Lafitte reportedly conducted his operations in the historic New Orleans French Quarter. General Jackson was informed of both Lafittes' gallant exploits at the Battle of New Orleans by Colonel Peter Ellis Bean, who then recruited the Lafittes to support the Mexican Republican movement. Of the two brothers, Jean was the most familiar with the naval aspects of their enterprise, while Pierre was more often involved with the commercial aspects. Pierre lived in New Orleans or at least maintained his household there (with his mulatto lover who bore him a very large family). Jean spent the majority of his time in Barataria managing the daily hands-on business of outfitting privateers and arranging the smuggling of stolen goods. The most prized "good" was invariably slaves, especially after the outlawing of the international slave trade in the United States. In 1810, a Spanish slave ship en route to Pensacola was captured by privateers and its cargo sold in Louisiana. The ship owner launched an investigation and discovered the names of the men who had purchased the slaves. The sheriff of Ascension Parish appointed Lafitte a deputy marshal and sent him to recover the slaves; Lafitte served the arrest warrant and helped round up the slaves. A provision in the Louisiana laws abolishing the slave trade called for illegally imported slaves to be confiscated and sold at auction, with half the profits going to the men who turned in the illegally gotten slaves. For his work in this case, Lafitte received half the purchase price for each illegally purchased slave he identified. Davis speculated that Lafitte participated in the raid to try to close down the operations of slave traders who were not operating through Barataria Bay. After Jean was run out of New Orleans around 1817, Pierre remained in New Orleans, but frequently visited the island of Galveston, Texas, to visit his brother. While the Lafitte brothers were engaged in running the Galveston operation, one client they worked with considerably in the slave smuggling trade was Jim Bowie. The Lafittes were selling slaves at a dollar a pound, and Bowie would buy them at the Lafittes' rate, then get around the American laws against slave trading by reporting his purchased slaves as having been found in the possession of smugglers. The law at the time allowed Bowie to collect a fee on the "recovered" slaves, and he would then re-buy the slaves (essentially a "slave laundering" act) and then resell them to prospective buyers. The Lafittes (Pierre, in particular) spied for Spain through agents in Cuba and in Louisiana.