The Memoirs of Jean Laffite: From Le Journal de Jean Laffite

by Gene Marshall (Translator), Jean Laffite

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738812526
Publisher:	Xlibris Us
Publication date:	04/10/2000
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	5.92(w) x 8.86(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

A liking for colorful characters, including history professors, and a weakness for barbecued chicken, led Gene Marshall, an associate professor of languages at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to a conversation at a McNeese State History Department picnic with Dr. Tom Watson, recently retired Head, about a manuscript in French alleged to have been written by Jean Laffite. Though he is the object of a two-week-long festival in Lake Charles, Laffite's renown comes from his role in the Battle of New Orleans.
Dr. Watson wanted to know if Marshall would take a look at a photocopy of the Laffite manuscript and use his literary background and knowledge of French and Spanish to help solve the mystery of the origin of the Journal of Jean Laffite? A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, and the publication of the Memoirs of Jean Laffite is only a continuation of the voyage of discovery started on that May afternoon in 1998.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	11
	Translator's Notes	37
	Acknowledgments	41
	Foreword	43
	Youth	45
	Ann Arbor, Friday, August 8, 1845	50
	Detroit, Monday, the first day of September, 1845	57
	Louisiana	72
	Toledo: Saturday, November 8, 1845	72
	Saint Louis, Monday, January 12, 1846	80
	Saint Louis, Tuesday, February 10, 1846	82
	After the Battle of New Orleans	99
	Bethalto, Illinois, Monday, May 4, 1846	99
	Saint Charles, Friday, May 29, 1846	107
	The Galveston Commune	113
	Saint Louis, Monday, June 8, 1846	113
	Edwardsville, Wednesday, October 7, 1846	121
	Carlinville, Monday, November 9, 1846	128
	Sangamon, Tuesday, December 1, 1846	134
	Exile from Galveston and a New Life	150
	At Saint Genevieve, Monday, January 4, 1847	150
	Creve Coeur, Thursday, March 4, 1847	159
	The Old Radical	165
	Saint Louis, Monday, April 24, 1848	165
	Saint Louis, Thursday, February 22, 1849	167
	Belleville, Monday, September 24, 1849	170
	Chester, South Carolina, Tuesday, March 19, 1850	171
	Saint Louis, Tuesday, June 4, 1850	175
	Clayton, Thursday, October 17, 1850	183
	Endnotes	187