by H. W. Brands
Jackson took this rejection as his signal for action. He feinted an assault against the west side of the town, under the guns of both the Spanish in their fort there and the British ships in the bay, before throwing the mass of his troops against the relatively undefended east side. The maneuver caught González quite by surprise. Jackson’s troops stormed the Spanish position in the town and captured it with light losses. An American lieutenant hauled down the Spanish colors.
At this point González decided he’d had enough. By Jackson’s telling he “begged for mercy.” Whatever his words, González surrendered the town and the fort. The subordinate commanding the fort, however, which lay some distance from the town proper, had other notions. He rejected a surrender order from González and continued fighting.
Jackson thereupon directed that captured Spanish cannons in the town be turned on the fort. The fort’s commander, observing the preparations for a bombardment, changed his mind and offered to join the surrender. But he haggled over details and dragged the process out till dark. Jackson grew impatient during the night and determined to force the issue at daybreak. He was giving the orders for the attack to begin when a terrific noise from the fort stopped him in midsentence. “A tremendous explosion was heard, and a column of smoke seen to ascend in that direction,” he told Monroe. “Repetitions of the explosions soon convinced me that the British and Spanish were blowing up the works.”
This spared Jackson the trouble of blowing up the fort himself. He had never intended to hold the town or the fort. He lacked the troops, which were in any event needed at New Orleans. His objective had been twofold: to drive the British from Pensacola and to impress on the Spanish and the Indians that the United States, not Britain, was the country to respect and fear in Florida. He was pleased to report to Monroe that his mission had been accomplished. “I had the satisfaction to see the whole British force leave the port, and their friends at our mercy.”
People who knew the Adams men had theories about what made them so irascible. Some thought it was the Puritan streak that ran through the family, others the effect of those Braintree winters, which equaled nearby Boston’s for bone-chilling cold but lacked the insulating effects of the city’s social life. Benjamin Franklin thought John Adams simply daft, at least in stretches. “He means well for his country,” Franklin said, “is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.” Thomas Jefferson marveled at Adams’s “dislike of all parties and all men.” John Quincy Adams inherited his father’s distemper, although he may have gotten some as well from his mother, Abigail, who tolerated human imperfection no better than her husband did. The younger Adams abstained from pleasures as resolutely as from vices. He rose hours before the sun to read the Bible—in Greek, German, French, or occasionally English. He walked for exercise and knew exactly how far he traveled, having measured his stride to the toenail’s breadth (two feet six and “eighty-eight one hundreds of an inch”). When weather allowed he swam, combining bath and constitutional in whatever pond, river, gulf, or ocean lay nearby. He preferred his own company to that of most other humans, and he wasn’t especially fond of himself. He distrusted the political judgment of the common people as much as his father did. When the elder Adams lost to Jefferson in the 1800 presidential contest, Quincy blamed the defeat on Jefferson’s “pimping to the popular passions.”
Yet for all his prickliness, Quincy Adams had the makings of a brilliant diplomat. He had accompanied his father to France when père joined Franklin on the commission that negotiated peace with Britain after the Battle of Yorktown. The facility in French he acquired there served him well in an era when French was the lingua franca of diplomacy. At fourteen he escorted an American envoy to the Russian court at St. Petersburg, interpreting for the French-less fellow. He was appointed minister in his own right to the Netherlands by President Washington, and then to Prussia by his president father. When the passions of the people retired John Adams to Massachusetts, Quincy followed him there. But the state legislature soon sent him to Washington as a senator. He languished as a Federalist under Jefferson’s Republican administrations, yet after the Federalists’ obstructionism began veering toward separatism, he left his father’s party for the party of his father’s foe. Massachusetts dumped him on account of the apostasy, but James Madison retrieved him and made him minister to Russia. From that distance he supported the war against Britain, albeit less warmly and more diplomatically than Henry Clay or John Calhoun. When Madison required someone to negotiate peace terms with Britain, he could think of no one better qualified than Quincy Adams.
Yet politics prevented Madison from delivering plenipotentiary powers to Adams alone. Just as John Adams (and John Jay) had been sent to Paris to keep an eye on Franklin at the end of the first war of American independence, so Clay and Albert Gallatin (and Jonathan Russell and James Bayard) were sent to Ghent, in what would become Belgium when that country acquired independence, to keep an eye on Quincy Adams as the second war of independence wound down. Clay was included as a war hawk and ardent nationalist. Having helped get America into the war, he seemed just the man to help get America out. Treasury Secretary Gallatin presumably would guard America’s economic interests.
He would also, Madison hoped, keep Clay and Adams from blows. The setting for the negotiations was pleasant, to a point. “Ghent looks clean and cheerful,” wrote James Gallatin, Albert’s seventeen-year-old son and secretary and an occasional note taker for the American commission. “The inhabitants speak only Flemish. All seem employed in commerce. . . . They call private residences hôtels in this country. The house is large and all the delegates are to lodge here. . . . The women are so ugly. . . . They always entertain here on Sunday—how different from London!” (The Gallatins had come through England, and James had been patriotically unimpressed.) “It is the gayest day. The working people have a cheerful holiday; in London they show joy by getting drunk.”
The distractions of the city did little for relations between Adams and Clay. The two worked as poorly in harness as Franklin and the elder Adams had. Clay was expansive in temperament and fluent in speech but occasionally imprecise, while Adams was just the opposite. When Clay criticized one of their British counterparts as a “man of much irritation,” Adams riposted, “Irritability . . . is the word, Mr. Clay, irritability.” He added, with an arch look at Clay, “Like somebody else that I know.” Clay countered, “That we do; all know him, and none better than yourself.” Adams complained in his diary of the personal habits of Clay and the other commissioners. “They sit after dinner and drink bad wine and smoke cigars, which neither suits my habits nor my health, and absorbs time which I cannot spare.” More than once Adams passed Clay in the hours before dawn, the former rising while the latter was just going to bed.
The other members of the commission observed the behavior of the two, sometimes with bemusement, often with irritation of their own. “Mr. Adams is in a very bad temper. Mr. Clay annoys him. Father pours oil on the troubled waters,” James Gallatin wrote. On another day: “Clay uses strong language to Adams, and Adams returns the compliment. Father looks calmly on with a twinkle in his eye.” Again: “Both Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay object to everything except what they suggest themselves. Father remains calm but firm and does all he can to keep peace.”
On at least one thing all agreed, however: that the terms the British offered in the negotiations that began in August 1814 were intolerable. The British proposed to let each side retain territory occupied during the war, to establish a sovereign Indian state carved from American territory in the West, and to allow their own vessels free navigation of the Mississippi. The first and second proposals would have alienated American land, the second would have blocked American expansion, and the third would have granted British warships free entry to the heart of America.
The Americans inferred from the British position that the government in London wasn’t serious about peace. “Our negotiatio
ns may be considered at an end,” Albert Gallatin wrote in a private message for James Monroe barely a week after the talks began. “Great Britain wants war in order to cripple us; she wants aggrandizement at our expense.” The Americans rejected the British terms and countered with demands of their own: a reversion to the territorial status quo ante bellum, an end to impressment, an indemnity for damages done by British troops, and an agreement by both sides not to employ Indians in any future conflict between Britain and the United States.
The negotiations didn’t exactly end, but neither did they move forward. It became apparent that London was counting on the current offensives in America to soften the diplomatic resistance in Ghent. Adams, Clay, and the other Americans hoped for the best but braced for worse. They groaned on the news of the burning of Washington and shared worried glances when they learned that the British were preparing an attack against New Orleans and the Mississippi. They had heard of Jackson’s victory at Horseshoe Bend, but with everyone else they assumed that Wellington’s invincibles were of a different and more formidable character than William Weatherford’s Red Sticks. Nervously they settled in for the winter, expecting nothing to happen in the negotiations till the arrival of news of the battle for the great river of the American heartland.
Louisiana is a delightful country, and though the climate too often proves fatal to a foreigner, yet generally we ascribe to the climate what is the effect of our imprudence. I have been severely attacked this summer, and had nearly died, but at length I am acclimated.”
The author of these words was John Windship, a Bostonian who migrated to Louisiana not long after his graduation from Harvard in 1809. He was still trying to make sense of his new home—of the climate and its effect on prudence and health, of the politics of the state (admitted to the Union in 1812), and of its assorted ethnic and racial groups—when the war with Britain broke out. The conflict was greeted with disdain in Louisiana. “The War of the U.S. is very unpopular with us,” he wrote. “It was with difficulty that the requisition of General Flournoy”—for volunteers—“was complied with, even among the Americans. At New Orleans the French and the Spaniards absolutely refused to be marched. They declared themselves liege subjects of Spain or France. The Governor is a mere nullity. The government is an aristocratic democracy.” Windship didn’t explain what he meant by an aristocratic democracy, but the effects of the hybrid were no recommendation. “Great tumult exists in the city, and the prospect is very gloomy to the friends of peace and order. If the English should attack us, there is no force competent to repel them.”
The antipathy toward war reflected the distinctive politics of Louisiana.
Our political parties differ entirely from those of New England. Federalist and Democrat mean almost the same thing. The American Party differ as to the policy of the war. The French Party as to the right of our government to the country. The Spanish Party curse everything. The Creoles discontented. The Negroes insolent. The Indians sulky. What political chemist will ever unite us? Among the French it is a favorite opinion, and perhaps an ardent wish, that we should be reunited to the French empire. Among a large portion of the inhabitants—English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, American, &c.—it is a matter of indifference to what power we fall provided cotton will sell at $20 per hundredweight.
The anarchic politics of Louisiana revealed—to the Federalist-bred Windship at least—the limits of local self-government. “The most enlightened men of this country consider the admission of Louisiana into the Union, as an independent state, as an impolitic and unfortunate measure. . . . There probably never was a people happier or more prosperous than the Louisianians before the late adoption. The expences of the government were defrayed from the treasury of the United States. . . . Our taxes were low and proportioned to the resources of the country; our people were quiet, and demagogues bawled in vain for influence and office.” The current condition of the state was altogether different. “We have the noisy and ignorant satellites of a democracy to rule us. Party spirit rages among us. Taxation has become oppressive. The Creole population have become jealous of the Americans.” Democrats—that is, Republicans—outnumbered Federalists, but the deeper divide was ethnic. “We are either French or Americans. There can be no doubt but that the French are declining in power, and the Americans are not sufficiently prudent to hide it from them. We have all the advantages that superior education and enterprise will afford, while they on the other hand, are devoted to European prejudices and politics. . . . The purchase of this country by the Americans is mortifying to their vanity. They are sometimes told not to interfere with government, as that is a subject peculiar to ourselves. They have even been told that in purchasing the country we purchased them also, at no higher price than 50 cents per head.”
The Spanish were just as unhappy. “They fondly recur to the despotism of Cadiz and commandants, and look with anxious hope to the progress of European conquest. They hate our laws and customs; and the regularity, the necessary delays and the impartial distribution of justice to rich and poor in our courts, are to them proofs of our barbarity and meanness.”
Writing in the spring of 1814, Windship remarked that the French and Spanish were hanging on the news from Europe. Many hoped for an end to their American exile. “If Bonaparte has regained the empire,” Windship said, summarizing the views of the most ardent irredentists, “he will have the power, seconded by the wishes of his faithful provincials, to re-annex this country to France. If Bonaparte is dethroned, the Bourbons will consider the sale of Louisiana as invalid and will repossess the country.” Speaking in his own voice, Windship articulated a common concern among Americans in Louisiana. “If Bonaparte is conquered, and an attempt is made”—by the British—“to sever this state, I fear that . . . Louisiana will fall to the dominion of either France or England. Those who know the situation of this country, who see neither spirit in the people nor any means of resistance, fear this event.”
Windship had been in Louisiana only a short while. Yet the country had changed him. “Indolence is common with us all. . . . The mind with the body is weakened. We suffer a relaxation which, to you Northerners, would be a subject of astonishment. The cool of the morning admits of some exertion. At noon we yield to a burning sun”—Windship was writing now in June—“and the evening is spent in repairing the exhausted system or in the indulgence of ease and tranquility. The nerve of the soul is wasted, and the strong passions of glory and ambition are faintly visible only in the moments of intemperance.” Windship’s time at Harvard seemed ages ago. There would be nothing like Harvard here. “It will be a phenomenon indeed if this state ever produces a man of genius or learning.” Not only New England but the rest of America receded. Louisiana was a world unto itself. “The truth is, we are not Americans.”
Yet among the non-Americans of Louisiana was one group that wanted to become American, if conditions were right. In a letter in which he railed against the ineffectiveness of the Louisiana government, Windship described the corruption to which this gave rise. “So weak is the Executive that the execution of the revenue laws is almost impossible. Smuggling is carried on to a great degree. . . . A force of 500 armed pirates are settled near the mouth of the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico is tributary to them. It is said to be almost impracticable to disposses them. Too many of the merchants of New Orleans are interested in this trade. The Captain of the band is a French general. Governor Claiborne offered $500 for his head while he was in the city; the next day this buccaneer offered a reward of $1000 for the head of the governor, and his hand bill was distributed through the city.”
Windship’s “French general” was Jean Laffite, who had indeed placed a bounty on Claiborne’s head, although whether in jest or earnest no one could say for sure. Laffite’s sense of humor was as unpredictable as his nationality. He had been born in France or the West Indies, depending on who was asking. He was French or Spanish or Jewish. He was pleased to cultivate a reputation as a pirate, although his maste
ry of the nautical arts was suspect, and there were persons in New Orleans who said they had known him as a blacksmith with a shop at the corner of St. Philip and Bourbon streets.
Whatever his antecedents, in 1814 Laffite was best described as an entrepreneur, a businessman who specialized in the arbitrage of prices across borders. A principal item of his commerce was African slaves. Laffite purchased slaves in the West Indies, where they were cheap, and smuggled them into Louisiana, where they were expensive on account of the federal ban on slave imports. As with other black markets, that in black slaves corrupted otherwise law-abiding persons, who in turn corrupted government by causing it to avert its gaze from the illicit traffic. Purchasers got what they wanted: cheap slaves. Sellers got what they wanted: profits. No one got hurt except perhaps the slaves, who had no voice in the matter. If they had been asked, most probably would have said that conditions on the American Gulf Coast, grim as they were, were better than those of the Caribbean and South America, where the life expectancy of slaves was often measured in months, and not many of those.
Laffite and his business associates also arbitraged in the transition of Spanish America to independence. Much as the fledgling United States government had done in its revolution against Britain, the aspiring republics of Central and South America enlisted privateers—maritime mercenaries—to harass the commerce of imperial Spain. Laffite and his brothers—Alexander, who was known about Louisiana by his nom de guerre, Dominique, and Pierre—obtained privateer commissions from Cartagena (the parent of modern Colombia). Under the laws of Cartagena, the Laffites were entitled to all the Spanish commerce they could capture. Needless to say, Spanish law took a different view. Perhaps less obviously, so did American law, which prevented the Laffites from legally landing and selling their prizes in America. This hardly stopped them from the landing and selling, and in fact the booty from the sea nicely complemented—and sometimes included—the slaves they were already selling illegally.
