Along the way several Africans died from dysentery and dehydration. On August 26, 1839, the Amistad landed off the eastern end of Long Island, New York at Culloden Point where a U.S. Navy ship took it into custody. Ruiz and Montes were freed while the surviving Africans were arrested and imprisoned at New London, Connecticut.
On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 to uphold the lower courts’ decisions in favor of the Africans of the Amistad. Justice Joseph Story delivered the majority opinion, writing that “There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt, that these negroes ought to be deemed free.”
Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, commanding the cutter, saw some of the Africans on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of La Amistad and the Africans.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, stating that they were free individuals. Kidnapped and transported illegally, they had never been slaves.
The Verdict On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 to uphold the lower courts' decisions in favor of the Africans of the Amistad. Justice Joseph Story delivered the majority opinion, writing that “There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt, that these negroes ought to be deemed free.”
Roger BaldwinRoger 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.
The Amistad Case is one of the most important to ever come before US courts. It influenced the abolitionist movement and proved that many influential people in the United States were in favor of abolishing slavery on the whole.
What was the decision handed down by Judge Judson (Judge #2)? That the Africans were free-born and and should be returned to Africa.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, stating that they were free individuals. Kidnapped and transported illegally, they had never been slaves.
Desperately, abolitionists sought a way to dramatize the horrors of slavery. The Amistad case seemed to provide a providential opportunity to illustrate the federal government's complicity with slavery and the discrepancy between slavery American ideals of natural rights.
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.
While the film is loosely based on the true story of a group of Mende people from Sierra Leone, who in 1839 overpowered their Spanish captors aboard the slave ship La Amistad, it is largely a tale of white hero worship.
Two planters in Havana purchased a group of the West Africans at auction, and using fake documents, planned to transport them to plantations within Cuba. However, the slaves revolted while on the schooner Amistad, killing its captain and cook, and directing the planters to sail the ship to Africa.
2. Why was the Amistad incident instrumental in changing attitudes of Northerners about slavery in the South? Suggested Response: The case illustrated vividly that there was no logical reason why a black person born in the U.S. should be a slave while a black person born in Africa should be free.
The case of United States v. Schooner Amistad was complicated because it placed the US government in an awkward position.
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 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.
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.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, stating that they were free individuals. Kidnapped and transported illegally, they had never been slaves. Senior Justice Joseph Story wrote and read the decision: "...it was the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice." The opinion asserted the Africans' right to resist "unlawful" slavery.
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.
It went from being a fragmented group to a legitimate movement, and the Amistad case helped centralize their message about the injustice of slavery. This is just one story associated with the Amistad event.
The U.S. vs. Amistad began in February 1841. The U.S. case argued that, under treaty obligations, the captives be returned to Spain. Adams stated that American ideals of freedom demanded that the Pieh and the others be set free and returned to their homes in what is presently Sierra Leone. The Supreme Court ruled 7-1 on the side of the captive Africans. They found that they were not Span ish, were taken illegally from Africa, and should return to Africa. The majority decision stated:
While Pieh and the others were in a New Haven prison, their case was sent to the U.S. District Court (also the Old Statehouse ). A U.S. attorney, under direction from Secretary of State John Forsyth, presented Spain’s argument that the captives should be returned to Cuba. The African captive’s defense was organized by the Amistad Committee - a group of local abolitionists. They argued that Spanish law and international treaty forbade the importation of Africans for the slave trade. Pieh and the others described their kidnap, mistreatment, and sale into slavery. The District Court ruled that the African captives were not Spanish and should return to Africa.
Adams stated that American ideals of freedom demanded that the Pieh and the others be set free and returned to their homes in what is presently Sierra Leone. The Supreme Court ruled 7-1 on the side of the captive Africans.
The African captive’s defense was organized by the Amistad Committee- a group of local abolitionists. They argued that Spanish law and international treaty forbade the importation of Africans for the slave trade. Pieh and the others described their kidnap, mistreatment, and sale into slavery.
The U.S. Attorney appealed the decision to the next highest court, the Circuit Court, which upheld the District Court's opinion. The U.S. Attorney then appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The Amistad Committee approached former President and Secretary of State John Quincy Adamsand asked him to argue the defense before the Supreme Court.
On August 29, 1839, the Amistad was towed into New London, Connecticut. The government charged the slaves with piracy and murder, and classified them as salvage property. The 53 Africans were sent to prison, pending hearing of their case before the U.S. Circuit Court in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Amistad revolt. The. Amistad. revolt. In January 1839, 53 African natives were kidnapped from eastern Africa and sold into the Spanish slave trade. They were then placed aboard a Spanish slave ship bound for Havana, Cuba. Once in Havana, the Africans were classified as native Cuban slaves and purchased at auction by two Spaniards, ...
However, three days into the journey, a 25-year-old slave named Sengbe Pieh (or "Cinque" to his Spanish captors) broke out of his shackles and released the other Africans. The slaves then revolted, killing most of the crew of the Amistad, including her cook and captain.
federal courts, the Amistad Case of 1840 remains one of the most dramatic and meaningful legal battles in America’s history. More than 20 years before the start of the Civil War, the struggle of 53 enslaved Africans, who after violently freeing themselves ...
government appealed the Amistad decision to the Supreme Court.
Besides Lieutenant Gedney, the Spanish plantation owners and traders of enslaved people, Ruiz and Montes petitioned the district court to return the Mende to them as their original property. The Spanish government, of course, wanted its ship back and demanded that the Mende captives be sent to Cuba to be tried in Spanish courts.
Cinqué 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 “cargo.”
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.
Sengbe Pieh, leader of the La Amistad uprising, pictured as a Muslim (1839). Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
On February 23, 1841, U.S. Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin began the oral argument phase before the Supreme Court. Gilpin first entered into evidence the papers of La Amistad, which stated that the Africans were Spanish property. Gilpin argued that the Court had no authority to rule against the validity of the documents.
On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty was ruled inapplicable since the Africans in question had never been legal property. They were not criminals, as the U.S.
The Africans greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy. Abolitionist supporters took the survivors – 36 men and boys and three girls – to Farmington, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Their residents had agreed to have the Africans stay there until they could return to their homeland.
The incident began In February 1839 when Portuguese slave hunters illegally seized 53 Africans in Sierra Leone, a British colon y, whom they intended to sell in the Spanish colony of Cuba. Several weeks into the slave-raiding trip, the 53, along with 500 other captured Africans were loaded on to the Tecora, a Portuguese slave ship. After a two month voyage the Tecora landed in Havana, Cuba. There Jose Ruiz purchased 49 adult slaves and Pedro Montes bought four children. Ruiz and Montes wanted to bring the slaves to the sugar plantations in Puerto Principe (now Camaguey), Cuba where they would resell them. The slave merchants boarded the 53 African captives on the Amistad which departed from Havana, Cuba on June 28, 1839.
Two Amistad crew members escaped from the ship by boat. Ruiz and Montes were spared during the revolt on the promise that they would sail the Amistad back to Sierra Leone as captives demanded. Instead they sailed the ship toward the United States. Along the way several Africans died from dysentery and dehydration.
Ruiz and Montes wanted to bring the slaves to the sugar plantations in Puerto Principe (now Camaguey), Cuba where they would resell them. The slave merchants boarded the 53 African captives on the Amistad which departed from Havana, Cuba on June 28, 1839.
Soon afterwards Northern abolitionists raised funds to pay for African men and boys, and three girls, to return to Sierra Leone. On November 25, 1841, the surviving Amistad captives departed from New York harbor for Sierra Leone.
The British governor of Sierra Leone, William Fergusson, led the colony in welcoming the captives when they arrived in Freetown, in January 1842.
When the Spanish embassy claimed the African captives were slaves and demanded their return to Cuba, a trial ensued on January 1840 in a federal court in Hartford, Connecticut. The judge ruled that the Africans were illegally brought to Cuba since Great Britain, Spain, and the United States signed agreements outlawing the international slave trade. Under pressure from Southern slaveholders, however, U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that anti-piracy agreements with Spain compelled the U.S. to return the Africans to Cuba. Meanwhile Northern Presbyterian and Congregational denominations led by abolitionist Lewis Tappin organized the Amistad Committee in New York City to support the legal defense of the Africans. Former President John Quincy Adams, then a Massachusetts Congressman, agreed to represent the Africans before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The recently imported Africans of the Amistad, if they were ever slaves, which is denied, were in the actual condition of freedom when they came within the jurisdictional limits of the state of New York. They came there without any wrongful act on the part of any officer or citizen of the United States. They were in a state where, not only no law existed to make them slaves, but where, by an express statute, all persons, except fugitives, &c., from a sister state, are declared to be free. They were under the protection of the laws of a state, which, in the language of the Supreme Court, in the case of Miln v. The City of New York, 11 Peters, 139, "has the same undeniable and unlimited jurisdiction over all persons and things within its territorial limits, as any foreign nation, when that jurisdiction is not surrendered or restrained by the Constitution of the United States."
The question of the surrender of fugitive slaves to a foreign claimant, if the right exists at all, is left to the comity of the states which tolerate slavery. The government of the United States has nothing to do with it. In the letter of instructions addressed by Mr. Adams, when Secretary of State, to Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, dated November 2, 1818, in relation to a proposed arrangement with Great Britain, for a more active co-operation in the suppression of the slave trade, he assigns as a reason for rejecting the proposition for a mixed commission, "that the disposal of the negroes found on board the slave-trading vessels, which might be condemned by the sentence of the mixed Courts, cannot be carried into effect by the United States." "The condition of the blacks being in this Union regulated by the municipal laws of the separate states, the government of the United States can neither guarantee their liberty in the states where they could only be received as slaves, nor control them in the states where they would be recognised as free." Doc. 48, H. Rep. 2 sess. 16th Cong. p. 15.
The only evidence exhibited to prove them slaves, are the papers of the Amistad, giving to Jose Ruiz permission to transport forty-nine Ladinos belonging to him, from Havana to Puerto Principe; and a like permit to Pedro Montez, to transport three Ladinos. For one of the four Africans, claimed by Montez, (the boy Ka-le,) there is no permit at all.
The ninth article of the Spanish treaty was copied from the sixteenth article of the treaty with France, concluded in 1778, in the midst of the war of the Revolution, in which the great principles of liberty proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence were vindicated by our fathers.
The Constitution confers upon the government no power to establish or legalize the institution of slavery. It recognises it as existing in regard to persons held to service by the laws of the states which tolerate it; and contains a compact between the states, obliging them to respect the rights acquired under the slave laws of other states, in the cases specified in the Constitution. But it imposes no duty, and confers no power on the government of the United States to act in regard to it. So far as the compact extends, the Courts of the United States, whether sitting in a free state or a slave state, will give effect to it. Beyond that, all persons within the limits of a state are entitled to the protection of its laws.
The law of comtiy would have obliged each state to protect and restore property belonging to a citizen of another, without such stipulation; but it would not have required the restoration of fugitive slaves from a sister state, unless they had been expressly mentioned.
By the treaty between Great Britain and Spain of the 28th of June, 1835, which is declared to be made for the purpose of "rendering the means taken for abolishing the inhuman traffic in slaves more effective," and to be in the spirit of the treaty contracted between both powers on the 23d of September, 1817, "the slave-trade is again declared on the part of Spain to be henceforward totally and finally abolished, in all parts of the world." And by the royal ordinance of November 2d, 1838, the Governor and the naval officers having command on the coast of Cuba, are stimulated to greater vigilance to suppress it.