I've got an old copy of Jenning C.Wise's 1958 book Sunrise of the Virginia Military Institute as a School of Arms, Spawn of the Cincinatti; Wise was Class of 1902, Professor-Commandant 1912 - 1915. In chapter XXIII, The Trade War of 1812-15 * The Birth of Secessia, Old Hickory or Andrew Jackson, the Alleged Hero of New Orleans, he writes the following:

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"With a veteran army including Highlanders renowned for their courage and discipline, Pakenham had no trouble destroying the flotilla of Jefferson's gunboats. Scorning the defenders of New Orleans, he was preparing to storm the city when the unexpected happened. For years the vile French pirate, Jean Lafitte, known as the "king of the Gulf," with utter contempt for the law forbidding the slave trade [passed in 1809, IIRC] had been supplying the so-called Pig Men of the Mississippi with the slaves for the thriving slave markets of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis, Port Jefferson, St. Louis, Paducah, and Louisville, as well as those of Pensacola and Mobile. The Federal Authorities had not dared assail him. In truth, it was in part to wrest from him the control of the Gulf trade that the British govenment, now determined to break up the slave trade through which 2,500,000 Negroes or more had been distributed over America from Jamaica, had sent Pakenham to Louisiana."

"Bolivar, "the Liberator," was now seeking an asylum in cuba, pending the resumption of activities against the Bourbons following the shooting of the republican patriot and insurgent Morelos in Mexicao just at this time. To the utter amazement of Jackson, with New Orleans apparently doomed, Lafitte boldly appeared there and, not wishing to see his empire [destroyed], which included the cayman Islands within the jurisdiction of Jamaica just south of Cuba, two of his principal smuggling bases of slaves received from the French in Haiti, of which today the history is carefully concealed, tendered his aid to the Americans. Incredulous at first, and at last in desperation Jackson accepted it, whereupon innumerable Pig Men and vassals of Lafitte appeared, incuding descendants of the Acadians transported from Nova Scotia in the past to Louisiana. Breastworks of cotton bales were thrown up behind which the "Cagian pirates" took their posts, manning guns of all calibers from Lafitte's fleet of slave runners. ... "
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I don't remember what the going rate was for a slave in those days, but that quantity represents a lot of money, and war is expensive. I can't imagine that the French slave-trade wasn't helping out with Napoleon's finances.

Does anyone know anything about this?

Regards, John