The Memoirs of Jean Laffite

Book Synopsis: Jean Laffite was born in Santo Domingo and raised by a Spanish-Jewish grandmother who instilled in him a hatred for the Spanish Crown and those who served it. Later this hatred grew to include the British. Following in the footsteps of his eldest brother Alexandre, Jean and his brother Pierre became privateers for France under the command of their uncle René Beluchai. Laffite describes in detail the capture of a Spanish ship and its crew’s fate. After a period of seizing enemy vessels, the two brothers go to France to join Napoleon’s armies. Instead, they find themselves in enemy prisons, and upon release they return to the Caribbean where they resume depredations against Spanish and British ships. The slave uprising in Haiti sends the brothers to the safety of Louisiana, where they establish Barataria as a smuggling center into New Orleans and up river. Jean and Louisiana governor Claiborne become enemies who mutually post rewards on the other’s head. Only the arrival of the British, offering a pardon and a bribe to Laffite, breaks the impasse between the Baratarians and the Americans. Laffite’s aid to General Andrew Jackson is well known and is the basis of his place in American history. After the victory, Jean received a pardon but no indemnification for his financial losses during the war years. Fruitless trips to Washington confirmed to Laffite the necessity of resuming old habits, and he established a new privateer settlement in Spanish territory on Galveston Island. A hurricane’s destruction and a changing world---backed by the power of the U.S. Navy --- led to the second dissolution of the Laffite enterprise. Jean and the last of his men quit the Galveston settlement as it flamed, lighted by their own hands. Freelance plundering became more and more dangerous until Jean and Pierre decided to call it quits and spread the rumor of their violent demise and burial on the Yucatan coast. The brothers split their swag, buried some, and went their separate ways. Jean, who had lost a young wife during the birth of their third child, found a young wife in Charleston, South Carolina. They began his second family in Philadelphia before moving to St. Louis, Missouri, to end their years. Jean Laffite maintained his anonymity but worked behind the scenes for causes he held dear. The former slaver became an abolitionist under the influence of his new wife, and after a visit to Europe in 1847, he even became a socialist supporter of the young Karl Marx. He saw himself as a benefactor of mankind, but even at the end of his memoirs he did not forget to proclaim "Down with the British dragon!"