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Auguste Davezac, the Creole Celebrity That History Forgot

October 2, 2018 in American History, Caribbean History, general history, History, Legal History, Louisiana History

Major Davesac at the height of his speaking career

Major Davezac in the 1840s

A noise began from the back of the massive crowd, light at first, then swelling gradually as it spread, as the next speaker was introduced to the throng of some 6,000 present. The name of Major Davezac was repeated, ever more loudly, by a thousand voices, as an older gentleman removed his top hat and ascended to an outdoor platform lit by torches and colored lamps in Baltimore.

In addition to banners, the platform featured a large arch covered in hickory boughs interlaced with purple pokeberries and multi-colored dahlias. Some 1,500 ladies, all occupying the front seats, waved their white handkerchiefs and floral bouquets, a tribute paid to the old French Creole veteran who gazed out over the crowd and smiled as cheers for him began before he ever spoke__it was Sept. 21, 1844, and Major Auguste Davezac, the right hand man of Gen. Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans 29 years earlier, was ready to deliver one of his dynamic Democratic speeches for the Polk-Dallas presidential ticket.

The opposing Whig party, like the British at Chalmette, didn’t stand a chance. Democrat James K. Polk won the Presidency in that November’s election.

A witness that night wrote from Baltimore that Davezac’s delivery was rapid, but distinct, and his voice strong, adding “What makes him specially among the popular speakers is the power he exercises at once over the sympathies of his audience. To use his own phrase, ‘there is a continued stream of galvanic fluid, flowing from the people to him, and returning, in sounds from his lips, to their hearts.’ He loves democracy as a young lover the maid of his first affections. His faith in its institution, in its power to throw down all obstacles in the way of its fated march, is like that of an apostle in his creed. He has read much, yet never cites. When he describes natural sceneries, you feel that he sees with the eyes of a painter; when he expatiates on heroic deeds, one fancies the poet, who has thrown away the shackles of rhythm and numbers, retaining of poetry only its enthusiasm and wild imaginings. Texas and Oregon are his favorite themes.”

A member of the opposing political party, a Whig, took issue with Davezac at Baltimore, derisively calling him a “foreigner” as he had a pronounced Creole French accent. Davezac quickly took up the challenge with rapier-like response:

“I am sorry to interrupt you, but I can permit no man to use such language in my presence. Judging from your appearance, I was an American citizen before you were born. I have a son, born an American citizen, older than you. As for myself, I have been four times naturalized. I was naturalized by the sanctity of the treaty of Louisiana, the highest form of law known to the Constitution. The rights of an American citizen were conferred upon me by the law creating the Territorial Government of Louisiana; and I was admitted to all the rights, blessings, and obligations which belong to you, my fellow citizens, by the law bringing the State of Louisiana into our glorious confederacy,” Davezac said. Then, his eyes flashing as on the plains of New Orleans, he continued, “Sir, you look now as if you desired to know where and when was the fourth time of my naturalization, and who were my sponsors. The consecrated spot on which I received the rights of naturalization was the battle ground of New Orleans; the altar was victory, the baptismal water was blood and fire; Andrew Jackson was my god-father, and patriotism, freedom and glory my god-mothers.” The cheers after this from the crowd were resounding. (Public Ledger, Philadelphia, Oct. 15, 1844)

In a biographical sketch of Davezac published by the Democratic Review in February 1845, the editor wrote “Probably no man has ever listened to the impassioned flow of the gallant old Major’s eloquence without carrying away a lively feeling of personal sympathy and something resembling affectionate attachment for the warm-hearted and enthusiastic speaker.” Davezac had given at least 60 addresses to Democrats in whose case the editor said he was so ardent an advocate, so valiant a champion, he had received 166 invitations in one year to speak publicly in 20 states, which attested to his wide-spread celebrity.

A friend of Gen. Jackson ever since serving as his aide-de-camp during the New Orleans campaign of 1814-1815, Davezac had blossomed in his later years into a major political asset. In 1844, at the age of 63, he made a whirlwind speaking tour by train from his residence in New York City to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Trenton, New Jersey, and Winchester, Va.

At the Winchester Democratic rally, he had his biggest audience ever, some 10,000 people from throughout the Old Dominion state. Before he could begin to speak there, the forest rang with three additional cheers for his old friend and Democratic icon Jackson, according to a witness for the Richmond Enquirer who said Davezac “gave the most impassioned, the richest and most effective treat of oratory it was ever our good fortune to enjoy. Its materials were derived from a life of useful effort, study, and observation. He advocated annexation of Texas, a hot topic of the day, and the increasing spread of settlement of the US through Manifest Destiny.

Spotting some men in the group then called “Young Hickories” after Jackson, Davezac eloquently asked them to “support him, now in the evening of life, in a cause which he had labored to promote in its morning and noon, and when they bent over the tomb of Auguste Davezac, he begged they would remember him only as a friend of Liberty and the favored comrade of Andrew Jackson,” stated the witness. Although he was tired from addressing a large meeting the previous night, the breathless audience hanging onto his every word compelled Davezac to speak for two hours straight, during which thousands had not changed the position in which they densely stood, and with such stillness that the rustling of a leaf could be heard amid the spellbound eloquence which swept over them, according to the Richmond reporter.

At the torchlight Democratic procession in Manhattan, Nov. 1, 1844, Davezac carried a banner and a flag, with the banner proclaiming “This Flag Was At the Battle of New Orleans.” Through sheer power of his speeches and his connection to Jackson, Davezac became a national hero to the Democratic party.

Davezac idolized Jackson and deeply cherished his close friendship with him. In March 1842, an elderly and sickly Jackson mostly confined to his bedroom wrote a sad letter to Auguste about how he was trying to put his “house in order to meet that call which must soon come to that other and better world from which no traveller returns.” In reviewing his past, Jackson wrote although he was satisfied with most of his life’s accomplishments, one thing still bothered him, the “iniquity and injustice of the $1,000 fine” imposed by Judge Hall, who believed Jackson had abused martial law during the defense of New Orleans. “Congress is the only body whose action could wipe this stain from my memory, by a joint resolution ordering the fine, with costs and interests, to be returned…going out of life….I cannot but regret that this stain upon my name should be permitted to pass down in posterity.” Davezac had the influence to see to it that a resolution was initiated through his friends in Congress to do as Old Hickory had asked, and Congress did approve the refund in 1844 on the 29th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans . The old war hero died a year and a half later.

So who was Major Auguste Davezac, the electrifying speaker of the 1840s, and what was his background? Before he met Jackson, he had been a respected lawyer and doctor in New Orleans, the brother-in-law of prominent attorney Edward Livingston, and a close friend of the privateers Jean and Pierre Laffite.

Davezac’s story began in the Caribbean city of Aquin, St. Domingue (now Haiti), where he was born in 1781. His father was wealthy French plantation owner Jean Pierre Valentine D’Avezac de Castera, who saw to it that Auguste went to school in France at the famous military college of La Flèche. Auguste returned to St. Domingue at the time of the slave revolts, and narrowly missed being massacred in 1803 along with two of his brothers and his maternal grandmother when the rest of the family fled in two boats, first to Jamaica, and then to the US. His mother, Marie Talary de Maragon D’Avezac, young widowed sister Louise, and nine year old sister Pauline, moved to New Orleans, where they lived off the sale of some precious jewels they had sewn into their clothes before leaving. Auguste and his father went to Virginia, where Jean Pierre soon died of yellow fever.

Auguste studied medicine with Dr. Dickinson of Edenton, N.C., then had a medical practice at Accomack, on the eastern shore of Virginia. There he met and married an heiress, Margaret Andrews, and they had a son, Augustus D’Avezac, in 1805. Then, for some unknown reason, Auguste left his family at Accomack and moved to New Orleans to be with his sister, Louise, who had married for the second time to prominent lawyer Edward Livingston in 1805. An ad in the July 30, 1807 Orleans Gazette shows that Dr. Davezac “informs the public that he has established his residence at Bourbon St. No. 30.” Auguste had dropped the apostrophe in his surname upon moving, and soon he opted out of his medical practice, too, as he wished to learn law under the tutelage of his brother-in-law Livingston. He lived with the Livingstons for several years, tutored their daughter Cora, and was a junior partner with Edward for a time before branching out into a law practice completely dealing with the criminal court system. According to a contemporaneous biography of him, it was said no client of his ever suffered the death penalty, so adroit and skillful were his defense arguments. New Orleans merchant Vincent Nolte noted in his autobiography that the Laffite brothers often could be seen arm and arm with Davezac, walking about town.

Gen. Andrew Jackson’s arrival in New Orleans in December 1814 led to the highlight of Davezac’s life, when Old Hickory named him aide de camp and judge advocate on his military staff for the defense of the city during the British invasion. He gave him the honorific title Major, which Davezac cherished and used to the end of his life.

“I instinctively foresaw his (Jackson’s) greatness and glory. My attachment to him was a religion of the heart,” Davezac recalled later. Their work together at Chalmette battlefield cemented a bond that time did not dim afterward. As Auguste had been a doctor in his early life, he quite possibly assisted Jackson medically as well during the campaign, since the general was so severely ill at that time there was some doubt he would be able to lead his men.

After the successful defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans on Jan. 8, 1815, Davezac kept up his New Orleans legal practice and continued to support Jackson through both the 1824 and 1828 presidential campaigns. As President, Jackson did not forget his friend, but rewarded him in 1831 with a diplomatic post, chargé d’affaires, at the Hague in the Netherlands. Auguste promised to keep the State Department informed of political developments in Europe, which was still in flux from the French 1830 revolution, plus a series of riots and revolutions elsewhere on the Continent, not to mention the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands. The Creole became quite the idol of the diplomatic corps during the eight years he served, and was considered indispensable at all dances and masquerades due to his ready wit and wonderful conversational talents.

Davezac returned to the US in 1839, not to New Orleans, but to set up a home in New York City. There he became the honored living Manhattan connection to the Battle of New Orleans. At the dinner table at events, he often told intimate tales of Jackson and the legendary Jean Laffite. He entered the Democratic political arena with gusto, and was elected in both 1841 and 1843 to the New York State Legislature. He became a fiery supporter of the American expansionist movement of Manifest Destiny, and also was considered one of the most passionate supporters of the Monroe Doctrine. The man of many talents also took up his pen and wrote articles for his favorite publication, the Democratic Review magazine, in the early 1840s.

Recalling a scene from the flower markets at Amsterdam, Davezac wrote, “At Amsterdam, classes from all societies assemble at the flower markets held twice a week. The rich attend to purchase ‘the emerald, the rubies, the sapphires of the vegetable kingdom; flowers are taken to the home of the poor to light the gloom of a homely shed__to give sweetness to the little air yet allowed to breathe. All clustered around them (the flowers) like bees, and like bees, appeared to gather from them nothing but sweetness.”

His literary, speaking, and political talents brought him into the orbit of such celebrated poets and writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and the Melville brothers.

After helping Polk win the Presidency in the 1844 election, Davezac was re-appointed as chargé d’affaires at the Hague in 1845. He returned home to the US on Jan. 8, 1851, and died about a month later, at the age of 69.

Today the charismatic Creole veteran of the Battle of New Orleans is little remembered as the sands of time have dimmed his accomplishments and celebrity. He was a visionary concerning Manifest Destiny, believing it was the destiny of the United States to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences. Federalists of the time scoffed and held the opinion the US already had land enough, which formed the focus of Davezac’s speeches on the subject, as the following illustrates, in closing:

“Land enough! Make way, I say, for the young American Buffalo__he has not yet got land enough. He wants more land as his cool shade in summer; he wants more land for his beautiful pasture grounds. I tell you we will give him Oregon for his summer shade and the region of Texas as his winter pasture. Like all of his race, he wants salt, too. Well, he shall have the use of two oceans, the mighty Pacific and turbulent Atlantic shall be his; for I tell you that the day is not far distant when with one leap he shall bound across the puny lakes that separate Canada from America ad pitch right into the other side…He shall not stop his career until he slakes his thirst in the frozen ocean,” predicted Davezac at the 1844 Trenton, N.J. Great Mass meeting of Democrats.

Well, Major Davezac, the US did not expand into Canada, but did get to the frozen ocean around Alaska, the volcanic islands of Hawaii, and from the coast of the Atlantic to the coast of the Pacific on the land mass…

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by Pam Keyes

Eyewitness Pension Record Testimonies Place Jean Laffite at Battle of New Orleans

February 21, 2018 in American History, general history, History, Legal History, Louisiana History, Nautical History

Jean Laffite at Battery No. 3 in a scene from the 1958 “The Buccaneer” film

Privateer-smuggler Jean Laffite’s active service at the Battle of New Orleans on Gen. Andrew Jackson’s line is firmly verified by eyewitness testimonies found in newly digitized pension records of the National Archives at Washington, D.C. The documentation is part of the lengthy official correspondence widows of Baratarian veterans of the battle had with authorities of the Pension Office trying to obtain bounty land and monthly pensions in the mid to late 1800s.

The service verification is highly significant as it is the only documentation in the official records that attests to both Pierre and Jean Laffites’ actions at the Battle of New Orleans (BONO), in command of two small companies of their men. Historians had been unable to locate these testaments as the handwritten documents were hidden in pension records, not indexed by content, and oddly the facts of the matter never were a part of the official militia rolls. Thus many have said Jean Laffite in particular wasn’t present at the Battle of New Orleans, as depicted in the two “Buccaneer” movies…..but he was, according to the testimony obtained from five veterans. They testified to help two widows whose husbands both were part of the cannon crews around Battery No. 3 and 4 with Dominique You, Beluche, and fellow Baratarians who had been with Jean Laffite previously at the privateer/smuggling base of Grande Terre.

The women, Adeline Godin Maire and Catherine Looski Joly, were seeking government old age benefits available to veterans of the War of 1812 or their widows, approved by Congress in 1878, and earlier in the 1850s, bounty land grants approved for veterans. Both of their husbands, Lorenzo (Laurent) Maire (aka Meii) and Victor Stanislas Louis Joly, respectively, served as cannoneers, crewing the 24-pounder cannons placed there on the embankment behind the Rodriguez Canal at Chalmette plantation. Those two cannons were the deadliest to the British, and most accurate, according to one British soldier’s later account.

Particularly important to Laffite’s role is the detailed testimony under oath given by BONO veteran Jacques Meffre Rouzan for the case of Mrs. Joly in court at New Orleans on Feb. 16, 1881. According to the justice of the peace account of the testimony, Rouzan said “he remembers Louis Joly as having served in one of the artillery squads under Captain Lafitte, the pirate, at the time of the invasion by the British in 1814-15 and at the battle of New Orleans, Jan. 8, 1815. That there were two of the Lafittes, brothers, Pierre and Jean, and each had charge of a squad of ten or fifteen cannoneers that they commanded ‘at the lines,’ that is at camp Chalmette, and in the battles that were fought there on the 23 of December and 8th of January. That he distinctly remembers Louis Joly, a white man and a Frenchman, as being a member of one of those squads, and as having been on duty therein ‘at the lines.’….that he also remembers one Dominique Yeux who was one of Lafitte’s cannoneers.”

Earlier testimony for a bounty land grant for Mrs. Joly by BONO eyewitness veterans Barthelemy Populas and Jacque David St. Herman strengthens support for evidence of the Laffite Company. On August 13, 1857, they stated under oath that they saw Louis Joly “in active service of the US in the two battles of New Orleans during the British invasion in the company of artillery commanded by Capt. Lafitte…generally known and called by the natives ‘Lafitte le Pirate’ of whom so much has been said in connection to his brave conduct in the defense of New Orleans.” They added that Joly served about 14 days in the battles and was discharged together with Jean Baptiste Latour and Vincent Gambie of the same company in New Orleans on or about the month of March 1815.

The BONO witnesses’ testimonies are crucial confirmation Laffite was actively in place on Jackson’s line at the Battle of New Orleans, documentation of which is not to be found anywhere else in military records, despite research by numerous historians over the years to find such proof. The only documented record of the Laffite brothers’ service of any note came from a couple of Jackson’s military orders and a brief acknowledgement by Jackson of their “courage and fidelity” in a published statement after the victory against the invading British. In 1827 in a letter to a friend, Jackson also said the sole source of the flints for the American side came from the Baratarians, meaning the Laffites. He never specified exactly how the Laffites served. However, the story the two pension applications tells points out that the truth of the Laffite brothers’ service was for some reason absent in the official military records of the volunteer militias that were fighting on Jan. 8, 1815. This is decidedly strange considering the pardon President James Madison offered to any Baratarian who served in the American side of the battles and could provide proof of service from Gov. Claiborne. The pardon named no individuals, but clearly Washington authorities were informed of the Baratarians’ service. Neither the Laffites nor most of the Baratarians ever applied for their pardons.

The book most historians regard as an exhaustive history of the Battle of New Orleans in particular, “A Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana, written by Jackson’s chief engineer Arsene Lacarriere Latour and published in 1816, does not mention this Laffite company as such, which is curious considering Latour was a best friend of Jean Laffite. However, other particulars regarding Jackson’s forces are not to be found in the book, either, some of which were to have been included in a second edition which was never made. Latour did tell Spanish authorities at Cuba in 1817 that his friend, Jean Laffite, had conducted himself with courage at the Battle of New Orleans.

The Laffite participation on the American side of the war against invading British forces was ignored officially. Indeed, as Commissioner of Pensions Wiilliam W. Dudley wrote in Dec. 22, 1882 to Mrs. Maire in response to her pension applications, “There is nothing in history known to this office or in the archives of government which credits Captain Lafitte (sic) with having been in the United States service during the War of 1812.”

In endeavoring to obtain their pensions, the two elderly ladies needed to amass a wide array of proofs, which included locating their husbands’ names on the official military rolls of the various companies. They were stymied in this, as like the Laffites, neither Lorenzo Maire nor Louis Joly was found on any roll, and according to an official letter from the auditor’s office dated Dec. 30, 1856 to Mrs. Joly, “Service is alleged to have been rendered in Capt. Dominique’s Co. La Mil in the War of 1812, but there is no evidence of that command (Dominique’s)” [!] Yes, even though Dominique You was widely revered in New Orleans and received a funeral with honors when he died in 1830, the official roll of his service was NOT in its right place in the military records at Washington….until Mrs. Joly and Mrs. Maire persistently asked someone to look for them, Mrs. Joly, a semi-literate, through her lawyer, and Mrs. Maire, through both a lawyer and her own letters to the Pension Office.

In May 1858, Mrs. Joly received a letter from George Eustis of the Pension office which stated “I have the honor to inform you that the bounty land claim of Mrs. Joly, widow of Victor S. Louis Joly dec’d referred to…has been suspended under repeated reports of the Auditor that there was no evidence of Capt. Dominique’s Command La Mi; War of 1812. But it appeared that rolls have been found within the last month, and the claim is now again referred to that officer for further examination, the result of which will be communicated to you…”

(Mrs. Joly was approved in the 1850s for a bounty land grant which apparently got overtaken in the mails, as she never received it, and had to post an ad in the Picayune newspaper of New Orleans alerting the public not to purchase the land from the holder of her grant. Several documents in the pension files show she also tried to obtain a replacement grant, which did not meet with success.)

To get a snapshot of the two Baratarians involved in these cases, they were described thusly by their respective wives: Maire (also known by the surname Meii) was a native of Italy, 5’7” tall, with dark complexion, black hair and black eyes, about 24 years old at the time of the Battle of New Orleans: Joly was a native of France, about 20 years old at the time of enlistment, 5’6” tall, with fair complexion, gray eyes and dark brown hair. Maire died in 1827; Joly, in 1856.

Adeline Maire’s case for Lorenzo’s pension is particularly significant in relation to both Jean and Pierre Laffite as Lorenzo Maire was known as their brother-in-law although Adeline Godin Maire was not their sister; apparently, Lorenzo had been married earlier to a Laffite sister who had died. Lorenzo was with the Laffites at New Orleans as early as 1812, and had been a privateer captain for them during the time they were at Galveston in 1817-1820. New Orleans Diocese records show that Adeline Godin and Maire were married by Father de Sedella at New Orleans on Dec. 16, 1817, when she was 17 and Lorenzo was 27.

Adeline pursued her widow’s pension intently, concentrating on the fact that Lorenzo had served in the “Lafitte Company.” Her attorney George W. Dearing did his best, writing to Dudley on August 16, 1881, enclosing two affidavits from eyewitness veterans of the Battle of New Orleans in support of her pension case under the Congressional Act of 1878.

Dearing added “I think it strange that there is no record of the men who served under the compact between General Jackson and Capt. Lafitte, for it is a historical fact that all of Lafitte’s men did serve, and did good duty during the siege of the British at New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 during Dec. and Jan. and the efficient and signal service rendered by Dominique You (one of the vessel captains under Lafitte) is well known, every survivor knows that Dominique You’s crew was assigned to a cannon on the US breastwork and that they did yeoman service, and we have heretofore shown by two credible veterans that they saw Maire or Meii under Dominique You doing duty, now Mr. Varion swears to service but only remembers him as one of those who belonged to Lafitte’s crews.”

Dearing’s letters did not elicit a favorable response, so the frustrated Mrs. Maire began deluging Dudley with her own letters.

“The chiefs in Command was (sic) Jean Laffitte and Pierre Laffitte and were pardoned by Gen. Jackson on condition that they would join the American forces_and was (sic) enrolled by Gen, Jackson’s orders in the Louisiana Militia. The officers in chief were Jean Laffitte, Pierre Laffitte, Gambi, Dominique Youx,’ wrote Mrs. Maire in response to a request for officers of her husband’s company.

On May 24, 1882, she wrote the following from New Orleans to Dudley at Washington, D.C.:
“…I will simply state that my husband Lorenzo Maire did serve as one of the Company commanded by Pierre Laffitte and Jean Laffitte as has been stated and sworn to by Francois Varion and Mr. Eugene Ducas whom has served (sic) and are drawing their pensions from this office and who has been well acquainted with my husband before during and after the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 and 1815. Mr. J. M. Lipace also has served in said battle and was also perfectly acquainted with my husband and he is also positive and certain that my husband did serve by referring those gentlemen which are still living and receiving their pensions through this office will I suppose be a sufficient proof of my assertion.”

She added that she had been receiving a Louisiana state veterans’ widows’ pension for a few months but in 1876 that pension was stopped.

On the back of her letter, some official with the Pension Office nastily scribbled: “The Pirate Lafitte does not appear to have been recognized by the US government,” adding that Maire’s witnesses were not considered satisfactory to determining eligibility in the case, but that note remained in the Pension Office files.

When Mrs. Maire did not receive a positive reply from Dudley, she wrote back on Dec. 2, 1882, repeating her claim that Lorenzo did serve in the Company of Artillery commanded by Capt Laffitte, General J.B. Plauche’s Division Louisiana Militia during the War of 1812, Battle of New Orleans in 1814-1815. Frustrated by the bureaucratic stone wall, Adeline wrote “The existence of Capt. Youx Company and the services rendered by said company during the Battle of New Orleans War of 1812 has been clearly furnished and in this company my husband Laurent Maire did serve Furthermore, Capt. Youx died in New Orleans and was buried in the St. Louis Cemetery by charity.”

Mrs. Maire’s case dragged on, unsuccessfully, through 1883, and you can feel her frustration with the Pension Office in her letter of April 25, 1883 to Dudley, who was insistently requesting fellow officer’s testimony from the Laffite Company to verify her claim, even though 68 years had passed since the time of the battle.

“The officers and privates of Capt. Lafitte’s Company of artillery Louisiana Militia Gen. J.B. Plauche’s Division are all dead and buried and therefore it is impossible for me to raise their dead bodies in order to comply with the proofs required by the United States government or the Pension officers. This power is only Given to God the Creator of the United States government and its officers which no one can deny,” wrote Adeline.

Dudley ended the communication in October 1883 with a partial form letter filled in by himself, repeating the there was no evidence of service, so the claim must remain rejected, inasmuch as nothing within the power of his office to complete this case had been left undone, further correspondence would therefore be unheeded.

Neither widow ever received their US pensions. Mrs. Maire died in 1891, and Mrs. Joly, in 1878. Oddly, the Pension Office did reimburse Mrs. Joly’s two daughters for part of her funeral expenses.

The elderly eyewitness veterans of the Battle of New Orleans, Francois Varion, Eugene Ducas, Jacques Meffre Rouzan, Barthelemy Populas and J.D. St. Herman, all had received their pensions at the time of their testimony for the two women. In an intriguing twist to the cases, those eyewitnesses all apparently were members of the “Association of Colored Veterans of 1814 and 1815” at New Orleans, a group chartered in 1853 by free men of color who were Battle of New Orleans veterans. Their goal was to help fellow claimants and survivors qualify for benefits at the state and federal levels, and they assisted black and white families alike. Most of the men had been part of the Lacoste and Daquin battalions who could testify for the Laffite units easily since they were quite close by on Jackson’s line on Jan. 8, 1815, as shown on Latour’s map. The survivors who testified in the 1880s had been young men at the time, and the battle had been indelibly etched in their memories.

It is a mystery why the Pension Office refused to accept the eyewitness testimony from Jackson’s line. Perhaps it may have had something to do with Dudley, who was appointed Commissioner of Pensions in 1881. He was a Union veteran of the Civil War, and no doubt had little sympathy for anyone in the South, considering he had lost part of his right leg and most of the men in his unit at Gettysburg.

Today, the Chalmette battlefield is known as part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, but that name was given to it in the 1980s for regional reasons, not to honor Laffite for the Battle of New Orleans itself. The newly discovered eyewitness testimony proves the name of the park is merited by honorable service long denied.

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Tags: Adeline Godin Maire, Baratarians, Battery No. 3, Battle of New Orleans, British, British Gulf Coast campaign, cannoneers, Catherine Looski Joly, General Andrew Jackson, Jean Laffite, Laurent Maire, Lorenzo Maire, Louisiaina Militia, Louisiana, New Orleans, official documents, President James Madison, privateers, soldiers. legal testimony, US Pension Office, Victor Stanislaus Louis Joly, War of 1812 1 Comment »

by Pam Keyes

New Book Reveals Arsene Latour’s Adventures

February 11, 2018 in American History, European History, general history, History, Louisiana History, Nautical History, Texas History

New Translation of Latour Biography

Engineer-mapmaker, War of 1812 historian, architect and erstwhile secret agent Arsene Lacarriere Latour comes vibrantly to life in the new English translation of “A Visionary Adventurer, Arsene Lacarriere Latour 1778-1837, the Unusual Travels of a Frenchman in the Americas” by Jean Garrigoux.

Originally printed in French in 1997, the Latour biography was translated by retired diplomat Gordon S. Brown and published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette press in 2017.

This biography draws from the large archive of Latour manuscripts and correspondence found in the Martine Bardon collection of France, and includes many important revelations about political intrigues of the United States, French Bonapartists, Spanish and Freemasons in the US, Cuba and Texas during the early 1800s. Although substantiation is undocumented, Latour seems to have been an unpaid double agent for the US.

Best known as an historian and early day journalist for his 1816 work, “An Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-1815,” Latour was much more than just an engineer-architect turned soldier at New Orleans during the British invasion of Louisiana: he was a multi-talented Renaissance man of considerable skills who dealt with the leading powerful men of his time. This narrative of his life also clearly shows that he was a keen political analyst and observer. The English translation allows non-Francophones to appreciate this biography for the first time.

Mostly forgotten by history, Latour is brought dramatically to life in this biography. Plagued by chronic illness all his life in a time when disease often led to early death, Latour did not let that keep him from doing dangerous explorations of the frontier, including up the Arkansas River among the Indians. He also made frequent trips between New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Cuba. He conducted special agent work that could have gotten him killed. Adventure was written large upon his soul.

Born in Aurillac, France, Latour came to New York from the slave revolution ravaged Saint Domingue in 1804. He then quickly headed south to Louisiana. He adopted the US and was deeply proud of the American citizenship he obtained in April 1812 while living in New Orleans. In an 1829 letter to friend and newly elected President Andrew Jackson, Latour wrote, “No consideration whatever could induce me to renounce the honorable title of American citizen, which I have and will always prefer to any fortune.”

In addition to Jackson, Latour knew and interacted with James Madison, James Monroe, Joseph Bonaparte, Edward Livingston, William C.C. Claiborne, General James Wilkinson and Peter Du Ponceau. He was a close friend of Napoleon’s favorite soldier, Charles Lallemand, and with privateer Jean Laffite.

Latour was a superb architect. His handiwork can be readily seen in New Orleans’ French Quarter by the buildings he created, most notably the famous Napoleon House, built in 1814. He designed the original city plan of Baton Rouge, La. In Cuba, where he lived for nearly 17 years, he built bridges and a fountain, plus brought the first steam engines to the island.

Through Latour’s correspondence and those of his associates, the biography reveals the complexity and depth of this artful French adventurer of the Gulf of Mexico. It is quite a wonderful, absorbing work, interweaving Cuban histories and archives with the Bardon Latour family collection to show how everything meshed together in a tapestry of intrigues. This is a worthwhile book to add to any early southern history enthusiast’s library, sure to be consulted and reread many times to garner at least a better picture of what life must have been like during the time South America was endeavoring to gain independence from Spain, privateers and pirates were rampant on the Gulf of Mexico waters, and politicians and filibusters plotted to seize borderlands of the US interior. I heartily recommend it.

Tags: adventurers, Andrew Jackson, Arsene Lacarriere Latour, Battle of New Orleans, Bonapartists, Charles Lallemand, Cuba, General James Wilkinson, Gulf of Mexico, historian, James Monroe, Jean Laffite, New Orleans, Peter Du Ponceau, Philadelphia, secret agent, Texas, War of 1812 Comments Off on New Book Reveals Arsene Latour’s Adventures

by Pam Keyes

Pirates, Privateers and Ethics in the New Orleans Courtroom

November 18, 2017 in American History, general history, History, Legal History, Louisiana History, Nautical History

The old Spanish Courthouse where John Dick and John R. Grymes battled

Ethics meant everything to attorney John Dick, an Irish emigrant to New Orleans. He felt compelled in May 1813 to ensure everyone else knew that, too, even if it meant possibly provoking a duel with his nemesis, District Attorney John Randolph Grymes, over a recently completed case involving a French pirate Grymes had represented in New Orleans District Court. So as soon as he was free of his sick bed, Dick proceeded to the offices of the leading newspaper in town, the Louisiana State Gazette, and gave the editor his lengthy exposition of just how badly he thought Grymes had neglected his official duty in order to profit from the purse of a pirate. The case involved the Spanish poleacre San Francisco de Paula versus the captain and crew of the armed French schooner Felix

The editor of the Louisiana State Gazette of May 29, 1813, prefaced Dick’s two page missive with the following:

“Publication of the following statement has been delayed by a variety of causes. At the period of its date, and for sometime afterward, the case to which the facts in the statement have reference, remained undecided. Consequently to have made the facts a subject of newspaper discussion would have been disrespectful and improper. This reason for delay was assigned by the writer through the public prints, early in the month of February (1813); and, at the same time, he pledged himself to a justification of his dispute with Mr. John R. Grymes, as soon as that justification could be made consistently with duty and decorum.
“When the case of the San Francisco de Paula was decided, an important change had taken place in the writer’s situation,_and his life, previously despaired of, was considered out of danger_then, he thought it better to delay his defense until freed from the trammels of a sick bed so he could give it his personal attention; but now, on due reflection, he presents it in its first form as written at the time of its date. This form is chosen by the writer in preference, as it displays his feelings and dispositions at that period, although he is aware of the imperfections necessarily included to so indigested a production….”

(Ed. note: the decision of the court was to restore the San Francisco de Paula and cargo to the libellants, so Dick won the case for his clients, but apparently the questionable ethics of his opponent still nettled him.)

Here, as follows, is most of Dick’s letter:

“New Orleans Jan. 27, 1813

TO THE PUBLIC

An urgent but disagreeable necessity forces me (John Dick), in defense of my own honor, to lay before the world the circumstances of a personal quarrel. Society is so regulated that in proportion as an individual becomes the object of suspicion or the theme of reproach, so if his utility impaired, his capacity to benefit the community or himself is enervated or destroyed. Impressed with this truth, and influenced by the intention of rescuing my character from the [taint] that justly attaches to him who falsely or unnecessarily assails the reputation of another, I have thought it proper thus to address the public.

The following statement …is a history of my own motive and conduct, written in order that, if living when this meets the public eye, I may be justified to the world, and may not lose that utility which the loss of the world’s good opinion would deprive me; or that if dead, my character may rest in peace_unsullied by the malevolence of those who bear me enmity, free from the censure of the ignorant or misinformed.

I have been charged by Mr. John R. Grymes with making a wanton, and unwarrantable attack on his character and reputation. This charge is eminently serious; it involved everything that is dearest to man; and in its consequences, may lead to a catastrophe much to be deprecated. To Mr. Grymes I have no feelings of personal hostility, but I have regard for justice and the truth…feelings that now urge me to repel with vigor an unjust accusation. If I am indeed capable of a wanton aspersion of character_if I am capable of willful injustice, of knowingly perverting what I understand, I no longer deserve to live in the society of those who deem a strict and inviolable adherence to truth, the groundwork of all that is virtuous and honorable among men__I proceed to a development of my alleged offense and to my justification.

It was in the District Court of the Louisiana District on the 19th of (January 1813), in the case of the Spanish poleacre the San Francisco de Paula, that I found it necessary in the course of the argument to advert to the system of piracy practiced in our seas__this system, which mocks all lives human and divine, which banishes all the charities of life and dissolves all the sympathies of nature, which, if countenanced, confounds all the distinctions of morals, and bursts the ties of society asunder by giving a license to power to prey upon weakness__this system, I say, I considered likely to be influenced by the decision in the pending case; on the one hand that it might tend to suppress the evil, or on the other, that it might give increased energy to its aggressions on the morals and happiness of society.

After endeavoring to impress the court with the importance of this subject, and after calling its attention to the alarming influence and progress of piracy and illegal adventures within its immediate jurisdiction I went on to express myself nearly as follows:

“What, indeed, it may be asked, is the condition of the community when he whose duty it is to guard the law from infraction and to enforce it, is found active in giving efficacy to the conduct of its violators? When the sentinel, not content with sleeping on his post, gives security to illicit operations by becoming its defender, we may well say that it is time for the citizen and the neutral to look elsewhere for an enforcer of the laws that afford them security and protection. And where can they look with so much security, with so much certainty of success, as to the enlightened tribunal which I have the honor to address?”

The person alluded to in these observations was Mr. Grymes, the district attorney; and I think the following narrative of facts will demonstrate not only their truth and justice, but their necessity to the subject under discussion.

The Spanish poleacre San Francisco de Paula, from Palmyra in the Island of Minorca bound for Havana, was captured off Matanzas on or about the 21st of last June by the armed schooner Felix, alleged to be a French privateer duly commissioned. The Felix brought her prize into the port of New Orleans, where the captain of the policer instituted a suit in the district court of the US for retribution of vessel and cargo alleging that the armed schooner Felix was not a privateer duly commissioned, that she was illegally fit out, and her force illegally augmented within the waters and jurisdiction of the United States.

I was one of the counsels for the captain of the poleacre libellant, Mr. Grymes, district attorney of the US in and for the Louisiana District, was one of the counsels for the captain and crew of the Felix, claimants.

In the progress of the cause it appeared in evidence that soon after the arrival of the San Francisco de Paula in the port of New Orleans, Captain Patterson of the navy, then commanding officer on this station in the absence of Commodore Shaw, applied to Mr. Grymes, as district attorney of the US, to institute a criminal prosecution against the said schooner stating that an examination of her papers, conducted with attentive scrutiny on his part, led him to consider the said schooner a Pirate. Upon this application, Mr. Grymes did not think proper to act; he saw no sufficient grounds for instituting a prosecution, and the Felix was permitted to go to sea without molestation.

It was further shown, by the testimony of one of the crew of the schooner Felix, that the said schooner had cleared out from Baltimore under the name of the Two Brothers; in ballast, and bound for Boston. That the witness shipped on board of her in the Chesapeake, at which time she was perfectly new, never having been to sea; that on getting to sea some arms and ammunition were produced, the name and character of the schooner were changed__she assuming the style and title of the French privateer Felix from Bayonne__that the Felix proceeded to Charleston, where she received an augmentation in her force of 22 men…These and other circumstances were related, all going to show distinctly and incontestably the character of the Felix, and affording full and satisfactory evidence that prosecution alone was wanting to condemnation of the vessel and punishment of the crew by the laws of the United States.

When the subject of this testimony was under discussion, Mr. Grymes, for the purpose of weakening its credibility and force, stated that it would have been sufficient to sustain a prosecution against the Felix, which would have been the most easy and ready means of obtaining restitution of the Spanish poleacre and cargo. In reply it was told to Mr. Grymes, that evidence struck different minds with different force that, as in the application made by Capt. Patterson, so in this case. He might have considered this evidence insufficient; that at the time of obtaining this testimony Mr. Grymes was counsel for the captain and crew of the Felix; that there was too much at stake (50-70,000 dollars) to risk its exhibition previous to trial for it was impossible to separate Mr. Grymes counsel for the claimants from Mr. Grymes attorney for the United States.

To show how entirely the conduct of the counsel for the claimants corresponded with these observations it is sufficient to state, that the testimony was disclosed to the acting collector of the customs while the Felix was yet in port__but in confidence, under an express injunction not to make it known to Mr. Grymes. Mr. Grymes was the only organ through which the collector could be expected to wage prosecution against the Felix; the conditions under which he obtained this information as a man of honor he could not violate; the district attorney was not consulted, the Felix rose at anchor in the Mississippi unmolested, and proceeded to sea without enquiry or interruption.

What evidence the counsel for the claimant had of the original outfit of the Felix I know not. From a circumstance, however, that occurred pending the case I have reason to believe it was full and conclusive. They were necessarily possessed of every means to obtain a correct knowledge of the facts in relation to the vessel. On our side, testimony was obtained with difficulty under every circumstance of disadvantage combating at every step the contrivances ingenuity had devised to smother enquiry. The result of the cause will show whether the efforts of the counsel were successful. The circumstance I have above alluded to, inducing a belief that Mr. Grymes, with others of counsel, was in full possession of the facts relating to the original outfit and subsequent augmentation of the force of the Felix, is the following. After three or four days had been taken up in examining testimony on the part of the libeling, and while no positive proof had yet been exhibited going to maintain the grounds of the libel, Mr. Grymes, the district attorney and of course for the claimants , in speaking of the case in the clerk’s office previous to the opening of the court, declared distinctly, unhesitantly and without reservation in my presence, and in that of several others, that he had no doubt the Felix was fitted out within the waters and jurisdiction of the United States but that we__the counsel for the libelists_could not prove it! __Here I pause. I rest my case.

I have endeavored to exhibit the truth and have neither time nor inclination to enter into reflections which in a thousand forms the subject presents. I have consulted only my own justifications, and I leave to the impartial and reflecting to say whether in the observations I uttered I was guilty of an unwarrantable attack on the feelings, character, or reputation of Mr. Grymes_No_Not one of all who are capable of comparing the relative situations of Mr. Grymes, counsel for the claimant, and Mr. Grimes, attorney for the US, but will say, that his part in the cause was incompatible with his official station, that it must necessarily conflict with the duties of that station.

I I do not pretend to say that it was the duty of Mr. Grymes to commence prosecution against the Felix upon the application made to him by Capt. Patterson. The evidence that appeared conclusive to Capt. Patterson might, in a legal point of view, have been insufficient. Of this, Mr. Grymes, from his official station and professional habits, was the better judge, and the presumption is, that in declining to prosecute the Felix. I do say the application ought to have awakened suspicion and enquiry on the part of Mr. Grymes, that ethically it ought to have forbidden his occupying the station of an advocate for this very vessel where the charges against her were piracy and infraction of the laws of the United States. Here it became the duty of Mr. Grymes, as counsel for the captain and crew of the Felix, to smother all evidence tending to conviction; and to seek an acquittal from charges, which as attorney for the US it was his duty to strengthen and sustain, by every means in his power. What opposites of reflections must this singular conflict of character naturally suggest to an unbiased mind! It presents a duplicity of situation which nothing can reconcile, which neither propriety nor delicacy can excuse…”

Signed John Dick

Not content to stop there, Dick continued to harp on how Grymes had unethically represented the presumed pirates, whom he should have prosecuted to perhaps end in their being hanged in New Orleans, since, as Dick stressed, “Piracy by the laws of the US is punishable with death.”

It is unknown exactly what response Grymes had to this lengthy public attack on his ethical character, but this was only the opening salvo to a long and sustained enmity between the two men which boiled over sometime in the fall of 1814 with a duel in which Grymes was shot in the calf and Dick got a serious wound to one thigh which left him with a limp for the remainder of his life.

Both Dick and Grymes were close in age, and young in 1813 when the Felix case came about, 25 and 27, respectively. Although Dick was a rising star at the time in the New Orleans community, he was not as popular as the gregarious high stakes gambler Grymes, who seems to have been the friend of everyone else in town except Dick. According to a description in a Louisiana State Bar Association report, “The manner of Grymes was singularly calm, and even in his speeches; betrayals of feeling were rare. His arguments were distinguished by a quiet, logical method of prosecution, and were always free of declaration. His voice was clear and musical, and under the most perfect control. Without appealing to prejudices or passion, he had yet a singular power over juries, rarely failing to gain a verdict.”

Grymes made something of a career after the Felix case of representing his friends, the privateer brothers Pierre and Jean Laffite, and their associates in court. He often battled legal cases against Dick in the small Spanish stucco style courthouse in the French Quarter. Some of these he won, some he lost. The most notorious Laffite case which Grymes lost was the Le Brave piracy case in 1819, which Dick, who had been District Attorney since February 1815 (assuming the role from Grymes), successfully prosecuted. The captain and men of the Le Brave were hanged, with the exception of two who received a presidential pardon.

For more about John Dick, and how once he himself had advocated for the Baratarian privateers, see my earlier Historia Obscura article “John Dick’s Letter to Monroe Honoring the Baratarians.”

John Dick was nothing if not a mercurial, impassioned individual.

Tags: court, district attorney, Felix, Jean Laffite, John Dick, John Randolph Grymes, legal ethics, New Orleans, pirates, privateers, San Francisco de Paula Comments Off on Pirates, Privateers and Ethics in the New Orleans Courtroom

by Pam Keyes

Bicentennial of Jean Laffite’s Takeover of Galveston Is April 8

April 7, 2017 in American History, Caribbean History, general history, History, Louisiana History, Nautical History, Texas History

Jean Laffite in front of an early 1800s map of the Galveston area.

Privateer Jean Laffite, a hero of the Battle of New Orleans, took control of the Island of Galveston in a bloodless coup two hundred years ago this April 8, taking the small pirate base which had been used by Louis-Michel Aury as a point from which to prey against Spanish shipping. Although he had ostensibly taken the island on behalf of Spanish interests, Laffite actually would use it as a camp from which to nettle Spanish shipping for both himself and his brother, Pierre Laffite, plus some of the same corsairs who had been with them some years previously at Barataria in Louisiana.

Aury had first arrived at Galveston in July 1816 and set up a small settlement of crude huts up on the rise of a sandy beach on the higher eastern end of the island. Galveston was a rawboned kind of place at the time, mostly marshland crawling with so many rattlesnakes washed there from the mainland that the island had earned the nickname “Isle of Serpents.”

On a secret mission for the Spanish, Jean Laffite had arrived at Galveston on March 23, 1817, to find six ships in the harbor: Aury’s corsair, Belona, the frigate Cleopatra (commanded by General Francisco Xavier Mina), two captured Spanish brigs, a schooner named General Victoria which had been captured by a corsair armed in New Orleans and commanded by John Davis, and another schooner in the anchorage which had been captured by the General Arismendi, captained by Renato Beluche, Laffite’s old friend from the Grande Terre days. Another former Baratarian associate also was among the captains atGalveston: Johnny Barbe en Feu, who commanded Aury’s armed sloop Congreso Mexicano.

In a diary Jean made as part of his Spanish spying record, he wrote that he spent two weeks at Galveston discussing matters with both Aury and with Aury’s fractious associate, General Mina, who wanted to invade Mexico and the control of it from Spain. The Spanish had sought the help of the Laffite brothers due to the problem of constant depredations by Aury-led corsairs in the Gulf of Mexico on Spanish merchant ships, and Padre Antonio de Sedella had recommended to Don Diego Morphy, Spanish vice consul at New Orleans, that the Laffites were the best men to fix the problem in lieu of a Spanish fleet of war vessels which the King of Spain did not send.

Aury and General Mina each wanted control of the Mexico invasion, but agreed to go together in separate ships with their men to accomplish their goal. They sailed from Galveston on April 7, 1817, but not before burning the huts onshore. Jean Laffite and about 40 men were left with a few ships.

According to Laffite’s diary, “Seeing the port was abandoned by Aury, and in order to better execute the project that John Williams [code name for Arsene Latour, Jean’s friend] and he had planned with No. 13 [Pierre Laffite’s code designation], they named officers and established the administration under their direction. No. 13-2 [Jean Laffite’s code name] has agreed to provide them with men and supplies and to send the supplies immediately from New Orleans in case something should prevent his bringing them himself.”

For the next week, Jean Laffite set up residence on Galveston, which he named Campeche. The men there rebuilt the burned huts, then met April 15, 1817, on the schooner Carmelita, which belonged to Barthelemy Lafon. There all but Jean Laffite signed a document of fealty called the Registry of Deliberations, pledging an oath of allegiance to the Republic of Mexico.

Aury returned to Galveston on May 4 to find to his surprise he had been overthrown as leader in his absence. Although he intended to still be recognized as governor and treasurer general of the settlement, his complaints fell on deaf ears so he sulked about it for a bit, then left for greener pastures, winding up at a new base at Amelia Island off the eastern coast of Florida. The men had remained resolute against Aury, even in Jean Laffite’s absence, as Jean had left April 18 for New Orleans to report to the new Spanish consul.

Pierre Laffite sailed to Galveston and managed the operation there for a few months, but the climate and conditions did not agree with his sickly disposition. Pierre returned to New Orleans, with Jean again assuming control of Galveston, where he would mostly stay. The Laffite Galveston privateering base would go through encroachments by French settlers with the Lallemand Expedition, a massive hurricane in September of 1818 that nearly wiped out the base, and finally, threats of naval action against Laffite and his men by the United States, even though Galveston was outside US territory on land claimed by Spain.

The worst thing of all occurred in late 1819, after Jean had built the settlement back up from the hurricane devastation: the crew of one of his ships, the Le Brave, was found guilty of piracy. A ship’s article paper onboard bore Laffite’s signature. It was the only time his name was ever evidentially connected with a piratical action. The Le Brave captain and some members of the crew were found guilty of piracy and hanged in New Orleans in 1820, shortly after Jean Laffite abandoned Galveston, setting fire to the place, including his Maison Rouge home. All that was left were ashes.

After a temporary incarceration in Cuba, Jean Laffite proceeded on to Carthagena, Colombia, where he became captain of the General Santander privateer ship for Bolivar, harassing ships in the Caribbean until reportedly dying as a result of injuries suffered in a sea battle with two Spanish ships in 1823. Pierre Laffite left New Orleans for the Isla Mujeres area, where he was reported to have been killed in a land battle.

If the Laffites could see their wild and wooly Galveston today, 200 years later, they would not recognize it, with a seawall protecting the Gulf side, a strip of tourist spots and swank hotels all along the beach zone, monster cruise ships at the bayside dock, ornate Victorian mansions in the interior and the Strand’s downtown business district. They’d find a Walmart offering low- dollar goods akin to items they once sold from captured ships, but for prices in the neighborhood of a sailor’s pay for a couple of month’s work in 1817. Would they be surprised to find that there is an historical social group honoring their memory, the Laffite Society, on the island? Perhaps. In the end, they would still recognize two things at Galveston: the waves of the eternal sea, and the glorious sunsets over the Gulf Coast. Some things never change.

Tags: Bolivar, Carthagena, corsairs, Cuba, Galveston, General Santander, Gulf of Mexico, hurricane, Jean Laffite, Le Brave, Louis-Michel Aury. Pierre Laffite, Mexico, New Orleans, pirates, privateers, Renato Beluche, Spanish, Texas Comments Off on Bicentennial of Jean Laffite’s Takeover of Galveston Is April 8

by Pam Keyes

New Book Reveals Explorer William Clark’s Dubious Past

September 17, 2016 in American History, general history, History, Louisiana History

Spying, smuggling, and possibly abetting treasonous conspirators against the United States are not actions most historians would associate with explorer William Clark of Lewis and Clark 1803-1806 Expedition fame, but a little-known 1798 journal he left behind tells a fascinating tale of an almost completely different side of the man.

“The Unknown Travels and Dubious Pursuits of William Clark” by Jo Ann Trogdon (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 2015) expertly reveals the story behind Clark’s journal of a trip he made on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Louisville, Ky. to New Orleans in 1798 by meticulously filling in the concise nature of his entries through research of the people with whom he associated.

This is a tale of high adventure and smuggling duplicity on a journey Clark charted in a personal logbook which mostly stayed overlooked for some 70 years in the Missouri State Historical Society Archives at Columbia before Trogdon discovered it and began to do meticulous research in such archives as the Archivo General de Indies for the back stories of each entry in that journal. Her book is a richly told, vivid account of the political machinations and economic factors behind what was then Spanish Louisiana, and the players in the Spanish Conspiracy, the plot by traitorous General James Wilkinson and cohorts to get Kentucky and western territories to secede from the US and join Spain.

Famous for his later arduous journeys with Meriwether Lewis across the Louisiana Purchase territory and back in 1803-1806, Clark’s exploits on the lower Mississippi River show he was daring and adventurous by himself in his younger days.

This book is unique in its method of using a courtroom style procedure of point-by-point inquiry and evaluation of evidence presented through letters, documents, and journals to question what Clark’s intentions may have been during his adventure, considering foremost Clark’s almost dogged admiration for General Wilkinson, the American general who was unparalleled at planning covert missions down the Mississippi and into Spanish territory.

Trogdon’s wonderful book is a rich tapestry of life on the lower Mississippi and at New Orleans during the rule of Spanish Louisiana, and the Spanish Conspiracy which the devious General Wilkinson earnestly worked to make a reality while hiding his true colors from US authorities. Trogdon gives all the evidence and players behind the master plot. During his 1798 voyage, Clark played a role in this conspiracy by illegally smuggling Spanish silver coinage upriver to some unknown party. The extent to which Clark knew what was involved with the money, which was a payment from the Spanish to Wilkinson, is the question which is a focus of this book. Was Clark a traitor too? Perhaps. Was he a spy? Maybe. The reader is left to judge and decide.

Although all accounts are true and reported minutely, this book is not a dry-as-dust work of academia but reads more like an historical thriller, particularly in the account of how an incident at the Balisa at the mouth of the Mississippi River with Clark caught in the middle on an American ship almost made an international conflict erupt between Spain and the US.

“The Unknown Travels and Dubious Pursuits of William Clark” is that rare book that entertains and informs both the casual reader and the serious student of history, plus has everything that a professional historian could desire from such a work, particularly with the complete transcript of Clark’s logbook for comparison in the back, footnotes, a bibliography and index. An extra plus is the entertaining tracework history in the addenda about how the Clark journal wound up in the Columbia archives.

Trogdon helpfully gives back stories for all the main players in the book, to aid with fully understanding what went on in 1798. For example, in 1795, Manuel Lisa accompanied Clark from New Madrid on behalf of Wilkinson. Lisa was a courier for the governors of Spanish Louisiana territory at the time, and was trusted to carry Spain’s top-secret correspondence to Wilkinson.

Many major players involved with New Orleans business were associated with Clark, such as Daniel W. Coxe, a Philadelphia merchant, and his protégé, Virginian Beverly Chew, who would soon become a major player in the Crescent City. On the return trip to the East Coast in 1798, Clark sailed with Coxe and Chew and then traveled homeward with Chew, once they had docked. The subtle but pervasive nuances of all these interactions are multilayered. For anyone who loves historical detection, this is truly a stellar read and a worthy addition to the bookshelf for continued reference.

Tags: Aaron Burr, Andrew Ellicott. Thomas Freeman, Benjamin Sebastian, Beverly Chew, Casa Calvo, Daniel Clark Jr., Daniel W. Coxe, General James Wilkinson, John McKee, Lewis and Clark, Louisiana, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, smuggling, Spanish Conspiracy, spying, treason, William Clark Comments Off on New Book Reveals Explorer William Clark’s Dubious Past

by Pam Keyes

One Vote Made Thomas Jefferson President

May 18, 2016 in American History, general history, History, Legal History, Louisiana History

Claiborne and President Thomas Jefferson with a map of the Louisiana Purchase

Astonishingly, only one vote from a very young Tennessee state representative handed Thomas Jefferson the presidency of the United States in the 1800 Election.

The 25-year-old who cast that ballot was William C. C. Claiborne, who as a direct result of his vote that spring of 1801 was appointed governor of the Territory of Mississippi a few months later by a grateful Jefferson. The Federalist governor in place, Winthrop Sargent, had faced heavy criticism for his authoritarian rule of the territory, and the residents there did not mourn his removal from office although Sargent bitterly complained in the press.

In the Presidential Election of 1800, the US Constitution had not required that electors should designate on their ballots the person they voted for as president, and the one voted for as vice president, but that the one having the highest number of votes should be president, and the one having the next highest should be vice president. This made the end vote of the Electoral College confusing, although the popular vote had given the Jefferson-Burr ticket a majority.

Incumbent President John Adams had lost the popular vote dramatically to candidates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, which threw the final decision into the Electoral College. But the Electoral College gave Jefferson and Burr an equal number of votes, so the House of Representatives had to decide which of them should be president, the choice to be made by ballot, and each state would have but one vote.

According to a historian writing in 1830, “the contest was extremely animated, for on this occasion the great federal and republican parties came into violent conflict…when they were returned with an equal number of votes to the house of representatives, it was supposed of course that the public voice would be obeyed, and Jefferson made president. The federal party, however, determined to support Colonel Burr; they knew very well the political sentiments of every member of the house of representatives, and they early ascertained that the election depended on the vote of Mr. Claiborne, the sole representative from the state of Tennessee.”

Claiborne was thought to be especially vulnerable to being influenced as he was young with grand ambitions, plus the most important factor was he was poor. Members of the Federalist Party sent several delegations to the holder of the key vote to try to bribe him with various offers. Claiborne refused all of them, saying he thought it proper and honorable to obey the public voice on the matter.

The ballots began to be cast in eary 1801, and the states were equally divided on the first ballot; several other ballots took place, and the result was the same, when the House adjourned.

News of the tied vote spread like wildfire. The importance of Claiborne’s vote was so critical to the contest that when Congress began voting again, he went armed to the House, as no one could predict what violence might erupt. The public was barred from the proceedings as a safety precaution.

For several days and sometimes long into the nights, the votes were the same. All in all, a total of 36 ballots had been cast, with the same number of votes for Jefferson and Burr. On every vote, Claiborne had voted for Jefferson, and declared that he felt satisfied that Jefferson was the choice of the people, and that he intended to stick with that vote, no matter what the consequences.

On the last vote, the Vermont representative turned in a blank ballot, voting for no one, and Claiborne had the tie-breaking vote for Jefferson.

A native of Virginia born in 1775, Claiborne did not have the advantages of inherited wealth like some of his fellow Virginians in the late 1700s, but he made up for that by careful studies and through associations with benefactors who helped him attain important political positions while he was still a very young man.

He had attended Richmond Academy, and the College of William and Mary, then worked as a clerical assistant studying law in Congress at New York City, and then at Philadelphia. Among the prominent people at Philadelphia who noted Claiborne’s industriousness was Thomas Jefferson, who offered to lend him some books for his studies.

Claiborne returned to Richmond where he passed the bar, then at the request of his friend and later Tennessee governor General John Sevier, Claiborne moved to Sullivan County, Tennessee, where he soon was named one of the five members of the Tennessee delegation to form the newly-minted state’s constitution. Gov. Sevier made one of his first acts the appointment of Claiborne as a judge of the supreme court of law and equity of the state, citing his universally acknowledged merits despite the fact Claiborne had not quite turned 22 years old.

Even at that young age, Claiborne set his sights high, aiming to become district judge of Tennessee. He asked his influential friends in Virginia William Fleming and Edmund Randolph to recommend him to President George Washington for appointment in 1797. Fleming said in his letter to Washington that Claiborne’s “superior talents, great sobriety, and intense application to business distinguish him from the generality of young gentlemen of his age and should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his application, I am persuaded you will never have cause to regret the appointment.”

Claiborne did not get the district judge position as Tennessee Congressman Andrew Jackson told President Washington in his letter regarding the matter that “Mr. Claibourn (sic) is an amiable young Man, but perhaps not possessed of sufficient Experience to fill such an important office (district judge).”

Somewhat ironically, when Jackson vacated his representative seat to run for senator later in 1797, Claiborne successfully ran in the special election for Jackson’s former post in the House of Representatives, winning by a large majority over more seasoned and wealthier opponents. Only 22 years old, he was the youngest man who had ever appeared on the floor of Congress. He was re-elected to a full term in the House in 1798.

Jackson and Claiborne’s lives would intertwine more than a few times in subsequent years, and they never were on friendly terms. Jackson had been an enemy of Sevier, who was one of Claiborne’s mentors.

In 1803 at the transfer of Louisiana territory from France to the United States, President Jefferson furthered Claiborne’s prominence by naming him and General James Wilkinson to accept the transfer on the part of the US. From the outset, it was understood that Claiborne was tacit governor of the Territory of Orleans, and he moved from Natchez, Miss., to New Orleans.

In 1804, Jefferson officially appointed Claiborne governor of the Territory of Orleans, although he noted in his letter that Claiborne had not been his first choice for that honor. Jefferson had wanted his old friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, for the post, but Lafayette had turned him down. An earnest applicant for the governorship had been Andrew Jackson, who must have fumed that the young man he had considered inexperienced had won the job over him, in a large part due to that presidential vote.

When Louisiana became a state, in 1812, Claiborne had gained enough respect and admiration from the French and American citizens there that he easily became the first governor.

According to a biographical entry in “The National Portrait Gallergy of Distinguised Americans” when Louisiana was invaded by the British, Gov. Claiborne “voluntarily surrendered to General Jackson, when he arrived, the command of the militia of his state, and consented himself to receive his orders, a measure which he thought a just tribute to the military experience of General Jackson, and which he adopted, also, to avoid to his state all the expenses of the equipment and movements of her militia, which would have fallen upon her alone had he kept the command.”

Jackson made sure Claiborne and his select group of militia were nowhere near Chalmette, the main scene of the action which would culminate in the Battle of New Orleans on Jan. 8, 1815. On Dec. 23, 1814, Claiborne and his corps had received orders from Jackson to go to Gentilly to occupy the important pass of Chef Menteur as it was feared the British might try a diversion there. Claiborne and his group stayed there and fortified it, remaining at the spot through the whole contest and missing any action against the British.

Upon the expiration of his term as governor in 1817, Claiborne was elected to represent Louisiana in the Senate of the United States but before he could do so, he fell victim to liver disease on Nov 23, 1817, at the age of 42. He had lived a relatively brief life, but had left many legacies of his skill as both a statesman and patriot.

As a youth, Claiborne had written to President Washington that the “primary object of my life is to be useful to my Country,” and that “I shall labour to acquire the esteem of the present, and of after Ages for good and virtuous Actions.”

If Claiborne had been appointed district judge by Washington, he would not have been seated as a representative during the dramatic House vote of 1801. Burr, not Jefferson, may have won by a tie-breaking vote. The Louisiana Purchase may not have occurred. The Lewis and Clark Expedition would not have happened. Everything which evolved from Jefferson’s presidency would not have occurred, or would have happened differently. The value of one vote, and one man’s decision, in Claiborne’s case, was enormous.

Tags: Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Election of 1800, Electoral College, George Washington, House of Representatives, Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans, Tennessee, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, William C.C. Claiborne 2 Comments »

by Pam Keyes

The Bizarre Case of the Wannabe Pirate

February 18, 2016 in American History, general history, History, Louisiana History, Nautical History

The type of pirate flag found in De Putron’s trunk.

Methodist missionary Daniel F. De Putron sought more adventure in his life, so in late spring of 1841 he bought a small schooner in New Orleans, got a sidekick of an affable Irishman with the nickname of “Happy Jack,” and kept a skull and crossbones flag ready for the moment when he planned to partner with a pirate cruising off the Gulf Coast. He had, after all, dispensed with his Bible in favor of a copy of the “Pirate’s Own Book,” kept in his cabin.

A series of unfortunate circumstances coupled with an over-zealous revenue officer led to the reverend captain’s denouncement as a pirate, imprisonment, and colorful court appearance in New Orleans. All that saved him and his crew from the rope was the discovery that a bloody-decked ship whose occupants were thought to have been his victims turned out to be just a hoax done by that ship’s dishonest captain after some insurance money.

Capt. De Putron’s story began with his arrival in the Crescent City in early 1841. He led a quiet life for a few months and seemed low on funds until he unexpectedly paid cash for the schooner Independence, intended for the coasting trade. Licensure requirements demanded that only US citizens could be masters of ships entering that trade, so De Putron claimed to be a US citizen who lived at New Orleans. After this, he cleared out with a small crew and once in the Gulf, remained some weeks cruising about the Chandeleur Islands, making occasional forays to Mobile for supplies and crewmen, trying to keep a low profile as he waited for the large schooner to show up with which his Independence would serve as tender.

New Orleans-based Revenue Officer William B.G. Taylor in the Izard also was looking for that rumored pirate ship in the Gulf, in late May 1841. He stopped and boarded every vessel he ran across. A small black schooner oddly anchored at the north of the Chandeleur Islands caught his eye. When he stopped to inspect her, he found the captain absent and only six crewmen aboard. The man in charge said the captain was out with a fishing party and had the ship’s license with him. Nothing appeared amiss other than the number of sweeps or long oars aboard, so Taylor returned to the Izard. He stayed suspicious of the vessel because it had no cargo, and anchored a mile above the schooner to the north to spend the night.

The next morning, while the Izard was speeding along with the wind past the black schooner, Capt. Taylor was jolted by the sight of a man jumping overboard from her and swimming rapidly towards the Izard, calling out “Captain Taylor, protect me!” Taylor clapped the Izard’s helm and tacked sharply in response, reaching the man just as two other men in a skiff from the schooner approached. Brought on board, the swimmer said his name was Thompson, that he had been kidnapped in Mobile, that the schooner (named Independence) was a piratical vessel, and to prove what he said, if Taylor would protect him, he would go back onboard that ship and show him where the arms were concealed.

On his second boarding, Taylor with Thompson’s aid found arms stowed under the bread lockers, and ammunition consisting of balls and powder in abundance. Convinced he had found a piratical ship, he seized the vessel, removed the arms and ammunition to the Izard, and made sail for the Balize with seven prisoners in irons. Once at the Balize, the prisoners were placed under guard to await transfer upriver to New Orleans to Collector of the Port Denis Prieur.

Upon a more thorough investigation of the contents of the Independence, Taylor reported finding “seven pair more of high-priced pistols, a back and breast-piece of heavy iron armor and skull-cap to suit, dirk and bowie knives in plenty, a ship’s articles of war and no quarter, and two calling cards of the absent captain, the Rev. Daniel F. De Putron.” He also found something striking: a pirate’s flag bearing a skull and crossbones in white against a blue bunting background, in the same chest with a copy of the “Pirate’s Own Book,” a popular work which related tales of past pirates and privateers (including New Orlean’s own Jean Laffite).

The Pirates Own Book, published in 1837, a copy of which De Putron had in his trunk.

The Articles of Agreement contained some scary wording:

“We the undersigned, being the children of nature, have lawfully and wholly as much right to enjoy here, in all her stores, as any other who is of woman born; but being deprived of all these blessings by the artful designs of those who possess in more than superabundance the stores that were intended for all, we are compelled to come forward, protest against all the world, and thus obtain our rights. From this day we declare war against the world … no quarters are offered us, none can be expected__We do, and have formed a constitution this day for the better regulation of ourselves, knowing it to be for our mutual benefit, and as order and safety may be concerned, we are bound to ourselves and to one another. Our tie is cemented with blood, and nothing less than blood will propitiate, and atone for any of us who act contrary to our laws. Death being the warrant knell of all those who in time of action, shall through cowardice, negligence, or disaffection yield, cause others to yield, or cry for quarters.”

After reading that, Taylor and the other officers of the Izard were convinced that an infamous scheme had been nipped in the bud.

Taylor’s seizure of a pirate ship and crew caused a sensation in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune of June 6, 1841, reported: “it created an excitement in our city which extended from the center to the uttermost bounds of the faubourgs. Some asserted that they were a squad of rowdies, and that their ‘articles of agreement’ were written for a ‘lark.’ A religious old lady up town said they were nothing more nor less than missionaries going out to convert the natives of the Sandwich Islands_and this assumption was not the farthest from probabilty, since the captain (of the Independence) turns out to be a reverend gentleman.”

On the morning after the seizure, Taylor and pilots at the Balize had put out in chase of the schooner’s absent captain. They found Capt. Daniel F. De Putron looking for his missing schooner, made him a prisoner, strip-searched him, and brought him to New Orleans in irons. Capt. De Putron thought this was just all a big mistake, and before his arrest, wrote a lengthy letter to the port collector .

De Putron claimed the error of his ship’s seizure and his crew’s imprisonment was due to the “misrepresentation on the part of one of my crew, who had some spite against me…It was never my intention to use her (Independence) on this coast, and never have done it. I have been endeavoring to obtain Texas papers for the Independence, it being difficult, she being under tonnage…I have nothing on board on which the laws of the United States can take her up. There was no negro irons on board, and nothing but a few small arms for self protection, and belonging to my person. The papers were on board during the detention of the vessel; although I was absent she was taken from where she lay. I immediately followed her after I had been apprized …I take this opportunity to inform you of her detention, which is unlawful, she not being carrying any unlawful trade; and whatever others may say of her, she is intended to act as a tender to another schooner, after she has obtained Texas papers. The expenses incurred during the detention of this vessel I must obtain. And I now demand the immediate release of the vessel, which you will please to order, also of the men; and whatever may be said about her, it can never be said, that she has done any unlawful act, or injured the United States’ revenue.”

Unhappily for De Putron, just as he was arrested, word was received that the ship Charles, which had departed New Orleans a few days previous, had been found with no one on board, all the goods missing, and worse yet, blood in various spots on the deck. The gossip-mongers naturally figured De Putron, the reverend with the pirate flag, had done the deed, or the larger pirate schooner he had been waiting for at the Chandeleur North Point was the culprit. De Putron was promptly reviled in the press as the “Pirate of the Gulf.” Capt. Taylor and his men, along with several other volunteer ships, went out scouring the coast for De Putron’s supposed accomplice pirate ship with no success.

On June 4, the Charles was found by the captain of the Tiger abandoned but still full of her lumber cargo, near the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River some 40 miles from the Balize. All her sails were set, and the jib appeared to have been cut loose. There was slight water in the hold. Not a solitary living being was on board. Inside the cabin were some recently broken port bottles with contents glazing the floor. On the ship’s deck on one side was a small pool of blood running towards the scupper, and the other side had eight blood stains which appeared to have been made by some wounded person carried or forced over the ship’s side. The Tiger proceeded to look for the longboat from the ship in the area with no success, but about 10 miles distant, found the Charles’ jolly-boat whose lone occupant was a dog said to belong to one of that ship’s passengers, plus a box of sardines. The dog was rescued by the crew, and did not appear to have been adrift long. No other boats were found in the area, so Capt. Crowell of the Tiger took the Charles in tow and returned to New Orleans, arriving by 7 a.m. June 6, 1841.

As soon as the Charles appeared at the wharf, “horrid rumors of murder and piracy, mutiny and assassination, flew from mouth to mouth with incredible rapidity” reported the New Orleans Bee.

The only clue about the Charles’ fate was a logbook slate entry found which said “the ship continues to make water,” but when discovered, the ship was not sinking, and had only a slight amount of water in the hold which was readily pumped out.

The Charles had carried 23 cabin passengers, some of them women. The mostly French merchants were going to make their annual purchases in France. All of them were presumed to have been carrying considerable amounts of specie.

Several armed militia units went out on boats and ships to scour the bays, inlets, and Gulf for the big topsail schooner which had been spotted earlier before the Charles incident and which was suspected to be De Putron’s partner. Capt. Taylor of the Izard offered $500 reward to any of the fishermen of the coastal area who could provide solid leads to the capture of the pirate, and wrote that he was “confident of finding and securing the murderers (of the Charles’ crew and passengers.) He added that “You may depend I will leave nothing undone to detect and bring out all this villainy.” (Note: Taylor was still pirate-happy some 22 years after his capture of the Jean Laffite ship Le Brave, whose captain and part of the crew were found guilty of piracy and hanged in New Orleans in 1819-1820. Taylor had been a young second lieutenant at the time.)

In a letter to Prieur dated June 18, 1841, from the Balize, Capt. Taylor said Julius Watson, master of the Hercules ship, informed him he had seen the pirate schooner around June 8, carrying sail like the Flying Dutchman. “That such a vessel has been prowling our coast, and that the Independence was her tender-shipping and kidnapping men and getting supplies for her–is in my mind a stubborn truth, and that she committed the piracy on the ship Charles, I also firmly believe,” wrote Taylor.

According to news accounts in New Orleans, the articles taken from the Charles were “just such as a newly fitted pirate would be most desirous of obtaining: beds and bedding, cabin chairs, clothing, and everything in the way of arms such as axes, knives, crow bars and muskets.”

Capt. Taylor added that a fisherman from the Chandeleur who had accompanied Capt. De Putron earlier said the potential pirate had 300 doubloons about him when he saw him last, but when Capt. Taylor searched De Putron, he found neither the doubloons, nor the captain’s gold watch.

In the wake of the public alarm over the Charles and the worry that a murdering pirate was loose on the Gulf, several people in the vicinity of New Orleans were arrested just on suspicion of the supposed piracy and murder on board the ship Charles. At least one paper reported that some New Orleanians even thought that the old “pirate” Lafitte [sic] who was thought to be living at Paraguay, had returned again to his “congenial pursuits.” (Jean Laffite, by the way, had been reported in the Times-Picayune of Feb. 17, 1841 as having recently visited New Orleans, where someone recognized him and said he had the “same piercing eye he had in youth, but slightly bent with age.” Laffite quite apparently had not died in the reported sea battle off the coast of Honduras in February 1823, or else that was his ghost strolling the French Quarter in 1841.)

On June 24, 1841, the Times-Picayune printed a lengthy protest written by the imprisoned Capt. De Putron:

“I have been for the past three weeks a prisoner–my property has been seized–my name calumniated. The press has teemed with rumors which have been converted into ‘confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ.’ and untried, without the opportunity of a defense, I have been held up to public detestation as a Pirate…The piratical acts which I am presumed to have committed are the taking of the cargo of the ship Charles and the murder of her crew and passengers. I am legally advised that piracy is the commission of a felony on the high seas. Judging from what I have read and heard, there is still some doubt as to the commission of the felony, and in the absence of all direct testimony on the subject, the probabilities are decidedly that the deed was committed by persons on board (the Charles). It is absolutely certain that the whole affair transpired while I was laying with my schooner, the Independence, at anchor off the Chandeleurs, or while I was in actual custody. It is fortunately within my power to prove, by a chain of witnesses, the points at which I was during the entire interval that elapsed from my departure from the port of New Orleans and my return in irons.”

“No one saw me do the deed__I have never confessed the deed__I was not near the place of the deed__I have not been for any length a time unaccountably absent__none of the articles from the pillaged ship have been found in my possession. Why then do men call me guilty?”

“I am answered ‘because there are suspicious circumstances attending you.’ These suspicious circumstances, so far as I can learn, are the following: that a quantity of arms were found on board the Independence; that in my trunk was found a suit of defensive armor, pistol proof; that in my trunk also was found a peculiar flag, called a pirate’s, or black flag; that there was found on board the Independence a paper containing what have been called ‘articles of agreement,’ of a piratical nature.”

“And lastly, the general facts that my vessel was moored in an unusual place, had no cargo on board and was ostensibly engaged in no trade. These, I presume, cover all the suspicious circumstances that have been alleged against me,” wrote De Putron.

He proceeded to relate his own history of the affair surrounding his arrest, that he had gone to the Balize and demanded the release of his schooner, whereupon he was arrested and brought to the jail of the Parish of Orleans.

Next he endeavored to explain the suspicious circumstances that surrounded him and his ship, particularly the number of arms aboard:

“I have a right as a man, a free man, a citizen of the world, to own and keep in my own house or on board my own ship, armor, both offensive and defensive, of such a kind and of such a quantity as I may please. There are pirates on the high seas. I have a right to be prepared to defend myself against their attacks. No seaman who knows what I do of the coast of Africa and its inhabitants would venture among them unarmed.”

“I have been advised that there are municipal regulations forbidding the carrying of offensive weapons concealed about the person. Has it ever entered into the head of any legislator to forbid the wearing of defensive armor?”

“Thirdly, the ‘flag’__the piratical flag that was found in my trunk. That is conclusive he (de Putron) is a pirate! Which should I feel most strongly, derision or indignation? A piratical flag! Has the law of actions, or of any one nation ever declared a piece of bunting with a particular device upon it, a piratical flag, and made it an offense to have and carry such a flag? If not, then have I been guilty of no offense. If so, then would a Pirate be the last man to carry such a flag?”

“The fellow who made the flag informed others that he had made a suspicious flag for me, and perhaps intimated that my intentions were of a piratical nature; and the result was that I received applications from a number of persons who wished to join me for such an expedition. I informed those persons that they had utterly mistaken the man to whom they were applying, and that I had none other than proper and lawful purposes in view. In the course of the day, after the so-called piratical flag was completed, I received no less than one hundred applications of this kind. I was astonished, and at the same time, not a little alarmed. ..I therefore determined to leave New Orleans immediately on my previously intended trip to the Texas coast. My schooner, however, needed caulking, and I had not yet purchased the larger vessel to which the schooner was to act as tender. I proceeded to Mobile (to get supplies),” wrote De Putron.

As for the “no quarter given” articles of agreement found on his schooner, De Putron pointed out it was unsigned and said that was just his translation into English of a pamphlet of piratical articles of agreement document in French and Portuguese, and had been copied in pencil just because he had been struck by the original’s ideas and style.

Thompson’s statement to Capt. Taylor that the Independence was a piratical vessel was attributed by De Putron to bad blood between Thompson and the rest of the crew. Domingos, the cook, in particular had beaten him in a disagreement.

“If I were a Pirate they try to make me out to be, I would never have allowed (Thompson) to have such constant opportunities to escape and inform against me. His carcass would have fattened some shark long ago. Whatever else I am, I am neither a fool nor a coward,” added De Putron.

Before De Putron and his crew had their day in court, the captain, passengers, crew and goods from the supposedly plundered Charles were all found safe and sound. They had departed the Charles due to what Capt. Gorham claimed to be a sinking condition of the vessel, and were immediately transferred to the Louis Quatorze, which was heading to Havana. The blood on the deck was explained by a crewman’s hand that had suffered a bad cut during the disembarkation. Word that all were safe took about three weeks before being known at New Orleans, and the ire there against the captain for his negligance in notifying authorities quickly was so great they hung him in effigy dockside. Even though there was some relief that the Charles had not been victimized by a pirate, the New Orleanians were still thoroughly interested in the case of the possible pirate, De Putron, as court convened July 2, 1841.

The Times-Picayune reporter noted that it was steamy hot that day but nevertheless men in fancy frockcoats, vests and high collars packed the courtroom so tightly they hardly had room to breathe, and as the testimony began and proceeded lengthily, all were melting with prespiration by the afternoon. No one wanted to miss the “pirate” hearing.

De Putron entered the courtroom without shackles and necks craned to get a good look at the missionary turned buccaneer. He was blond, a young man of about 25, respectable-looking, with hair combed forward as was the style. He did not seem particularly ferocious. During testimony he stood “as stiffly as though a noose already dangled above his head,” recounted journalist and spectator Charles Hooton in his 1845 article “The Crescent City.” The Times-Picayune reporter on the scene said De Putron seemed “better adapted for the cassock than the coat of mail–more fit to tell his beads than to wield his Bowie knife.”

Accompanying De Putron were his fellow imprisoned crewmen: Osborno Abbott, John Tully alias Happy Jack, Luis Bargasse, Manuel Domingos and John Peaston. The other crewman, Johnson, had turned state’s evidence.

Ballie Peyton, US District Attorney, and J.W. Smith represented the US. C.K. Johnson and Randall Hunt appeared for the prisoners. Recorder Baldwin presided.

The Independence captain and crew learned the charges against them for the first time that morning, even though they had been held in prison for some three weeks.

De Putron was charged with perjury–for representing himself at the custom house as a US citizen and as having been born in the US, contrary to the facts.

The second charge was having employed men, and fitted out and armed a schooner for the purpose of embarking in the African slave trade, in defiance of and contrary to the laws of the United States.

The third charge was for having aided, assisted and corresponded with pirates.

First up on the stand was Capt. Taylor, boarding officer at the Balize for several years. He said he was told by a fisherman that a suspicious craft lay at the Chandeleurs. He put out after her, well armed and ready for a scratch, for he expected one. He came up to her, went on board, met Abbott and told him who he was and what was his business. Abbott told him the captain was not on board, that they were merely on a pleasure or fishing excursion, and had no arms but a fowling piece, which he showed him. Taylor said he went down into the cabin which he called a dark-looking hole, could find nothing, and came up as if he had left a steam bath; was still not satisfied that everything was right, told Abbott when the captain should arrive he must see his papers, and left for the Izard. The next day when he was passing near the Independence (the suspicious vessel), he saw Thompson jump off and swim towards him. He took him on board, and Thompson told him the Independence was a pirate vessel, that the captain had kidnapped him in Mobile, and that if the witness would protect him and come with him on board the Independence he would show him arms enough to “shingle a ten-pin alley.”

Attorney Johnson interrupted Capt. Taylor and said that Thompson’s narrative related by himself was not relevant, and he was not to give in evidence anything that Thompson or anyone else told him.

Peyton said the prisoners were charged with fitting out a piratical vessel for the slave trade (which according to US laws of the time, was piracy) and for conspiring to act as pirates.

Capt. Taylor resumed his testimony and said he went with Thompson on board the Independence, went down to the cabin, and found a large lot of what he called “plunder” in the captain’s (De Putron’s) chest. The items he found were on display in the court: the skull and crossbones pirate flag, the steel armor and helmet, and a colossal Bowie knife.

Also on display were the other items found on board: two guns, a large spring bayonet, a pioneer knife or sword, ten pair of pistols, a pair of Colt’s patent repeating pistols, one keg of powder, two silk handkerchiefs filled with pistol and musket balls, one pair of bullet molds, nine dirks, a pair of double barrelled pistols which were charged with balls, a large case of percussion caps, five powder flasks, a map of the coast, the Pirate’s Own Book and articles of agreement.

Continuing his testimony, Capt. Taylor said he brought the arrested crewmen to the Balize, and when De Putron came there looking for his ship, he arrested him and found on his person a pair of loaded pistols, a dirk and a Bowie knife. (At the time, New Orleans had a law against concealed weapons.) De Putron told him the Independence was intended as a tender to a slaver to do business on the Texas coast.

Next up on the stand was the accused, De Putron. He recognized all the items in display as his, including several papers which were read. One was his will, signed at the island of Guernsey April 10, 1840, saying he was the son of Daniel De Putron of Guernsey. Among beneficiaries in the will were the British and Foreign Bible Society, plus several pounds sterling to widows and orphans of Guernsey. Another, more peculiar paper that was read was a manuscript memoir of his short life, which started “Born February the 23d, 1817,” but had the place cut out. The memoir covered his life from 1820 up to 1838 and consisted of voyages form the West Indies to England, England to New Holland, New Holland to France, France to America, and America to Africa.

Next on the witness stand was Thompson, who said he first met Capt. De Putron in Mobile about two months earlier, and was convinced to come on board the ship by Happy Jack, who enticed him with some grog to stay and join the crew. He said the Independence had been at the Chandeluers about three weeks, and though the captain would say he was going off fishing, there was never any fishing apparatus on board. He heard it whispered on board that a topsail schooner was expected, and every vessel coming from the east was signalled.

Thompson said De Putron told him the pirate’s flag was to frighten off intruders on the coast of Africa, and also that he thought he had a right to use the prefix of reverend to his name as he was educated for the Protestant ministry and was born in Cincinnati. However, Thompson noted that De Putron’s accent was very like that of a British Cockney.

Thompson said he had been whipped by Domingos once for losing some knives overboard during washing. He added that Domingos had often threatened his life, with both a knife and a hatchet in hand but not used.

Testimony concluded that afternoon to be continued the next morning, when Smith of the US counsel said he would leave it to the court to determine whether or not the charge of confederating and corresponding with pirates, had been sustained by the evidence offered; but they (the US counsel) contended that the charge of equipping and fitting out a vessel to engage in the African slave trade was fully established against the whole of the prisoners, and that the charge of perjury against De Putron was clearly proven.

Smith read the laws enacted for the suppression of the African slave trade, particularly the law of 1817, which said transgressors were liable to a penalty of $5,000 each, and imprisonment not exceeding seven and not less than three years.

He noted that “De Putron’s failure to give proof he was engaged in legal commercial business and in honest enterprize was confirmation of his guilt.” Smith added that from the memoir read in court it was shown the captain’s relatives in Guernsey were slave traders, that his uncle in the Brazils was a slave dealer, and that from his boyhood up, De Putron had been engaged in the slave trade and knew all the means necessary for such a business, including proficiency in various languages.

Johnson, for the defense, replied: “At first there was a monstrous piracy (the Charles)__there were foul and bloody murders. And this, which was attributed to the prisoners at the bar, turns out to be, after all, neither piracy nor murder. The piracy was no more than a cowardly, rascally captain deserting his ship and causing the passengers to do the same, and the murders and the bloody deck all ended with a cut finger (of a crewman).”

At question, continued Johnson, was not “Did the evidence show any degree of moral guilt on the part of the prisoners?”, but was it enough to ensure their legal conviction before a jury.

Smith argued at length about how it appeared the Independence was indeed being outfitted for the slave trade, and not, as Johnson commented as part of his argument, that De Putron only intended on going to Africa for oil.

The hearing concluded with Abbott and Domingos discharged, and De Putron returned to prison, on both the slave trade and perjury charges, with bail set at $6,500. Happy Jack and the other crewmen were free to go.

De Putron lingered in prison awaiting his next court appearance, which came Jan. 16, 1842, when he went to trial and was found guilty of perjury. He did not go to trial in US Circuit Court until Feb. 12, 1842, for his second, and greater, charge of fitting out the Independence with the intent to employ her in the African slave trade..

The Times Picayune reported “This magnificently magnified pirate, smuggler, and all that sort of thing, was yesterday set at liberty, after an incarceration of some ten months…” De Putron was acquitted on the charge of fitting out for the slave trade, and US District Attorney Peyton moved that a nolle prosequi be entered on the charge of corresponding with pirates. “Thus ends the great De Putron case,” quipped the Times-Picayune, reprinted in the May 3, 1842 New Bedford Register of New Bedford, Mass.

De Putron vanished from the newspapers after his release from prison, where he had been kept for nearly a year. Genealogical data seems to indicate he returned to Guernsey, where he married and likely resumed the clerical life.

Capt. Taylor did not live long after the De Putron case concluded. He and his new US Revenue Cutter Vigilant were lost at sea near Key West in a gale in 1844.

Mysteries remain about the De Putron case, especially where did he get the funds to purchase the Independence, and who was captain of the large top-sailed schooner with whom the Independence never rendezvoused? The answers to those questions might be found with the subject of the next article: the return of pirate William Mitchell from the grave.

Tags: 1841, articles of agreement, Capt. Gorham, Capt. William Taylor, Daniel De Putron, New Orleans, pirate, ship Charles, ship Independence, skull and crossbones flag, slave trade 1 Comment »

by Pam Keyes

Paddy Scott: The Irish Pirate Who Plagued Mobile

January 30, 2016 in American History, general history, History, Nautical History

A scene of bayside pirates from the Pirates’ Own Book

Irish pirate Paddy Scott terrorized residents and visitors of the Mobile Bay area for some ten years over the 1820s and 1830s, earning himself national notoriety as that “vile pirate.” Oddly, no one now seems to know his story at all, and his legend lies dormant, buried with his bones. Only the old contemporary newspapers are left to tell his tale of mischief and mayhem.

The history of this freebooter begins with an 1818 ad seeking customers to send freight on his brand new “excellent forty ton barge” at Tuscaloosa Falls. Under his proper name, Patrick Scott, the young man boasted “the unusual goodness of his boat added to his practical experience of the navigation of the channel, offers an insurance of safety to whatever is committed to his charge.” (Alabama Republican, April 18, 1818)

By 1824, Patrick, now known as “Paddy” Scott, had gone the “breaking bad” route, leading Mobile newspapers to caution captains around Mobile and environs, as Scott and 10 Spaniards had gotten a long Spanish launch with a four pound shot hole in her gunwale which they were cruizing about the coast. The mayor of Mobile was concerned enough about this gang to offer a reward of $50 for the leader, as Scott had called on board the British Tar, lying in Mobile Bay a couple of days previous, and had helped himself and crew to provisions, etc., demanding liquors but finding none. The article stated they were bound for the lakes, and pulled for Pass Heron. A Pensacola man informed the newspaper that ten of the crew of the Spanish armed ship Ceres, prize to a South American Patriot privateer, had stolen a boat and absconded. “They have, it appears, made Scott, alias Glass, their commander. The public will do well to be on their guard.” (New York National Advocate, May 24, 1824)

(As one of his many aliases, Scott decided to appropriate the famous mountain man Hugh Glass’ name, probably inspired by the the current newspaper accounts of Glass’ near-fatal encounter with a grizzly bear and subsequent revenge trek seeking justice on his companions who had left him for dead. Paddy Scott, however, did not have the horrid scars of a bear attack and thus most definitely was not Glass.)

Not long after Paddy’s first foray into crime, Curtis Lewis, one of the inspectors of revenue for the Port of Mobile, returned from his expedition on Pascagoula Bay, having found a further quantity of goods which had been stolen from the schooner Barbaretta. Lewis also had taken and jailed two men who had stolen the goods in question from the first thieves (Scott and Francis). Six lots of goods were plundered from the Barbaretta, and recovered by the customs officer, who placed them in the custom house under lock and key. Seven of the original thieves were then caught, including the leader. Scott, Francis Keating, and Bruce, imprisoned for stealing the items from the ship, were sent on board the steamer Colombia, to be confined in jail at Cahawba, to face trial at the next session of the District Court. (Spectator, New York, N.Y. June 8, 1824)

However, Scott did not linger in irons very long, even in the supposedly more secure jail at Cahawba. By the 14^th of July, Scott the desperado was again at large. He with four others made their escape from the Cahawba Jail. Reid, the celebrated smuggler, who was committed in Baldwin county a few months previous for passing counterfeit money and sent to Cahawba for safe keeping, was one of the escapees, and it was through his means the escape was effected. A reward of $200 was offered for their apprehension, and several parties went in different directions in pursuit. One of the five sprained his ankle in getting out, and was retaken before he left the town. Keating, one of Scott’s accomplices in plundering the Schooner Barbaretta, and who turned states’ evidence, died in prison a few days after they reached Cahawba from Mobile. (Independent Chronicle and Patriot, Boston, Mass. August 25, 1824)

By summer of 1826, Paddy Scott had proven to be a constant pest on the Alabama and Mississippi coastline, particularly around Mobile Bay. The Pensacola Gazette of June 17, 1826 reported that Scott and a colorful accomplice known only as Smiley “are hovering in and around Mobile Bay, and have for some time past made Fowl River his rendezvous, with a sloop boat called the John Fowler, armed with muskets, pistols and sabers, all in good order. Is there not promptness enough in the country, to take such measures as will lead to the capture of so vile a pirate as he is known to be? Or shall we suffer him to go at large, to and fro, seeking whom he may devour?”

Scott and Smiley were soon apprehended. Reports from Mobile said that “a man named Paddy Scott has been arrested and imprisoned with a man named Smilie (sic). He was captured off Horn Island, in a small sloop, by Capt. Foster of the Revenue Cutter. Six shots were fired at him before he surrendered. Scott has long been accused of piracy, and is said to be a desperate fellow. He broke from prison at Cahawba and had been occasionally seen about the coast of Alabama. Since he has been taken, a party of armed men had been seen about the jail, supposed for the purpose of rescuing their companion, Scott, but they were pursued, and effected their escape in a boat.” (New York Daily Advertiser, June 30, 1826)

By July 3, 1826, Scott had acquired such a dangerous reputation that the Daily National Journal of Washington, D.C. devoted a lengthy article to him: “Paddy Scott has rendered himself notorious in Mobile by his depradations. About two years ago a prize to the Colombian privateer Centilla, lying in the river, was robbed of a quantity of dry goods and other articles of value; the District Court being in session, a bill of indictment was found against Scott and several others for piracy, but they were not apprehended until after the court adjourned. Scott broke jail..a few weeks afterward, he went on board a Mobile packet for New Orleans under the promise of being landed somewhere along the coast. He was brought to Mobile and delivered up to the Marshal. The jail being considered insecure, the prisoners were taken to Cahawba. Before the next term, however, all but one escaped, and he who had turned state’s evidence died in jail. For several months Scott was seen about the Bay, and suspected of piratical intentions; it was said he threatened to burn the city, for which the Mayor offered a large reward for his apprehension. He then disappeared, and had been only recently seen, and then in a boat, with several armed men. Once they boarded a vessel in the bay, and how they subsisted is unknown. He is a native of Ireland and says his real name is Glass.”

The jail at Mobile was indeed as insecure as authorities feared, for by late September 1826, both Scott and Smiley made good their escape. The Charleston Courier of Oct. 14, 1826 reported from Mobile that Smiley had by some means managed to saw off his irons, and late in the afternoon called upon the jailer to give him some water, whereupon entering the cell the jailer was knocked down. Smiley then wrested the keys from him and locked him in the cell, and deliberately proceeded to Scott’s cell, unlocked it, took off his irons, and both escaped after carefully locking the jail door.

Scott and Smiley headed for New Orleans, a bad move on their part, as Scott was arrested on Oct. 5 and Smiley the next day.

Strangely, the newspapers are silent about Paddy’s actions for almost two years. He and his cronies do not pop up again until early September 1828, in an article in the Louisiana Advertiser headed “Pirates.” Paddy Scott was said to be leading a group of 12 desperadoes on a small sloop called the Lalla Rookh, of about 10 tons, 30-35 feet long, fitted out at Pensacola, with black upper works, white molding and green interior, complete with a quantity of arms and provisions on board. The Advertiser stated the sloop called at the Bay of St. Louis on August 26 and Paddy and co. stole a whale boat from Charles Matthews along with other petty thefts, then loitered in the area, presenting several “very impudent threats to those on shore.” The writer opined that the general presumption is that they are bound on a piratical cruise and said “Should they not be looked after?”

Once again, Paddy went to New Orleans, and once again, he got arrested there, and taken to the New Orleans mayor for examination, according to the Baltimore Gazette of October 9, 1828. Nothing appears to have come of this arrest, and he was apparently released.

As of late March 1829, Scott and some four associates stole a small boat near New Orleans and were said to be lurking among the islands off the Bay of Biloxi, according to the Custom House Collector of New Orleans. (Commercial Advertiser, New York, N.Y. April 6, 1829)

Another lull in Scott’s dramatic misdeeds occurred until the fall of 1832, when the Charleston Courier reported that Scott was again actively doing nefarious deeds. Some “respectable citizens” of Charleston who apparently were unaware of Scott’s piratical tendencies hired him to take them in a small boat from the Bay of St. Louis to the Bay of Biloxi, stopping midway to go on shore for a bit of hunting while leaving their trunks and other effects on the boat. Scott of course seized the opportunity to cast off and put out into the lake at once, leaving his victims stranded on shore. Unhappily for Scott, Capt. Benjamin Holly ran across him fleeing the scene in his boat, thought it odd there was only one man in a schooner rigged craft, and successfully pursued him. He took possession of the craft, and brought the trunks and baggage to the Bay of St. Louis, where the owners were so happy to see their belongings they gave Holly a reward of $50. Nothing was mentioned about what happened to Paddy, and for some years, once again, he was idle__until a land pirate raid on some settlers in Baldwin County, Ala., in August 1837.

The Mobile Register of August 28, 1837 and New Orleans Times-Picayune of Sept. 23, 1837 reported vile outrages against some female settlers were committed in Baldwin County by a gang of desperadoes led by Paddy Scott. Bailey, one of Scott’s accomplices, was soon taken on Mobile Point but Paddy escaped in his schooner. He soon turned up walking the streets in New Orleans while citizens of Mobile offered a reward of five hundred dollars for his arrest. New Orleans authorities seemed to turn a blind eye to the wronged Mobile citizens: although Paddy was arrested in New Orleans under the vagrant act, for want of any evidence to justify his detention, he was soon liberated. (Evening Star, New York, Oct. 2, 1837)

By late 1839, the New Orleans Times-Picayune was calling Paddy Scott “the modern Lafitte” and noted that after he had been in the city about five days, he was arrested on the Levee. In a description of him given that year, he is said to be above the middle size, and “on the wrong side of 40.”

Paddy’s luck would soon turn sour after his next release. In January 1840 he murdered James Burgoyne in New Orleans by stabbing him in the back, then fled to his old haunts around Mobile.

The coroner’s inquest on Burgoyne’s body, reported in the Times-Picayune of Feb. 6, 1840, said the deceased was stabbed in the back just below the shoulder, the wound entering the chest cavity and penetrating the lungs. Dr. J.E. Kerr noted a singular peculiarity about Burgoyne in that his heart was on the right, rather than left, side of his body,

The Grand Jury at New Orleans issued a bill of indictment for murder against Scott, and he was arrested in June of 1840 in Mobile, then transferred to New Orleans. His aliases in addition to Hugh Glass included John Scott and John Carney.

The Sept. 6, 1840 Times-Picayune reported that after being found guilty of murder and at his death sentencing, Paddy Scott was asked by Judge Canonge if there was anything he wished to say. Seeming half-choked with “fear and feeling” Scott said in a voice “scarcely audible” that he should wish the court to defer passing sentence on him. The jury, he understood, were about addressing the Governor on his behalf. Six of the jury members which found him guilty signed a memorial to the Governor, praying that Scott not be made to suffer capital punishment. The T-P writer said at the sentencing hearing Scott “cried like a child. He is an idiotic, mindless looking man, and apparently devoid of all physical courage.”

By February of 1841, Scott had been pardoned by the Louisiana governor, and the sentence of death recorded against him was commuted to two years’ imprisonment at hard labor. (Times-Picayune, March 3, 1841)

Scott’s last appearance in the press was in the Jan. 3, 1844 issue of the Times-Picayune. The brief article stated “Paddy Scott, well known as a pilot on Lake Ponchartrain, died suddenly at Milneburg on New Year’s night.”

Tags: 1820s, 1830s, Alabama, Cahawba, Fish River, Fowl River, Hugh Glass, Mobile Bay, Mobile Point, New Orleans, Paddy Scott, Patrick Scott, pirate, privateers, Times-Picayune 1 Comment »

by Pam Keyes

The Laffite Portrait Proves the Authenticity of the Laffite Journal

December 1, 2015 in European History, general history, History, Louisiana History

The 1804 portrait of Jean Laffite by Gros

Baron Antoine-Jean Gros self portrait from 1820

At least part of the Jean Laffite journal collection at Sam Houston Regional Library at Liberty, Texas can be proven authentic through association with a portrait of Laffite never a part of the archives of Sam Houston because it was lost in a house fire in 1959 at Spartanburg, S.C.. This portrait, showing Jean Laffite standing on the deck of a ship with a cannon nearby, is dated 1804 and signed “Gros”___for Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, art advisor to Napoleon and painter-chronicler of the Emperor’s military triumphs.

Gros was a well-known and highly respected French artist who specialized in historical Napoleon portraits under the tutelage of artist Jacques-Louis David. Gros had been introduced to Bonaparte in 1796 by Napoleon’s sweetheart, Josephine, in Milan when he was away from France for safety’s sake after the French Revolution. He returned with the Napoleonic entourage and became a valued member of the group’s artistic corps. He specialized in romantic, Rubenesque portraits of various officers and vast, mural-size paintings that have been called spontaneous and free in brushwork, spacious in atmosphere, and smouldering in emotive color by twentieth century art critics. Gros’ artistic star soared with Napoleon’s own comet of fame, and slowly declined in brightness after the French emperor’s death in 1821. Called the first great romantic painter, Gros by age 64 suffered from personal dissatisfaction in his later career. In despair, he drowned himself in the Seine in 1835.

The portrait of Jean Laffite which Gros created only exists today in the form of a 4 x 5 inch black and white negative in the Laffite Collection at Sam Houston, a negative which was used by Stanley Clisby Arthur in 1952 as a frontispiece black and white photo in his Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover biographical book. Arthur had the photograph made during a visit to see the portrait, other paintings, and Laffite manuscript materials belonging to John A. Laffite, who was living in Kansas City, Mo., around 1950-51. The painting was on his living room wall, one of his KC neighbors recalled years later. Another black and white image of the same portrait was used as the frontispiece for the Vantage Press edition of The Journal of Jean Laffite, which John A. Laffite had privately published in 1958 after having the French journal translated to English.

Much controversy has ensued ever since among historians over the authenticity of the Laffite journal, and the Gros painting has been mostly overlooked through the years because it was lost, and because it appeared to be just a hastily done painting study, not a professional portrait.

(The Laffite journal and a few other holographic Laffite family materials escaped the house fire as they were in a trunk that was saved. All the paintings hanging in the house were destroyed. Strangely, even a part of the trunk’s contents was lost when they were caught in a fire at a radio and tv station in Spartanburg a feww months later in May 1960. The Laffite journal was in that second fire, and suffered fire damage along the edges, but survived intact. It and some of the other surviving parts of the Laffite Collection were sold by John A. Laffite in 1969 to collectors William Simpson and Johnny Jenkins of Houston for $15,000. Former Texas governor Price Daniel bought the lot in 1975 for $12,500, and donated all in 1978 to the newly created Sam Houston Regional Library.)

Everyone, including those in favor of the Journal’s authenticity, neglected to check on a simple way to assert the validity of the claim that the materials really were from famous New Orleans privateer Jean Laffite: all that needed to be done was to compare the Gros signature of the Laffite portrait to known Gros paintings of the same period. This seems simple, but until recently, it was not a quick thing to accomplish because Gros signatures were not easy to find to use for comparison purposes.

The majority of Gros paintings online are of small resolution, suitable for website galleries and web pages, but of utterly no use for checking the signature. This is especially true of some of Gros’ best known Napoleonic works, which are literally the size of walls. Even at high resolution, the signature on such works is often impossible to see. However, a few very high resolution scans of Gros art were examined, and signatures contemporaneous with 1804 were found. The Gros signature on the Battle of Aboukir painting (1806) at the Palace of Versailles is virtually the same as the signature on the Laffite portrait, and both signatures are found in the lower left corner of the artwork.

Gros signature on Laffite portrait

Gros signature on Battle of Aboukir painting

Gros 1804 signature on Jacques Amalric portrait

Some may question this and say “well, it could have been a painting forgery”, but the evidence is very much against this. The first American exhibition of Gros’ paintings and portraits was held in 1955 at Seligmann Gallery in New York, and at the time, the vast majority of Gros’s artwork were only to be found in France, and most of those in Paris. The Laffite portrait photograph was made before 1952, and it shows a worn, damaged painting that is coming loose at the top from its frame backing. The photograph of the painting in the Journal of Jean Laffite shows it in an expensive heavy gilt frame compatible with the early 1800s period. Also, there is no record that John A. Laffite ever tried to sell this painting before it was lost in the fire, so there was no motive to even try to forge it. Additionally, not all Gros paintings are signed, and the ones which are signed often are difficult to make out.

The next question would be where and when was the Laffite portrait made? Laffite is wearing a long coat, so that would indicate cold weather, winter or early spring, or maybe late fall. Gros was living in Paris at the Convent Capuchin in 1804. The closest harbor would have been Le Havre. Laffite was possibly the “Captain Lafitte” of the La Soeur Cherie ship which arrived in New Orleans in April 1804 and stayed there through early August. Gros was busy most of 1804 with painting the 17 by 23 foot mural Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1804, held in September of that year in Paris. Gros was idle between September and Dec. 2, so if Laffite departed for France from New Orleans, he could have been at Le Havre by late September, and thus some time in the Fall of 1804 the portrait was created, probably in the space of a few hours. Gros received great honors for his Napoleon mural at the Salon of 1804, and was very popular for making portraits afterward, so it is quite significant that Laffite was able to commission him to do even the quick study shipboard painting. Even this sketch would have cost a hefty sum at the time, so it indicates Laffite was well off even when he was relatively young, in his early 20s. Also, he must have had some connection to Napoleon in order to even hire Gros. One possible clue is the extremely ornate presentation sword in scabbard that Laffite is holding. The portrait would seem to commemorate the occasion of getting the sword. Did Napoleon present it to Laffite? The answer, like the painting, is lost to history.

One way to verify a piece of art is to look into its provenance, or chronology of the ownership, custody or location of the historical artwork. The primary purpose is to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production or discovery, by establishing its later history, custody and places of storage. A particular value in establishing provenance is in helping authenticate objects. The back of a painting, for instance, may include significant provenance information.

In the case of the Laffite portrait by Gros, since it was lost to fire, and no notes were made about what may or may not have been on the back of the artwork/frame, that particular information is lost, too. It is not known if the portrait sitter was identified on the back. In his book, Stanley Clisby Arthur said the painting was assumed by descendants to be Jean Laffite, as it was among other effects of the corsair preserved by one of his sons (presumably Jules Laffite, who died in St. Louis, Mo., in the 1920s). John A. Laffite, the owner of the painting in the late 1940s- 1950s, claimed to be the great-grandson of Jean Laffite and grandson of Jules Laffite, but genealogical data has not corroborated this. It is unknown exactly when or how John A. Laffite got the Laffite Gros portrait, other paintings, photographs, and Jean Laffite manuscript materials which are featured in Arthur’s Gentleman Rover book and the Vantage Press Journal of Jean Laffite book. All that is known about its ownership history is that he had the Gros portrait from about 1949 until its loss in 1959.

The fact that the Laffite portrait had a Gros signature identical to that on other Gros paintings fits with the timeline presented in the Laffite journal, as Jean says in it he was born in 1782, so would have been 22 years old in 1804 when the portrait was done. As the portrait dates to the right time period, its association with the Laffite journal and miscellaneous copybooks, family photographs, etc. lends more weight to their authenticity as well. They are most likely exactly what they appear to be: holographic manuscript materials written by Jean Laffite and members of his family.

John A. Laffite was a retired railroad employee who knew no French and could not read the Laffite journal, which is mostly in an archaic Creole French mixed with Spanish and a bit of English.

The content of the Laffite journal includes some historical items that were not known until recently, and the signatures in the journal closely match an authentic Jean Laffite signature on the Le Brave ship’s document which has been in federal custody since 1819.

Only the subject of the Gros portrait could have written the Laffite journal, and that person was Jean Laffite.

Tags: 1804, Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, France, Jean Laffite, John A. Laffite, Laffite Journal, Napoleon, Paris, portraits, S.C., Salon of 1804, Sam Houston Regional Library, Spartanburg 2 Comments »

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