The story began in Sierra Leone in 1839. Fifty three members of the Mende tribe were kidnapped and taken to the island of Lomboko. There, the captives were put aboard a Portuguese slave ship named the Tecora. On board, were approximately 500 Africans that would be taken to Havana, Cuba to be sold.
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“A treaty between Great Britain and Spain, which controlled Cuba, made transporting Africans to Cuba for sale technically illegal after 1820.”
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This did not stop the African’s from being sold with false documentation.
Two Spaniards, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, purchased the 53 captives in Havana and boarded them on the schooner La Amistad on June 28, 1839. The captives were to be transported to the other end of Cuba, a voyage that should have taken three days. Cinque (also known at Singbe) was the unofficial leader of the group. He was able to use a loose nail to break free of the shackles and then freed the others. Next, there came a mutiny. The Africans killed the captain and most of the crew. Ruiz and Montes were kept alive so that they could sail the boat back to Africa. “Cinque had observed that the Tecora had sailed toward the setting sun as it took them away from Africa. To return to Africa, he reasoned, the Amistad should head toward the rising sun.”
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Ruiz and Montes sailed east during the day, but at night turned the boat west, back towards the United States. For weeks, the schooner zigzagged up the coast towards New England. On August 26 the USS Washington of the U.S. Navy intercepted the schooner about a mile off the coast of Long Island. Ruiz and Montes were only able to give their side of the story and the Africans as well as the vessel were taken to New London. The 53 Africans were transported to the Jail in New Haven.
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The supposition is that the navy took the schooner and the captives to Connecticut rather than New York for one simple reason. “Slavery was legal in Connecticut and not in New York, which meant the salvage rights to slave property, would not be considered in New York courts.
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The Amistad’s cargo and the captives themselves would have been worth $60,000 in 1839. The Captain and crew of the USS Washington thus would have had a right to the salvage under Connecticut law, but not under New York law.
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There were several issues that needed to be settled by the courts. “The Africans had to be defended (1) against claims by the U.S. Navy, who seized the boat and wanted claims against the property (2) the Spanish owners who wanted the slaves and property back, and (3) against murder and mutiny charges.”
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Also at question was the Anglo-Saxon Treaty of 1817, which outlawed slave trade in Spain and its colonies, including Cuba.
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“The essential issue throughout the affair was a conflict between human rights and property rights -- whether natural law as the abolitionists defined it was to take precedence over what they regarded as positive, man-made law.”
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This was because the Circuit court judge, Smith Thompson, “preferred to evade the larger debate over abolition and rested his decision on jurisdictional grounds.”
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Yale Professor Josiah Gibbs was part of the group of New Haven abolitionists dedicated to helping the Africans legally and financially. Professor Gibbs found two Mende speakers on the docks in New York. James Covey, a freed slave from Sierra Leone, and Charles Pratt, a native of Mende who had also been enslaved by a Spanish slave trader.
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These two men were essential in having the captives tell their story in their own voice.
The Africans went through three rounds of court proceedings. The first was in the Circuit Court in Hartford in September 1839. During this time, the Africans were held in the Hartford jail. They were transported to Hartford, on barges by way of the Farmington Canal. The Farmington canal line ran from New Haven, through Farmington, to Northampton, Massachusetts. The second was in the District Court in New Haven in January 1840. The appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. in February of 1841. Finally, on March 9, 1840 the U.S. Supreme Court issued the verdict that the Africans were free men.
The story does not end there. The thirty-six remaining Africans were again transported along the canal line to Farmington to live while abolitionists raised money for their return to Sierra Leone. Farmington’s many abolitionist residents took an interest in the case during their trials in New Haven and Hartford. Finally, in November of 1841, The Gentleman sailed from New York to return the Africans to Sierra Leone.