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As a privateer and pirate, Jean Lafitte lived much of his life outside the law, and a number of details about his life are obscure. Some believe he was born January 24, 1776 as Jean Baptiste Lafitte in Bayonne, France, although a number of other cities in France also claim to be his birthplace.
He is said to have been a friend of both Andrew Jackson and Napoleon Bonaparte. Lafitte allegedly tried to help Napoleon escape exile, but fearing capture he fled back to Louisiana when Napoleon didn't arrive at Lafitte's boat in Bordeaux at the exact hour planned. Stories also circulated that Lafitte buried Napoleon's treasure somewhere and that it has not been found even to this day.
Along with his 'crew of a thousand men' (the number he commanded was actually quite small, but, due to the loose confederation which he and his brother ran, the number of men engaged in their affairs was substantial), Lafitte sometimes receives credit for helping defend Louisiana from the British in the War of 1812, with his nautical raids along the Gulf of Mexico.
Jean and his older brother Pierre Lafitte established their own "Kingdom of Barataria" in the swamps and bayous near New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. He claimed to command more than 3,000 men and provided them as troops for the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, greatly assisting Andrew Jackson in repulsing the British attack. The actual number he commanded was more likely a few dozen, although since they specialized in artillery their effect was substantial. Lafitte reportedly conducted his operations in the historic New Orleans French Quarter. General Jackson was informed of Lafitte's gallant exploits at the Battle of New Orleans by Colonel Ellis P. Bean, who then recruited Lafitte to support the Mexican Republican movement.
Of the two brothers, Jean was the most familiar with the naval aspects of their enterprise, while Pierre was more often involved with the commercial aspects. Pierre lived in New Orleans or at least maintained his household there (with his mulatto lover who bore him a very large family). Jean spent the majority of his time in Barataria managing the daily hands-on business of outfitting privateers and arranging the smuggling of stolen goods. The most prized "good" was invariably slaves, especially after the outlawing of the slave trade in the United States.
After being run out of New Orleans around 1817, Lafitte relocated to the island of Galveston, Texas establishing another "kingdom" he named "Campeche". In Galveston, Lafitte either purchased or set his claim to a lavishly furnished mansion used by French pirate Louis-Michel Aury, which he named "Maison Rouge". The building's upper level was converted into a fortress where a cannon commanding Galveston harbor was placed. Around 1820, Lafitte reportedly married Madeline Regaud, possibly the widow or daughter of a French colonist who had died during an ill-fated expedition to Galveston. In 1821, the schooner USS Enterprise was sent to Galveston to remove Lafitte from the Gulf after one of the pirate's captains attacked an American merchant ship. Lafitte agreed to leave the island without a fight, and in 1821 or 1822 departed on his flagship, the Pride, burning his fortress and settlements and reportedly taking immense amounts of treasure with him. All that remains of Maison Rouge is the foundation, located at 1417 Avenue A near the Galveston wharf. When Laffite left Galveston Island in 1820 he made Jao de la Porta, a Jewish Texan merchant a full-time trader.
While the Lafitte brothers were engaged in running the Galveston operation, one client they worked with considerably in the slave smuggling trade was James Bowie. The Lafittes were selling slaves at a dollar a pound, and Bowie would buy them at the Lafittes' rate, then get around the American laws against slave trading by reporting his purchased slaves as having been found in the possession of smugglers. The law at the time allowed Bowie to collect a fee on the "recovered" slaves, and he would then re-buy the slaves (essentially a "slave laundering" act) and then resell them to prospective buyers.
The Lafittes were also engaged in espionage, and were, in effect, double agents. The notion of their loyalty to the United States, while much evoked by their own publicity, was highly dubious. The Lafittes (Pierre, in particular) spied for Spain through agents in Cuba and in Louisiana. While often providing solid material, the Lafittes in fact played both sides, American and Spanish, and always with an eye to securing their own interests. No doubt the charm of Pierre and his reputation as a man in the know figured heavily in the weight he was given by his immediate handlers, although he was never trusted by the higher-up of the Spanish interests. Of particular interest it should be noted that while running the island of Galveston for personal benefit, Pierre Lafitte tried to induce Spain to assault the island. This would have enhanced his standing with Spain while causing minimal real losses to the Lafitte operations.
In the early 19th Century, a price of $500 was placed on Jean Lafitte's head by the Louisiana Governor, William C. C. Claiborne. In response, Jean Lafitte put a $5,000 bounty on the Governor.
In early 1821, the U.S. Navy ran Lafitte out of Galveston, according to French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. While leaving, Lafitte burned his compound. Thus, despite the great heights to which Lafitte rose, began his decline. He left with three vessels, but two of them deserted him a few days later when he refused to attack a convoy of Spanish merchantmen. From that point on, Lafitte's power and influence reached a low ebb, and he became a petty pirate and thief. He established a base on Mugeres Island off the coast of Yucatán, but it was just a small collection of squalid huts.
Herbert Asbury recounts his death in The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. In 1826, Lafitte entered the little Indian village of Teljas, on the mainland, and died of fever after a few days' illness in a native hut. He was 47.
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