John Quincy Adams for the Defense To defend the Africans in front of the Supreme Court, Tappan and his fellow abolitionists enlisted former President John Quincy Adams, who was at the time 73 years old and a member of the House of Representatives.
 ¡ On February 24, 1841, former President John Quincy Adams begins to argue the Amistad case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. A practicing lawyer and member of the House of Representatives, John...
 ¡ The brig Washington that seized the Amistad was commanded by Lt. Thomas R. Gedney. In maritime law, compensation is allowed to persons whose assistance saves a ship or its cargo from impending loss. Lt. Gedney claimed that it was with great difficulty and danger that he and his crew were able to recapture the Amistad from the Africans.They claimed that, had âŚ
 ¡ Engraving of Africans chained in the cargo hold of the Amistad, which measured 1 meter high, by John Warner Barber in 1900 (Š Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) But abolitionists raised money to hire a translator to interview Pieh and the other survivors and to obtain legal help from abolitionist lawyer Lewis Tappan.
Here are eight African American attorneys who pioneered the way for generations of legal scholars by challenging the preconceived bias and bigotry of an entire nation: Macon Bolling Allen Charoltte E. Ray James Weldon Johnson Charles H. Houston Thurgood Marshall Jane Bolin Constance Baker Motley Fred Gray 1. Macon Bolling Allen (1816-1894)
When Baldwin decided to defend the African prisoners in the Amistad case, he gained national recognition. The Amistad was a Spanish slave ship that was illegally transporting recently captured Mendi Africans to Cuba when the Mendi on board revolted and gained control.
President John Quincy AdamsTo defend the Africans in front of the Supreme Court, Tappan and his fellow abolitionists enlisted former President John Quincy Adams, who was at the time 73 years old and a member of the House of Representatives.
In 1840 Lewis Tappan and Ellis Gray Loring of the Amistad Committee approached the 72-year old Adams to defend the Amistad captives. Initially hesitant, he eventually took the case believing it would be his last great service to the country.
Roger Baldwin was a Yale-educated forty-six-year old New Haven lawyer with a reputation for defending the unfortunate when he was asked to represent the Africans of the Amistad.
Led by an African named Sengbe Pieh â known to the Spanish and Americans as Joseph CinquĂŠ â the freedom seekers killed the Amistadâs captain and cook, overpowered the rest of the crew, and took control of the ship.
federal courts, the Amistad Case of 1840 remains one of the most dramatic and meaningful legal battles in Americaâs history. More than 20 years before the start of the Civil War, the struggle of 53 enslaved Africans, who after violently freeing themselves ...
CinquĂŠ and his accomplices spared Ruiz and Montes on the condition that they take them back to West Africa. Ruiz and Montes agreed and set a course due west. However, as the Mende slept, the Spanish crew steered the Amistad northwest hoping to encounter friendly Spanish slaving ships headed for the United States.
Suspicion arose that Gedney intended to sell the Africans for profit and had, in fact, chosen to land in Connecticut, because the system of enslavement was still legal there. The Mende people were placed in the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut and the legal battles began.
The Washington escorted the Amistad, along with the surviving Mende Africans to New London, Connecticut. After reaching New London, Lieutenant Gedney informed the U.S. marshal of the incident and requested a court hearing to determine the disposition of the Amistad and her âcargo.â
Criminal Charges Against the Mende. The Mende African men were charged with piracy and murder arising from their armed takeover of the Amistad. In September 1839, a grand jury appointed by the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut considered the charges against the Mende.
government appealed the Amistad decision to the Supreme Court.
Armed with knives, they seized control of the Amistad, killing its Spanish captain and the shipâs cook, who had taunted the captives by telling them they would be killed and eaten when they got to the plantation. In need of navigation, the Africans ordered Montes and Ruiz to turn the ship eastward, back to Africa.
Aboard the Spanish ship were a group of Africans who had been captured and sold illegally as slaves in Cuba. The enslaved Africans then revolted at sea and won control of the Amistad from their captors. U.S. authorities seized the ship and imprisoned the Africans, beginning a legal and diplomatic drama that would shake the foundations of the nationâs government and bring the explosive issue of slavery to the forefront of American politics.
Charged with murder and piracy, Cinque and the other Africans of the Amistad were imprisoned in New Haven. Though these criminal charges were quickly dropped, they remained in prison while the courts went about deciding their legal status, as well as the competing property claims by the officers of the Washington, Montes and Ruiz and the Spanish government.
In November 1841 , Cinque and the other 34 surviving Africans of the Amistad (the others had died at sea or in prison awaiting trial) sailed from New York aboard the ship Gentleman, accompanied by several Christian missionaries, to return to their homeland.
But the Spaniards secretly changed course at night, and instead the Amistad sailed through the Caribbean and up the eastern coast of the United States . On August 26, the U.S. brig Washington found the ship while it was anchored off the tip of Long Island to get provisions.
Illegally Captured and Sold Into Slavery. The story of the Amistad began in February 1839, when Portuguese slave hunters abducted hundreds of Africans from Mendeland, in present-day Sierra Leone, and transported them to Cuba, then a Spanish colony. Though the United States, Britain, Spain and other European powers had abolished the importation ...
The Spanish plantation owners Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz purchased 53 of the African captives as slaves, including 49 adult males and four children, three of them girls. On June 28, Montes and Ruiz and the 53 Africans set sail from Havana on the Amistad (Spanish for âfriendshipâ) for Puerto Principe (now CamagĂźey), where the two Spaniards owned plantations.
The brig Washington that seized the Amistad was commanded by Lt. Thomas R. Gedney. In maritime law, compensation is allowed to persons whose assistance saves a ship or its cargo from impending loss. Lt. Gedney claimed that it was with great difficulty and danger that he and his crew were able to recapture the Amistad from the Africans. They claimed that, had they not seized the vessel, it would have been a total loss to its "rightful" owners. Gedney and his crew believed they were entitled to salvage rights (or the full $65,000). At that time in U.S. history, even individuals acting in their official capacity as officials of the government were entitled to salvage rights.
Abolitionists hired Roger S. Baldwin, a lawyer from New Haven, and two New York attorneys, Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgewick, to serve as proctors, or legal representatives, for the Africans.
In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence.
The Court ordered the immediate release of the Amistad Africans. Thirty five of the survivors were returned to their homeland (the others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial). Materials created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.
The district court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The U.S. District Attorney filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Additional Background Information. Montes and Ruiz actually steered the ship north; and on August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY , by the U.S. brig Washington. The schooner, its cargo, and all on board were taken to New London, CT.
Read More... Warrant for Habeas Corpus Ordering Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque), Leader of the Mutiny, and the Other Africans Who Were Aboard the Amistad to Appear in Court.
Considered to be both the first African American attorney to practice law in the United States and to hold a judicial position, Macon Bolling Allen broke numerous barriers.
Charlotte E. Ray was the first black female lawyer in the United States. She studied at the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., and went on to teach and study law at Howard University.
Best known for his role in the creation of the Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson was not just an attorney; he was also an early civil rights activist and a leader of the NAACP. After founding a newspaper called The Daily American, Johnson became the first African American attorney to pass the Bar in the state of Florida.
Charles H. Houston served as the Harvard Law Reviewâs first African-American editor, the vice dean of Howard Universityâs law school, and head of the NAACPâs legal fight against âseparate but equalâ schools, culminating to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice of the Supreme Court, serving from 1967-1991. After studying law at Howard University, Marshall went on to serve as counsel to the NAACP. In 1954, he won the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education, which signaled the end of racial segregation in American public schools.
The first African American female judge in the United States, Jane Bolin earned her J.D. degree at the Yale Law School in 1931, where she was also the first African American woman to graduate.
Constance Motley was the first African American woman to be appointed as a federal judge. She was the first African American woman to serve as a member of the New York State Senate. Additionally, Motley was the first woman to serve as Manhattan borough president.
Amistad illustrates the horrors of the slave trade as it clarifies the divisive nature of the slavery issue in the United States. It exposes the tolerance of slavery by most Northerners as well as the power of the abolitionist movement.
To avoid a problem in U.S. relations with Spain , President Van Buren wanted the Amistad Africans kept as slaves and returned to the Cubans. It is not right to allow foreign policy to be carried out at the expense of the freedom of others. Again, in this case, the ends do not justify the means. As to the âwar on terrorâ, many argue that it is a different matter and that we need to use torture, secret prisons, imprisonment without trial and other tactics that are against the traditions of the U.S. in order to win. They point out that the rights of others are always sacrificed in war, even the right to life itself. Other assert that if we employ an âends justify the meansâ rationale for our actions we will lose our souls. This is a great question for debate.
Once it was recognized that the Amistad Africans had the same rights as anyone to freedom, to return to their families , and to revolt against their enslavers, the question then arose: âHow are these black people, born in Africa, any different from black people born into slavery in the United States?â The obvious answer was that an accident of birth should make no difference at all. Once it was admitted that the Amistad Africans had the right to their freedom, there was no logical justification for the continued enslavement of blacks in the United States. Dramatically brought to the publicâs attention by the Amistad incident, this logic turned many in the North against slavery. But abolitionists were still not a majority. That didnât happen until sometime during the Civil War.
Adams was the son of the revolutionary era leader and second President of the United States, John Adams. John Quincy Adams served as a diplomat and Secretary of State under President James Monroe. Elected as the sixth President of the United States, he served one term from 1825-1829.
They were Roger Sherman Baldwin (later to become a U.S. Senator), Theodore Sedgwick, and Seth Staples (who later founded Yaleâs law school). Baldwin and Adams argued the case before the Supreme Court, with Mr. Baldwin making the arguments that the Court eventually adopted.
1. In 1839, the time of the Amistad incident until well into the Civil War, most people in the U.S. either supported slavery or were willing to tolerate its existence. Can you explain this?
Amistad Law Project is a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive.
Fifty-three people were purchased and placed upon the Caribbean-bound slave ship, La Amistad. On July 1, 1839, the abductees rose up and defeated their captors in the famous Amistad Rebellion. They were later taken to the United States, tried in court, and acquitted.
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