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.
After three days of arguments, Judge Thompson ruled that the court had no jurisdiction over the charges, because the alleged crimes had been committed on a Spanish ship in Spanish waters and were therefore not crimes punishable under U. S. law. The Amistad civil case was tried before District Judge Andrew Judson.
Abolitionists enlisted former US President John Quincy Adams to represent the Amistad captives' petition for freedom before the Supreme Court. Adams, then a 73-year-old US Congressman from Massachusetts, had in recent years fought tirelessly against Congress's “gag rule” banning anti-slavery petitions.
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.
The Court ordered the 35 surviving Africans to be freed immediately, and not put under federal custody for eventual transportation back to Africa. Abolitionists raised funds for the freed Amistad captives to be returned to Sierra Leone.
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 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.”
In February 1811, President Madison nominated Adams as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
It belongs to the world, to the ancestors." (For his part, Spielberg has said that he made "Amistad" for his two adopted black children, "because it's a story they should know about, and my other children should know about it, too.")
Cinque returned to Africa with missionaries and the remaining Amistad survivors. After his return he discovered that his family could not be found and his entire village had been destroyed.
Turner knew little about the background of his father, who was believed to have escaped from slavery when Turner was a young boy. Turner spent his entire life in Southampton County....Nat Turner's background.Nat TurnerCause of deathExecution by hangingNationalityAmericanKnown forNat Turner's slave rebellion3 more rows