The story of the Amistad Affair is a confrontation on the national and international level of law, morality and treaties. I have referred to Howard Jones,
Mutiny On The Amistad
, for this condensed version of the story. It begins with the kidnap of Cinqué, a free African farmer. The story ends with Cinqué’s return to Africa from America, where he, with the help of the New Haven community, was able to use the law to ensure his liberty. It is a very important case in the history of slavery and abolition. It is also a very important story in the history of the relationship between those people whose ancestors were brought to this country as slaves and those whose ancestors came here seeking freedom.
Cinqué was a Mende from Sierra Leone. He was kidnapped by Africans and sold to white Portuguese slave traders for transport to the New World. Much later he implied that he may have been kidnapped for payment of a business debt he had incurred. He was held in a “factory”, a huge shed used to contain captives until they were loaded onto ships. In April 1839 the TeCcoro, owned by Pedro Blanco of Cuba, departed from Lomboko at the mouth of the Gallinas River. She carried approximately six hundred men, women and children, including Cinqué chained beneath her decks. One third of these would die during the Middle Passage. This part of the story of Cinqué is the story of the thousands of Africans who were brought to the New World to be slaves.
In Cuba, Cinqué and forty-eight other men and four children were sold to two Cuban slave holders, José Ruiz and Pedro Montés. Ruiz and Montés hired the Amistad, an American built schooner designed for use in the coastal slave trade. They were to sail to Puerto Principe, a settlement about three hundred miles from Havana on the coast of Cuba. On board the Amistad were fifty-three Africans, two slave owners, Captain Ferrer and his two slaves Antonio and Celestino and two sailors. The conditions were poor. The Africans were chained, and the food and water were inadequate. The trip was supposed to take a few days. After three nights at sea, Cinqué managed to release his chains and take control of the ship. Of the seven crew and slavers, three survived the mutiny. The captain and Celestino were killed by the Africans. The sailors apparently jumped overboard. Montés and Ruiz were wounded. It isn’t clear how many Africans died in the mutiny; of these, thirty-nine adult males and four children were alive when the Amistad was seized at Culloden Point two months later.
The Africans wanted to sail back to Africa. They knew that they must sail toward the rising sun. However they did not know how to navigate by the stars. Ruiz and Montés agreed to sail the ship at night, but they tricked the Africans, sailing north in a meandering path in hope of rescue by American or British ships. For two months the Amistad wandered northward until it finally came in sight of land. The Africans had to choose to seek provisions and risk capture, or to stay on board with no provisions, a damaged ship, and no idea how to get home.
The Amistad landed at Culloden Point, the northern peninsula of the eastern tip of Long Island. Cinqué and some others from the ship were able to purchase some supplies before they became enmeshed in the complicated tangle of national and international law and treaties. As the Amistad appeared to be so disabled as to be unsailable, and without appropriate legal status, a claim was made to salvage the ship and her contents. During the long legal struggle, the issue of whether the contents included the forty-three Africans was the central contention. The Africans were taken prisoner by the USS Washington, and the Amistad, the Africans and the two Cubans were to be taken to New London for investigation of the salvage rights.
The first hearing was held aboard the USS Washington and presided over by Federal District Judge Andrew Judson. He had to decide whether the Africans on the Amistad were guilty of piracy and murder, or whether the law of the United States which prohibited the transportation of slaves between states guaranteed their freedom. Ruiz and Montés were able to testify to their case and had documents to prove their ownership of the Africans and the ownership of the Amistad. On the other side were the forty-three Mende people who spoke neither English nor Spanish and were unable to present evidence to support their position. Judge Judson decided to hold the Africans in the New Haven jail until the next meeting of the Grand Jury of the U.S. Circuit Court in Hartford in September of 1839. There the court would rule on the property claims and whether the Africans should be tried for mutiny and murder.
It was a time of passion in the abolitionist movement. In New Haven an Amistad Committee was quickly formed to provide for the defense of the Africans. Members of the committee included lawyers and bankers from New York and New Haven. Roger Baldwin accepted the position of lawyer for the case. Josiah Gibbs, a professor of linguistics at Yale University found an interpreter for the Africans. He went to New York, armed with the numbers from one to ten in Mende, to find a sailor at New York Harbor who might recognize the language and agree to help the Amistad captives. He found James Covey, who himself had been kidnapped from Africa and freed by British ships at the age of nine.
The stage opened again in New Haven with the second court case in the Grand Jury meeting of the United States Circuit Court, Associate Justice Smith Thompson of the Supreme Court and Andrew Judson of the District Court presiding. The argument put before the court by the abolitionists was that this circuit court lacked jurisdiction. The grand jury, they argued, could not bring an indictment against the Africans for murder or piracy. A higher law exists, echoed in the Declaration of Independence, which guarantees human rights, even though the Constitution left the legality of slavery to the individual states. The judgment of the Circuit Court, four days after convening, was that this court did not have jurisdiction in this case. This court could not judge whether the right to own slaves existed. There were laws about slavery, and the legal decisions must be made accordingly. As the laws were mainly international treaties, the appropriate court was the district court, with a route of appeal to the circuit, and then to the U.S. Supreme Courts.
The third court case was the district court which convened in November 1839 to determine whether the Africans were legally slaves in Cuba. The defense pointed to an 1819 treaty between Spain and England which made the exportation of Africans from Africa illegal. No new slaves were to be brought to the New World. Since these Africans spoke only Mende, and since some of them were too young to have been taken from Africa before 1819, they must be free Africans, despite the documents from Cuba to the contrary. The court agreed that the Africans were not legal slaves and that they should be freed on the condition that they return to Africa.
The case was appealed by the Cubans to the Circuit Court which convened in April 1840 for the fourth court case. With the encouragement of the Spanish government, the decision was to be taken regarding the status of the Africans and also the salvage rights to the Amistad.
Since the Grand Jury of the Circuit Court case in September 1839, the president of the U.S., Martin van Buren, had become concerned about the Amistad case. He wanted to avoid an international confrontation with Spain; he did not want the issue of slavery to interfere with his reelection; and he did not want the U.S. to become a haven for escaping and mutinous slaves. He arranged for the transportation of the Africans back to Cuba aboard the USS Grumpus. If they were slaves, he believed, they must be returned according to the treaty with Spain. If they were free men, they must stand trial in Cuba for the deaths aboard the Amistad. The abolitionists were also prepared with a ship. Should the Africans lose the case and be ordered to be returned to Cuba, the abolitionists planned to help them to freedom in Canada. In the District Court Judge Judson had ruled that the Africans could not be returned to Cuba because they had not entered the United States as slaves, either legally or illegally. They had entered the U.S. under their own power aboard the Amistad.
The last appeal, the fifth court case, to the Supreme Court, began in February 1841. The lawyer for the defense was former president John Quincy Adams. The final judgment of the Supreme Court was that these forty-three Africans were not slaves, not the property of Ruiz and Montés. However in so deciding, the court upheld the idea that there exists such an institution as slavery, and that the rights of the Africans were not protected by moral law.
Funds were raised by the Amistad committee to sail the Africans back to Africa on the Gentleman. Thirty-five survivors returned to Sierra Leone three years after they had been taken.