Patriotic Fire (28 page)

Jackson was an American original, whose world rested on moral principles as immutable as the laws of nature. He was the first populist president, the first to publicly and actively campaign in his own behalf, the first to come from west of the Appalachians—a rough country backwoodsman, dueler, and brawler, in stark contrast to the courtly Virginians and staid New Englanders who previously had held the office. The rumor mills ground out all kinds of unsavory reports: White House doors flung open to the rabble, and drinking, cursing, gambling, and brawling now become the hallmarks of America’s highest office. It was claimed that the carpets of the president’s mansion were muddied from the boots of the vulgar frontiersmen who were his friends, men who had never known a utensil besides a knife and who always ate at the dinner table with their fingers.

Yet Jackson’s vision of America was as sweeping as the great prairies of the West. He saw the nation as a great, expanding panorama filled with appalling risks and soaring promise, and with wealth and happiness as its God-given design. He had grown up in poverty in the abominable Waxhaw canebreaks, lost his entire family to war, and then bootstrapped himself to become president of the United States. If he could do it, Jackson reasoned, then anybody could.

There were constant battles, as always. Jackson despised the notion of a national bank, which Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists had established, because he thought it would inevitably become corrupt, and this put him in direct contention with the monied interests. The abuses and intrigues of Washington were as unrelenting then as they are today, and Jackson soon found himself at odds even with members of his own party. In 1830 the powerful South Carolina firebrand John C. Calhoun, Jackson’s own vice president, went on the stump against his leader over the issue of high protective tariffs imposed by a Federalist Congress. The South Carolinians declared the tariffs invalid under what they said was the theory of nullification (i.e., that the states were entitled to disregard any federal law they deemed to be against their interests). Jackson threatened to enforce the tariffs with federal troops, and the issue was defused. But here lay the underpinnings of the schism that eventually led to civil war, with the question of slavery only then beginning to insinuate itself seriously into the equation. If nothing else, Jackson had managed to postpone the inevitable for three more decades.

He was reelected in 1832, but not before he signed into law the still-controversial Indian Removal bill, which eventually resulted in some fifteen thousand Cherokees being rounded up from their eight million acres of territory in Georgia and force-marched nearly two thousand miles to what is now Oklahoma. (The Creeks and Chickasaws had already agreed to be moved, and had left their lands by then.) Nearly 20 percent of them died from starvation or exposure to rain, sleet, and snow in what became known as the Trail of Tears. There was an outcry of indignation against this harsh act, and many of Jackson’s other policies were equally controversial, but when he departed office in 1837 he was, among other things, generally credited as being the father of the modern Democratic party.

He retired afterward to the Hermitage, where, though in ill health but much revered, he was ever open to political discussions. Many who came through Nashville wanted to see him, and he was always accommodating. He lived until 1845 and was buried in the garden next to Rachel.

In 1851 the Place d’Armes in New Orleans was renamed Jackson Square, and a few years later a life-size statue of the general was erected there, depicting Jackson sitting on his rearing horse and waving his hat. It is there today, and Jackson Square is almost always filled with tourists, a focal point of one of the world’s cities of destination.

I
t is often noted that history is written by the victors, and this became a sore subject with Jean Laffite and at least some of the Baratarians. Although Jackson commended them, they did not feel that they received their due in the official reports, which of course were what the press studied to publicize the battle. Jean was especially incensed that none of Jackson’s dispatches mentioned the large quantities of gunpowder, flints, and other armaments that he had donated to the campaign.

When Commodore Patterson and Colonel Ross began auctioning off what Laffite claimed as his property, which among other things consisted of fifteen armed privateering ships, Jean persuaded his old partners—who remained among the wealthiest and most influential citizens of New Orleans—to surreptitiously repurchase them for him, which they did. While he was waiting for his lawsuit against the government to be settled (it was now before the U.S. Supreme Court), Laffite resumed his old activities, preying on Spanish shipping under letters of marque from Cartagena.

Since Patterson’s raid on Grand Terre, it had become apparent to Jean that Barataria was no longer a safe place to conduct business, and he decided to relocate to what is now Galveston Island, about three hundred miles to the west. This he did in 1816 with some five hundred of his men. Others decided to stay on at Grand Terre and engage in the tamer pursuits of fishing and shrimping, with a little smuggling on the side, but not privateering. Some of their direct descendants lived on the island until the 1940s, and others reside in the general area today. Some of the Baratarians moved into town, including Louis Chighizola (Nez Coupe), who peddled fruit in the old French Market till the end of his days.

Galveston had certain advantages over Barataria in that it was much more remote and was also the subject of a diplomatic dispute between Spain, which claimed it was part of Mexico, and the United States, which asserted that it was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Neither nation, therefore, wanted to exercise a presence there for fear of upsetting the negotiations. Its disadvantages, however, were manifest. First, there was no ready outlet for disposing of captured goods as there had been in New Orleans. Also, the island was writhing with poisonous rattlesnakes and cottonmouth moccasins (it was at first called Snake Island). Not only that, but there was a fierce band of Indians, known as the Karankawa tribe, who over the centuries had come under the impression that the island belonged to them.

Nevertheless, after battling both snakes and Indians, Laffite and the Baratarians established themselves on what they had named Campeche, which soon would contain a boardinghouse, arsenal, shipyard, and a number of rude houses. A formal government was set up, complete with tax collectors, magistrate, notary, and secretary and with Laffite as its “governor.” Laffite seems actually to have moved there, but his brothers Pierre and Dominique apparently kept residence in New Orleans and visited only when they went out on raids.

One possible reason Jean did not stay in New Orleans was that a nasty rumor had begun to circulate that among his “goods” being auctioned off by Patterson and Ross were certain pieces of jewelry that had been identified by New Orleans women as having belonged to a well-known widow who had gone on a trip to Europe and vanished without a trace. The implication, of course, was that she fell victim to pirates, and that here was the evidence, in Laffite’s own cache of booty. All his life, Laffite maintained that he was a privateer and never a pirate and that he did not countenance piracy among his Baratarians. Yet here was this allegedly damning evidence, or rumor of evidence, and Laffite became thoroughly disgusted. He had done his best to save New Orleans, sent his men, his artillery, his munitions, risked his life—and now this ingratitude and innuendo.

The Galveston enterprise quickly became profitable, and by 1818 Laffite had made arrangements to sell his captured goods to various merchants in the interior, as far away as St. Louis, Missouri, where, on April 15 of that year, he received a receipt from one Jh. Robidoux for “Twenty slaves, mature, have good teeth. Males speak French; Twenty mirrors; Five Hundred big hatchets; Two Hundred butcher knives; Twenty-five cauldrons. Twenty-five silk ropes; One thousand steel and flints. Three hundred pieces of wool bands; Three thousand flints; Three hundred pounds glue; Three hundred muskets. Three hundred pounds powder; Five hundred blankets; Twenty pieces packing-canvas; Four casks wine; Two hundred pounds tobacco. Three hundred shirts; Five hundred pounds raw sugar.” All of it worth, on the black market, $3,535.

Jean Laffite seemed to be one of those people for whom “trouble always rides behind and gallops with him.” It wasn’t long before the authorities in Washington got wind of the goings-on at Galveston; James Monroe, who had since become president, sent a message to the effect that Laffite and his crews must depart that place under threat of being evicted by U.S. troops.

Laffite then began to engage in a long-winded correspondence with the federal government over a period of months, which purported to establish his legitimacy in occupying Galveston but upon second reading appears merely to be a stall for time. Then, in late September 1818, a hurricane roared through Galveston Island, drowning a number of men, wrecking most of the ships, ruining the food stores and supplies, and wiping out most of the houses and buildings.

With all this difficulty, a more prudent man might have packed up and gone, but Laffite set about rebuilding and resumed writing letters to the authorities, which by now included the Spanish government, who had of necessity become involved in the thing, and who began characterizing Galveston as a
madriguera de malvado
(place of wickedness). Laffite managed through this gauzy and voluminous correspondence to keep the authorities at bay for another two years, but finally in 1821 he abandoned the commune. It was apparently not an impromptu decision; in the intervening time Laffite—no doubt recalling what had happened when Patterson raided Grand Terre—had been stashing his goods in numerous places, from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, to St. Louis.

When he finally left Galveston, Laffite for all intents disappeared. American naval officers who had come to see him off arrived with every expectation that they would confront a fierce, piratical-looking man, dressed in colored sashes, swashbuckle, the works. Instead they found Laffite wearing a handsome blue topcoat and forage cap, and aboard his sleek and elegant ink-black schooner. He invited them on the ship for a sumptuous supper and apparently charmed them. One of these officers later concluded a magazine piece about the encounter: “We made our adieus . . . with feelings far more interested for the gallant rover than either would have chosen to confess. We shook hands for the last time in this world.”

What became of Laffite afterward has been the subject of much contradictory speculation. It was reported that he was killed in a sea battle, drowned in a hurricane, hanged by the Spanish, died of disease in Mexico, and murdered by his own crew. If you believe his own journal (a discussion of that document appears in the Notes on Sources section at the end of this book), Laffite retired from the privateering business after Galveston and, according to family papers, went upriver to St. Louis, where he had considerable business connections. There, in 1832, he was remarried, to a young woman named Emma Mortimere, found God, and settled down to the life of a landlubber, fathering a son. During this period a spate of books and magazine stories appeared, most of them absurdly fictitious, which often characterized him as the bloodthirstiest kind of pirate and attributed to him deeds of the vilest nature. Chagrined, at some point Laffite, now turning portly, grew a beard and changed his name to John Lafflin.

During his later years, according to the purported memoirs, Laffite traveled widely, engaged in various “business transactions,” and sometime in the early 1850s settled in Alton, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, where he began writing a journal of his life. He lived there until his death in 1854 at the age of about seventy.

He never got over the shabby treatment he felt he had received from the federal government and from the city he had risked his life and treasure to defend. At one point he mused bitterly over what might have happened if he had instead taken the British offer of money and other emoluments and betrayed America. Answering his own hypothetical, he concluded that the Americans would have lost the battle, as well as Louisiana, and that there would have been no president of the United States named Andrew Jackson.

He makes some interesting points. First, Laffite and the Baratarians possessed the vital knowledge of the tides, shoals, and quirks of Barataria Bay and of all the tributaries, paths, and routes leading up to New Orleans. It is just possible that he could have guided the British up to the city without being noticed. His warning to New Orleans, even though it was not believed for a few days, certainly put the city on alert, when time was measured practically in precious minutes.

His offer of powder and flints may well have been critical to the outcome of the battle. New Orleans had inadequate munitions and, as we have seen, being so far in the West, acquiring them was a difficult proposition (the missing arms boats did not turn up until two weeks after the battle ended). It took a great deal of gunpowder in those days to fire a single cannon shot—sometimes up to twenty pounds—and since we know that on one morning during Pakenham’s reconnaissance attack, the
Louisiana
alone fired some eight hundred rounds, that could have used up as much as ten thousand pounds of powder.

If the Americans had run out of gunpowder on the morning of January 8, who can determine the outcome? Likely it would not have been a good one. The same is true of the flints (made from a very hard type of stone). Muskets and rifles then were flintlocks, meaning that the shot was ignited by a spring-loaded hammer into which a flint had been inserted, striking a flashpan of gunpowder that, in turn, was set off by the resulting spark. But flints wore out fairly often. Some of the troops at first had to use pebbles for flints, the kind one finds on the ground, but naturally these did not work well most of the time.

It was Laffite’s suggestion that the rampart on Jackson’s left be strengthened and run nearly half a mile into the swamp. This was truly an astute observation, and while somebody else might have thought of it later, Laffite is the one who gets the credit in the history books. It is well that the matter was taken care of, too, because turning Jackson’s left was precisely what the British had in mind.