Jean Lafitte
Jean Lafitte ran the largest smuggling operation in the Gulf of Mexico and then helped save New Orleans from the British. Born around 1780, probably in French Saint-Domingue or in Bayonne, he appeared in New Orleans around 1809 with his brother Pierre and built a business on a legal gap. The United States had banned the importation of enslaved people in 1808 and taxed foreign goods heavily; Lafitte supplied both, from a base at Barataria Bay in the marshes south of the city. His men held letters of marque from Cartagena, a rebel republic, authorising them to take Spanish shipping. Whether that made them privateers or pirates was a question New Orleans preferred not to settle, since the merchants, the planters and much of the legal profession bought from them. Governor Claiborne offered $500 for his capture; Lafitte offered $1,500 for Claiborne's. In September 1814 a British squadron offered him a captaincy, thirty thousand dollars and land in exchange for helping them take the city. He passed the documents to the American authorities and offered his services instead. Andrew Jackson called them hellish banditti and then took them, because he needed artillerymen and flints, and had almost none of either. The Baratarians manned two batteries at Chalmette on 8 January 1815 and their gunnery was singled out in Jackson's dispatch. They were pardoned by President Madison. Lafitte then founded a new colony at Galveston, resumed the trade, was expelled by the navy in 1821, and disappeared. Accounts of his death range from 1823 in a sea fight off Honduras to a quiet old age under another name.
- Lived: 1780 CE – 1823 CE
- Nationality: French-American
- Roles: privateer, pirate, smuggler
