John West's ship the Francis regularly made the run between New Orleans and Philadelphia, and now she was in port and due to depart July 15.71 Jean purchased a passage from her captain, Thomas Barns, and then he and Pierre attended to last minute business. Pierre went to attorney George Pollock and drafted a power of attorney empowering his brother to represent his interests in Washington, including presenting petitions and memorials to the president, heads of the executive departments, and Congress in seeking to obtain the return of their property seized by Patterson and Ross. Jean also had his full assent to make unilateral commitments to sell their existing property, or to contract for the purchase of new property, meaning vessels and tackle. Jean could accept money to be collected for both of them, and if he had to go to court to do it, he was fully empowered to speak for Pierre.72 This day Francis Tomasis, owner of the Moon of November, also gave Jean his power of attorney to attempt recovery of his vessel and her cargo taken by Patterson.73
Jean also had a court appearance to make. Besides his coming piracy trial, Gambi faced a civil suit over a slave that had run away and served on both the Dorada and the Petit Milan prior to Patterson's raid. Jean went to the Orleans Parish district court on the morning of July 15 and attested in a deposition that Gambi had not known the slave to be a runaway.74 Indeed, Jean was so busy that he could not make his court appearance appealing the $164 debt, and had his lawyer Henry Carlton represent him.75 That done, while Vincent Gambi was hearing his third indictment for piracy, Jean walked to the waterfront and boarded the Francis, which cleared the port that evening.76
It was August 27 when the Francis tied up at the wharf in Philadelphia to disgorge her cargo of cotton, brandy, sugar, and passengers.77 Jean Laffite stepped ashore to find the city buzzing with word that Guadaloupe had fallen to the British two weeks earlier. More startling yet was the news that after escaping his exile at Elba and conducting a campaign that ended with defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was once more a prisoner. 78 Philadelphia hummed with rumors of plots to free the emperor, even to bring him to America. Within a few weeks of Jean's arrival, word spread that Joseph Bonaparte had arrived in New York in early September, and suddenly the stories of secret schemes took on greater authenticity.79
Of more immediate and personal interest to the Laffites was a proclamation by President Madison, issued September i, that appeared in the press within a few days.80 The president was responding to Spanish complaints by condemning the plans in Louisiana to launch a military expedition against Texas and Mexico in aid of the insurgents there. Madison declared that such plotters were "deceiving and seducing honest and well-intentioned citizens to engage in their unlawful enterprises." He warned those duped into participation to withdraw, and ordered that the organizers cease immediately. "They will answer the contrary at their peril," he admonished. He also called on all military and civil authorities, national, state, and local, to be on the watch for such schemers, to seize their arms and vessels, and to try them for violating the neutrality laws.81 The United States and Spain were close to restoring full diplomatic relations, and violations of Spain's sovereignty worked against that.
The very expedition Madison condemned was one of the reasons Jean Laffite came to the East, and to Baltimore at least once. At that moment the Maryland city was on the verge of becoming more important than New Orleans as a seedbed of filibustering activities against Spain, for would-be revolutionaries found sympathetic ears among the port's merchant investors.82 One such man was Peter A. Guestier, a merchant and ship chandler doing business at the southwest corner of Frederick and Second streets.83 Laffite met with him to make arrangements for acquiring and fitting out at least one new vessel to resume privateering against Spanish traders under letters of marque that Jean expected to get from Humbert as an agent of the Mexican junta.84
Jean passed most of the fall in Philadelphia, however. There were people in the Quaker City on whom he had to call, perhaps starting with bankers to deposit the money or instruments that he brought from New Orleans. Another likely visit was to the attorney Peter Du Ponceau, a close business associate of the Laffites' new friend and sometime legal counsel Livingston, to whom Livingston referred friends visiting the city.85 Laffite could need a lawyer if he made any business commitments while there. Latour was also in the city in November to oversee the proofing and printing of his book. He expected to produce six hundred copies and had an agent taking money for advance sales in Louisiana, Livingston acting as surety for their delivery.86 Latour was also there to cement a new enterprise as an agent for Spain reporting on the condition of its territory north and west of Louisiana and any efforts to interfere with its colonial possessions.
Indeed, he probably discussed with Laffite the advantages to Jean engaging himself with Spain, too. Latour would know that in the wake of the fall of Barataria, the brothers' financial fortunes ran at an uncertain ebb, and their close association with Humbert, Toledo, and other revolutionaries was an open secret. Everyone could see the hopeless impracticality and infighting that crippled the filibustering projects, and there was little reason to expect future efforts to be less disastrous than past. Rather than risk themselves and their means on wild schemes of conquest, the Laffites could earn sure money by feeding Spain information on the insurgents' plans. With no vessels of their own at the moment, they were out of the privateering business, but they could reestablish their fleet with what they earned from Spain, who might even allow them to privateer as a cover for their espionage. In short, they might have it both ways.
Jean soon fell into the perfect means of making the brothers useful to Spain. In December he learned from someone in the French émigré community of a supposed plot by the exiled emperor's brother Joseph to locate a colony of refugees somewhere in Texas. Laffite also heard—or said he heard—rumors of a plan to incite a slave rebellion in Cuba, probably to distract the Spaniards while the new Texas colony was planted. He later claimed that he thought it a fantastical scheme at the time, one that he dismissed out of hand. In fact he may have invented the whole thing in order to have dramatic evidence of the kind of information the brothers could provide. The same day Laffite supposedly learned these things, he met with Latour, who almost certainly took him to see Luis Onís. 87
Onís had been running his shadow legation in Philadelphia for at least five years. Even so, he remained in constant contact with officials in Washington, lobbying for actions such as Madison's September 1 proclamation—though Onís, like most Spaniards, suspected it was a hollow gesture. Onís and his friends believed that unofficially the Americans wanted Florida and Texas, and preferred that rebel movements evict Spain from the Americas entirely. For this reason, Onís ran the intelligence system in the United States, the Caribbean, and New Spain that engaged Latour, and would be interested in meeting Jean Laffite.88
The timing of this meeting was wonderfully coincidental, for on November 17 Pierre had entered into an agreement with Picornell and Sedella for the brothers to spy for Spain. If he sent word at once to his brother, it could have reached Jean at the same time that he met with Onís, and certainly by December 28 Onís knew of Pierre's bargain. Surely Pierre did write to Jean, for there was a spate of good news. Earlier in the year, on July 29 the court awarded Jean the proceeds from the sale of some property seized at Barataria.89 Better yet, when Livingston filed a petition for the recovery of sixteen pieces of gold plate and eight cannon, Dick assented to the motion, and on July 29 all parties agreed to returning the gold plate, though Patterson would retain the cannon.90 No one thought it wise to turn artillery back to a man so closely tied to smuggling. Though subsequent judgments went against the Laffites, Pierre could tell Jean well before December that the brothers had more money available for their projects. 91 And on a more personal note, just as he was to leave for Washington, Jean probably got another letter with the news that he had become a father on November 4 when Catherine Villard gave birth to a son she named Jean Pierre.92
Jean went to Washingto
n in December to press his case for restitution or reparations for the losses at Barataria. Congress had begun its session four days into the month, and to persuade the representatives from Louisiana on whom he called Jean brought with him copies of the Lockyer documents and his own correspondence with Blanque, which he had retrieved earlier that spring on Livingston's advice.93 Jean also carried a list of the brothers' vessels taken at Barataria, and the commissions or pretended letters of marque under which they sailed, to demonstrate that the charges of piracy against them were unfounded.94
Unfortunately, no one in officialdom was interested. In the wake of normalization of relations with Spain, restoring ships to men who had plundered Spanish vessels under questionable papers, or no papers at all, would have been a prime diplomatic blunder. The Laffites' well-known connection with the invasion plans Madison had condemned made a sympathetic reception even more unlikely. Jean may have gained an interview with Secretary of State Monroe, since Latour visited with Monroe a couple of times this winter.95 He would have tried to gain audiences with Attorney General Rush, who had been an agent in quashing the piracy indictments, and perhaps with the secretary of the treasury, Alexander Dallas. Members of Louisiana's congressional delegation offered less attractive targets. The Laffites had no known connections with either of the senators, James Brown and Eligius Fromentin, and could expect little sympathy from Representative Thomas Boiling Robertson, a friend of Judge Hall's who had earlier condemned the Baratarians as "brigands."
Given the boldness with which the brothers customarily approached high officials, Jean probably bypassed everyone initially and took his plea directly to Madison. He drafted a letter in French, and got someone, perhaps Latour, to translate it into passable but awkward English on December 27. Typically, he began with flattery of Madison's "benevolent dispositions," meaning the pardons, and then begged the president's agency in gaining the favor of Dallas, "whose decision could but be in my favour, if he only was well acquainted with my disinterrested conduct during the last attempt of the Britanic fources on Louisiana." Laffite went on to describe how, with utter disregard of his own interests, he acted for the welfare of the nation in the crisis, and declined to let his ships leave Barataria even after he learned of the impending Patterson raid. He told Madison that in spite of his crews' protests about the loss of their property, he assured them that "if my property should be ceised I had not the least apprehention of the equity of the U. S. once they would be convinced of the cinserity of my conduct."
To emphasize his patriotism and self-sacrifice, he averred that he kept his ships at Barataria in order to detain his crews there, and thus "retain about four hundred skillful artillers in the country which could but be of the utmost importance for its defense." Even after the raid, at the LaBranche plantation he had tried to rally the people of the German Coast to defend the state. Showing that Laffite was well aware that service with Jackson had made the "pirate-patriots" celebrities in the national press, he boasted that "my conduct since that period is notorious." The country was now safe and at peace, he went on. "I claim no merit for having like all the inhabitants of the state, cooperated in its wellfair [for] in this my conduct has been dictated by the impulse of my proper centiments." However, now he felt justified in asking for "the equity of the Government of the U. S. upon which I always relied for the restitution of at least that portion of my property which will not deprive the treasury of the U. S. of anny of its own funs." 96
The president never acknowledged Laffite's letter.97 There was ample testimony in Hall's court that the commissions of the Laffite vessels were unlawful, making both the ships and their prizes and goods forfeit. The brothers were fortunate to be free of indictments and able to walk the streets of New Orleans unmolested. They could expect nothing more from this administration after the pardon and nolle prosse scheme, and it would not interfere with the decisions coming from Hall's bench in prize cases already decided or to come. Madison's failure to respond also reflected his official policy toward the Mexican and South American insurgents and their American sympathizers, as stated in his proclamation. Ultimately, the absence of any indication of aid or sympathy from the president crippled Laffite's hopes of redress from Rush or Dallas, and Jean may not have taken his appeal any further after waiting long enough to realize that the president would not countenance his plea.
It could not have helped Laffite's case that the day he wrote to Madison, the press reported that at the end of October Toledo had returned to New Orleans from another trip to the Mexican coast. He brought with him yet another would-be representative, José Manuel de Herrera, the Mexican junta's newly appointed minister plenipotentiary to the United States. With them came the news that the insurgents now controlled much of the open country in Mexico, leaving the major towns isolated from one another.98 Washington had no intention of receiving Herrera or acknowledging the revolutionaries until they succeeded on their own, but his arrival with the notorious Toledo in New Orleans, and their obvious intention to raise men and money in Louisiana, made embarrassingly public just how little Madison's proclamation mattered. Worse, the news arrived only a week after Onís presented his ambassadorial credentials. 99 But at least with both Jean and Onís in the city on December 28 the ambassador gave his blessing to the employment of the Laffite brothers as spies.100
General Jackson was in Washington as well, having arrived in early November. Citizens held a grand ball in his honor across the Potomac in Alexandria on December 7, though he was too ill to attend. He remained in the city until Christmas Eve, and Laffite likely attempted to see the general to solicit his support, though if Old Hickory was sympathetic, he appears to have done nothing to further the brothers' cause.101 Perhaps Laffite even attended the ball if he reached Washington in time. Years later he told people that he lived lavishly, spending thousands of dollars in fashionable pursuits, but the facts of the brothers' financial conditions belie that.102 He probably spent his days as his limited funds allowed.
While in Washington Laffite learned of the United States Navy's action against the Mediterranean pirates operating out of Algiers. Stephen Decatur returned to the capital to be hailed as a hero. Even more disturbing was the news from New Orleans. Word came that Morelos, the insurgent leader who originally sent Bean to Louisiana for help, had been captured as his Congress retreated, and was executed on December 22. Then came news of a more direct and threatening disaster for those already practicing the corsairing trade. Cartagena had fallen.
Cartagena's role as an incubator for privateers, legal and illicit, ended in early October 1815 when Spanish gunboats attacked. The siege lasted for 106 days, with Jannet and other alumni of Barataria trying to defend the city's water approaches with their small fleet. Aury commanded a dozen vessels, and fought several indecisive engagements with Spanish warships. The factions within the city even united for a time, but on October 8 Aury and others led a revolt against the military commander who had defied Bolivar. By November the Cartagenans were in a desperate condition, more than twenty-five hundred dying of hunger and the rest eating beef hides and what Aury described as "a thousand other filthy things." Finally on December 6 Aury abandoned the defense and spent four hours sailing a fleet of fourteen privateers and merchantmen loaded with refugees past enemy guns to escape to San Domingue. 103
Rough seas swamped several of the ships, and the Spaniards captured others, but some captains made it through. One was Jannet, who like Beluche and Aury had a legitimate commission from Cartagena. He was almost the last to leave, carrying the news to Bolivar that there was no hope for the city. Another was William Mitchell, commanding the Cometa under the city's colors, with the fleeing governor of the city aboard. Once beyond Spain's guns, he abruptly put ashore and marooned his passengers on or near the island of San Andres after robbing them and killing the governor. Not content with that, he attacked San Andres, killed yet another governor and several others, gathered plunder estimated at $40,000, and then took twenty slaves.104 Finally on
December 10 he boarded a Spanish vessel and relieved her of some $25,000 in specie.105
It was a perfect example of how the violence and barbarity that lay beneath the surface of privateering could suddenly and frighteningly erupt once the restraints of legal pretense were removed. Given the choice between quitting their calling or continuing without proper commissions, some were willing to choose the latter, and with it the implicit understanding that their plundering need have no limits, since they would face charges of piracy anyway. The collapse of Cartagena negated any remaining legitimacy of its privateering commissions. If the Laffites ever had legitimate letters of marque from the infant republic, they evaporated in the flames and the pillaging.106
This news shook the revolutionary representatives in Washington, just as it heartened Onís. In the capital Jean Laffite found and probably moved on the fringes of a small circle of insurgent agents, in whom Onís took much interest, and about whom he probably tried to secure information through Laffite. Garcia de Sena, an agent from Bolivar's new Venezuelan republic, was in Washington then, as was José Carrere, an agent from José de San Martin's insurgent Buenos Aires, now meeting with Baltimore privateers in hopes of emulating Cartagena's corsair policy. Pedro Gual was there acting for Bogotá and New Granada, which Bolivar hoped to join with Venezuela as the United Provinces of New Granada, and Manuel Rodriguez Torices, former governor of the now defunct Cartagena, was living in Philadelphia, where old General James Wilkinson spent his time writing his memoirs and probably mixing in the brew of intrigue.
Laffite met more than once with Gual in Washington, and discussed ambitions for several of the insurgent colonies. Gual told him he had high hopes that Washington would recognize New Granada before long. This boded well for the Laffites and their friends, of course, as an independent New Granada could grant letters of marque to privateers. Of more immediate and personal concern to Jean, though, was the news Gual had of Mexican affairs. Gual wrote to Toledo, and probably said to Jean, that if Vera Cruz and Tampico could not be taken soon, then the Congress in Mexico would need to open another port on its Gulf coast in order to establish an admiralty court and properly hand out commissions on its soil. At the same time Gual wrote to Mexican insurgent Luis Iturribarria to encourage his efforts. Ample armaments and everything else awaited them in Baltimore—information that Laffite may have provided after his visit to the city—if only the insurgents could open a port to receive them. The execution of Morelos was a blow, but still Gual felt optimistic. What he did not have was money.107 On February 8, entirely unaware that Jean was now in the employ of Spain, Gual entrusted his correspondence to Laffite, who promised to deliver it to Toledo.
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