Contemporaries described the smuggler Jean Lafitte as "graceful and elegant in manners ... accomplished in conversation." Women found him charming. Some of the leading figures of New Orleans openly associated with him. But to young Louisiana Gov. W.C.C. Claiborne, there was just one word for Lafitte: "pirate." Even so, as historian Bennett H. Wall records, "It was not the privateering and occasional piracy ... that particularly annoyed Claiborne and the government of the United States. ... Rather, it was the fact that Lafitte and his men openly flaunted customs laws by selling their booty at much lower prices than legitimate...