United States v. The Amistad

For other uses, see Amistad (disambiguation).

The Amistad
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 22 – March 2, 1841 Decided March 9, 1841
Full case name	United States v. The Amistad
Citations	40 U.S. 518 (more) 15 Pet. 518; 10 L. Ed. 826; 1841 U.S. LEXIS 279
Case history
Prior	United States District Court for the District of Connecticut rules for the Africans; United States appeals to the United States Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut, lower court affirmed; United States appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court
Subsequent	Africans returned to Africa not by way of the President, but by way of abolitionists; United States Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut dispenses monetary awards mandated by the Supreme Court; United States Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut hears a petition by Ramon Bermejo, in 1845, for the unclaimed monetary sum retained by the court in 1841; petition granted in the amount of $631
Holding
The Africans are free, and are remanded to be released; Lt. Gedney’s claims of salvage are granted, remanded to the United States Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut for further proceedings in monetary manners.
Court membership
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney Associate Justices Joseph Story · Smith Thompson John McLean · Henry Baldwin James M. Wayne · John Catron John McKinley
Case opinions
Majority	Story, joined by Taney, Thompson, McLean, Wayne, Catron, McKinley
Dissent	Baldwin
Barbour took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Pinckney's Treaty, art. IX; Adams-Onís Treaty

The Amistad, also known as United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of slaves on board the Spanish schooner Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual "freedom suit", as it involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law.

The rebellion broke out when the schooner, traveling along the coast of Cuba, was taken over by a group of captives who had earlier been kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery. The Africans were later apprehended on the vessel near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. The ensuing, widely publicized court cases in the United States helped the abolitionist movement.

In 1840, a federal trial court found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic (which did not involve the Amistad) had been illegal, because the international slave trade had been abolished, and the captives were thus not legally slaves but free. Given that they were illegally confined, the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. After the US Supreme Court affirmed this finding on March 9, 1841, supporters arranged transportation for the Africans back to Africa in 1842. The case influenced numerous succeeding laws in the United States.

Rebellion at sea, and capture

Sengbe Pieh, leader of the 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 (then a Spanish colony), for Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were the captain, Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montez, all of Spanish origin. With Ferrer was his personal slave Antonio. Ruiz was transporting 49 African slaves, entrusted to him by the Governor-General of Cuba. Montez held four additional African slaves, also entrusted to him by the Governor-General of Cuba. On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Cinqué, who had learned metalworking, managed to free himself and the other captives using an iron file. It had been found and kept by a woman on the Tecora (the ship that had transported them illegally as slaves from Africa to Cuba).

The Mende Africans killed the ship's cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The slaves also killed the vessel's captain in a struggle in which two of the rebelling slaves were killed. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The slaves spared the lives of the two crew members who could navigate the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, upon the condition that they would return the ship to Africa. They also spared the captain's personal slave, Antonio, using him as an interpreter between themselves and Ruiz and Montez.

The crew deceived the Africans and steered the Amistad north along the coast of the United States, where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor half a mile off eastern Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went on shore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk. The vessel was discovered by the United States Revenue Cutter USRC Washington. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, commanding the cutter, saw some of the slaves on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of the Amistad and the rebel slaves. He took them to the state of Connecticut and presented a written claim under 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, unlike in New York. He hoped to profit from sale of the slaves. Gedney transferred all captured slaves into the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, at which time legal proceedings began.

Parties

• Lieutenant Gedney filed a libel (a lawsuit in admiralty law) for the captives and cargo on board La Amistad as property seized on the high seas.
• Henry Green and Pelatiah Fordham filed a libel for salvage, claiming that they had been the first to discover La Amistad.
• Ruiz and Montez filed libels requesting that their slaves and cargo be returned to them.
• The Office of the United States Attorney for the Connecticut District, representing the Spanish Government, libelled that the slaves, cargo, and vessel be returned to Spain as its property.
• Antonio Vega: vice-consul of Spain libelled for "the slave Antonio," on the grounds that this man was his property.
• The Africans denied that they were slaves or property, or that the court could return them to the control of the government of Spain.
• José Antonio Tellincas, with Aspe and Laca, claimed goods on board La Amistad.

Lower court proceedings

First page of the deposition of James Covey concerning Amistad prisoners held in the New Haven, Connecticut jail, 4 October 1839

Events leading to the American Civil War

1. Northwest Ordinance
2. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
3. End of Atlantic slave trade
4. Missouri Compromise
5. Tariff of 1828
6. Nat Turner's Rebellion
7. Nullification crisis
8. End of slavery in British colonies
9. Texas Revolution
10. United States v. Crandall
11. Gag rule
12. Commonwealth v. Aves
13. Murder of Elijah Lovejoy
14. Burning of Pennsylvania Hall
15. American Slavery As It Is
16. United States v. The Amistad
17. Prigg v. Pennsylvania
18. Texas annexation
19. Mexican–American War
20. Wilmot Proviso
21. Nashville Convention
22. Compromise of 1850
23. Uncle Tom's Cabin
24. Recapture of Anthony Burns
25. Kansas–Nebraska Act
26. Ostend Manifesto
27. Bleeding Kansas
28. Caning of Charles Sumner
29. Dred Scott v. Sandford
30. The Impending Crisis of the South
31. Panic of 1857
32. Lincoln–Douglas debates
33. Oberlin–Wellington Rescue
34. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
35. Virginia v. John Brown
36. 1860 presidential election
37. Crittenden Compromise
38. Secession of Southern states
39. Peace Conference of 1861
40. Corwin Amendment
41. Battle of Fort Sumter

A case before the Circuit Court in Hartford, Connecticut, was filed in September 1839, alleging mutiny and murder. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction, because the alleged acts took place on a Spanish ship in Spanish waters.

Various parties then filed property claims to many of the captives, to the ship, and to its cargo before the lower District Court: 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 slaves be restored to Spain under the Pinckney treaty of 1795 between Spain and the United States. Article 9 of this treaty holds 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 this claim on behalf of Spain.

The abolitionist movement had formed the "Amistad Committee", headed by 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. Willard Gibbs, Sr. learned to count to ten in the Mende language, went to the harbor of New York City, and counted aloud in front of sailors until he located a person able to understand and translate. That person was James Covey, a twenty-year-old sailor of the British man-of-war HMS Buzzard. Covey was himself a former slave from West Africa.

The abolitionists filed charges of assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment against Ruiz and Montez. Their arrest in New York City in October 1839 outraged pro-slavery rights advocates and the Spanish government. They were eventually released on bail and left for Cuba.

On January 7, 1840, all the parties (except for Ruiz and Montez, who were represented by the Spanish minister) appeared before the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and presented their arguments.

The abolitionists' main argument before the District Court was that a treaty between Britain and Spain of 1817 and a subsequent pronouncement by the Spanish government had outlawed the slave trade across the Atlantic. It was established that the slaves had been captured in Mendiland (also spelled Mendeland, current 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 therefore not slaves, but victims of illegal kidnapping and free to go. Their papers wrongly identified them as slaves who had been in Cuba since before 1820, a common practice in Cuba condoned by government officials.

U.S. President Martin Van Buren, who did not have strong opinions on the slavery question but was concerned about relations with Spain and about his re-election prospects in the southern states, sided with the Spanish position; he ordered a U.S. schooner to New Haven Harbor to return the Africans to Cuba immediately after a favorable decision, before any appeals could be decided.

The District Court, however, agreed with the abolitionists, ordering in January 1840 that the Amistad and its cargo be given to Lieutenant Gedney; and the Africans be returned to their homeland by the U.S. government. (The federal government had outlawed the slave trade between the U.S. and other countries in 1808, and a law from 1818, amended in 1819, provided for the return of all illegally traded slaves.) The captain's slave Antonio was declared the rightful property of the captain's heirs and was ordered restored to Cuba (some sources say he willingly returned to Cuba, while other sources claim 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, 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 President of the United States 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 of Green and Fordham for salvage.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, on 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 the denial of their salvage. Ruiz and Montez, as well as the owners of La Amistad, did not appeal.

This court affirmed (upheld) the District Court's decision in April 1840. From there, the U.S. Attorney appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Arguments before the Supreme Court

On February 23, 1841, 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. The documents being in order, Gilpin argued that the Court had no authority to rule against their validity. Gilpin contended that if the Africans were slaves (as evidenced by the documents), then they must be returned to their rightful owner, in this case, the Spanish government. Gilpin's argument lasted two hours.

John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and at that time a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, had agreed to argue for the Africans, but when it was time for him to argue, felt ill-prepared. Roger Sherman Baldwin, who had already represented the captives in the lower cases, opened in his place.

Baldwin, a prominent attorney (who was no relation to Justice Baldwin, the lone dissenter on the Court) contended that the Spanish government was attempting to manipulate the Court to return "fugitives". In actuality, Baldwin argued, the Spanish government sought the return of slaves, who had been freed by the District Court, a fact that the Spanish government was not appealing. Covering all the facts of the case, Baldwin spoke for four hours over the course of the 22nd and the 23rd.

John Quincy Adams rose to speak on February 24. First, he reminded the court that it was a part of the judicial branch, and not part of the executive. Adams introduced correspondence between the Spanish government and the Secretary of State, criticizing President Martin van Buren for his assumption of unconstitutional powers in the case.

This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with utmost pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy — and a sympathy the most partial and injust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.

Adams argued that neither Pinckney's Treaty nor the Adams-Onís Treaty were applicable to the case. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty referred only to property, and did not apply to people. As to The Antelope decision (10 Wheat. 124), which recognized "that possession on board of a vessel was evidence of property", Adams said that did not apply either, since the precedent there was established prior to the prohibition of the foreign slave trade in the United States. Adams concluded after eight and one-half hours of speaking on March 1 (the Court had taken a recess following the death of Associate Justice Barbour).

Attorney General Gilpin concluded oral argument with a three-hour rebuttal on March 2. The Court retired to consider the case.

Decision of the Supreme Court

On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty was ruled off topic since the Africans in question were never 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 not evidence 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 came into Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had no intent to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onís Treaty did not apply, and the President was not required to return the slaves to Africa.

Upon the whole, our opinion is, that the decree of the circuit court, affirming that of the district court, ought to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to be delivered to the president, to be transported to Africa, in pursuance of the act of the 3rd of March 1819; and as to this, it ought to be reversed: and that the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay.

After the trial

Portrait of Kimbo, one of 35 men aboard the Amistad, ca. 1839–1840.

The Africans greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy. Abolitionist supporters took the survivors — 35 men and boys and three girls — to Farmington, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Then a child in Farmington, the author Charles Ledyard Norton wrote later about the arrival of the Africans:

Barracks were erected and here the former captives made their home. Cinqué was a born ruler. Ably seconded by his lieutenant, Grabeau, he maintained a very creditable degree of discipline among his followers. They were, for the most part, free to roam about, except for regular school hours, and townsfolk soon ceased to fear them. Anxious mamas at first trembled and kept their children behind bolted doors, but before long it was no uncommon sight to see the big grown-up blacks playing with little white children in village dooryards.

The Amistad committee continued to instruct the Africans in English and Christianity and collected donations to pay for their return home. Along with several missionaries, the surviving 36 Africans sailed back to Africa early in 1842. A mission was erected in Mendiland. Numerous members of the Amistad committee later founded the American Missionary Association, an evangelical organization which continued to support the Mendi mission. Made up of black and white ministers from mostly Presbyterian and Congregational denominations, it was active in arguing for abolitionism and for education of blacks. After the American Civil War, it founded numerous schools and colleges for freedmen in the Southern U.S.

In the following years, the Spanish government continued to press the US for compensation. Several lawmakers from southern states introduced resolutions into the United States Congress to pay. These efforts were supported by presidents James K. Polk and James Buchanan, but they all failed to gain passage.

Joseph Cinqué returned to Africa. One rumor held that he later went to Jamaica. Another account holds that he returned to the mission and re-embraced Christianity in his final years. Other rumors alleged that Cinqué became involved in slavery. Although some of the Africans associated with the Amistad probably did engage in the slave trade upon their return, recent historical research suggests that the allegations of Cinqué's involvement are false.

The United States dealt with another ship rebellion similar to the Amistad case in the Creole case of 1841.

Legacy

Some of the laws related to the Amistad case were:

• It had been illegal to import slaves into United States since 1808;
• Slaves were legally recognized as property in Connecticut until 1848;
• The United States had a treaty with Spain (Pinckney's Treaty of 1795) that stated if a vessel of either nation was forced to enter the other's ports, that ship would be released immediately;
• Spain outlawed slavery in 1811;
• Spanish law made it legal to keep slaves if they were born before 1820;
• Ships and property found helpless at sea were subject to claims (salvage rights) made by those who rescued them.

Applicable as it was to the issues of slavery and abolitionism, the Amistad case gained a measure of renown. A number of memorials and commemorations were instituted.

• A statue of Cinqué was erected beside the City Hall building in New Haven, Connecticut.
• A version of the events described here was made into a movie called Amistad in 1997. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams, Morgan Freeman as one of the abolitionists, Djimon Hounsou as Cinqué, and Matthew McConaughey as Roger Sherman Baldwin, their lawyer. This film also depicts the initial transport of the slaves from Africa to Cuba, showing the brutality of treatment.
• In March 2000, a replica of the Amistad was launched from Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. Its mission is to educate the public on the history of slavery, discrimination and civil rights. The vessel's current home port is New Haven, Connecticut, where the Amistad Trial took place. The ship also travels to port cities for educational opportunities. The official name of the vessel is the Freedom Schooner Amistad.
• The Connecticut Historical Society of Hartford, Connecticut, offers a multi-media exhibit recreating portions of the Amistad story, from its beginning in the Mendi villages of West Africa, to the return of 35 captives years later. School programs are offered.
• The Historical Society of Farmington, Connecticut, offers walking tours of village houses that housed the Africans while funds were collected for their return home, as well as the gravestone of Foone, who drowned in the Farmington River.
• Similarly, the Oberlin Heritage Center (Oberlin, Ohio) provides tours of the one-room schoolhouse where Sarah Margru Kinson, one of the Amistad captives, studied beginning in August 1846, at the suggestion of abolitionist Lewis Tappan.

See also

• Abolitionism
• La Amistad
• Amistad (film)
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 40

Further reading

• Jackson, Donald Dale (1997). "Mutiny on the Amistad". Smithsonian. 28 (9): 114–118, 120, 122–124. ISSN 0037-7333. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
• Jones, Howard (1987). Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503828-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Jones, Howard (2000). "Cinqué of the Amistad a Slave Trader? Perpetuating a Myth". Journal of American History. 87 (3). The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 3: 923–939. doi:10.2307/2675277. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
• Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan (2000). The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-2224-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

• Courtroom portraits of the Amistad captives drawn by New Haven resident William H. Townsend while the prisoners awaited trial. From the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• 40 U.S. 518 (1841) — Opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court
• A chronology of the trials
• A History of the Amistad Captives by John Warner Barber (1798–1885): The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Gilder Lehrman Center's Amistad page
• Legal background on the Amistad case by Michael Peil (includes case documents)
• Original Documents Online: Amistad Court Records Online
• The Amistad Case from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School
• The Amistad Case and Its Consequences in U.S. History by Clifton Johnson
• The Legal Path of the Amistad Case from The Museum of America and the Sea
• World Digital Library presentation of Courtroom portraits of the Amistad captives drawn by New Haven resident William H. Townsend. Yale University Library.