Jean Lafitte: One Helluva PR Wiz!

This isn’t so much a blog as it is a history lesson. I’m frequently intrigued by events of the past and how they came to impact today’s public consciousness and become the stuff of legend. For most of my life I pretty much assumed that history just happens, that historians and academics research and write, and the rest of us simply read and interpret, drawing our own conclusions and thereby making history “history”.

I recently came across an amazing example which proves the old adage that history is written by the winners, often to prove a point or gain leverage in ways that go well beyond the facts of the event and “spin” history in the most self-serving manner. Consider now such an example: The legend of Jean Lafitte.

Every child in Louisiana learns the story of the Battle of New Orleans (1815), the (anti) climatic ending to the War of 1812 (which actually took place after the war ended) and Andrew Jackson’s springboard to national fame and the American presidency. From grade school on, we’re told of the heroics of Jackson and notably, the pirate Jean Lafitte, who emerged from “the swamps of Barataria to save the day”.

While elements of the Jean Lafitte legend are undoubtedly true, the image most of us have of Lafitte manning a cannon, dodging bullets and rallying his fellow pirates at the front line are as far from reality as Jean Lafitte was from the battle itself. The truth is that while Lafitte did in fact serve the US against the British foe, Jean was dispatched back to his home base near Grand Isle, Louisiana, more than fifty miles from any fighting at all.

In truth, it was Jean’s palsey-ridden brother Pierre, who was closest to the fighting, yet he too was at some distance from the action being posted miles away where Bayou St. John intersects with Lake Pontchartrain. At least from there he might have occasionally heard the sound of a cannon, unlike his more famous brother who spent more time dodging mosquitoes than dodging bullets!

While there were certainly pirates and privateers who stood shoulder to shoulder with the American troops, they only made up an estimated 2% of the military manpower, although those who did fight appear to have served with great distinction and valor.

Still, the legend of the Lafittes gives them top billing along with Jackson, shunting those who did the real fighting and had the wounds to show for it to the brackish back waters of history.

Part of the reason for the Lafittes’ ascendancy at the expense of their piratical colleagues lies in the fact that they had a history of ad hoc leadership among their Baratarian brethren (where no man was ever really “in charge”). Another reason lies in the confusing cultural mix of the city itself in those days where native Frenchmen, Spaniards and their Caribbean island neighbors objected strongly to US governance and were quick to take sides with any non-Americans such as the Lafittes who proudly thumbed their noses at American laws and law enforcers.

But perhaps the most compelling factor in the Lafittes’ national rise to fame was the fact that they literally helped write the books and newspaper articles that defined the events of those dramatic days. Jean, in particular, cultivated newspaper editors, columnists and the equivalent media bloggers of his day and wrote an endless series of anonymous letters to the editor telling the Lafitte side of the story, going so far as to review and edit relevant portions of the first book of national significance on the battle of New Orleans.

Eager to build his public reputation (and his greatly diminished pocketbook) as a way to fend off creditors, and to solidify the guarantee of a presidential pardon, Jean Lafitte took a temporary leave of absence as a pirate to become a PR machine, employing many of his well-placed friends and business associates in the service of enhancing his importance to the outcome of the battle, and consequently, to the preservation of the young American republic.

Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods, maybe history isn’t really history until someone writes (or blogs) about it.

Notably, the part of the story Lafitte never mentioned in any of his writings or letters to the editor, was his longstanding service as a double agent for both the Americans and their Spanish rivals seeking to gain an upper hand along the Gulf of Mexico and Lafitte’s numerous efforts to market his privateering and soldiering prowess to the hated British in the weeks leading up to the historic Battle of New Orleans. How very different Louisiana’s school children might be taught of Jean Lafitte if he had actually succeeded?

While Jean Lafitte may have been a highly successful pioneer in the as-of-then undefined field of American PR, he was a rank amateur compared to another better known and better loved one-of-a-kind public figure.

More on David Crockett, the man, the myth and the myth-maker in an upcoming blog.