Amistad

Description: This movie is a fictionalized account of the 1839 revolt by illegally enslaved Africans aboard the Spanish ship, Le Amistad. When the ship was seized on the high seas by a U.S. Navy vessel, abolitionists filed a court case to free the Africans. The trial and subsequent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted to the public the evils of slavery and is seen as a major step toward turning the North against the South's "peculiar institution." The litigation involved a sitting President of the United States, a former President, and the Queen of Spain. For the captives, the outcome would determine whether they lived their lives in freedom or in slavery.

Background:

The Amistad case was one of the most famous federal cases of the nineteenth century and attracted great public attention at each stage of its movement through the nation’s judiciary. The dramatic story of the enslaved Africans who freed themselves from their captors and then sought recognition of their freedom in the federal courts helps to explain the role of the judiciary in the first half of the nineteenth century. The case also transformed the courts into the forum for a national debate on the legal foundations of slavery.

The Africans from the Amistad testified in court and were represented by prominent lawyers, including former President John Quincy Adams. The role of the Africans as parties in the case drew attention to the personal tragedies of slavery and attracted new support for the growing anti-slavery movement in the United States.

Enslavement

The Amistad case had its origins in West Africa, far from the jurisdiction of the federal courts. In the spring of 1839, slave traders in the West African port of Lomboko transported more than 500 enslaved Africans to Spanish-ruled Cuba. Many of the captives on the slave ship were from the Mende region of West Africa, an area later incorporated in Sierra Leone. Spanish law, enacted in response to pressure from Great Britain, prohibited the transportation of African slaves to Cuba. Spanish officials in Cuba largely ignored that law, however, and a thriving slave market provided labor for sugar planters.

At a slave sale in Havana, Jose Ruiz purchased 49 of the Mende men, and Pedro Montes purchased three girls and a boy, also from the Mende country. These planters chartered space on the schooner Amistad to carry the enslaved Africans to plantations along the coast of Cuba. The planters carried passes signed by a Spanish official, attesting to the fact that the Mende were long-time inhabitants of Spanish territory and legally held as slaves. The passes even provided the Africans with Spanish names.

Revolt on the Amistad

Late one night at sea, a group of the Mende broke out of their irons and armed themselves with sugar cane knives. Led by Sengbe Pieh (known to the Spanish and Americans as Cinque), the Mende killed the captain and the ship’s cook and took command of the Amistad. They then coerced Ruiz and Montes to sail the ship in the direction of the rising sun and West Africa. At night the planters turned to the north and west, hoping to cross paths with another ship. After two months, theAmistad reached Long Island Sound, desperately short of provisions. Cinque led a party onto the New York shore to gather supplies for their voyage back to Africa. While Cinque and others were ashore, the crew of the Navy BrigWashington spotted the badly-damaged Amistad. When the naval officers boarded the Amistad, the Spanish planters told of the revolt and pleaded for their safety. The commanding officer of the Washington, Lieutenant Thomas Gedney, ordered his crew to take custody of the Amistad and the 42 surviving Mende, including those who had gone ashore. The Navy ship escorted the Amistad to New London, Connecticut, and Gedney contacted the U.S. marshal to request a court hearing.

A Court of Inquiry

The U.S. District Court for Connecticut, with Judge Andrew Judson presiding, convened a special session on August 29, 1839, on board the Washington in New London harbor. Gedney and his crew intended to submit a libel, or claim, for a salvage award following their recovery of the Amistad and the cargo on board. They asserted that the Mende were slaves worth an estimated $25,000 and included the Africans in their list of recovered cargo. Judson set a date at which the district court would consider the claim for salvage and any related property claims. The marshal then issued a process of monition, by which the court advertised the subject of Gedney’s claim and informed other interested parties of the date by which they needed to submit all claims related to the Amistad.

Judson also heard testimony from the Spanish planters, who offered their version of the slave sale in Havana and the revolt on the schooner. The court moved to the Amistad, where Antonio, a slave owned by the slain captain of the schooner, testified about the revolt. The U.S. attorney submitted an information and complaint, a legal form that described the criminal charges that would be brought against Cinque and the leaders of the revolt. Judson referred consideration of the criminal questions to the U.S. Circuit Court for Connecticut. The judge then ordered the marshal to take custody of the ship, its cargo, and the Mende on the Amistad.

The federal courts took custody of the Mende under the authority of two separate warrants. A warrant of seizure, typical of admiralty proceedings concerning a libel for salvage, authorized holding the Mende, the ship, and its cargo as property that was the subject of claims before the court. A warrant of arrest held all of the adult Mende who were the subject of an indictment for murder and piracy. The three young Mende girls and Antonio were also held as witnesses for the criminal case.

The U.S. Circuit Court: Criminal Charges and Writs of Habeas Corpus

The U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut convened on September 17, 1839, and impaneled a grand jury to consider the U.S. attorney’s indictment of the Mende on charges of piracy and murder. After the jury returned with a finding of facts, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Smith Thompson, who served as the presiding judge in the circuit court, declared that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over an alleged crime that took place at sea on a foreign-owned vessel. The circuit court dismissed all criminal charges against the Mende.

During the same session, the circuit court considered two writs of habeas corpus calling for the release of the Mende in federal custody. These writs were brought by the abolitionist lawyers who had formed a committee to represent the Mende in the federal courts. The initial writ referred only to the three girls held as property and as witnesses, but not included in the criminal indictment. After the court dismissed the criminal charges, another writ of habeas corpus brought the adult Mende before the court with a similar request for their release. Justice Thompson declared that he could not order their release since they were all the subject of property claims pending before the U.S. district court. Thompson reminded the abolitionists that the Constitution and the laws of the nation protected the right to hold slave property. The district court’s responsibility was to determine the legitimacy of the several property claims that alleged the Mende were slaves. The circuit court would have jurisdiction only if one of the parties appealed the decision of the district court.

Admiralty Proceedings in the U.S. District Court

The U.S. district courts had jurisdiction over cases in admiralty – that branch of law concerning maritime commerce and the nation’s trade laws. At the September 1839 session of the district court in Connecticut, various parties submitted claims for property on the Amistad. The planters, Ruiz and Montes, asked the district court to return the Mende as their rightful property. The U.S. attorney, William Holabird, asked the court to consider Spain’s request for the return of all property on the Amistad, with no deduction in its value for the salvage award claimed by Gedney and his crew. The Spanish ambassador insisted that the 1795 treaty between the two countries required the return on these terms. Several claims asserted that all of the Mende on the Amistad were slave property, thus forcing the court to determine whether or not these individuals were legally slaves or free. The court’s decision rested solely with Judge Andrew Judson, since juries were not used in federal admiralty cases during the first half of the nineteenth century.

At the November session of the district court, the Mende formally entered the case as respondents to the several claims alleging that they were slaves. The plea submitted by their lawyers, Roger Sherman Baldwin and Seth Staples, requested the immediate release of the Mende in custody. The federal courts, they claimed, had no jurisdiction over these free persons who had taken control of the Amistad in an effort to return to their families. Based on interviews with Cinque and others, the plea explained that all of the Mende had been born free persons in Africa and had been kidnapped, illegally transported to Cuba, and enslaved for life. Staples and Baldwin also claimed that it had been illegal for Lieutenant Gedney to seize the Africans in New York, a free state.

At the same session, the Spanish consul from Boston asked the court to order the return of Antonio to the heirs of theAmistad’s captain.

The District Court Trial

Judge Judson opened the trial in the Amistad case on January 7, 1840. One of the largest crowds ever gathered for a federal trial appeared in the New Haven, Connecticut, courtroom. Roger Sherman Baldwin argued that the Mende captives could not be returned as property because under Spanish law, any Africans introduced into Spanish territory after 1820 were free within that territory. The abolitionists’ committee had found a native of the Mende region to serve as a translator, thus allowing Cinque and two other captives to testify that they had been recently transported to Cuba from Africa. Cinque’s description of his enslavement and the horrors of the voyage across the Atlantic provided the dramatic high point of the five-day trial. Other witnesses testified that Spanish officials in Havana frequently falsified documents in order to admit enslaved Africans into Cuba.

Before the trial opened, President Van Buren was so confident that Judson would agree to the Spanish claims that he ordered a Navy ship to New Haven in preparation for a quick delivery of the Mende to Spanish officials in Cuba. Judson, however, surprised almost everyone when he announced that the Mende were not slaves under Spanish law and that he could not order their return to Cuba. Instead, the judge granted a motion filed by the U.S. attorney that the Mende be delivered to the President for return to their homes under the provisions of a federal law prohibiting the African slave trade in the United States. Judson acknowledged that the terms of the act did not apply precisely to the Amistad because no one had transported the Mende to the United States as slaves, but he said his decree was within the spirit of an act intended to facilitate the return of enslaved Africans to freedom in their homeland.

Judson also ordered that Gedney and his crew receive one-third of the value of the Amistad and its cargo as a salvage award. Judson’s decision provided that the remaining property, including the slave Antonio, be returned to the several owners in Cuba. The Mende’s return home and the delivery of the property were delayed when the Van Buren administration ordered the U.S. attorney to appeal Judson’s decision to the U.S. Circuit Court.

Appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court

On April 29, 1840, the U.S. Circuit Court convened in Hartford to hear appeals of the district court decision. The U.S. attorney, representing the claims of the Spanish government, appealed that portion of the decision that declared the Africans on board were not slaves and the order to grant a salvage award to Lieutenant Gedney and his crew. The Spanish owners of the cargo on board the Amistad also appealed the salvage award. The lawyers for the Mende from theAmistad asked the court to dismiss the appeal on the grounds that the United States government had no right to represent the claims of a foreign nation. Justice Thompson denied the motion for dismissal and issued a pro forma decree upholding the district court decision. The use of the pro forma decree allowed Thompson to avoid a lengthy discussion of the merits of the case and helped to speed the appeal to the Supreme Court.

Appeal to the Supreme Court

The U.S. attorney responded to Thompson’s decree with the expected appeal to the Supreme Court. The government’s lawyer asked the Supreme Court to order the delivery to Spanish officials of all property claimed by Spanish owners. U.S. Attorney William Holabird repeated the arguments that the treaty between Spain and the United States required the return of all property, including the alleged slaves, with no deduction for a salvage award.

In the months leading up to the opening of the Supreme Court term in January 1841, former President John Quincy Adams agreed to join the lawyers representing the Mende. Adams was then serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he led an effort forcing the Van Buren administration to give Congress copies of Amistad-related correspondence with the Spanish government. Adams traveled to Connecticut to meet with the Mende, who remained in federal custody in a village outside of New Haven. In the weeks before the Supreme Court session, two of the Mende wrote Adams letters encouraging him in his efforts to secure their freedom.

Arguments in the Supreme Court

Attorney General Henry Gilpin presented the opening arguments in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court. He maintained that treaty obligations required the United States to return the Mende, as slave property, to the Spanish planters from Cuba. If the federal courts refused to accept documentation provided by another government, all foreign commerce would be threatened. Roger Sherman Baldwin argued in favor of upholding the earlier court decision that the Mende were not slaves. He asserted that the United States government could not represent the claims of a foreign government, and he repeated his arguments that under the laws of Spain, the Mende were free. John Quincy Adams then presented his dramatic condemnation of the Van Buren administration and its efforts to return the Mende to Cuba. Adams, with an appeal to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, called on the Court to recognize the natural rights of the captive Africans.

Chief Justice Roger Taney and the eight other justices were present at the opening arguments of the Amistad case on February 22, 1841. Several days later, Justice Philip Pendleton Barbour died. After a recess, the Court resumed hearing arguments in the case and on March 9, 1841, issued its decision. Justice Joseph Story was joined in his opinion by six justices, including Smith Thompson. One justice, Henry Baldwin, dissented without comment.

Freedom for the Africans

The Supreme Court upheld the circuit court’s affirmation of Judson’s decision that the Mende on the Amistad clearly were not slaves under Spanish law and that the federal courts could not order their delivery to Spanish officials. Story overturned the earlier decision to deliver the Mende to the President for transport to Africa. The Amistad had arrived in the United States in the possession of the Mende, not slave traders, and they could not be considered as slaves illegally imported into the United States. Cinque and the other surviving Mende were free persons, and the federal courts had no further authority over them. The Supreme Court issued a decree ordering the circuit court to free the Mende from federal custody.

Return to West Africa

The Supreme Court opinion granted unconditional freedom to the Mende, but, unlike Judson’s decision in the district court, it left them with no provision for a return to their homes. In order to raise money for transportation, the abolitionists’ committee organized a series of public appearances at which people paid admission to hear the Mende sing, recite from the Bible, and describe their stories of enslavement and the struggle for freedom. In November 1841, in the company of a group of American missionaries, the 35 surviving Mende left New York for the coast of Sierra Leone. Most returned to live with their families, while a few remained with a mission established by the American clergy.