Nevertheless Frank R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates,
says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he
was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about
sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about
the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was
never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and
once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail
under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up
his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have made some of the fine
wrought iron balcony railings which still adorn the old town), and went
to Barataria, became nothing more nor less than a "fence" for pirates
and privateers, taking their booty, smuggling it up to New Orleans, and
selling it there on commission.
But if the fact that he was not a gory-handed freebooter is against
Lafitte, there is one great thing in his favor. When the British were
making ready to attack New Orleans in 1814, they tried both to bribe and
to browbeat Lafitte into joining forces with them. As the American
government was planning, at this very time, a punitive expedition
against him, it would perhaps have seemed good policy for the
pseudo-pirate to have accepted the British offer, but what Lafitte did
was to go up and report the matter at New Orleans, giving the city the
first authentic information of the contemplated attack, and offering to
join with his men in the defense, in exchange for amnesty.
Pages:
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664