by H. W. Brands
The Laffites weren’t the only privateers in the Caribbean, nor were they the only importers of illegal slaves. But in smuggling, as in many other businesses, location can be critical to success, and no one had a better location than Laffite and company. The bayous, swamps, and islands south of New Orleans were ideal for smuggling. The waterways, besides defying the best efforts of mapmakers to reduce them to charts, were deep enough to admit the coastal craft the Laffites launched into the Caribbean but shallow enough to bar the big warships of the Spanish navy (or any other fleet) that might chase them home. The West Indies, including Cuba, the richest of the Spanish colonies and, partly for that reason, the most loyal (“the ever faithful isle,” it would be called), were not far to the south. New Orleans, the market for the goods seized from the Indies, was not far to the north. The Laffites and the community of seamen, soldiers, artisans, and accountants they gathered on the shores of Barataria Bay couldn’t well have asked for more. “The quantity of goods brought in by the banditti is immense,” remarked an American official who tracked Laffite’s activities, in early 1814. “I have no doubt but they have entered and secured far more than a million of dollars within this last six months.”
But into this entrepreneurial idyll sailed, one day in the late summer of 1814, an ominous vessel flying the ensign of the king of England. The British warship anchored outside the entrance to Barataria Bay and lowered a boat, which crossed the bar and approached the Laffites’ headquarters. The boat bore a British officer who carried greetings and messages from Colonel Edward Nichols, the commander of the same squadron that was worrying Andrew Jackson at Mobile at just this time. The longest message was addressed not to the Baratarians alone but to the residents of Louisiana at large. “Natives of Louisiana! On you the first call is made to assist in liberating from a faithless, imbecile government your paternal soil. Spaniards, Frenchmen, Italians, and British, whether settled or residing for a time in Louisiana: on you also I call to aid me in this just cause. The American usurpation in this country must be abolished, and the lawful owners of the soil put in possession.” Nichols said he headed a powerful fleet with accurate artillery and had at his disposal “a large body of Indians, well armed, disciplined, and commanded by British officers.” He mentioned the Indians, of course, to strike terror into the hearts of the Louisianians—but not too much terror. “Rest assured that these brave red men only burn with an ardent desire of satisfaction for the wrongs they have suffered from the Americans, to join you in liberating these southern provinces from their yoke, and drive them into those limits formerly prescribed by my sovereign. The Indians have pledged themselves in the most solemn manner not to injure in the slightest degree the persons or properties of any but enemies to their Spanish or English fathers. A flag over any door, whether Spanish, French, or British, will be a certain protection.”
Nichols wished this proclamation to reach all Louisianians. But he could hardly expect the state government to circulate it for him, which was why he delivered it to Jean Laffite, whose informal network was known to be incomparable. “You may be a useful assistant to me in forwarding them,” he said of the “honorable intentions” his message conveyed.
Nichols had a second message, for Laffite alone. He hoped they could become friends and allies. “I call on you, with your brave followers, to enter into the service of Great Britain, in which you shall have the rank of a captain; lands will be given to you all, in proportion to your respective ranks.” Laffite could keep the property he had gathered to Barataria; the British government asked no questions. But neither would it show mercy in the event Laffite declined this generous offer. The captain of the warship at the mouth of Barataria Bay had orders to destroy the smugglers’ camp and everything in it if they failed to cooperate. The choice was theirs: “war instantly destructive” or “the security of their property” and “the blessings of the British constitution.”
The British offer—and threat—placed Laffite in a delicate position. Although Nichols didn’t put it quite so, Laffite was being asked to bet on the outcome of the war. If he bet on the British and the British won, he’d be a captain in the British navy—an intriguing notion for one who scarcely knew a topgallant from a staysail—and his men would be landholders. If he bet on the British and the British lost, he could certainly expect retribution from the Americans. Laffite didn’t know Andrew Jackson by more than reputation at this point. But he’d heard about the Creek war and the Creek peace, and he had little cause to think Jackson would be kinder to him than to the Indians.
Laffite had another reason to lean toward the British. Of late the government of Louisiana had shown an intention to crack down on Barataria. Laffite couldn’t tell quite why this was so, but he had to guess that it reflected a desire on the part of his commercial rivals in New Orleans to seize some of his market share. The bounty on his head—the five-hundred-dollar reward John Windship described—was an opening shot in the campaign. Laffite didn’t know how serious Governor Claiborne and the legislature were. The bounty he responded with for Claiborne’s head was, in part, an attempt to gauge their seriousness. But at best the campaign would be troublesome and certainly bad for business.
Laffite asked the British for two weeks to think the matter over. They agreed, even while sweetening their offer by thirty thousand dollars, payable in cash to Laffite personally at a location of his choice. This wasn’t a huge amount for one who drank the finest bootleg wine from the best stolen goblets. But hard currency was a problem even for pirates.
Laffite employed the two weeks to explore his options on the other side. To Governor Claiborne he intimated a desire to serve Louisiana and the United States. “I offer to you to restore to this State several citizens”—several hundred, he meant, but he preferred not to enumerate—“who perhaps in your eyes have lost that sacred title. I offer them, however, such as you could wish to find them, ready to exert their utmost efforts in defense of the country. This point of Louisiana which I occupy is of great importance in the present crisis. I tender my services to defend it. And the only reward I ask is that a stop be put to the proscription against me and my adherents, by an act of oblivion for all that has been done hitherto.” The governor would agree that amnesty was apt, if he could see into Laffite’s heart. “I am the stray sheep wishing to return to the sheepfold. If you were thoroughly acquainted with the nature of my offenses I should appear to you much less guilty, and still worthy to discharge the duties of a good citizen.” The applicant was simply an honest privateer trying to make a living. “I have never sailed under any flag but that of the republic of Carthagena, and my vessels are perfectly regular in that respect. If I could have brought my lawful prizes into the ports of this State I should not have employed the illicit means that have caused me to be proscribed.”
Claiborne was inclined to accept Laffite’s offer and grant the amnesty he asked. But the Louisiana legislature, which included some of those most interested in scuttling the Baratarians’ business, refused. Moreover, the government in Washington, worried that Laffite was going to draw the United States into war with Spain, and anyway annoyed at Laffite’s cavalier attitude toward federal import and revenue laws, had determined to disperse the ruffians. The American naval commander at New Orleans, Daniel Patterson, received orders to move against Barataria. With the Louisiana legislature urging Patterson on, Claiborne declined to hold him back.
By the time Laffite learned that the American navy was coming, his two weeks with the British had expired, which meant that they’d be descending on Barataria, too. He decided that discretion was the better part of survival, took what could be moved from Barataria, and sailed away west. Patterson seized the leftovers, arrested some stragglers, and declared victory. The British weren’t sure whether they were better off without Laffite than they would have been with him. Claiborne, who had taken the precaution of forwarding to Andrew Jackson a copy of Laffite’s offer to defend New Orleans, hoped the general had more sense than the American
navy and the Louisiana legislature.
Jackson had been to the Mississippi at Natchez and to the Gulf at Pensacola, but before the autumn of 1814 he had never approached the place where the river meets the Gulf. This connection, of course, was New Orleans’s raison d’être, and it was the key to British strategy in the closing stages of the war. The negotiators chattered in Ghent. They might even reach an agreement. But no treaty would be final till approved by the respective governments, and the British government wouldn’t approve any treaty till it learned the outcome of its final offensive. The aim of the offensive was simple: to sever Louisiana—the whole territory, not merely the state—from the rest of the United States. Britain had never accepted the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States (or from Spain to France, for that matter). It preferred and intended to keep the Americans bottled up east of the Mississippi. The United States had grown alarmingly since 1783. Better for Britain that it be cut down to size. And so, even as the British quietly applauded the secessionists of New England, they prepared to peel the western half of American territory away from the East.
The offensive would start at New Orleans. The city controlled the lower Mississippi, which provided ready access to the interior of the continent and thereby allowed a link to British forces in Canada. New Orleans, moreover, had psychological value that transcended geography. The United States was a novelty in world affairs, a country founded not on kinship or shared history or language but on an idea: that people could govern themselves. The English didn’t reject the notion entirely. Their Parliament was premised on just such thinking. But British self-government was restricted to the responsible classes, unlike the American version, which was rapidly evolving from republicanism to democracy. And democracy was dangerous, whether practiced in North America, where pushy democrats would perennially grasp for more land, or imported to England, where the lower classes would get unsettling ideas. New Orleans was a test case for the American mode of political organization. Its polyglot population shared nothing of history or language or culture. If the American idea of self-government could work in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, it could work anywhere. The thought was appalling.
Approaching New Orleans was easy enough during peacetime. That, of course, was why the city was located where it was, on the left bank a bit more than one hundred miles above the main channel’s entrance to the Gulf. But if the approach was easy, it was almost always slow. The river made several turns below the city, and these typically required sailing ships to stop and wait for a change of wind or at least a change of tide. After a voyage of weeks or months, a few hours or even days meant little to a merchant vessel. But to a hostile warship, such a delay would probably be fatal, as the French and then the Spanish and now the Americans had identified the bottlenecks and located gun batteries accordingly. Reducing an enemy squadron to kindling would be little more than target practice.
Yet if a direct approach upstream was impossible, other approaches to the city were not simply feasible but inviting. Indeed, an enemy commander had a choice of routes. He could land troops on the shore of Lake Borgne, east of the city, and march in from there. He could penetrate Lake Pontchartrain, west of Borgne, and send a force south to the city. He could move north from Barataria Bay or from some point west. This required crossing the Mississippi, which entailed difficulty but commensurate chance of surprise. A fourth route to New Orleans was the longest. An enemy might land at Pensacola or Mobile Bay and skirt north of Lake Pontchartrain to Baton Rouge. Once captured, this lightly defended town would allow the enemy to close the Mississippi above New Orleans, isolating the city. A march downriver would complete the job.
This fourth route was the one Jackson had hoped to preclude by taking Pensacola and chasing the British off. He couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t return, but he had the other approaches to worry about as he headed toward New Orleans in late November. The prospect should have discouraged him. The British owned the sea, which gave them mobility he lacked. The army they were bringing—from the Chesapeake, with reinforcements from the Caribbean—substantially outnumbered his. They possessed the advantage of the offensive, being able to choose their approach to the city. And given the restiveness of the population of New Orleans and Louisiana, they had reason to expect support or at least acquiescence from the locals.
Jackson couldn’t change the balance of power in the Gulf or the geography of the Mississippi delta. But he could hope to alter the mood of the people he was charged to defend. He reached New Orleans on December 1 and discovered that John Windship was right about the irredentist and seditionist tendencies of the French and Spanish inhabitants. (He didn’t have a chance to meet Windship, who had just died of one of the endemic diseases to which he thought he had become inured.) A few of the foreign-born openly hoped for defeat, circulating stories that a British victory would restore Louisiana to Spanish control. Others disguised their desires in defeatism, contending that Jackson’s pitiful force of militia and volunteers could never defeat Britain’s battle-hardened troops. The negative feelings of those who hoped for the worst spread, provoking fear among those who wished for better.
Jackson confronted the issue, and the populace, with characteristic boldness. “The Major General commanding has with astonishment and regret learned that great consternation and alarm pervade your city,” he proclaimed to the citizens. He didn’t deny that there were grounds for concern. “It is true the enemy is on our coast and threatens an invasion of our territory.” But proximity and threat were hardly the sum of the story. “It is equally true, with union, energy, and the approbation of heaven, we will beat him at every point his temerity may induce him to set foot upon our soil.” Jackson said he had heard the rumors that a victorious Britain would restore Louisiana to Spain. “Believe not such incredible tales. Your government is at peace with Spain.” Jackson couldn’t say how long the United States would be at peace with Spain; news of his raid on Pensacola was still crossing the Atlantic. But for now the danger came from Britain—“the vital enemy of your country, the common enemy of mankind, the highway robber of the world.” Jackson hoped good sense would prevail against the seditious rumors. But he was prepared to supplement sense where its effects fell shy. “The rules and articles of war annex the punishment of death to any person holding secret correspondence with the enemy, creating false alarm, or supplying him with provision. . . . The general announces his unalterable determination rigidly to execute the martial law in all cases. . . . He will separate our enemies from our friends. Those who are not with us are against us, and will be dealt with accordingly.”
Jackson might have waited for exhortation to have its effect, but on the very day the papers of New Orleans published his proclamation, word arrived that British vessels had captured American gunboats on Lake Borgne. As the lake was less than a day’s march from the outskirts of New Orleans, this severely compressed Jackson’s schedule for sorting the sheep from the goats.
He responded, as decisively as ever, by seizing complete control over the city and all within it. “Major General Andrew Jackson, commanding the Seventh United States Military District, declares the city and environs of New Orleans under strict martial law,” a new proclamation read. It specified what martial law meant. “Every individual entering the city will report at the Adjutant General’s office, and on failure, to be arrested and held for examination. No person shall be permitted to leave the city without a permission in writing signed by the General or one of his staff. No vessel, boat, or other craft will be permitted to leave New Orleans or Bayou St. John without a passport in writing.” A strict curfew took effect. “The street lamps shall be extinguished at the hour of nine at night, after which period persons of every description found in the streets, or not at their respective homes, without permission in writing as aforesaid and not having the countersign shall be apprehended as spies and held for examination.”
Jackson complemented martial law by taking charge of the Louisiana militi
a. His experience with the Tennessee militia had taught him the difficulty of making soldiers out of ordinary young men. But the Louisiana militia presented a challenge of a different order. He reviewed the militia companies in the Place des Armes on December 18, and as he gazed out across the square he must have wondered how he was going to defend the city with such a motley bunch. The ranks included Americans and Frenchmen and Spanish, whites and blacks and persons of mixed race, poor and middling and rich. Some mustered willingly, others with great reluctance. Some hoped for success, others for failure. Most simply hoped to survive whatever Jackson had in store for them. All knew they’d be fighting British regulars, the best battlefield soldiers in the world.
The sight of his new troops hardly inspired Jackson’s confidence—which simply meant that he had to inspire confidence in them. The Creek campaign had already shown Jackson to be a capable tactician; the defense of New Orleans would prove him a master, and a brilliant organizer as well. But what truly set him apart from other generals was his ability to motivate his men. Many of them loved him, starting with those who named him Old Hickory on the march home from Natchez. Nearly all of them feared him, including the would-be mutineers he threatened with cannon fire and everyone who heard the sad story of John Wood.
