew and many brave citizens of New Orleans, were stationed at [batteries] Numbers 3. and 4. The general cannot avoid giving his warm approbation of the manner in which these gentlemen have uniformly conducted themselves while under his command, and of the gallantry with which they have redeemed the pledge they gave.” He went on to note that “The brothers Laffite have exhibited the same courage and fidelity, and the general promises that the government shall be duly apprized of their conduct.”
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As the battered British forces retreated, the Laffites were hailed as heroes in New Orleans, and early the next month they and their followers received the promised presidential pardons. All charges of smuggling and piracy were dropped. A few months later, before returning home, General Jackson sent Jean Laffite a thank-you note in which he praised his “activities and zeal,” described him as “one of those to whom
the country is most indebted,” and even expressed his “sincere assurance of my private friendship and high esteem.” The note concluded: “I am, Sir … your most Obed and humble servant.”
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One can easily inflate the importance of the Baratarians in the Battle of New Orleans, especially given the cult-figure status the Laffites have come to enjoy in popularized accounts. At the same time, their tactical contribution—in the form of manpower, intelligence, and arms supplies—should not be discounted.
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Perhaps most important is what Jean Laffite and his followers
didn’t do
: accept the British offer and participate in the attack on New Orleans. As the historian and former Marine Corps Major General Wilburt Brown argues, “it is possible that Jackson might have defended the city successfully without the aid of the Baratarians, but it is probable that he could not have done so if Laffite and his men had accepted British offers of amnesty, alliance, and bribe money and had thrown their weight against the American defense.”
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The battle of New Orleans actually took place after the peace treaty ending the war with Britain had already been signed, but no matter. The two events coincided so closely, and communications were so slow, that when the combined news of the treaty and the victory arrived, Americans convinced themselves that the country had actually defeated the British. A deeply unpopular and often incompetently managed war ended with a perfectly timed victory with huge political repercussions. Madison and the Republicans felt vindicated, while the antiwar Federalists were now discredited and on the defensive (and would never make a comeback). General Jackson, now catapulted to the status of a war hero, would eventually go on to become president. The victory at New Orleans had a huge psychological impact, inflating the country’s self-confidence and sense of national pride. Remarkably, what had often been a frustrating and even humiliating war ended on such a celebrated high note that the war itself was reinterpreted in the popular imagination as an American success story.

THE WAR OF 1812
has now largely fallen into obscurity. But it left a number of important legacies, one of which was much greater national concern and awareness about illicit trade. The customs service, which had been challenged like never before during the war, would emerge beaten and bruised but also more expansive and empowered. The most
onerous trade restrictions of the embargo and war years were now lifted, but the coercive capacity of customs would remain strengthened.
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