Jean Lafitte was a pirate. Not an interesting and entertaining Disney pirate, but a hard man who lived by theft and plunder.
Late in the war of 1812, between the young United States and Great Britain, Lafitte was approached by a captain in the Royal Navy and given an attractive offer.
If Lafitte would guide the British warships through the confusing channels of the Louisiana delta and help capture New Orleans, then he would be pardoned for his crimes (he was under a death sentence), given hundreds of thousands of acres of Louisiana farmland, several million dollars in gold and his brother would be released from a New Orleans prison.
To the shock of his men and the disbelief of the British Navy, Lafitte said No.
Instead he joined General Andrew Jackson in the rousing defense of the city. He and his men helped win a decisive victory for the new Republic.
When Lafitte was later asked why he had risked everything for the United States, he said simply that he believed in the ideals of freedom the new nation represented.
Some historians believe that Lafitte was killed in a naval engagement in the Gulf of Honduras.
But other writers have found intriguing evidence that Lafitte may have faked his death and moved to Missouri where he became an evangelical Christian pastor in St. Louis.
Whatever the truth, something wonderful captured the heart of this privateer. Something wonderful that is rooted in the founding of the American Republic.
America is impossible to understand without the Judeo-Christian beliefs that form its foundation.
Early American leader, John Winthrop, in a sermon preached in 1630, called the American experiment, ” …a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”, a quote based on Matthew 5:14.
As a friend once told me, the United States is basically a “church relocation project.” The men and women who founded this country had come first for the freedom to worship God.
That is the country that so captivated a pirate named, Jean Lafitte.
God bless America.
As the Bible says in Matthew 5:14, we are “a city on a hill.”
