Slave smuggling by foreign privateers: The illegal slave trade and the geopolitics of the early republic

Journal of the Early Republic

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 433-462

  Head, David ^a  

^a SPRING HILL COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84886617146     PISSN: 02751275     EISSN: 15530620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jer.2013.0061     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (Orlando, FL, 2005), 9-19, 37-39. In 1804, the federal government divided the Louisiana Purchase in two, with most of the future state of Louisiana at first called the Orleans Territory and everything else called Louisiana. Baton Rouge and the area between the Mississippi River and the Pearl River, which today are part of the state, were once in Spanish West Florida. They were annexed by the U.S. in 1810. For simplicity, I have used Louisiana to indicate the area of today's state, even when discussing events before Louisiana achieved statehood in 1812.
2. For the status of slavery before statehood, see Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 24-35.
3. For Louisiana and Spanish West Florida, see Andrew McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 (Athens, GA, 2008). An elaborate mythology has developed around the Laffites, and accounts of their lives vary widely in quality. Currently, the best biography is Davis's popular but heavily archival Pirates Laffite, and I have followed his account of their early lives
4. For the scale and scope of foreign privateering, see David Head, "Sailing for Spanish America: The Atlantic Geopolitics of Foreign Privateering from the United States in the Early American Republic," PhD diss., SUNY-Buffalo, 2009, 4-15. Foreign privateering should not be confused with American national privateering conducted under U.S. commissions during the War of 1812. Foreign privateers, though often employing U.S. citizens and sailing from U.S. ports, often violated federal neutrality law, which made it unlawful for anyone in the United States, whether a U.S. citizen or a foreigner, to own, fit out, arm, supply, command, accept a commission to command, sail aboard, or ship hands to sail aboard a foreign armed vessel with the intent to attack a nation at peace with the United States. The law also prohibited U.S. citizens from performing any of these actions while abroad. See Charles G. Fenwick, Neutrality Laws of the United States (Washington, 1913), ch. 2, 15-41. The names of the Spanish American provinces seeking independence from Spain are fraught with difficulty, since each region followed its own path to independence and names changed over time. I have adopted the above scheme for the sake of consistency and to reflect what privateering documents themselves most often used. Collectively, I refer to these emerging nations as Spanish America and to the privateers they commissioned as Spanish American, regardless of the citizenship of the men who sailed them.
5. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870 (1896; repr. New York, 1969), 109;
6. Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807 (Philadelphia, 1981), ch. 6, 201-29;
7. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (1975; repr. New York, 1999), 137-38, 148-49;
8. Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837-1862 (Berkeley, CA, 1963), 206-210;
9. Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 (New York, 1971), ch. 8, 295-346;
10. James A. McMillin, The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783-1810 (Columbia, SC, 2004);
11. Erik Colonius, The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails (New York, 2006);
12. Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York, 2007);
13. Natalie S. Robertson, The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA: Spirit of Our Ancestors (Westport, CT, 2008).
14. See also Civil War History 54 (Dec. 2008);
15. Ernest Obadele-Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States after 1808 (Fayetteville, AR, 2007);
16. Gene A. Smith, "U.S. Navy Gunboats and the Slave Trade in Louisiana Waters, 1808-1811," Military History of the West 23 (Fall 1993), 135-47.
17. Paul Finkelman, "Regulating the African Slave Trade," Civil War History 54 (Dec. 2008), 398-405.
18. For the relationship amongst narratives of nation-building, the early republic, and writing history outside of the nation-state, see Rosemarie Zagarri, "The Significance of the 'Global Turn' for the Early American Republic: Globalization in the Age of Nation-Building," Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Spring 2011), 1-37;
19. Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History (New York, 2006).
20. For the importance of Spanish American independence in this vein, see Rafe Blaufarb, "The Western Question: The Geopolitics of Latin American Independence," American Historical Review 112 (June 2007), 742-63.
21. The classic guide to admiralty law is Erastus C. Benedict, The American Admiralty: Its Jurisdiction and Practice with Forms and Directions. First published in 1850, Benedict's Admiralty is now a major law reference series.
22. See also William R. Casto, "The Origins of Federal Admiralty Jurisdiction in an Age of Privateers, Smugglers, and Pirates," The American Journal of Legal History 37 (Apr. 1993), 117-57;
23. Donald Petrie, The Prize Game: Lawful Looting on the High Seas in the Age of Fighting Sail (New York, 1999), 5-7, 140-46;
24. Sean T. Perrone, "John Stoughton and the Divina Pastora Prize Case, 1816-1819," Journal of the Early Republic 28 (Summer 2008), 215-41.
25. On smuggling, see Alan L. Karras, Smuggling: Contraband and Corruption in World History (Lanham, MD, 2010);
26. Wim Klooster, "Inter-Imperial Smuggling in the Americas, 1600-1800," in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1830, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 141-80.
27. Du Bois, Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 123-24. Phillip Curtin and Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman favored 1,000 per year as a reasonable estimate.
28. See Phillip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, WI, 1969), 73-75;
29. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), 25. Ernest Obadele-Starks has argued for a figure between 192,000 and 786,500 slaves smuggled to the United States between 1808 and 1863 or 3,500-14,000 per year.
30. See Ernest Obadele-Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers, 9-10. David Eltis has provided estimates of 46,000 for the period 1808-1860 (884 people per year) and, along with David Richardson, 1,000 per year for the period 1809-1820.
31. See David Eltis, "The U.S. Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1644-1867: An Assessment," Civil War History 54 (Dec. 2008), 353;
32. David Eltis and David Richardson, "A New Assessment of the Transatlantic Slave Trade," in Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, ed. David Eltis and David Richardson (New Haven, CT, 2008), 30. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that during the core years of foreign privateering from the United States, 1810-1821, approximately 5,600 slaves (about 450 per year) were disembarked in mainland North America.
33. See Estimates Database, 2010, Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces? yearFrom;eq1810&yearTo-1821 (accessed Dec. 30, 2011).
34. It should also be noted that foreign privateers also captured slaves who never ended up in the United States. A Captain Metcalf, for instance, captured over 1,100 slaves from three vessels that were seized by the Venezuelan Navy. See W. R. Maron to Thomas Lloyd Halsey, Feb. 24, 1821, Thomas Lloyd Halsey Letters in the Jonathan D. Meredith Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. For a poignant story of the fate of slaves contested over in these cases, see John T. Noonan, Jr., The Antelope: The Ordeal of the Recaptured Africans in the Administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams (Berkeley, CA, 1977).
35. John G. Clark, New Orleans, 1718-1812 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1970), ch. 15, 299-329;
36. Rothman, Slave Country, ch. 1, 1-36, and ch. 3, 73-118. The foreign slave trade to Louisiana was partially forbidden under the Spanish, wide open under the French, curtailed severely under the 1804 Orleans Territory organization law, partially opened in 1805 to allow the entry of slaves transported from other U.S. states, to total restriction on Jan. 1, 1808.
37. Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore, 2010), ch. 5, 166-202;
38. Stanley Faye, "Privateers of Guadeloupe and Their Establishment in Barataria," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 23 (Apr. 1940), 431-33, 443-44;
39. Davis, Pirates Laffite, 49, 56, 96-97.
40. For the Spanish American revolutions generally, see John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826 (1973; 2nd ed., New York, 1986);
41. John Charles Chasteen, Americanos: Latin America's Struggle for Independence (New York, 2008).
42. For the status of the slave trade in Latin America, see David Murray, "Latin America, Antislavery and Abolition," in Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, ed. Peter Hinks, John McKivigan, and R. Owen Williams (2 vols., Westport, CT, 2007), 2: 408-18.
43. Testimony of John Oliver, Dec. 8, 1814, Daniel Patterson and Others v. The Schooner General Bolívar, case no. 760, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans), Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21, National Archives and Records Administration - Southwest Region (Ft. Worth, TX). On becoming a territory, one federal court was established in New Orleans, which heard all federal cases. Each case was numbered. Cases 1-769 have been microfilmed as Case Files of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, 1806-1814, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1082 (hereafter cited as LADC).
44. See also depositions of Manuel Ruiz and James J. Connel, July 1813, U.S. v. Juan Juanilleo alias Sapia, LADC, case no. 774; testimony of William Hoey, Dec. 5, 1814; Joseph Costa, Dec. 5, 1814; James Hoskins, Dec. 5, 1814;
45. and E. Williams, Dec. 8, 1814, Patterson v. The Schooner General Bolívar, LADC, case no. 760.
46. Libel of Vincent Dorgoigoite, Aug. 28, 1810, Vincent Dorgoigoite v. Michel Bruard, LADC, case no. 390;
47. libel of Pedro de Reano, Dec. 17, 1816, Pedro de Reano and Others v. Pierre Liquet and Certain Negro Slaves, LADC, case no. 949;
48. Faye, "Privateers of Guadeloupe," 441;
49. Indictment, Oct. 27, 1814, U.S. v. Jacques Cannon, LADC, case no. 777;
50. For the factors affecting slave prices, see Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA, 1999), ch. 2, 45-77.
51. Works of admiralty law frequently mentioned distress, but did not explain its meaning, which suggests that the provision was commonly understood. See, for example, Henry Wheaton, A Digest of the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes (New York, 1815).
52. However, Louisiana Federal Judge Dominick Hall explained the requirements of a distress claim in his opinion in Jose Almiral v. The Ship Amistad de Rues and Cargo, LADC, case no. 1136.
53. Depositions of Joseph Mandage, July 2, 1810, Louis Crispin, July 9, 1810, Jean Baptiste Larrey, July 9, 1810, and affidavit of William Carter, July 9, 1810, William Carter (qui tam) v. Louis Aury, LADC, case no. 376.
54. Libel of William Allen, July 17, 1810, William Allen v. The Ship Alerta and Cargo of Slaves, LADC, case no. 381.
55. See also indictment, July 10, 1810 and affidavit of Francisco Martinez Antonio Bortoluci, July 9, 1810, U.S. v. Francis Brosquet, LADC, case no. 378;
56. libel of U.S., July 11, 1810 and deposition of William Allen, July 26, 1810, U.S. v. The Ship Alerta, LADC, case no. 379;
57. libel of Blas Moran, n.d., Blas Moran v. The Schooner Alerta, LADC, case no. 380;
58. The Brig Alerta and Cargo v. Blas Moran (1815), 13 U.S. 359.
59. Deposition of James Houston, May 28, 1818; opinion of Dominick Hall, n.d., U.S. v. The Brig Josefa Segunda, Her Tackle, Apparel, Furniture, and the Goods and Effects Found on Board, LADC, case no. 1183. See also libel of U.S., Apr. 29, 1818; claim and answer of Carricabura, Arrieta, and Co., May 5, 1818; testimony of Francis Raymond, June 19, 1818; and testimony of William Whitney, June 19, 1818, in the same case.
60. Petitions of P.N. Paillet, n.d., P.N. Paillet v. Caudole, LADC, case no. 392;
61. P.N. Paillet v. Bonal, LADC, case no. 394;
62. P.N. Paillet v. Coulon, LADC, case no. 395;
63. and deposition of John Chauvenette, Sep. 1810, P.N. Paillet v. Cadet Bayonne, LADC, case no. 393;
64. For one of many examples, see William C. C. Claiborne to Richard Rush, Oct. 30, 1814, Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, ed. Dunbar Rowland (6 vols., Jackson, MS, 1917), 6: 300.
65. As a neutral, the U.S. technically had two other options: It could have closed its ports to all combatants, although that would have closed even more ports to American sailors; or, the U.S. could have flung its ports wide open and allowed any and every privateer to do whatever he wanted in port, although that would have certainly created chaos and drawn the nation into war. See The Brig Alerta, and Cargo v. Blas Moran (1815), 13 U.S. 359.
66. For U.S. neutrality policy, see James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), 78-85;
67. Arthur P. Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, 1800-1830 (1941; repr. New York, 1964), ch. 7, 189-222.
68. Donald Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, IL, 1989), 152-53, 214-16;
69. Hickey, "Trade Restrictions During the War of 1812," Journal of American History 68 (Dec. 1981), 517-538;
70. Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (Annapolis, MD, 1991);
71. Gene A. Smith, Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny (Annapolis, MD, 2000);
72. Gene A. Smith, " 'Preventing the 'Eggs of Insurrection' from Hatching: The U.S. Navy and Control of the Mississippi River, 1806-1815," The Northern Mariner/le marin du nord 18 (July-Oct. 2008), 87-91.
73. Robert C. Vogel, "The Patterson and Ross Raid on Barataria, September 1814," Louisiana History 33 (Spring 1992), 157-70;
74. Vogel, "Jean Laffite, The Baratarians, and the Battle of New Orleans: A Reappraisal," Louisiana History 41 (Summer 2000), 261-76;
75. Chasteen, Americanos, ch. 4, 95-122;
76. Lynch, Spanish American Revolutions, 68-69, 100-102, 207-209, 317-19;
77. Head, "Sailing for Spanish America," 75-79.
78. Harold A. Bierck, Jr., "Pedro Gual and the Patriot Effort to Capture a Mexican Port, 1816," The Hispanic American Historical Review 27 (Aug. 1947), 456-66.
79. For Aury's background, see Lancaster E. Dabney, "Louis Aury: The First Governor of Texas Under the Mexican Republic," Southwest Historical Quarterly 42 (Oct. 1938), 108-16, http://www.tshaonline.org/shqonline/apager. php?vol-042&pag-11 4 (accessed July 4, 2009);
80. Stanley Faye, "Commodore Aury," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 24 (July 1941), 611-97. Though Aury's credentials are sometimes doubted, an agent for several Spanish American countries confirmed Aury's naval rank.
81. See Vincente Pazos to John Quincy Adams, Feb. 7, 1818, in U.S. Department of State, "Message From the President of the United States Transmitting, in Pursuance of a Resolution of the House of Representatives, of the 20th Instant, Information Not Heretofore Communicated, on the Occupation of Amelia Island," Mar. 25, 1818, 11 H.doc. 175, 33-34, United States Serial Set Digital Collection (accessed Aug. 15, 2005), 37.
82. Beverly Chew to William Crawford, Aug.1, Aug. 30, 1817, Oct. 17, 1817, in U.S. Department of State, "Message from the President of the United States, Communicating Information of the Proceeding of Certain Persons who Took Possession of Amelia Island and of Galvezton, during the Summer of the Present Year, and Made Establishments There," Dec. 15, 1817, 6 H.doc. 12, United States Serial Set Digital Collection (accessed Aug. 15, 2005), 8-13 (hereafter cited as "Message on Certain Persons");
83. libel and supplemental libel of Juan Lopez Constante, Sep. 13, 1817 and Dec. 1, 1817, Juan Lopez Constante v. The Schooner Petronilla, LADC, case no. 1095;
84. Faye, "Commodore Aury," 642-643;
85. William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis (New York, 1998), 55-61. Other slave smugglers followed a similar strategy by buying slaves in the West Indies and then bringing them to Louisiana where they turned them in and later purchased them back at auction.
86. Interrogatories, Dec. 1817, U.S. v. Pedro Riano, LADC, case no. 1132.
87. For U.S. relations with Spain and Spanish America, see Lewis American Union;
88. J. C. A. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776-1821 (New Haven, CT, 2009);
89. Peter J. Kastor, The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, CT, 2004).
90. testimony of Jean Maye, Henry Mathieu, Fourton, Durand, and Beranville, n.d., U.S. v. The Schooner Mosquito, LADC, case no. 978. If the men were free sailors, it is suspicious that they did not carry their protection certificates, since these were usually prized by African American seamen.
91. See W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 5. At the same time, these documents attested to the sailors' status as American citizens, which would have put them in danger of violating neutrality law by sailing aboard a Mexican privateer.
92. For the background of East Florida, see Frank Lawrence Owsley and Gene Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1998), ch. 7, 118-40;
93. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, IL, 1999).
94. James G. Cusick, The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida (Gainesville, FL, 2003).
95. For MacGregor, see Matthew Brown, "Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King: Gregor MacGregor and the Early Nineteenth-Century Caribbean," Bulletin of Latin American Research 24 (Jan. 2005), 44-70;
96. David Sinclair, Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Land That Never Was: The Extraordinary Story of the Most Audacious Fraud in History (London, 2003);
97. T. Frederick Davis, MacGregor's Invasion of Florida, 1817: Together With an Account of His Successors Irwin, Hubbard and Aury on Amelia Island, East Florida (Tallahassee, FL, 1928).
98. John H. Elton to Benjamin W. Crowninshield, Oct. 10, 1817, "Message on Certain Persons," 37.
99. Quotes: Elton to Crowninshield, Oct. 10, 1817, "Message on Certain Persons," 37;
100. Elton to Crowninshield, Oct. 19, 1817; Elton to Ruggles Hubbard, Sep. 9, 1817, Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy from Commanders, 1804-1886 (hereafter cited as Commanders' Letters), National Archives Microfilm M147.
101. See also Belton A. Copp to John Quincy Adams, Apr. 1, 1818, "The Patriot War, A Contemporary Letter," Florida Historical Quarterly 5 (Jan. 1927), 162-67;
102. Davis, MacGregor's Invasion of Florida, 46-47; Elton to Crowninshield, Sep. 3, 1817, Sep. 13, 1817, and Oct. 10, 1817, Commanders' Letters.
103. My estimate coincides with Jennifer Heckard's estimate, based on newspaper and naval sources, that some 500-600 slaves were landed at Amelia with another 500-700 intercepted by the navy. See Jennifer L. Heckard, "The Crossroads of Empire: The 1817 Liberation and Occupation of Amelia Island, East Florida," PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2006, 157-58.
104. For the slave trade laws, see Finkelman, "Regulating the Slave Trade," 402-405.
105. For the limitations of the 1820 law, see Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (1988; 2nd ed., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY, 1998), 162-66.
106. The neutrality acts are Act of March 3, 1817, ch. 58, 3 United States Statutes at Large, 370-371;
107. Kastor, Nation's Crucible, 201-20;
108. See David F. Long, Nothing Too Daring: A Biography of Commodore David Porter, 1783-1843 (Annapolis, MD, 1970), 52-55;
109. Smith, " 'Eggs of Insurrection,' " 86-87;
110. Obadele-Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers, 44.
111. John A. Logan, No Transfer: An American Security Principle (New Haven, CT, 1961).
112. For the law's application to Amelia Island, see James Monroe, "First Annual Message," Dec. 2, 1817, in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (10 vols., Washington, 1897-1902), 2: 14;
113. House Select Committee, "Report on the Introduction of Slaves from Amelia Island," 46-47;
114. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands, 196, 286n.
115. Rafe Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2005), 111-16;
116. Howard, American Slavers, ch. 2, 28-69;
117. Judd Scott Harmon, "Suppress and Protect: The United States Navy, the African Slave Trade, and Maritime Commerce, 1794-1862," PhD diss., The College of William and Mary, 1977, ch. 3, 53-87, and ch. 5, 110-42;
118. Eltis, "U.S. Transatlantic Slave Trade," 352-53.