Part 6

Failing again to get any action from the legislature, Claiborne resorted to another course. He arranged to have a grand jury, friendly to his views, chosen from the city’s merchants and bankers. Witnesses were called who, in the strictest secrecy, swore to knowledge of piratical acts by the Laffites and their men. Before the news of this grand jury’s meeting spread through the city, Pierre Laffite was arrested. He was taken to jail and bail was denied. Jean Laffite, when he heard of Pierre’s arrest, hurried secretly to the city to talk with friends about releasing his brother. But this time nothing could be done.

It was while Pierre was in jail, on September 3, 1814, that His Britannic Majesty’s brig _Sophie_ sailed into the narrow strait off the island of Grande Terre and dropped anchor. A small boat was lowered and two officers were rowed ashore by sailors. The British were met on the beach by a tall, dark-haired man whom they asked to lead them to Monsieur Laffite. Their guide led them across the beach onto the porch of a breeze-swept house. And then the guide turned and said, “Messieurs, I myself am Laffite.” The visitors were Captain Lockyer from the _Sophie_ and Captain McWilliams of the Royal Colonial Marines. They had brought a most unusual offer.

Laffite refused to discuss business until lunch had been served. They ate their lunch from silverplate. It was an excellent meal, the officers recalled, with fine wines and good conversation. When the meal was finished, the men lit cigars and then Laffite was ready to hear what they had to say. Captain Lockyer disclosed that he brought an offer from Admiral Sir William H. Percy, commanding the British squadron at Pensacola. In brief, the British were offering Laffite $30,000 if he would bring his ships, guns and men to the side of Britain in the war against the United States. Laffite asked them to leave the Admiral’s letters with him and to give him fifteen days in which to study the proposition. Then, he said, “I will be entirely at your disposal.”

But Jean Laffite, pirate and cutthroat though he was, had no intention of betraying the United States. He hastily wrote a letter to his friend Jean Blanque, in New Orleans. He enclosed the letters handed to him by the British, together with a personal message for Governor Claiborne. Laffite said in his letter to Blanque: “Our enemies exerted on my integrity a motive which few men would have resisted. They have represented to me a brother in irons, a brother who to me is very dear! of whom I can become the deliverer ... from your enlightenment will you aid me in a circumstance so grave.”

And then he enclosed this letter to be delivered to the Governor:

MonSieur:

... I offer to return to this State many citizens who perhaps have lost to your eyes that sacred title. I offer ... their efforts for the defense of the country.

This point of Louisiana that occupies great importance in the present situation, I offer myself to defend it ... I am the lost sheep who desires to return to the flock ... for you to see through my faults such as they are....

In case, MonSieur Le Gouverneur, your reply should not be favorable in my ardent wishes I declare to you that I leave immediately so not to be held to have cooperated with an invasion.... This cannot fail to take place, and puts me entirely on the judgment of my conscience.

I have the honor to be, MonSieur Le Gouverneur,

_Laffite_.

Jean Laffite had put loyalty to the United States before profit in this time of peril. But even as Captain Lockyer conferred with Laffite, Claiborne was going forward with plans for a land-sea operation against the pirate stronghold.

After receiving Laffite’s letter, Claiborne called his military advisers into conference. These were Major General Jaques Villere, Commodore Patterson of the U.S. Navy, and Colonel Ross of the regular U.S. Army. The questions they discussed were whether the documents sent by Laffite were genuine and whether the governor should enter into correspondence with Laffite. Villere thought the documents genuine and that the Governor should reply immediately to the Laffite letter. However, Ross and Patterson voted against Villere. The majority favored an attack on the pirate stronghold.

Peculiarly enough, the morning after this meeting at the Governor’s mansion, newspapers carried notices that Pierre Laffite had mysteriously escaped from jail. A notice was posted offering $1,000 reward for his capture.

Eight days after Laffite wrote to Claiborne, the Ross-Patterson expedition set out for Barataria. Three barges were loaded with men and ammunition. It left the levee at New Orleans before dawn and drifted silently downstream with the current. Near the mouth of the river, the barges joined forces with Colonel Ross’ fleet of six gunboats and the schooner _Carolina_. The pirate hideout on the islands of Grande Terre and Grande Isle was sighted on the early morning of September 16.

There were indications at first that the Baratarians were going to resist. They began placing cannon into position and arming themselves. But then apparently they saw the American flag on the approaching ships. They broke ranks and ran. Without firing a shot, the expeditionary force captured the pirate fleet, guns, and stores of merchandise valued at more than $500,000.

When news of the attack on Barataria was received in New Orleans, there was much criticism of the expedition. And there was even more indignation when it was learned that the expedition was launched after Laffite had offered his services and those of his companions to the government in the defense of New Orleans against the expected attack by the British.

The British bribe offer to Laffite came as General Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans to arrange for the defense of the city. Claiborne sent copies of Laffite’s documents to Jackson on the chance that they were genuine and contained military information which would be important. Jackson made it quite clear he wanted no traffic with “this hellish banditti” and he rebuked Claiborne for having permitted Laffite and his men in the past to visit the city.

At last Jean Laffite made a secret trip to see Jackson himself. There is no record of what went on between the two men and what was said in that conference. It became known that Laffite offered to put in Jackson’s hands a supply of 750,000 pistol flints and some of the most skilled artillerymen in the world, including Laffite’s lieutenants, Dominique You and Beluche.

Jackson relented and accepted Laffite’s offer of help. The General made You and Beluche captains and they were given command of batteries on the right side of the American line.

On January 8, 1815, the decisive battle of New Orleans was fought. As dawn was breaking, Jackson visited the troops along the front lines and stopped at a battery where the Baratarians were making coffee in an old iron pot.

“That smells good,” Jackson said. “It’s better coffee than we get. Where did it come from? Did you smuggle it in?”

Dominique You grinned. “That may be,” he said, and he ordered a cup filled for the General. As Jackson sat on his horse sipping the strong, black coffee, he remarked to an aide, “I wish I had fifty such guns on this line, with five hundred devils such as those fellows behind them.”

The British advanced on the American positions to be mowed down by withering fire. At the height of the battle, Jackson again visited Dominique You’s battery to see how things were going.

“Ah, we do not make much damage,” You said.

“Why is that?” Jackson demanded.

“The powder!” You replied. “It is not good. The cannon balls, they fall short.”

Jackson said, “I’ll remedy that!” He ordered an aide to see to it that the Baratarians received the best ammunition possible. The General was heard to say later, “Were I ordered to storm the very gates of hell with Dominique You as my lieutenant, I would have no misgivings as to the outcome.”

Jean and Pierre Laffite acquitted themselves with honor in the battle for New Orleans. They and their men were given Presidential pardons, clearing the slate of past crimes, and for some time after the city was saved, they were great heroes. They were wined, dined, and cheered wherever they went.

Perhaps the brothers became bored with respectability. At any rate they drifted back into piracy. They pulled out of their old haunts and moved to Galveston to set up operations, and for several years they carried on business in the slave trade. In 1820, Jean Laffite boarded his favorite boat, _The Pride_, and sailed away into legend. There were stories that he died in Yucatan. Some claimed that he carried on his piracy in the Mediterranean. Still others said that he settled in France and lived to be an old man. All recorded history of Jean Laffite ended when he sailed from Galveston. Pierre Laffite was said to have lived in Louisiana to an old age and to have died a poor man.

The quality and the quantity of piracy subsided along with the fortunes of the brothers Laffite. But not smuggling. Smuggling was to continue to plague the Customs Service, and some of the smuggling would make the Laffites look like amateurs.

5

THE DARK YEARS

Slavery was the issue which exploded into the Civil War in 1861, but twenty-eight years before the first shot was fired on Fort Sumter, the nation was on the edge of open war over a dispute involving the Federal government’s right to force the collection of customs duties.

The spirit of revolt flamed high in South Carolina in 1832–1833. It was fed, too, by sympathy in Virginia and Georgia and other agricultural states which bitterly opposed the system of protective tariffs as being oppressive to the farm states.

Did the central government have the Constitutional right to force the collection of duties in a state which opposed such collections? No! said the “Nullifiers,” who favored striking down the Federal tariff laws. They insisted that any state had the right to withdraw from the Union if it so desired.

The Nullifiers gained control of the government of South Carolina and a call was issued for a convention to meet and abolish by formal state action the collection of duties. There also were loud demands from some state leaders for mobilization of South Carolina troops to oppose any Federal intervention. Customs officers, more sympathetic to the state of South Carolina than to the Union, refused to collect duties. This convention call was the aftermath of a previous convention at which a grim resolution was adopted saying in part: “The state looks to her sons to defend her in whatever form she may proclaim to _Resist_.”

The tariff collection issue became so divisive that reports reached President Jackson in August and September, 1832, that the loyalty of army officers in command of Federal troops at Charleston was suspect.

It was reported to Jackson that in event of Federal “aggression” against South Carolina to enforce tariff collection and oppose secession, these officers were ready to surrender their troops to the state rather than fight to protect the Charleston forts. These same reports said overtures had been made “perhaps not without success” to switch the allegiance of the naval officer in command at Charleston, in order to prevent a Federal blockade of the port.

Jackson advised his Secretary of State, Edward Livingston, that “the Union must be preserved, without blood if this be possible, but it must be preserved at all hazards and at any price.” He changed the garrison at Charleston and sent Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott to take over the command. He warned Secretary of War Lewis Cass that a surprise attack would be made on the Charleston forts by South Carolina militia and directed that such an attack must be “repelled with prompt and exemplary punishment.”

While taking these precautions, Jackson argued that if the doctrine of nullification of customs duties by the states were ever established, then every Federal law for raising revenue could be annulled by the states. He denied the right of secession, declaring that “to say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation.”

The controversial tariff laws had been a national issue long before Jackson entered the White House in 1828. The major issue in the Presidential campaign of 1823–1824 revolved around tariffs and the use of Federal funds for such internal improvements as roads, harbors, and like projects. The leading candidates for the Presidency that year were John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Q. Adams of Massachusetts, William H. Crawford of Georgia, and finally, Andrew Jackson--with Jackson and Adams emerging as the showdown antagonists.

Adams won the election when Henry Clay threw his support to the New Englander. Under the leadership of Clay and Daniel Webster a high-duty system of tariffs was adopted, which was termed the “Act of Abominations” by its opponents.

When Jackson entered the White House in 1828 the tariff issue was still the most important and also the most divisive issue of the day. In January, 1830, Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina launched a strong attack in the Senate against the excessively high tariffs. The young Senator sought a coalition between the West and the South, the agricultural areas, to oppose the duties favored by the industrial states.

Hayne’s argument rested on the states’ rights questions which were to plague the nation for many years to come. Hayne contended that “no evil was more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this government.” He argued for the right of any state to set aside “oppressive” Federal legislation, including tariffs.

Daniel Webster picked up the argument against Hayne. He contended that “the Constitution is not the creature of the state government. The very chief end, the main design, for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted was to establish a government that should not ... depend on the state opinion and state discretion.” He said it was folly to support a doctrine of “liberty first and union afterwards,” and he spoke the famous line: “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

By 1832, the South Carolina Nullifiers were openly led by Vice President Calhoun. The extremists were in control in South Carolina to push events toward the crisis which forced Jackson to rush back to Washington from Nashville. The state’s legislature proclaimed that any effort by Federal authorities to collect the duties after February 1, 1833, would cause South Carolina to secede from the Union.

When news of this proclamation reached Jackson, he ordered seven revenue cutters and a warship dispatched to Charleston. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott set his men to work preparing harbor defenses against attack from the land. The situation was at the stage where only recklessness was needed to set off a conflict. At this time Jackson wrote a friend that “no state or states has the right to secede ... nullification therefore means insurrection and war; and other states have a right to put it down....”

Jackson issued a proclamation warning the citizens of South Carolina not to follow the Nullifiers, whose “object is disunion.” He warned that “disunion by armed force is treason” and that those who followed this path must suffer the “dreadful consequences.” The proclamation spread excitement throughout the country. Many men volunteered for military duty in case of a conflict. Several state legislatures met to denounce nullification. But in South Carolina Robert Y. Hayne--who had resigned from his Senate seat to become governor of the state--issued his own proclamation in which he vowed to maintain South Carolina’s sovereignty or else to perish “beneath its ruins.” Hayne called for the organization of “Mounted Minute Men,” which, he said, would permit him to place “2,500 of the elite of the whole state upon a given point in three or four days....”

The only concession held forth by Jackson in this cold war was his approval of a bill for introduction in the House which would call for a reduction of tariff rates. His willingness to go along with this measure did not eliminate the threat of a shooting conflict.

While holding an olive twig of compromise in one hand, Jackson held a sword in the other. He sent a request to Congress asking authority to use Federal troops if necessary to collect the customs. Even as the cheers and curses sounded over this move, Jackson sent a letter to Gerald R. Poinsett, a Unionist leader in South Carolina, outlining his plans to use strong measures to enforce Federal authority. No doubt he intended his letter to reach the hands of the Nullificationists. He said should Congress fail to act on his request for authority to use military force, and should South Carolina oppose with armed force the collection of the customs duties, then “I stand prepared to issue my proclamation warning them to disperse. Should they fail to comply I will ... in ten or fifteen days at fartherest have in Charleston ten to fifteen thousand well organized troops well equipped for the field, and twenty or thirty thousand more in their interior. I have a tender of volunteers from every state in the Union. I can if need be, which God forbid, march 200,000 men in forty days to quell any and every insurrection that might arise....”

Not only would he take these measures against South Carolina, Jackson added, but if the governor of Virginia should make any move to prevent Federal troops from moving through the state against South Carolina then “I would arrest him....” The President also was prepared to call on Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to furnish 35,000 troops to carry out his orders.

Jackson’s request of Congress for authority to use troops in forcing the collection of customs was immediately called the “Force Bill.” To the extremists it was known as the “Bloody Bill.” Vice President John Calhoun said darkly that if the bill should pass then “it will be resisted at every hazard, even that of death.”

It was at this point that the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, moved to seek the solution which would avoid bloodshed and perhaps civil war. He introduced in the House his own bill to lower tariffs by 20 per cent over a period of ten years. The Clay bill was pushed through Congress along with the Jackson Force Bill and both were sent to the President for his signature. Jackson won his demand for authority to send troops to South Carolina to put down any move toward secession or nullification of the tariff laws, and he signed the compromise tariff bill even though it was, in a measure, appeasement of the Nullificationists. Clay’s tariff bill was a face-saving measure for South Carolina. The head-on conflict between Federal and state forces was averted--at least for the time being.

In Jackson’s administration there was one man whose name appears mostly in the footnotes of that turbulent period, but it is a name that deserves special mention in this chronicle. The man was Samuel Swartwout, Collector of Customs in New York City during Jackson’s two terms in the White House. He rates special mention and a shadowy niche in American history because he was the first and only man to steal a million dollars from the Treasury of the United States. In fact, he stole $1,250,000.

Swartwout was a young man when he plunged into New York politics. He was a dark-haired, personable man who made himself useful by running errands for the political bosses until he reached a position of backroom fixer and schemer with no small amount of influence. He was the bluff, hearty type who made friends easily. And while he never was a central figure in the making of history, he was one of those men whose names continually cropped up in the affairs of the men who did make history in his time.

Swartwout was a protege and confidante of Aaron Burr during the period of Burr’s shady adventure in the West when he was accused of treason in an alleged plot to establish an empire in the southwestern United States. And when Jackson’s star began to rise as a Presidential candidate, Swartwout attached himself to the cause of the Tennessean.

Many of Jackson’s friends and followers resented Swartwout’s close association with Jackson because they regarded him as a doubtful character smeared by the tar of the Burr affair. But when Jackson entered the White House in 1828, Swartwout was among the honored guests at the celebrations.

Jackson’s friends were concerned when it became known that the New Yorker had easy access to the office of the President and was seen coming and going as though he were one of Jackson’s intimate advisers--which he wasn’t. The concern became dismay when rumors spread that Swartwout had come to town seeking from Jackson the nomination as Collector of Customs for New York City, a post of no little prestige and political influence in those days. Jackson’s Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren, was so upset by the reports that he refused to admit Swartwout to his office or to enter into correspondence with him.

Jackson must have felt he owed a political debt to Swartwout because on April 25, 1829, during a recess of Congress, he handed the New Yorker the political plum he had been seeking. Swartwout continued in the office until March 29, 1838, with never any public suspicion that he was involved in thefts of money collected by the Customs House in New York. Only when the records were checked by his successor was the discovery made that his accounts were short by $1,250,000.

The scandal which followed broke like a storm over the young Customs Service. Demands were made in Congress for safeguards to prevent any such future looting of the Treasury. Enemies of Jackson attacked the “spoils system” of appointments and centered much of their assault on Customs.

As for Swartwout, he had foreseen the storm that was to come. He had bade his friends farewell and boarded a ship for Europe several weeks before the shortages in his accounts were discovered. He was in France, safely out of reach of the law, when the scandal broke--and he didn’t bother to return.

By 1849, the Customs Service spanned the continent. It reached the coast of California in the person of John Collier, who was appointed as the first Collector of Customs for San Francisco just as the state was clearing the way for entry into the Union. Collier reached San Francisco on November 13, 1849, after a perilous trip across the country. He arrived at the beginning of the gold rush to find the city and the customs situation in a state of disorganization and confusion.

Collier was overwhelmed by the amount of business being carried on in San Francisco, by the number of vessels arriving and leaving the harbor, by the smuggling which was going on, and by the high prices he found in the city. He advised Secretary of the Treasury W. M. Meredith in a long, rambling letter: “I am perfectly astounded at the amount of business in this office.... The amount of tonnage ... on the 10th instance in port, was 120,317 tons; of which 87,494 were American, and 32,823 were foreign. Number of vessels in the harbor on that day, 10th instance, 312, and the whole number of arrivals since the first of April, 697; of which 401 were American, and 296 foreign. This state of things, so unexpected, has greatly surprised me....”