Privateers of the Americas

Spanish American Privateering from the United States in the Early Republic

David Head

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780820348643
  9780820344003
• eBook ISBN:
  9780820348650
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Privateers of the Americas examines raids on Spanish shipping conducted from the United States during the early 1800s. These activities were sanctioned by, and conducted on behalf of, republics in Spanish America aspiring to independence from Spain. Among the available histories of privateering, there is no comparable work. Because privateering further complicated international dealings during the already tumultuous Age of Revolution, the book also offers a new perspective on the diplomatic and Atlantic history of the early American republic.

Seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes (which sometimes included slaves) from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Galveston and on Amelia Island. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people—not only ships' crews but investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations.

David Head looks at how Spanish American privateering worked and who engaged in it; how the U.S. government responded; how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations; what motivated men to choose this line of work; and ultimately, what it meant to them to sail for the new republics of Spanish America. His findings broaden our understanding of the experience of being an American in a wider world.

1. Diplomacy with Spain and Spanish America

In the spring of 1819, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was angry with the Supreme Court. In a case involving piracy committed against a British ship by the crew of a Buenos Aires privateer that had ended up in the United States, the Court had ruled that U.S. piracy law applied only to U.S. citizens. When the British minister complained, Adams could only deflect—and fume. “Their reasoning is a sample of judicial logic,” Adams wrote in his diary, “disingenuous, false, and hollow—a logic so abhorrent to my nature that it gave me an early disgust to the practice of the law, and led me to the unalterable determination never to accept a judicial office.” Adams detested Spanish American privateers. He called them “piratical privateers,” or just plain “pirates.” Adams had good reason to feel prickly. He often fielded complaints from Spanish, British, and French victims of privateers as he negotiated with Luis de Onís, the Spanish minister to the United States, over their nations’ boundaries, and assured everyone that, despite the popularity of privateering in the United States, the country really was neutral. Given to self-pity, Adams felt everyone was against him. Privateering “brought the whole body of the European allies upon us in the form of remonstrances,” he told his diary. “I must take the brunt of the battle upon myself, and rely upon the justice of the cause.”1

Diplomatic historians today best remember Adams for his role concluding an agreement with Spain, known as the Transcontinental Treaty or Adams-Onís Treaty, that acquired the Floridas for the United States, settled a border between the two nations in the West, and won access to the Pacific. Much less remembered is the contemporaneous issue of Spanish American privateering and the frustration Adams felt from the diplomacy of Spanish American vessels operating from the United States. This chapter recaptures the geopolitical context of U.S. relations with Spain and its rebelling colonies that made possible not only the Transcontinental Treaty but also Spanish American privateering. In doing so it pushes against a tendency in diplomatic histories to diminish the context in which the treaty was originally negotiated. Since the treaty was rich with significance for the country’s future growth, it is tempting to focus on its role promoting expansion to the exclusion of the other pertinent issues. But the treaty was achieved not as the next step along a predetermined path to power but rather within the particular circumstances of the early nineteenth century as the United States worked out its relations with the rest of the world. It was the geopolitical present that determined the course charted by U.S. policy makers, and it was the geopolitical present that made possible, in time, the expansionist future.2

The chapter follows several major statesmen of the day: Napoleon imprisoning Spanish King Fernando VII and touching off a revolution; President James Madison affirming United States neutrality; John Quincy Adams negotiating with Luis de Onís; and Speaker of the House Henry Clay pushing the United States to become the first to recognize the independence of the Spanish American republics. Examining how these men navigated their world reveals the larger picture of the wars in Europe and the Americas that privateers would exploit and that U.S. policy makers needed to navigate as they responded to foreign privateering. Geopolitical context thus emerges as the crucial factor shaping the decisions made by both the policy makers and the privateers.

War in Spanish America

In April 1808, Napoleon laid a trap for the Spanish king, Fernando VII, calling him to a meeting across the Pyrenees in Bayonne. Spain and its royal family were already in turmoil. Fernando had ascended to the throne only the previous month when rioting, brought about by Spain’s disastrous cooperation with France in the conquest of Portugal, had forced the abdication of his father, Charles IV. With one hundred thousand French soldiers occupying Spain, Fernando should have known better, but he believed Napoleon’s intentions peaceable—to build a buffer zone along the border or support his claim to the throne or even to cement their bonds by providing a French princess for him to marry. Instead Napoleon made Fernando a prisoner. He was taking Spain for his family. Fernando was deposed. Napoleon’s brother Joseph was installed as king.3

Napoleon taking the Spanish throne unleashed a crisis of authority in the Spanish world that would ultimately result in more than a decade of war, death, and destruction, and the dissolution of the Spanish Empire and the birth of new independent republics in the Americas. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a war breaking out led immediately to the commissioning of privateers, and the first private armed vessels sailed with the first favorable tide. In the Spanish Wars of Independence, however, privateering arose over time according to local conditions. Among the five emerging republics whose vessels sailed from the United States, the movement toward independence, war, and privateering unfolded according to their own rhythm within the larger drama of Spain’s contest with its colonies.

The Spanish people, in Spain and the Americas, immediately rejected Joseph Bonaparte, the usurper. They formed local governing bodies, called juntas, to organize resistance and govern in Fernando’s name according to the Spanish tradition that in the king’s absence sovereignty devolved to the people. The juntas in Spain came together to form a national governing body, the Junta Central, although in time it gave way to an executive body, the Regency, and a legislature, the Cortes. However constituted, this Spanish resistance government faced constant pressure from Napoleon’s troops, which forced the government to take up residence in Cadiz, a fortified port city protected by the British navy. Across the Atlantic, Spanish American juntas disputed the leadership of the Cadiz government. Some Spanish Americans juntas recognized the Cadiz government’s gesture toward power sharing. Spanish Americans served in the Junta Central, for example. But others balked. The Spanish kingdom rested equally on two pillars, Spain and America, they argued. Spanish Americans had the responsibility to exercise their own sovereignty, governing in the king’s name as well. 4

At the same time, tensions between Spanish America and the mother country had simmered for some time, and the crisis brought to the fore an element interested in independence. Some of these leaders, such as Simón Bolívar and Father Miguel Hidalgo, contrived to “wear the mask of Fernando,” as the saying went: resisting the claims of Cadiz by pretending loyalty to the king while preparing for the opportune moment in which to assert independence. Tensions also existed between Spanish American regions, and it was not uncommon for neighboring cities to form their own juntas, sometimes cooperating with each other, sometimes working at cross purposes, and, in the worst of times, engaging in open warfare.5

The Spanish American wars thus combined a foreign war against France with a civil war for power in the Spanish Empire, and the progress of the wars in any given place depended on how local conditions combined with events in the larger Spanish world. In Mexico, Father Hidalgo ignited the drive to independence with the grito de Dolores, his cry for rebellion voiced on September 16, 1810. A priest from a creole family, Hidalgo had given up an academic career to minister to the rural parish of Dolores and practice liberal politics. He built a peasant army of some eighty thousand men, inspiring their loyalty by consecrating the movement to the Virgin of Guadeloupe and enacting reforms such as ending slavery, abolishing Indian tribute payments, and redistributing property. Despite their numbers, Hidalgo’s forces were still peasants, and in the engagements that followed in late 1810 and early 1811, the defeats were crushing and the victories all too often pyrrhic. In March 1811, he was captured and sent to Mexico City, where he was tried, excommunicated, and, in July, put to death.6

Leadership of the Mexican independence movement then fell to Father José María Morelos, a former mule driver turned priest turned general. Morales scored several victories in 1812, and under his guidance a legislature, styled the Congress of Anáhuac in a nod to Mexico’s Aztec heritage, convened to declare independence (November 6, 1813) and to write a constitution. Following independence, however, Morales suffered a string of defeats, and the Spanish took charge, forcing Morales and the Congress of Anáhuac to flee across Mexico, one step ahead of their enemies. In late 1815, the Spanish apprehended Morales as he accompanied the Congress to the coast. He was, like Hidalgo, brought to Mexico City, condemned, and, just before Christmas, executed. As 1815 ended, the Mexican independence movement seemed defeated, with the resistance to be carried forward by informal forces, filibusters, and privateers recruited abroad.7

Meanwhile, in the Captain-Generalcy of Venezuela, juntas had formed in several regions with Caracas, the capital, asserting its supremacy, a status that some cities recognized but that others did not. A declaration of independence followed on July 5, 1811, with a constitution adopted in December. Venezuela became the first republic to arise in Spanish America. Its first republican period was short-lived, however. Trouble began in March 1812, when an earthquake devastated Caracas. Hitting on Holy Thursday, it was interpreted as God’s judgment on independence seekers. Military defeats followed in the months ahead, first in Caracas and then Puerto Cabello, where Simón Bolívar was forced to flee, one step ahead of the enemy, to a Caribbean-bound boat. Bolívar regrouped in Cartagena. Once a part of the Viceroyalty of New Grenada, Cartagena formed a junta in June 1810 compromised of members who bowed neither to the resistance government in Spain nor to the junta at Bogotá, the former vice-regal capital. Cartagena declared independence on November 11, 1811, and its privateers plied the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean by the end of the year, often stopping in New Orleans. Bolívar joined the Cartagenan army, taking a command and leading his men into Venezuela, which he proceeded to conquer. In August 1812, Bolívar entered Caracas as a hero, acclaimed as “el Liberador.” Venezuela’s second republic lasted no longer than the first. In June 1814, a Spanish force of llaneros, rough cowboys from the plains, defeated Bolívar at the Battle of La Puerto and forced him back aboard another Caribbean-bound boat.8

Map 1. Spanish America in the Age of Revolution, 1808–1824

Bolívar’s situation worsened. The year 1814 brought a major turning point in the Wars of Independence. With Napoleon defeated in the Peninsular War, Fernando returned to Spain and his throne in May. Unhappy about the way his subjects exercised sovereignty in his absence, Fernando revoked the Constitution of 1812 (and its liberal provisions), restored the monarchy to its full powers, and began preparations to send an expedition to reconquer Spanish America. The expedition, ten thousand men strong, the largest ever to leave Spain, sailed the next February under the command of Pablo Morillo and landed in Venezuela in April. Morillo’s men made quick work of whatever resistance remained. Bolívar escaped to Jamaica, where he relied on the kindness of a British merchant friend until heading to Haiti in early 1816 to begin planning his next foray to Venezuela.9

Cartagena was also in desperate straits by early 1816. After pacifying Venezuela, the Spanish moved west to New Grenada, landing at Santa Marta in July 1815 and then laying siege to Cartagena. The city was heavily fortified, one of the strongest in the Caribbean. But the Spanish forces waited them out. Supplies dwindled. An evacuation was attempted. The city finally fell in early December 1815. When Morillo’s troops moved in, they found the streets strewn with bodies. The surviving patriots were soon among them.10

In Buenos Aires, a junta formed in 1810 and set about establishing control over the other provinces of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The interior provinces were amenable, but along the periphery resistance mounted. An expedition against Asunción (in modern Paraguay), for example, was rebuffed by a fellow local junta, and several expeditions against a Spanish stronghold in Upper Peru were also turned back. A third area of difficulty was the Banda Oriental, located across the Río de la Plata along the eastern shore of the Uruguay River. A small, lightly populated region, the Banda Oriental was nevertheless strategically vital as a buffer between Buenos Aires and Brazil and economically important because of its port at Monte Video and its river links to the interior. The Buenos Aires and the Banda Oriental juntas nursed a mutual resentment, eying each other warily across the river. But leaders could set those feelings aside, as they did in 1811 to attack a Spanish garrison at Monte Video.11

José Gervais Artigas led the Banda Oriental forces. In a previous life, Artigas had been a cattle rustler and smuggler before he joined the Spanish army and was assigned to arrest cattle rustlers and smugglers. Artigas had gained some distinction in the province and received a command from the junta at Buenos Aires. In the assault on Monte Video, however, Artigas issued his own call for rebellion, the grito de Asencio, a signal that cooperating with Buenos Aires was a means to an end—and that end was not Buenos Aires’s hegemony. As the siege progressed, a fourth party entered the fray: Portugal. The Spanish commander in Monte Video joined forces with Princess Carlotta Joaquina, the wife of the Portuguese prince regent and, it so happened, the sister of King Fernando of Spain. Like the rest of the Portuguese royal family, Carlotta Joaquina had fled Napoleon and taken up residence in Brazil. She agreed to send an army to rescue her brother’s lands and expand her own influence south. Over the next nine years, warfare along the Río de la Plata would be a mixture of shifting alliances and hostilities among Buenos Aires, the Banda Oriental, Spain, and Portugal.

For Artigas the high point came in February 1815, when he entered Monte Video as a hero and founder of a new nation, the Oriental Republic. (Actually, Buenos Aires had liberated Monte Video but gave it to Artigas as more trouble than it was worth.) Artigas then established an alliance of former Río de la Plata provinces called the Federal League, although despite being esteemed the Protector of Free Peoples, he wielded power only in the Banda Oriental. Artigas’s rule in Monte Video would last less than two years. In August 1816, Portugal reentered the Banda Oriental. Attacked anew, Artigas looked outside the country for help, including from privateers, but he was unable to save Monte Video. Artigas surrendered the city in January 1817 and commenced a guerilla war from the countryside and on the water as he continued to commission privateers, an anomaly given his lack of a sea port. Artigas held out until 1820, when he was finally defeated and forced into exile in Paraguay.12

Across the Río de la Plata in Buenos Aires, the challenge of controlling the provinces, fending off the Spanish, and building a new government coincided with the launch of privateering. By 1815, Buenos Aires had passed through several forms of government, and rumors swirled that General Morillo would head south following his conquest of Venezuela and Cartagena, augmenting Spain’s stronghold in Upper Peru. To address the military danger, Buenos Aires projected its sea power abroad, beyond its previous focus on the Río de la Plata. Naval vessels and privateers took to sea in late 1815. To meet the political fractiousness, a national congress assembled in Tucamán, restoring a measure of unity. The congress declared independence in July 1816 and drafted a constitution for a new nation to be called the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. Problems remained, especially as wrangling continued in the provinces, but the United Provinces would never again fall under Spain’s control.13

Neutrality

In September 1815, President Madison officially pledged neutrality in Spain’s contest with its rebelling colonies. Receiving word that “sundry persons” were “conspiring together to begin and set on foot, provide, and prepare the means for a military expedition or enterprise against the dominions of Spain,” Madison warned all involved to desist, “as they will answer the contrary at their peril,” and called on “all good and faithful citizens and others in the United States” to exert themselves in “the discovery, apprehension, and bringing to justice” of the perpetrators. The United States would continue to welcome Spanish American vessels to its ports. So long as they did not increase their arms or crew, the newness of their flags was no barrier to entry. The United States would likewise continue to permit Spanish American agents to visit. So long as they did not recruit men to serve in a foreign war, the uncertain status of their nations was no barrier to engaging in any lawful political or commercial activity. But Madison drew the line at participation and promotion of privateers and filibusters. Madison made the proclamation because privateering and filibustering threatened the nation’s ability to achieve its foreign policy goals vis-à-vis Spain and Spanish America. At best, Americans involved in privateering and filibustering could derail negotiations with Spain, upsetting the relationship with a bordering nation. At worst, the United States might be embroiled in another European war, triggered by Spain’s anger with U.S. interference in its colonial affairs. As Madison affirmed, neutrality was the best course for the United States to follow.14

By the time of Madison’s proclamation, two long-running issues caused friction in U.S. relations with Spain: the proper border between the two and damages that U.S. officials believed Spain owed to Americans. The border dispute stretched back to the American Revolution, when, despite treaty negotiations that set a boundary at the Mississippi River in the west and the 31st parallel in the south, Spain demurred, only acceding to the terms in the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase opened t...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations, Tables, and Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Captain Chaytor’s Dilemma
• 1. Diplomacy with Spain and Spanish America
• 2. New Orleans and Barataria
• 3. Baltimore
• 4. Galveston and Amelia Island
• 5. Service and Toil in Spanish America
• Conclusion: Captain Chaytor Comes Home
• Notes
• Index