Part 16

“Ah, we do not make much damage,” You said.

“Why is that?” Jackson demanded.

“The powder!” You replied. “It is not good. The cannon balls, they fall short.”

Jackson said, “I’ll remedy that!” He ordered an aide to see to it that the Baratarians received the best ammunition possible. The General was heard to say later, “Were I ordered to storm the very gates of hell with Dominique You as my lieutenant, I would have no misgivings as to the outcome.”

Jean and Pierre Laffite acquitted themselves with honor in the battle for New Orleans. They and their men were given Presidential pardons, clearing the slate of past crimes, and for some time after the city was saved, they were great heroes. They were wined, dined, and cheered wherever they went.

Perhaps the brothers became bored with respectability. At any rate they drifted back into piracy. They pulled out of their old haunts and moved to Galveston to set up operations, and for several years they carried on business in the slave trade. In 1820, Jean Laffite boarded his favorite boat, The Pride, and sailed away into legend. There were stories that he died in Yucatan. Some claimed that he carried on his piracy in the Mediterranean. Still others said that he settled in France and lived to be an old man. All recorded history of Jean Laffite ended when he sailed from Galveston. Pierre Laffite was said to have lived in Louisiana to an old age and to have died a poor man.

The quality and the quantity of piracy subsided along with the fortunes of the brothers Laffite. But not smuggling. Smuggling was to continue to plague the Customs Service, and some of the smuggling would make the Laffites look like amateurs.

THE DARK YEARS

Slavery was the issue which exploded into the Civil War in 1861, but twenty-eight years before the first shot was fired on Fort Sumter, the nation was on the edge of open war over a dispute involving the Federal government’s right to force the collection of customs duties.

The spirit of revolt flamed high in South Carolina in 1832–1833. It was fed, too, by sympathy in Virginia and Georgia and other agricultural states which bitterly opposed the system of protective tariffs as being oppressive to the farm states.

Did the central government have the Constitutional right to force the collection of duties in a state which opposed such collections? No! said the “Nullifiers,” who favored striking down the Federal tariff laws. They insisted that any state had the right to withdraw from the Union if it so desired.

The Nullifiers gained control of the government of South Carolina and a call was issued for a convention to meet and abolish by formal state action the collection of duties. There also were loud demands from some state leaders for mobilization of South Carolina troops to oppose any Federal intervention. Customs officers, more sympathetic to the state of South Carolina than to the Union, refused to collect duties. This convention call was the aftermath of a previous convention at which a grim resolution was adopted saying in part: “The state looks to her sons to defend her in whatever form she may proclaim to Resist.”

The tariff collection issue became so divisive that reports reached President Jackson in August and September, 1832, that the loyalty of army officers in command of Federal troops at Charleston was suspect.

It was reported to Jackson that in event of Federal “aggression” against South Carolina to enforce tariff collection and oppose secession, these officers were ready to surrender their troops to the state rather than fight to protect the Charleston forts. These same reports said overtures had been made “perhaps not without success” to switch the allegiance of the naval officer in command at Charleston, in order to prevent a Federal blockade of the port.

Jackson advised his Secretary of State, Edward Livingston, that “the Union must be preserved, without blood if this be possible, but it must be preserved at all hazards and at any price.” He changed the garrison at Charleston and sent Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott to take over the command. He warned Secretary of War Lewis Cass that a surprise attack would be made on the Charleston forts by South Carolina militia and directed that such an attack must be “repelled with prompt and exemplary punishment.”

While taking these precautions, Jackson argued that if the doctrine of nullification of customs duties by the states were ever established, then every Federal law for raising revenue could be annulled by the states. He denied the right of secession, declaring that “to say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation.”

The controversial tariff laws had been a national issue long before Jackson entered the White House in 1828. The major issue in the Presidential campaign of 1823–1824 revolved around tariffs and the use of Federal funds for such internal improvements as roads, harbors, and like projects. The leading candidates for the Presidency that year were John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Q. Adams of Massachusetts, William H. Crawford of Georgia, and finally, Andrew Jackson--with Jackson and Adams emerging as the showdown antagonists.

Adams won the election when Henry Clay threw his support to the New Englander. Under the leadership of Clay and Daniel Webster a high-duty system of tariffs was adopted, which was termed the “Act of Abominations” by its opponents.

When Jackson entered the White House in 1828 the tariff issue was still the most important and also the most divisive issue of the day. In January, 1830, Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina launched a strong attack in the Senate against the excessively high tariffs. The young Senator sought a coalition between the West and the South, the agricultural areas, to oppose the duties favored by the industrial states.

Hayne’s argument rested on the states’ rights questions which were to plague the nation for many years to come. Hayne contended that “no evil was more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this government.” He argued for the right of any state to set aside “oppressive” Federal legislation, including tariffs.

Daniel Webster picked up the argument against Hayne. He contended that “the Constitution is not the creature of the state government. The very chief end, the main design, for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted was to establish a government that should not ... depend on the state opinion and state discretion.” He said it was folly to support a doctrine of “liberty first and union afterwards,” and he spoke the famous line: “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

By 1832, the South Carolina Nullifiers were openly led by Vice President Calhoun. The extremists were in control in South Carolina to push events toward the crisis which forced Jackson to rush back to Washington from Nashville. The state’s legislature proclaimed that any effort by Federal authorities to collect the duties after February 1, 1833, would cause South Carolina to secede from the Union.

When news of this proclamation reached Jackson, he ordered seven revenue cutters and a warship dispatched to Charleston. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott set his men to work preparing harbor defenses against attack from the land. The situation was at the stage where only recklessness was needed to set off a conflict. At this time Jackson wrote a friend that “no state or states has the right to secede ... nullification therefore means insurrection and war; and other states have a right to put it down....”

Jackson issued a proclamation warning the citizens of South Carolina not to follow the Nullifiers, whose “object is disunion.” He warned that “disunion by armed force is treason” and that those who followed this path must suffer the “dreadful consequences.” The proclamation spread excitement throughout the country. Many men volunteered for military duty in case of a conflict. Several state legislatures met to denounce nullification. But in South Carolina Robert Y. Hayne--who had resigned from his Senate seat to become governor of the state--issued his own proclamation in which he vowed to maintain South Carolina’s sovereignty or else to perish “beneath its ruins.” Hayne called for the organization of “Mounted Minute Men,” which, he said, would permit him to place “2,500 of the elite of the whole state upon a given point in three or four days....”

The only concession held forth by Jackson in this cold war was his approval of a bill for introduction in the House which would call for a reduction of tariff rates. His willingness to go along with this measure did not eliminate the threat of a shooting conflict.

While holding an olive twig of compromise in one hand, Jackson held a sword in the other. He sent a request to Congress asking authority to use Federal troops if necessary to collect the customs. Even as the cheers and curses sounded over this move, Jackson sent a letter to Gerald R. Poinsett, a Unionist leader in South Carolina, outlining his plans to use strong measures to enforce Federal authority. No doubt he intended his letter to reach the hands of the Nullificationists. He said should Congress fail to act on his request for authority to use military force, and should South Carolina oppose with armed force the collection of the customs duties, then “I stand prepared to issue my proclamation warning them to disperse. Should they fail to comply I will ... in ten or fifteen days at fartherest have in Charleston ten to fifteen thousand well organized troops well equipped for the field, and twenty or thirty thousand more in their interior. I have a tender of volunteers from every state in the Union. I can if need be, which God forbid, march 200,000 men in forty days to quell any and every insurrection that might arise....”

Not only would he take these measures against South Carolina, Jackson added, but if the governor of Virginia should make any move to prevent Federal troops from moving through the state against South Carolina then “I would arrest him....” The President also was prepared to call on Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to furnish 35,000 troops to carry out his orders.

Jackson’s request of Congress for authority to use troops in forcing the collection of customs was immediately called the “Force Bill.” To the extremists it was known as the “Bloody Bill.” Vice President John Calhoun said darkly that if the bill should pass then “it will be resisted at every hazard, even that of death.”