The Pirates Laffite Read online

  Just how welcome Laffite felt is unknown. He at least had an acquaintance with Governor Folche, and had probably developed some contacts with Panton, Leslie during his merchant days at Baton Rouge. The lure for a man of his entrepreneurial instincts was obvious. Panton, Leslie's stranglehold on the economy may not have left much hard cash for a merchant to squeeze out of local hands, but with more and more Americans coming in and the liberalization of trade restrictions, money could be made. Moreover, Spain's hold on mainland North America appeared to be dramatically weakened after Spain lost Louisiana to France and then to the Yankees. East and West Florida were now clearly isolated by an American Georgia on the east and the Mississippi Territory on the west, with British Alabama in between. The activities of men like the Kempers threatened to wrest West Florida from Spain, especially with the encouragement of outside American supporters. If West Florida became American, attached either to Louisiana or Mississippi, then those who were in place early on could hope to reap fortunes.

  Probably most persuasive was Pierre's realization of the money to be made in slaves. The prohibitions against importing foreign slaves to Louisiana and elsewhere in the United States presented a serious obstacle to him. The Constitution prevented Congress from taking any all-encompassing action against the African slave trade through the end of 1807, but everyone could anticipate that as soon as that restriction expired, statute legislation would be passed abolishing slave importation everywhere and permanently. Spain observed no such ban, however, meaning that Laffite could acquire as many Africans as he wished in Pensacola, and then use his expanding grasp of the back roads and bayous of Louisiana to introduce them into the territory for the sort of profit he had realized so recently in New Orleans. Indeed, on July 6, within a week of his arrival, the largest public slave sale to date in Pensacola occurred. Eighteen blacks just arrived from Africa aboard the Success went on the block, some bringing as much as $350.46 Most likely the buyers were not the cash-strapped Pensacolans, but men from Louisiana come to buy illicit stock that they could then smuggle home either to work their plantations or else to sell.

  The public demonstration of the money to be made inspired Pierre to a spontaneous, and ill-advised, attempt to capitalize on the presence of eager buyers who had cash left after the sale. On July 10 he engaged to sell the slave cook Lubin to François Bellestre of New Orleans. The fact that Bellestre paid $700, double the best price realized for any slave at the recent auction, apparently overcame any qualms Pierre might have had about selling what was not his to sell. After the fact he sent a letter to St. Marc asking permission to sell the cook. When St. Marc refused, Laffite was trapped by his own hasty action, but being outside the jurisdiction of a Louisiana court now and for the foreseeable future, he probably felt little fear of the repercussions.47

  For the next three years Pierre Laffite remained in Pensacola all or most of the time, and Marie Villard with him.48 Indeed, they were not there long before the little family began to grow. First, probably before the end of the year, Marie gave birth to a daughter they named Catherine Coralie Laffite. Barely a year later in late 1807 or early 1808 appeared a younger brother Martial—or Martin—Firmin Laffite.49 Marie may have given birth to yet another child, Jean Baptiste, late in 1808 or early 1809.50 And at some point their home took in Marie's sister Catherine or Catarina, whom they called Catiche—a common nickname for girls of her name, especially if diminutive in stature.51

  If his family prospered, Pierre may not have done so well commercially. On September 17,1806, a devastating hurricane hit the Gulf coast, the worst storm for thirteen years and likely Pierre's first experience with the potential fury of the region's weather. In New Orleans it damaged every vessel in port but one, and flattened the sugarcane fields for miles around.52 Then in 1807 Enrique, the Chevalier de Peytavin, drew the eyes of the authorities looking into unlawful slaves being smuggled into Baton Rouge. Peytavin and his family did a lot of slave buying and selling in this period, and if an operator of his scale attracted attention, it could hardly make the efforts of smaller entrepreneurs like Laffite any easier. 53 Nor does Pierre appear to have done much business with Panton, Leslie, or the other principal local merchants.54 If he did, especially in slaves, then most probably it was of the sort that he had by now learned required subterfuge and discretion.

  More important, events on a broader stage would soon persuade him that the marketplace was shifting. Aaron Burr's 1806 effort to carve out a new empire in Spanish Texas had failed, but it attracted the attention of men across the region, for with Spain weakening, Texas offered cheap land and resources for the taking and, in the right hands, a plump market for slaves.

  More immediately, after the failure of the Nonimportation Act, Jefferson began considering an outright embargo prohibiting all American trade with foreign ports. Congress passed the measure in December 1807, virtually closing all lawful commerce with other nations. Despite the enforcement acts that followed, the embargo would completely fail to accomplish its purpose of ending trade with England and France. Rather, it fostered the eruption of the nascent smuggling trade on the Gulf. Meanwhile Britain wound up with all but a monopoly on the Atlantic carrying trade.

  If the embargo and nonintercourse laws made smuggling lucrative, the contraband trade led naturally to privateering, and ultimately to piracy. Congress on March 1, 1807, directed that piracy be suppressed, and looked to the navy to do so, but even before then Washington realized that the United States Navy was too small to be effectual.55 When Congress inaugurated a new year with the January 1, 1808, abolition of America's African slave trade, the legislators only added one more incentive to those who sought to profit by circumventing the laws of the United States.

  Most immediately affected was Louisiana, where planters feared that the abolition would ruin them because sugar, cotton, and indigo could not be cultivated without cheap labor. Neither could the planters keep the levees repaired to hold back the river while the climate made it impossible to get white men to do the work ordinarily performed by slaves. In several years interstate trade would begin to address the slave shortage, but until then smuggling was the only answer, and Louisiana's complex and virtually unpolicable coastline and interior waterways worked to the advantage of those willing to take great risks for great rewards. Indeed, on April 14, 1808, two American ships brought ninety-eight blacks to New Orleans in brazen defiance of the ban.56 It was only the beginning, and hereafter the illicit slave trade on the Gulf would be inextricably linked with the corsairs.

  Seemingly every available French vessel turned to privateering. Louis Aury, a career adventurer from France who came to the New World determined to make himself a fortune and a name, was in San Domingue serving on privateers prior to the French being driven out. "Corsairs are the only French boats, war or merchant, in this country," he wrote in September 1808. "They wage war as loyally as the ships of his imperial majesty."57 Though French privateers were officially commissioned to act against British vessels, they wanted the fat Spanish ships laden with slaves and Mexican gold, and took advantage of Spain's alliance with Britain after 1808 when she revolted against and briefly deposed Napoleon's brother Joseph to restore her own monarchy. Meanwhile the United States and Spain all but severed relations that year as a result of the British alliance and Jefferson's embargo, which threatened to starve Baton Rouge and West Florida. Hostility to Spain grew rapidly in American minds, and rumors of war spread. Just as when Pierre Laffite was living in Baton Rouge, war between Spain and the United States did not promise to be good for business. Besides, the slave market was now in New Orleans, as Pierre well knew, and the explosion of privateers bringing much wanted goods to a hungry market that did not scruple at buying outside the law suggested that the enterprising man move his base once again.

  In a futile effort to put down privateering, Congress passed a Restriction Act forbidding all vessels in United States waters from interfering with the vessels of any other nation's commerce in those waters. Th
anks to the wording of the legislation, however, the privateers had no trouble evading the law, and soon they made New Orleans the point of sale for their takings. "The sea, in fact, at that time swarmed with legalized pirates," recalled Commodore David Porter, whom Jefferson charged with suppressing piracy in the Gulf in 1808. Spain and the United States did cooperate to the extent of offering large rewards for the capture of certain members of the freebooter community, especially the Frenchmen, but to little avail. Porter took command in New Orleans with twenty gunboats and a naval station ashore, only to find that the bays and inlets of the coast were already the resort of smugglers and pirates under British, French, and Spanish flags.

  "These gentlemen were continually hovering on our coasts, and in default of finding enemy's ships would seize upon our own, upon one pretext or another, for which outrages our people obtained little redress," he complained. Many privateers chose to refit and resupply in New Orleans since the city had no garrison and foreign warships did not go there. "As they spent their money freely, the local authorities rather encouraged their presence," Porter discovered. "These desperadoes, mixing with the dissolute part of the population, kept the town in a continual state of turmoil."58 In fact, just after Porter took command in August, several mob fights erupted on the city levee between American sailors and those of France, Spain, and Italy. A number of men were killed or injured in the melees, and Porter concluded that "there was certainly a large number of dangerous characters in New Orleans requiring the utmost vigilance." It presented a serious challenge to any commander to preserve law and order, for "there were so many 'choice spirits' in and around New Orleans always ready for desperate enterprises, that the forces of the army and navy were always in readiness to preserve order." 59

  Worse, the local authorities, animated by the sympathies of a populace that wanted to keep slaves and consumer goods coming into Louisiana, seemed happy to encourage the violations of the embargo. "The district attorney evidently winked at piracies committed in our waters and at the open communication kept up between these depredators and the citizens of New Orleans," Porter complained.60 He discovered that he could not interfere without colliding with the civil authorities and merchants who had connections in Washington that could cost him his position, or even career.

  The ingredients were all in place: a market starving for slaves and luxury goods regardless of the source; a district attorney and court system inclined to cast blind eyes on malefactors who provided consumer goods; a large population primarily of French origin who felt hostility toward their new American masters and a corresponding disregard of their laws; a Gulf teeming with newly made privateers anxious to prey on any vessel they could take; an international political climate sufficiently fluid that any privateer could find some flag under which to claim legitimate service; and Spain's New World colonies on the verge of widespread revolt. It was a recipe for opportunity, primarily at Spain's expense, from which everyone else could benefit, even the officially opposed United States, which secretly hoped to take more of the New World away from Spain—a cause in which the privateers could be excellent unofficial and unpaid allies.

  All that was needed were daring men to grasp the opportunity. By 1809 Pierre Laffite decided that he would be one of them, though it meant his return to New Orleans. Surely it was no coincidence that at virtually the same time his brother Jean finally came to Louisiana.

  FOUR

  Brothers in Business 1809–1811

  No matter where—their chief's allotment this;

  Theirs, to believe no prey nor plan amiss.

  But who that CHIEF? his name on every shore

  Is famed and fear'd—they ask and know no more.

  ONCE AGAIN affairs beyond their immediate horizon guided the Laffite brothers, finally bringing them together once and for all. Pierre may not have been back to New Orleans after leaving for Pensacola, though during those years he may have made a visit or two to Baton Rouge and Point Coupée to buy and sell slaves.1 Then on March 25, 1809, Congress repealed the unpopular Embargo and replaced it with a Non-Intercourse Act that opened the United States to trade with all nations except Britain and France, and thus made trade with Spain legal once more. To the extent that Laffite had moved to Pensacola in order to evade the Embargo and deal in Spanish goods, that reason was gone.

  In May 1809 something much more dramatic happened that helped to draw him back to New Orleans. When San Domingue finally fell to the insurgents in 1803, Cuba was the closest place for refugees, and they began streaming there early that year. More than twenty-seven thousand of them came, and for several years they were welcome. But in March 1808 Napoleon occupied Madrid and put his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, and in Cuba the Spaniards reacted against the refugees. On April 11, 1809, the colonial governor issued a proclamation evicting all Frenchmen who were not naturalized citizens, giving them no more than forty days to leave. 2 Most of the refugees had no choice but to sell their property at the mercy of speculators, and then began the parade of vessel after vessel, many of them French privateers, transporting the fugitives to Charleston, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Louisiana. Between May 10 and August 19 at least fifty-five ships landed in New Orleans, forty-eight of them from Santiago, six from Baracoa, and one from Havana.3

  In 1805 New Orleans had 8,475 people. By December 1809, 9,059 refugees had stepped ashore at the levee. Of them, 2,731 were white, 3,102 were free colored, and 3,226 were slaves. Another thousand came in the early months of 1810, and one thousand others remained from the 1803 wave of refugees. This influx affected an already unbalanced population makeup.4 Whereas previously in New Orleans less than one-fifth of the population were free colored, over a third of the refugees were such. In fact, the largest single group of refugees were free women of color, some 1,377. These new free women of color had fewer children, allowing them more freedom to earn employment, and thus compete with the existing population. As for competing for men, the arrivers only made a poor situation worse. In 1809 the city had 195 white men over fifteen for every 100 white women of the same age. However, in the free colored community, there were only 31 adult men for every 100 women, leaving even more unattached free colored women to seek livelihood and partners.5

  Initially the mayor and civic leaders thought this new influx of free blacks to be quite desirable. Some had money and the rest had needed skills.6 American authorities, too, welcomed the exiles at first. The local army commander General James Wilkinson told a deputation of them just a week before the eviction order that they had American sympathy, and promised them sanctuary in America.

  At the same time, however, he reminded them of the recent and absolute ban on importing slaves into the country. The navy had vessels cruising the Louisiana coast from March to May 1809 looking for smugglers, and as illicit activity went on the rise, reduced the distance between patrolling stations for more careful scrutiny.7 In March Porter took two vessels, the USS Vesuvius and the USS Alligator, on an extensive patrol to acquaint himself with the coastline. He spotted one French corsair and pursued it to Barataria, where he lost the quarry.8

  Not all of them got away, however, and that July the United States District Court tried the owners of the schooner Santa Rita for bringing slaves in from Cuba the previous summer.9 Even earlier, on May 25, during the first wave of refugee arrivals, the same schooner Louisa that took Laffite to Pensacola was detained and searched by Collector of Customs William Brown when he caught it coming in the river with fifteen slaves from Santiago that the captain intended to sell. The United States attorney Philip Grymes filed a charge against her at the District Court, and on June 20 authorities seized her and her cargo at anchor. Her owner made the pettifogging plea that as he had not actually sold any slaves in the United States, he had not technically violated the law.10 As evidence that Commodore Porter's complaint about the local district attorney had some substance, the owner's frail plea saved him his ship, for within a week the Louisa was back on her way to Pensacola on her old route.1
1

  The exiles could come, but they could not legally import their slaves. For refugees forced practically to give away most other property, slaves, if they had them, were their only transportable capital assets other than currency. When their ships arrived, Governor Claiborne allowed the refugees, including free colored people, to come ashore, but their slaves had to remain aboard the ships. He then ordered the vessels impounded to prevent them from either departing with the property of the refugees or secretly allowing that property to come ashore. For several months many of the refugees lived on the charity of sympathetic New Oceanians while their slaves lived on the ships.

  At last in July Claiborne allowed the slaves to come ashore if their owners posted bond guaranteeing that the blacks would be produced if and when required as the local federal court or Washington decided whether or not they could stay as exceptions to the recent law. In November when the British took San Domingue, leading U.S. authorities to expect even more French refugees, Claiborne wanted them to be told to go elsewhere.12 For the moment, however, Claiborne asked that the law be relaxed to allow the refugees to bring their slaves with them, and Congress passed such an exception that summer.13

  Many of the refugees had nothing else, and found themselves forced to sell their slaves to the anxious market, sometimes at prices lower than real value. This alone might have lured Pierre Laffite back to New Orleans. In either case, he did not need long to take advantage of the situation. On July 29 he bought his first slave from Pierre Bourg, and two days later sold the slave for $425.14 Within a few weeks he made $600 more from the sale of another black, an Islamic Mandingan quite certainly from Africa via one of the San Domingue refugees.15