United States v. The Amistad

Rebellion at sea and capture , leader of the La Amistad uprising, pictured as a Muslim (1839). Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library On June 27, 1839, La Amistad ("Friendship"), a Spanish vessel, departed from the port of Havana, Cuba, for the Province of Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were Captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montes, all Spanish nationals. With Ferrer was Antonio, a man enslaved by Ferrer to serve him personally. Ruiz was transporting 49 Africans, who had been entrusted to him by the governor-general of Cuba. Montez held four additional Africans, also entrusted to him by the governor-general. As the voyage normally took only four days, the crew had brought four days' worth of rations and had not anticipated the strong headwind that slowed the schooner. On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Joseph Cinqué, freed himself and the other captives using a file that had been found and kept by a woman who, like them, had been on the Tecora, the Portuguese ship that had transported them illegally as slaves from West Africa to Cuba. The Mende killed the ship's cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The Mende also killed Captain Ferrer, and the armed struggle resulted as well in the deaths of two Africans. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende spared the lives of the two Spaniards who could navigate the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, if they returned the ship east across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. They also spared Antonio, a creole, and used him as an interpreter with Ruiz and Montez. Ruiz and Montez deceived the Africans and steered La Amistad north along the East Coast of the United States, where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor a half-mile off eastern Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went ashore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk. The vessel was discovered by , a revenue cutter of the United States Revenue-Marine (later renamed the United States Revenue Cutter Service and one of the predecessors of the United States Coast Guard) while Washington was conducting hydrographic survey work for the United States Coast Survey. 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. Taking them to the Long Island Sound port of New London, Connecticut, Lieutenant Gedney presented officials with a written claim for his property rights under international admiralty law for salvage of the vessel, the cargo, and the Africans. Gedney allegedly chose to land in Connecticut because slavery was still technically legal there, under the state's gradual abolition law, unlike in nearby New York State. He hoped to profit from sale of the Africans. Gedney transferred the captured Africans into the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, where legal proceedings began. • Antonio Vega, vice-consul of Spain, libelled for "the slave Antonio" on the grounds that the man was his personal property. • The Africans denied that they were slaves or property and argued that the court could not "return" them to the control of the government of Spain.{{clarify|reason=Who were Tellincas, Aspe, and Laca? British pressure As the British had entered into a treaty with Spain prohibiting the slave trade north of the equator, they considered it a matter of international law for the United States to release the Africans. The British applied diplomatic pressure to achieve that such as invoking the Treaty of Ghent with the U.S., which jointly enforced their respective prohibitions against the international slave trade. While the legal battle continued, Dr. Richard Robert Madden, "who served on behalf of the British commission to suppress the African slave trade in Havana," arrived to testify. Madden also "told the court that his examinations revealed that the defendants were brought directly from Africa and could not have been residents of Cuba," as the Spanish had claimed. Fox wrote: Forsyth responded that under the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution, the President could not influence the court case. He said that the question of whether the "negroes of the Amistad" had been enslaved in violation of the Treaty was still an open one, "and this Government would with great reluctance erect itself into a tribunal to investigate such questions between two friendly sovereigns." When pressed with questions concerning the law of nations, the Spanish referred to a concept of Hugo Grotius, who is credited as one of the originators of the law of nations. Specifically, they noted that : "the usage, then, of demanding fugitives from a foreign Government, is confined ... to crimes which affect the Government and such as are of extreme atrocity." ==Initial court proceedings==

of James Covey concerning La Amistad prisoners held in the New Haven, Connecticut jail, October 4, 1839. A case before the circuit court in Hartford, Connecticut, was filed in September 1839, charging the Africans with mutiny and murder on La Amistad. Roger Sherman Baldwin, an attorney from New Haven who had served on that city's town board as well as in the state legislature, represented the Africans. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction, because the alleged acts took place on a Spanish ship in Spanish waters. It was entered into the docket books of the federal court as United States v. Cinque, et al. Various parties filed property claims with the district court to many of the African captives, to the ship, and to its cargo: Ruiz and Montez, Lieutenant Gedney, and Captain Henry Green (who had met the Africans while on shore on Long Island and claimed to have helped in their capture). The Spanish government asked that the ship, cargo, and African captives be restored to Spain under the Pinckney treaty of 1795 between Spain and the United States. Article 9 of the treaty held that : "all ships and merchandises of what nature soever, which shall be rescued out of the hands of pirates or robbers on the high seas, ... shall be restored, entire, to the true proprietor." The United States filed a claim on behalf of Spain. , American evangelical abolitionist and founder of the "Amistad committee" The abolitionist movement had formed the "Amistad Committee," headed by the New York City merchant Lewis Tappan, and had collected money to mount a defense of the Africans. Initially, communication with the Africans was difficult since they spoke neither English nor Spanish. Professor J.W. Gibbs learned from the Africans to count to ten in their Mende language. He went to the docks of New York City and counted aloud in front of sailors until he located a person able to understand and translate. He found James Covey, a twenty-year-old sailor on the British man-of-war . Covey was a formerly enslaved person from West Africa. The abolitionists filed charges of assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment against Ruiz and Montes. Their arrest in New York City in October 1839 outraged pro-slavery advocates and the Spanish government. Montes immediately posted bail and went to Cuba. Ruiz, being : "more comfortable in a New England setting (and entitled to many amenities not available to the Africans), hoped to garner further public support by staying in jail. ... Ruiz, however, soon tired of his martyred lifestyle in jail and posted bond. Like Montes, he returned to Cuba." The abolitionists' main argument before the district court was that a treaty between Britain and Spain in 1817 and a subsequent pronouncement by the Spanish government had outlawed the slave trade across the Atlantic. They established that the slaves had been captured in Mendiland (also spelled Mendeland, now Sierra Leone) in Africa, sold to a Portuguese trader in Lomboko (south of Freetown) in April 1839, and taken to Havana illegally on a Portuguese ship. The Africans were victims of illegal kidnapping and so, the abolitionists argued, were not slaves but free to return to Africa. They further argued that the documents for the Africans, provided by the Spanish government of Cuba, falsely identified Africans as slaves who had been in Cuba since before 1820, and hence were considered to have been born there as slaves. They contended that government officials in Cuba criminally condoned the fraudulent classification of the Africans from the Amistad. Concerned about relations with Spain and his re-election prospects in the South, U.S. President Martin Van Buren, a Democrat, sided with the Spanish position. He ordered the schooner USS Grampus to New Haven Harbor to return the Africans to Cuba immediately after a favorable decision, before any appeals could be decided. Contrary to Van Buren's plan, the district court, led by judge Andrew T. Judson, ruled in favor of the abolitionists and the Africans' position. In January 1840, Judson ordered for the Africans to be returned to their homeland by the U.S. government, and for one third of La Amistad and its cargo to be given to Lieutenant Gedney as salvage property. (The federal government had outlawed the slave trade between the U.S. and other countries in 1808; an 1818 law, as amended in 1819, provided for the return of all illegally-traded slaves.) Antonio, the deceased captain's personal slave, was declared the rightful property of the captain's heirs and was ordered restored to Cuba. Contrary to Sterne's 1953 fictional account that describes Antonio willingly returning to Cuba, Smithsonian sources report that he escaped to New York, or to Canada, with the help of an abolitionist group. In detail, the District Court ruled as follows: • It rejected the claim of the U.S. Attorney, who argued on behalf of the Spanish minister for the restoration of the "slaves". • It dismissed the claims of Ruiz and Montez. • It ordered that the captives be delivered to the custody of the U.S. president for transportation to Africa since they were in fact legally free. • It allowed the Spanish vice-consul to claim the slave Antonio. • It allowed Lt. Gedney to claim one third of the property on board La Amistad. • It allowed Tellincas, Aspe, and Laca to claim one third of the property. • It dismissed the claims made by Green and Fordham for salvage rights. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, by order of Van Buren, immediately appealed to the U.S. circuit court for the Connecticut district. He challenged every part of the district court's ruling, except the concession of the slave Antonio to the Spanish vice-consul. Tellincas, Aspe, and Laca also appealed to gain a greater portion of the salvage value. Ruiz and Montez and the owners of La Amistad did not appeal. In April 1840 the Circuit Court of Appeals, in turn, upheld the district court's decision. The U.S. Attorney appealed the federal government's case to the U.S. Supreme Court. ==Arguments before Supreme Court==

On February 22, 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. Gilpin contended that if the Africans were slaves, as indicated by the documents, they must be returned to their rightful owner, the Spanish government. Gilpin's argument lasted two hours. John Quincy Adams, a former U.S. president who was then a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, had agreed to argue for the Africans. When it was time for him to argue, he said that he felt ill-prepared. Roger Sherman Baldwin, who had already represented the captives in the lower cases, opened in his place. Adams said that did not apply either since the precedent was established prior to the prohibition of the foreign slave trade by the United States. Adams concluded on March 1 after eight-and-a-half hours of speaking. (The Court had taken a recess following the death of Associate Justice Barbour on February 25.) Attorney General Gilpin concluded oral arguments with a three-hour rebuttal on March 2. The Court retired to consider the case. ==Decision==

gave the Supreme Court's majority judgment on 9 March 1841. Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision on March 9. 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. Attorney's Office argued, but rather : "unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel." The documents submitted by Attorney General Gilpin were evidence not of property but rather of fraud on the part of the Spanish government. Lt. Gedney and the USS Washington were to be awarded salvage from the vessel for having performed "a highly meritorious and useful service to the proprietors of the ship and cargo." When La Amistad anchored near Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had never intended to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onís Treaty did not apply and so the President was not required by that law to cover the expense of returning the Africans to Africa. In his judgment, Story wrote: ==Aftermath and significance==

'' on August 31, 1839 of Kimbo, one of 36 men aboard La Amistad, c. 1839–1840 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, Connecticut, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Its residents had agreed to have the Africans stay there until they could return to their homeland. Some households took them in; supporters also provided barracks for them. The Amistad Committee instructed the Africans in English and Christianity, and raised funds to pay for their return home. One missionary was James Steele, an Oberlin graduate, previously one of the Lane Rebels. In 1841, he joined the Amistad Mission to Mendhi, which returned freed slaves to Africa and worked to establish a mission there. However, Steele soon found that the Amistad captives belonged to seven different tribes, some at war with one another. All of the chiefs were slave traders and authorized to re-enslave freed persons. These findings led to the decision that the mission must start in Sierra Leone, under the protection of the British. Along with several missionaries, in 1842, the surviving 35 Africans returned to Sierra Leone, the others having died at sea or while awaiting trial. The Americans constructed a mission in Mendiland. Former members of the Amistad Committee later founded the American Missionary Association, an integrated evangelical organization that continued to support both the Mendi mission and the abolitionist movement. In the following years, the Spanish government continued to press the U.S. for compensation for the ship, cargo, and slaves. Several Southern lawmakers introduced resolutions into the United States Congress to appropriate money for such payment but failed to gain passage, although it was supported by presidents James K. Polk and James Buchanan. Joseph Cinqué returned to Africa. In his final years, he was reported to have returned to the mission and re-embraced Christianity. Recent historical research suggests that the allegations of Cinqué's later involvement in the slave trade are false. In the Creole case of 1841, the United States dealt with another ship rebellion similar to that of La Amistad. The U.S. had prohibited the international slave trade in 1808, but ended domestic slavery only in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment. Connecticut had a gradual abolition law passed in 1797; children born to slaves were free but had to serve apprenticeships until young adulthood; the last slaves were freed in 1848. In popular culture In 1998, a memorial was installed at the Montauk Point Lighthouse to commemorate the Amistad. on Long Island. On August 26, 2023, the Montauk Historical Society, together with the Eastville Community Historical Society and the Southampton African-American Museum, erected a historic marker near Culloden Point in Montauk where the Amistad was anchored in 1839. The revolt aboard La Amistad, the background of the slave trade and its subsequent trial is retold in a celebrated poem by Robert Hayden entitled "Middle Passage", first published in 1962. Howard Jones published Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy in 1987. A movie, Amistad (1997), was based on the events of the revolt and court cases, and Howard Jones' 1987 book Mutiny on the Amistad. African-American artist Hale Woodruff painted murals portraying events related to the revolt on La Amistad in 1938, for Talladega College in Alabama. A statue of Cinqué was erected beside the City Hall building in New Haven, Connecticut in 1992. There is an Amistad memorial at Montauk Point State Park on Long Island. In 2000, Freedom Schooner Amistad, a ship replica, was launched in Mystic, Connecticut. The Historical Society of Farmington, Connecticut offers walking tours of village houses that housed the Africans while funds were collected for their return home. The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, has numerous resources for research into slavery, abolition, and African Americans. ==See also==