The Pirates Laffite

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The Pirates Laffite Page 28

by William C. Davis


  When Herrera wrote to his superiors, he kept from them the embarrassing manner of his reception in New Orleans, and instead told them that officials had received him warmly He dissembled further when he said that he had put together a company "composed of the most respectable & opulent citizens and traders," in order to assist the junta with military aid. He named those he thought most committed to what he called his "Patriotic" association, including Bean, West, Livingston, and Peire, and claimed that Claiborne had orders from Washington to protect the revolutionaries and treat their agents kindly. He said that he had persuaded Patterson to carry his correspondence on the Firebrand under pretext of cruising, and to bring back the junta's correspondence and the money he requested. He also asked that letters of marque be sent him to hand out in New Orleans, revealing yet again the concerns of the "associates."9

  Herrera's stay in New Orleans was necessarily brief before he returned to Mexico on his mission. Meanwhile the "associates" sent the Petit Milan on another voyage delivering munitions, and she made a third trip in January 1816 before the court finally seized her for auction.10 Lameson had lost the Presidente by this time, but he took over the schooner Indiana and made the voyage to Boquilla de Piedras with more goods for the rebels, a run he would make several times in the next year. Pierre Laffite had also been preparing to put a ship into the business. He had bought the Presidente when the court auctioned it late that summer, probably with some of the proceeds from the restitution Jean had secured in July or with financial backing from some of the "associates." By September the ship was his.

  Pierre engaged a carpenter to make repairs to the main deck, including removing the base for a pivot gun, which suggested that he intended to use her as a conventional merchantman. His cargo was to be muskets for the revolutionaries, but in the true spirit of profiteering, he would not sell new muskets. Rather, in October he and his backers acquired close to five hundred worn and damaged weapons left over from the war. Pierre took them to gunsmith Theon Barberet on Toulouse Street, showed him a letter from Humbert, and told him the guns were for the general. He gave Barberet a month to repair them and then had them delivered to the house he shared with Marie and Catherine and the children.11

  In addition to West, Toledo and Herrera met with others of what Morphy later described as "the principal armorers and captains of the Baratarian pirates." 12 One of them was Pierre Laffite. He asked Toledo to pay him in full for the used guns and take charge of sailing them to Mexico, but Toledo declined, not least because Herreras funds were already depleted and Toledo did not have enough left for his own purposes. Laffite also spoke with Herrera, asking him to undertake to get the Presidente to Mexico to deliver dispatches and goods, but he, too, refused.13 There would be no easy money derived from them now on, and there was no certainty of the depth of the pockets of the Congress in Mexico.

  Pierre decided on a change of plan. He engaged his own captain, Louis Fougard, and told Toledo when they met in the city street one day that he planned to sail the Presidente to St. Bartholomew's in the Leeward Islands.14 Yet a few days later on November 6 Pierre had auctioneer Francois Dutillet sell the Presidente. Officially the buyer was Charles Parent, and he certainly paid Laffite, and Pierre paid Dutillet his commission. In fact, however, the vessel went to a partnership of shareholders, all of them New Orleans merchants, and they were almost certainly a front for Pierre. Made in a public forum, the sale was meant to divert the prying official eyes that might look into anything with which the Laffites were connected.15

  By November 25 Herrera was back from Mexico and disillusioned by the mercenary nature of the people with whom he was dealing. In a November 26 letter he advised the Congress that they should "proceed with the greatest caution in the mode of accepting their services and offers," and should withhold the letters of marque, which would be used for rank piracy.16 The Laffites were just as disappointed in the "associates." West had gobbled up most of Herreras cash before Laffite could get at him. Duncan had his own vessel now, having bought the General Bolivar and converted her to the General Jackson, and was pursuing his own interests, as was Sauvinet. The big merchant backers were going to look out for themselves. Once they had enough of their own vessels such as Duncan's, especially with independent mariners such as Gambi and Dominique able to enlist all the crewmen required, they might have no need for the Laffite brothers, and no need to share any increasingly illusory profits.

  Someone else in New Orleans perceived this shift. Morphy had watched for a year as enthusiasm for Mexican independence grew in New Orleans. He saw how men such as Toledo or the Baratarians and their backers "hope to make a quick fortune." When Picornell indicated his wish to return to the Spanish fold the past spring, Onís dangled a pardon before him while putting him to work. Onís told him that he could prove himself deserving of clemency if he broke up the Tampico plot and that those involved included the Laffites. To give Picornell some ammunition, Onís lied, telling him 160,000 soldados were ready in the mother country, and 25,000 of them would soon be sent to Mexico to put down the rebels. That would make filibustering hopeless, indeed suicidal. "There is nothing more effective for strengthening the good intentions of a man who has just forsaken a bad cause than to persuade him that the plans of the revolutionists will be disrupted and their atrocities punished with the severity they deserve," Onís told an associate in August.17 Yet the ambassador also held out the clemency that Picornell was to receive as a carrot for winning over others. Speaking for the king, Onís told him to "assure unfaithful ones in his name that they will find his arms open from the day that they submit and forever unless they commit new offenses."18

  But first Spain had to know what was happening inside the counsels of the plotters. In fact, almost everyone knew the outline of the plot from the outset. John Dick knew something was going on as early as July. Though he felt an ardent sympathy with the liberation movements in Spanish America, he warned the attorney general that up to five hundred well-armed men, including former United States Army officers, were gathered at Belle Isle, a point of land at the mouth of Bayou Atchafalaya. They would be taken by sea to Matagorda and then march on La Bahia and thence to San Antonio. He also heard rumors of a one thousand-strong expedition gathering at Natchitoches, with more men expected from Kentucky and Tennessee. He was not sure who commanded the Belle Isle crowd, but he suspected it was Perry. 19 Claiborne learned of it the same day, and confided his concern to the secretary of state in Washington. "The Civil authority of Louisiana is not competent to the suppression of these Expeditions, and if the Government wants them put down, force must be applied," he advised. As usual, the people of the state seemed in favor of such enterprises, and he confessed that there was an impression among the people that the filibusters "are secretly countenanced by the administration."20

  Of course, despite official protestations, including Madison's September proclamation, Washington did tacitly approve of the filibusters. Madison hoped for a repeat of the West Florida experience, in which locals wrested territory from Spain in their own name, then affiliated themselves with the United States. Indeed, the United States believed that it rightfully owned Texas, at least as far west as the Nueces River, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The resumption of full diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain in June had opened negotiations to settle the western boundary of Louisiana, but if filibusters took Texas in the meantime and handed it over to Madison, so much the better in weakening Spain's position at the table.

  And so Washington did not respond to advice of the expeditions with celerity. Indeed, for months it did not respond at all. Meanwhile the Spaniards watched in frustration throughout the summer as the preparations continued under their noses. A loyal Spaniard in Vera Cruz had learned of the plot from an insurgent as early as May.21 When Perry left New Orleans on July 10 with close to four hundred men, a very well-informed Spaniard sent word to officials in Texas of the filibusters' passing down Bayou Lafourche, and warned that they intended to
embark on vessels for Matagorda to march on La Bahía. They had no artillery or cavalry with them, and appeared to be poorly organized, he thought. Toledo was not with them, having fallen out with the plot's leaders. Three days later Teodoro Martinez learned of the expedition expected to come overland, and warned of that, too. 22

  More detailed intelligence on the second part of the invasion came from a citizen of Natchitoches who happened to be named Paul Bouet Lafitte, though of no relation to the brothers Laffite. On July 21 his sons Cezar and Luis returned from a visit to Natchitoches, where they had seen Humbert dressed like a herdsman in a deerskin jacket, on foot and passing through in a great hurry with about fifty men on their way to the rendezvous on the Louisiana side of the Sabine. Revealing yet more of the infighting among the filibusters, Humbert let it be known that he thought Toledo an impostor. Displaying his commission as a major general, received from Gutiérrez two weeks earlier before he left New Orleans, Humbert tried to enlist those he encountered by promising that the expedition was well funded, with "plenty of money in Laffites vessels."23

  Watching the preparations at close range, Morphy divined almost exactly the same details, of which he advised Apodaca on July 20. By mid-August Onís in Philadelphia knew the full outline of the latest scheme "to repeat the horror scenes, robbery and murder" of the 1813 Gutiérrez expedition. He expected a "Corps of Adventurers" from Kentucky and Tennessee to join the Louisianans in a concentration at the Sabine, where they would be led by "the monsters Bernardo Gutiérrez, Toledo, Anaya, Humbert and their gang." He knew that bronze cannon and one thousand muskets had been shipped from New Orleans to Natchez to be taken overland to Natchitoches, and that rations for the soldiers had been sent to the ships to be commanded by "the famous pirate Vincente Gamby." Gambi would transport the "tramp army" to the mouth of the Sabine, and from there it would march upstream to invade. Onís complained to Monroe of the facilities given to rebel privateers in United States ports, but had no illusions that anything would be done. 24

  Dick protested that in recent months Hall's court had seized and returned to their original owners nine Spanish prize ships fitted out in United States ports, but Onís regarded this as a mere gesture, and so it was.25 All Morphy had to do was stand in the street in New Orleans and watch as merchant banker Benjamin Morgan busily bought all the muskets, pistols, and sabers he could get from private homes and shipped them, along with food, in pirogues to Barataria where the naval contingent was to gather. Convinced that the United States was behind this latest enterprise, Morphy warned Apodaca that it might involve seven or eight vessels mounting more than twenty cannon in all, with additional launches and pirogues transporting six hundred to eight hundred volunteers and another four hundred to five hundred from the United States Army. The good news was that the plotters were squabbling among themselves as usual, all asserting the right to command and "disputing the authority of the Chief." Morphy warned everyone he could, sending word to Apodaca by a special sailboat.26

  By November 16 Morphy knew that Perry had left the Louisiana coast the month before. When news of Madison's September proclamation reached Louisiana, it made Perry's position precarious. Even before then on September 5 Patterson, satisfied that there was substance to the reports of filibusters massing on Belle Isle, sent Lieutenant Cunningham with his gunboat to disperse them, by force if necessary.27 Perry knew it was getting too warm for him in Louisiana. Indeed, three Spaniards who wanted to join Perry in his campaign were made so fearful by rumors of Americans and loyal Spaniards watching the byways, waiting to kill them, that they never left New Orleans, but stayed at Pierre Laffite's home. 28 In October Perry embarked a first contingent of his command and landed them at what he would name Bolivar Point opposite the eastern end of Galveston Island. When the rest of his men had been transported there they would move on to Matagorda, and when Gutiérrez arrived overland, they would attack. Paul Lafitte learned of the movement and advised authorities in Mexico that "Laffite's vessels" were a part of the operation, "but their only object is plunder."29

  Through the summer and fall Picornell worked with Morphy in trying to penetrate the conspirators and set the leaders against one another. This required little effort, of course. Morphy helped to discredit Anaya, and employed three men to infiltrate the lower ranks of plotters or backers. Picornell, meanwhile, instituted legal proceedings against some Baratarians who cooperated with Toledo, though not against the Laffites, and at some risk to himself harbored witnesses in his home pending their testimony.30 Even then, however, neither Picornell nor Morphy had enough discretionary cash to buy information, and Onís could not help since his own funds were limited.31

  Thus Picornell saw with dismay Toledo's return from Mexico with both money and Herrera. Picornell decided he must penetrate their schemes by "attracting to our party one of the persons who were in the secret of all the plans and trusted in part with their execution." Studiously, he considered "the character of each one of those who met in the secret councils"—Livingston, Davezac, Duncan, West, Grymes, Nolte, Patterson, even Duplessis, and of course the Laffites—and concluded that his best option lay with Pierre Laffite, "whom I thought the most proper and the easiest." Picornell's reasons for settling on the elder brother as "the easiest" are not hard to surmise. Because the Laffites did not have the money to be major investors or outfitters, their potential gain would be less than that of their associates, and their role essentially reduced to hired transport. Privateering profit might be available to them if a port issuing commissions were opened on the Mexican coast, but having just escaped from the indictments of the federal court, Pierre and Jean might be reluctant to put themselves at risk again. The risk was twofold since they had taken or been involved in the plunder of enough Spanish vessels to expect summary treatment if they should fall into the hands of Spaniards while corsairing the Gulf. More simply, their Baratarian establishment was gone and the Laffites no longer commanded the authority they once enjoyed. Moreover, Pierre was almost always short of cash.

  Picornell hoped to show Pierre that the path of his self-interest led away from the filibusters and toward an alliance with Spain, especially if Apodaca could include cash in return and the promise of royal forgiveness for past acts against Spanish shipping. Picornell first spoke with Pierre on the subject in early fall. Pierre went out of his way to magnify his importance and to make himself a more attractive target. He told the Spaniard that he and Jean were the sons of a Spanish mother and had been raised among Spaniards, which was why they had always shown kindness to their Spanish prisoners. He convinced Picornell that he was "good and honest in meeting his obligations," which many a New Orleans creditor might have challenged, and went on to exaggerate the Laffite brothers' influence among the Creole and San Domingan people of Louisiana while averring that he felt nothing but hatred for the Americans. Picornell left without a commitment from Pierre Laffite but convinced that "this man alone if furnished with means of offering some payment to his people will easily be able to ruin the projects that our enemies are forming in the Gulf."32

  Picornell had gone fishing, and taken the bait himself. In fact, the Laffites' friend Latour believed that Pierre had initiated the business by offering to spy for Sedella, and Picornell was getting information on insurgent activities from an unidentified source as early as February 1815. Hopes for such a shift in the Laffites' endeavors could even have been behind Jean's trip to Washington, as the brothers adjusted to the changing landscape. Just as likely, Pierre exaggerated his role to Latour as he would to Picornell. Without question, however, Pierre Laffite had long ere this assessed Picornell and Sedella as carefully as they evaluated him now.

  Then in mid-November, days after Toledo and Herrera disappointed Pierre's hopes for his shipment of used guns, New Orleans merchant Angel Benito de Ariza returned to town. He had helped to turn Picornell's loyalty the year before, and now he joined him in the courting of Laffite. In a series of meetings over several days Picornell pressed his suit, and finally L
affite let himself be won. Picornell and Ariza arranged to take Laffite to the corner of Orleans Street behind the church, to the rude hut of "Père Antoine" on the evening of November 17. There Sedella, who commanded the confidence of Apodaca far more than they did, would give his approval and witness Laffite's promises. If Pierre later tried to back out, no one would doubt the priest should he speak publicly. Even if they did not come to terms, Pierre could not retreat without risking his willingness to betray his associates becoming known. That could be fatal. The meeting went well. Pierre told the padre, dressed no doubt as usual in a coarse dark brown habit, that "being informed as he was of all secrets, plans and projects that were forming at this time and in this city by the traitor Toledo, the insurgent José Manual Herrera and the rest," he would advise the Spaniards of whatever he learned well in time for them to "not only avoid but destroy these plans entirely." With typical boldness, Pierre offered to confirm for Apodaca what he said "by any required test, over any of the themes he had indicated or he was about to indicate."

  In return Pierre asked for a general pardon from Spain for himself and two others, one no doubt Jean and the other probably Fougard, and of course for payment commensurate with his services. He also said that he had two ships, the Presidente and likely the one that Jean was purchasing in the East, and for them he wanted safe passes in case they were captured by Spanish warships. He promised to give the Spaniards advance notice of the vessels' sailings including their purposes and destinations. Showing that the business of clandestine operations came naturally to his turn of mind, he also asked that, should his ships be taken, Morphy pursue the usual legal action against them so as not to arouse suspicion. He demanded an early agreement to his terms, or he would regard the deal as void. Then as evidence of good faith, he told them what he knew of Toledo and Herrera's plans, with some embellishment to make his information seem more valuable. They intended to foment and coordinate rebellion in several Spanish provinces in the New World, he said, and had negotiated contracts with several American firms to manufacture arms and artillery. At that very moment, he said, a vessel was outfitting in New Orleans to take the contracts to the Congress for its approval. It was also to deliver two thousand muskets and a printing press to produce proclamations calling citizens to arms in rebellion.

 

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