The young commodore needed some reassurance, for he had heard that in the wake of Morelos's execution, the insurgent Mexican Congress had essentially dissolved. The "associates" did not know it yet, but this particular independence movement was flickering out, a victim of its own factionalism and disorganization, and hardly aided by the drain of precious funds to New Orleans. Hereafter there would be only isolated bands of revolutionaries, each loyal to their self-proclaimed strongmen. Mexican privateering commissions were worthless unless a new resistance movement could establish itself on Mexican soil with a claim to sovereignty. Aury expected to make such a claim at Galveston, with himself as El Supremo.
Over two days, August 5 and 6, Aury's agent attended a meeting of the "associates." Patterson, Duplessis, Livingston, Duncan, Herrera, Peire, Dupuis, and several others were there to hear that Aury now had a fleet of fifteen armed vessels and ten prizes, two of which had been armed. More than 150 captured crewmen were in custody, and some were joining the privateers. The agent told the assembled that Aury also had carpenters and smiths and other skilled artisans to help establish his port at Matagorda, unaware that Aury would change his mind and go to Galveston. The interest of the "associates," which had flagged when Herrera and Toledo could not wring more money out of Mexico, was revived by Aury's $7,000 and the indication of more to come. The money also renewed Herrera's influence after the 20 million peso credit line fiasco. Now the "associates" assured Aury's man that they had five vessels in the Mississippi armed and ready to join him. Additionally, Duncan's General Bolivar would be leaving in two days for Boquilla de Piedras with twelve hundred muskets and four field cannon, and Grymes and the now-returned Perry would go along.
Certainly the collapse of the Mexican Congress was discussed, but while a blow, it would not be a disaster so long as a port could be established to continue the pretense of a government. Someone suggested that Aury use Matagorda only as a temporary port and supply base and the old joint attack plan be dusted off. Herrera was still officially the minister from the all-but-defunct Mexican junta. They decided to pay off his debts in New Orleans and send him with a command of 120 whites and mulattoes, the former led by Peire and the latter under Colonel Joseph Savary, to join Aury. Herrera would take civil control of the port, establish a prize court, issue letters of marque, and rule jointly with Aury, with sufficient support from the "associates" to stay two months on the Texas coast. Meanwhile Perry and Gutiérrez would lead an assembly of men overland to meet them, the "associates" guaranteeing to supply necessary arms and provisions. When everything was in place, after about six weeks, Aury's fleet would transport the army to a point on the Mexican coast from which it would launch an invasion while Aury sailed on to take Tampico or Vera Cruz and establish a permanent port and seat of government. Meanwhile the "associates" would pay Pierre Laffite a fee of $1,000, to keep a small boat running between Matagorda and New Orleans to maintain constant communications.
Pierre negotiated the purchase of such a boat immediately after the meeting adjourned, and was making arrangements for a voyage to Matagorda when he encountered Picornell in the street. Morphy and Picornell knew that something was going on. Throughout the day they had seen men from the meeting making hurried calls on other confederates. Picornell asked Pierre to reveal what was happening, but Laffite was in a rush and told him the street was too public a place to be seen talking. However, he hinted that "a lot was going on and it was big," and agreed to meet with Picornell and Sedella in a few minutes at a private spot. There, Pierre put everything in Sedella's hands and vouched for its accuracy, promising to tell them more when he returned from Matagorda. At once his information was on the way to Morphy and Apodaca.91
Sedella still tried to preserve Laffite's anonymity. Picornell had been referring to him as "Number 14" since May, but now Sedella changed the code name to "Number 13," perhaps a conscious echo of the identification given to General Wilkinson when he spied for Spain a decade earlier. Père Antoine need not have bothered. Apodaca had declared in January that "even when he's hiding his name, I know he's a French citizen named Lafite." 92 Number 13's information seriously compromised Patterson, for now the Spaniards knew that the commodore purposely allowed privateers to leave New Orleans, and Duplessis was equally culpable. When the news got to Onís, he renewed his complaints in Washington.93 As for Pierre Laffite, he got ready to leave for Matagorda. Soon he learned of Aury's shift to Galveston, though, and of the disaster to several of his ships on the bar. This was only the beginning.
Aury managed to get some of his prize goods and artillery safely to shore, and started building huts and repairing the ships. Soon he had about two hundred men, mostly from Haiti, and many of them surly because they had been promised riches and not hard work on a barren island. By September 7 the crew of one ship mutinied. Soon the uprising spread to other crews, and the next day several of Aury's men stepped into his tent and demanded that he give himself up. He reached for a dagger, but pistols went off and Aury went down with bullets through both hands and a wound in his chest. With him incapacitated, the mutineers loaded most of the prize goods onto three ships, set another vessel ablaze to discourage pursuit, and sailed off.94
On September 9 Herrera arrived to find not the confident adventurer ready for action that the "associates" expected, but a badly wounded and indignant young man with few remaining ships and even less booty.95 Herrera had planned to leave New Orleans with Peire, Humbert, Savary, and Sauvinet—an enthusiastic supporter of occupying Galveston—on August 24, leaving Iturribarria in his place. However, it was August 30 before Herrera got around to registering his power of attorney for Iturribarria to transact business on his behalf, and so the others left first.96 Still, Herrera brought the invalid Aury the cheering news that Francisco Xavier Mina had recently arrived in Baltimore from London with supplies, fifty men, twenty-five hundred muskets, nine cannon, fifty barrels of gunpowder, and boxes of pistols and sabers, harness, and uniforms. 97 A lifelong opponent of the monarchy, Mina had come over to the cause of Mexican independence two years before, and after raising more men and money in Baltimore, he would be sailing for the Gulf coast near the end of September. When he arrived, they could reassemble the Galveston base, and Aury and Mina together could continue the enterprise.98
On September 13 Herrera drafted and signed a proclamation declaring Galveston a port under the nonexistent authority of the now-defunct Mexican Congress. A few days later Herrera created Galveston's government, with a collector of customs and revenue to receive and distribute money and merchandise taken by the privateers, and an admiralty court to give a semblance of legitimacy to the condemnation and sale or disposal of goods taken, as well as to settle disputes between the privateers. He also appointed a notary to witness, record, and authenticate documents and commissions, all to give the appearance of legitimacy.99 Herrera named the convalescent Aury governor, and raised the checkerboard flag.100 Unfortunately, with the myopia that afflicted all of the filibuster leaders, Aury placed only his Cartagenan cronies in prominent positions in the government. His exclusion of Peire and the Americans was a blow to ambition and vanity alike that divided the men at Galveston into two camps. In October Peire would leave with Herrera for Mexico, Major Perry coming to Galveston in Peire's place, but the tension did not abate. Meanwhile more volunteers arrived. The day that Herrera named Aury governor, Morphy in New Orleans reported that "every day much small shipping sails from this port for Matagorda [Galveston], some with provisions, others with various persons who are speculators in prize goods, and in all of them go passengers who it is said are going to seek their fortune in the Kingdom of Mexico."101 Indeed they did, and very soon the Laffites would be among them.
FIFTEEN
The Birth of Galveston 1816–1817
These are our realms, no limits to their sway—
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every cha
nge.
THE ISLAND HAD been known to sailors for generations, under a number of names. Some called it St. Louis Island. Spaniards shipwrecked there in the sixteenth century referred to it as Malhado, or "Isle of Doom,"1 perhaps because of the rattlesnakes. In fact others labeled it Culebra Island, a name given to more than one of the snake-infested barrier islands along the coast. Galveston, its current name, honored Spanish explorer Bernardo Galvez. The island stretched thirty miles between the Gulf and Galveston Bay, yet was nowhere more than two or three miles in width or ten or twelve feet above sea level. A few clumps of trees near the island's center offered the only cover other than beach grass along the shore and more dense scrub behind the dunes. No one lived there year-round, but Karankawa Indians often came to fish.
Otherwise the island belonged to the snakes, some deer, alligators, and huge seasonal flocks of ducks and geese. "The whole island presents rather a dreary and forbidding aspect, with nothing to relieve the eye," a visitor would say a few years hence.2 The place did have some attractions, however, not the least the seafood, with oysters thick in the shallows, and abundant fish and turtle and crabs. Brackish water could be had by digging in the sand, while in the canebrakes on the interior wells sometimes produced good water. Moreover, the ground was dry, if low, broken by a few shallow bayous but with none of the miasmic swamps that made Barataria rather unhealthy in places. For Aury, the outstanding feature was, of course, the vast bay behind the island, offering many anchorages despite its frequent shallows. The island protected the bay from the Gulf, making the harbor accessible only by a quarter-mile-wide pass between the island and Bolivar Point. Even then, a bar with only twelve to fifteen feet of water above it ran across the Gulf side of the pass, allowing the privateers in, but not deeply laden craft or heavy warships. 3 The Gulf swell could make it dangerous even for lighter vessels, as Aury learned. A small island that some called Little Campechey sat just inside the pass behind the eastern tip of the big island, separated from it by a narrow channel only six feet deep that made passage very difficult.4
When Aury arrived, Galveston was a desert with only three or four huts of boards and sails left from Perry's departed men.5 Before long, Aury ruled from a small square earthen fort with half a dozen cannon on the bay side near the western end of the island. The flag of the Mexican junta flew over the fort, while within it his "government" seemed quite regular to men on the island. Commercial trade with New Orleans and elsewhere came and went, Aury's customs house collecting duties and making inspections according to form. Aury set up a "court of justice" to try men brought ashore after breaking rules aboard his ships. His court of admiralty ran smoothly, conveniently condemning as prizes virtually everything the privateers brought in, though American vessels were out of bounds. When he sent prize goods to New Orleans, Aury removed all marks from the bales and boxes to prevent their original owners from identifying and claiming them in the federal court. 6 By October vessels were leaving New Orleans almost daily with men and supplies bound for Galveston, and returning with prize goods deposited in or near Barataría to be loaded in two-hundred-pound bales onto mules for transport into the city.7
In one cargo Abner Duncan sent to Boquilla de Piedras the Rebecca, captained by Laméson, carried ten cases of muskets and rifles, thirty-six thousand gunflints, eighty kegs of gunpowder, two cases of sabers, two cases of cartridges for cannon, a case of dragoon pistols, a cannon, a barrel of other ammunition, shovels and spades, medicines, twenty barrels of salted meat, sixty barrels of biscuit, and nine hundred pounds of cannonballs for "ballast." Excluding the powder, the value of the armament came to $6,316. After delivering her cargo in November, the Rebecca stopped at Galveston and was saluted by Aury's vessels as a privateer. There her owners sold her to Laméson, who changed her name to the Eugenie. In January 1817, with a crew of forty including Jean Desfarges, a longtime Baratarían, she raised the checkerboard flag of Mexico, though one man aboard saw clearly that what Laméson had was not a genuine commission but a blank one handed to him at Boquilla de Piedras.8 Legal or not, she joined the offspring of Galveston to prey on the Gulf.
The privateers brought a regular supply of goods to the island almost from the first, most without a formal commission. The indefatigable Captain Mitchell led a little fleet of small privateers funded by the "associates," operating out of Barataría, and equipped in New Orleans—leading Onís to complain to Monroe of "whole Squadrons of Pirates having been fitted out from thence." Mitchell had reportedly taken $320,000 in goods from recent prizes, kept $200,000 for his own and his crews' shares, and sent the rest to Aury's agent François Dupuis to deposit in the Bank of Louisiana, whose president Benjamin Morgan happened to be one of the "associates." 9 By the end of the year the privateers' deposits in Morgan's bank totaled $180,000 or more.10 Onís's demands and the notoriety of Mitchell's captures frightened American shippers and attracted attention that Patterson could not afford to ignore without exposing his involvement.11 Before he could react, however, Patterson landed right on the edge of an international controversy.
Patterson had at first refused to lend the Firebrand for any more voyages on behalf of the "associates."12 With some inducement, however, he changed his mind, and both the Enterprise and the General Jackson went to Nautla in May, the latter with a commission from Herrera on August 6 or 7. The General Jackson went to Boquilla de Piedras along with the Firebrandwhich was now acting as escort for an insurgent privateer. John Grymes went aboard the GeneralJackson, his cover story being that he was inspired by curiosity to see a country of which he had heard so much.13 He actually went to handle the sale of a cargo of munitions, but he was not able to complete the deal, so the vessels left to look for another port.
They were off Vera Cruz when the General Jackson took a small armed Spanish schooner, but then three Spaniard warships came in sight and attacked on August 27. Grymes shifted to the Firebrand which Patterson had refitted after purchase as a two-masted schooner for a crew of fifty-two and armed with one six-pounder cannon and half a dozen twelve-pounders. Under Lieutenant Cunningham, she was one of Patterson's best armed lesser warships, but she was no match for what came at her, and did not resist.14 Cunningham raised the Stars and Stripes, the commander of the Spanish flotilla held the Firebrand for a day and arrested Cunningham briefly before releasing the ships. The General Jackson sustained heavy damage, lost a mast, and limped away not to be seen again. Her prize escaped and sailed for New Orleans.
The Firebrand returned to New Orleans September 7, the day the mutiny against Aury commenced, and missed by hours encountering Herrera and his little squadron on their way to Galveston. 15 Thanks to the anti-Spanish sentiment prevailing in the city and the nation, Patterson miraculously escaped recrimination for putting a United States Navy ship at risk by escorting a privateer of an unrecognized insurrection, operating against a neutral state, in order to benefit private investors and perhaps himself Instead, a general expression of indignation over Spaniards firing on an American warship swept New Orleans.
On the morning of September 19 some two hundred men gathered at Maspero's coffeehouse. Grymes presided. The "associates" were well represented, and Morphy noted that several of the Baratarian leaders were present, no doubt Pierre Laffite among them.16 Duncan's loss was deplored. Speakers demanded that Governor Claiborne mobilize the militia. Others urged that Washington declare war on Spain—a move, of course, that promised unlimited financial benefit to the "associates" in the form of legitimate American privateering against Spanish shipping. The meeting adopted resolutions declaring the attack an affront to American honor that must be redressed. Clearly Spain sought to interfere with free navigation. While they were on the subject, the resolutions averred that Louisianans and Americans should resist any move to return any part of Louisiana to Spain in the negotiations with Onís. The meeting delegated Grymes, Duncan, and Davezac to take the resolutions to President Madison. "Our country is on the eve of a war," said one city editorial.17
Durin
g this first flush of indignation, Morphy briefly feared that Patterson would order out his squadron to find the Spaniards who attacked the Firebrand and bring them in.18 Elsewhere in the nation tempers were hot. Andrew Jackson told Livingston he wished Patterson had simply sunk the three Spanish warships before notifying the government of what had happened. Sinking them was the only way to cleanse the stain on the flag, even if doing so meant war.19 Onís was alarmed and feared for a time that the New Orleans resolutions would be effective. He asked Secretary of State Monroe for an official explanation of the whole affair, but seems never to have gotten one. In the end, an unidentified source reported that despite her flying the American flag the Firebrand had been mistaken for the privateer she once was, thanks to her rigging, and that was why the Spaniards attacked. Madison mentioned the incident obliquely in his December 3, 1816, annual message, with no word at all of the GeneralJackson or of the Firebrand's mission. After Madison ordered two warships to the Gulf and Onís assured him that it was all a misunderstanding, both nations were happy to let the matter drop.20
The Pirates Laffite Page 32