The Amistad Rebellion (30 page)

Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin explained in his opening statement why the Supreme Court should overturn the ruling of the lower court. He sought the straightforward restoration of private property based on the Pinckney Treaty of 1795, in which the United States and Spain agreed to mutual assistance for ships in distress. Article 8 stipulated that if a ship “be forced through stress of weather, pursuit of pirates or enemies, or any other urgent necessity” to seek shelter, it “shall be received and treated with all humanity” and properly assisted. Article 9 added: all ships “rescued out of the hands of any pirates or robbers on the high seas, shall be brought into some port”
and returned to those who originally owned them. The Spanish slaveholders Ruiz and Montes made claims based on these articles of the treaty, as had the government of Spain through their ambassadors, Angel Calderón de la Barca and Pedro Alcántara de Argaiz. The vessel, cargo, and slaves, argued Gilpin, should be “restored to the Spanish owners.” These black pirates—“enemies of all mankind”—had committed a crime against property by seizing themselves. They should be returned to Cuba.
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Roger S. Baldwin, who had worked with the Amistad Committee throughout the ordeal, spoke on behalf of the thirty-six Africans, contending “for freedom and for life, with two powerful governments arrayed against them.” Baldwin cleverly turned the tables on Gilpin. Drawing on an American federal law of 1820 that any citizen of the United States who engaged in the slave trade “shall be adjudged a pirate” and if convicted “shall suffer death,” he asked, who are the pirates here? Not the
Amistad
rebels but rather Ruiz, Montes, and by implication the deceased Captain Ramón Ferrer, all of whom were, in this rhetorical flourish (if not in law, for they were not American citizens), illegal slave-trading pirates. Baldwin insisted that the
Amistad
rebels were
not pirates
, were
not slaves
, and that the United States government must not turn them over to Ruiz, Montes, Cuba, Spain, or anyone else. They should go free. Baldwin stated that his clients “were not pirates, nor in any sense hostes humani generis” (enemies of all mankind). They had no goal of enrichment in seizing the vessel and they attacked no other ships. Their sole objective was to free themselves from unlawful bondage. They were in fact the “victims of piracy.”
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Twelve times in his fluent address Baldwin acknowledged the
Amistad
rebels as the agents of their own emancipation. By their own “successful revolt,” they had “achieved their deliverance from slavery, on the high seas.” They had arrived “in a condition of freedom within the territorial limits of a FREE AND SOVEREIGN STATE”—that is, what the Africans called “a free country.” This was an important legal point because it meant a return to Cuba or Spain would require the United States government to “re-enslave them, for the benefit of Spanish negro-dealers,” which was clearly unconstitutional. Baldwin railed
against the “executive interference” that sought to place them back in bondage. He also noted the “intense interest [in the case] throughout the country;—I may almost say throughout the civilized world.” An observer noted that Baldwin’s speech was “one of the most complete, finished, conclusive legal arguments ever made before that court.”
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When John Quincy Adams rose to address the court, he noted that his “learned friend and colleague” had defended the
Amistad
Africans “in so able and complete a manner as leaves me scarcely anything to say.” His address would therefore last a mere seven and a half hours, over two court sessions. In the first, the wily master of rhetoric had some fun with the contradictions of the argument about piracy. Both the American and Spanish governments had insisted on treating the
Amistad
Africans as both “merchandise”—as passive property, that is to say, as slaves—and at the same time as “pirates and robbers,” who were active, aggressive human agents. Referring to the treaty of 1795, Adams remarked, “My clients are claimed under the treaty as merchandise, rescued from pirates and robbers.” But who were the merchandise and who were the robbers? “According to the construction of the Spanish minister, the merchandise were the robbers, and the robbers were the merchandise. The merchandise was rescued out of its own hands, and the robbers were rescued out of the hands of the robbers.” Adams then turned to the justices and asked, no doubt with a glint of mischief in his eyes, “Is this the meaning of the treaty?” Adams also assailed Lt. Thomas Gedney and the other officers of the navy, who had no legal right to attack the rebels, drive them belowdecks, seize them, or forcibly carry them to New London. Their “sympathy” for the white slaveholders was all too apparent. Adams expanded upon Baldwin’s argument that the Africans arrived in the United States in full, rightful possession of both the vessel and their freedom.
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After the court adjourned for the day, its proceedings were “interrupted by the solemn voice of death.” Justice Philip Barbour of Virginia was found dead in his bed the following morning, causing a postponement of the case until March 1. Other dramatic news came soon after, from Liberia, by way of an American shipmaster: the British
antislavery patrol, led by Captain Joseph Denman, had destroyed the slave-trading factories of Pedro Blanco on the Gallinas Coast, the very place from which the
Amistad
Africans had been shipped to Cuba aboard the
Teçora
in April 1839. Eleven boats with one hundred twenty armed sailors had pushed off from the
Wanderer
, the
Saracen
, and the
Rolla
on the evening of November 19, 1840, arrived undetected, and forced the overseers to grab their papers and fly into the bush in fright and consternation. The sailors liberated more than eight hundred enslaved Africans and torched the barracoons, destroying property worth an estimated £200,000 ($9 million in 2012 dollars). Lord Palmerston, British secretary of state for foreign affairs, commended the action: “Taking a wasp’s nest…is more effective than catching the wasps one by one.” At roughly the same time, Captain H. F. Seagram had negotiated the surrender of Blanco’s former partner, Theophilus Conneau, now the second biggest slave trader on the coast. Suddenly a “mammoth market for human flesh” had been destroyed and “a thousand miles of coastline cleared” of the horrid trade.
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Back in Connecticut, abolitionists were once again debating what to do in the event of a verdict against the
Amistad
Africans. The discussion was complicated this time because Wilcox the marshal and Pendleton the jailer expected a jailbreak. Abolitionists therefore worried that they might take preemptive action to move the Africans to another location. Amos Townsend Jr. met with Cinqué to alert him to the possibility, telling him to keep everyone together and to “make all the resistance in their power & not suffer themselves to be carried off by stealth.” Cinqué and his fellow warriors had demonstrated “all the resistance in their power” aboard the
Amistad
, but he understood that a different, lesser kind of resistance was called for on this occasion. He promised that “if they come we will all halloo loud & make plenty noise” to alert sympathetic neighbors. In any case, many local abolitionists remained “ready forcibly to interfere,” if necessary. Wilcox and Pendleton added guards and extra locks to the prison doors.
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When Adams resumed on Monday, March 1, in a “well filled Court room” as a snowstorm raged outside, he waged a blistering attack on
Martin Van Buren for “executive interference” in the case. He pointed repeatedly to the courtroom copy of the Declaration of Independence, emphasizing the principle of equality as crucial to the case. As he concluded, he was gripped by emotion, his voice almost failing, his face lined with tears. A correspondent, profoundly moved, wrote, “The closing part of his speech was the most touching and affecting of anything of the kind to which I ever listened.” “Old Man Eloquent,” as Adams was called, had given his all to the defense.
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Acknowledging the public engagement in this “interesting and important controversy,” the eight sitting justices reviewed all of the evidence, arguments, and previous rulings of the
Amistad
case and decided, 7–1, that “these negroes never were the lawful slaves of Ruiz or Montes or of any other Spanish subjects.” Writing for the majority, Justice Joseph Story affirmed the narrative the Africans had given in September and repeated endlessly ever since: “They are natives of Africa, and were kidnapped there, and were unlawfully transported to Cuba, in violation of the law and treaties of Spain, and the most solemn edict and declarations of that Government.” The Court lamented the “dreadful acts” by which they “asserted their liberty” during the rebellion, but implicitly acknowledged them as legitimate. The Africans were not “robbers or pirates” and the treaty of 1795 therefore “cannot be obligatory upon them.” The court, however, rejected Adams’s argument that the ship and cargo lawfully belonged to the Africans, ruling that they were the property of Spanish subjects and that Gedney and the other officers were entitled to salvage, as the lower court had ruled. The court also ruled that the United States government bore no obligation of repatriation.
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As the decision was being rendered in Washington, the
Amistad
Africans were nervously calling out the windows of the Westville jail to passersby, asking if they had heard any news. Everyone was waiting on the arrival of the New York newspapers. Soon Wilcox and Pendleton showed up at the jail to deliver the verdict. They gathered into one room all of the captives, who, on Cinqué’s signal, sat down to receive the fateful news. Their faces expressed “the deepest anxiety.” Marshal Wilcox then said, “The big Court has come to a decision—
they say that you—one and all—are free.” He then showed them the newspaper and said, “Read it.” Cinqué turned to Kale, the best reader in the group, and told him to read it aloud for all. The leader remained skeptical, adding, “Paper lie sometimes.” Soon abolitionists Henry G. Ludlow and Amos Townsend Jr. arrived at the jail to give the Africans the news from more trustworthy sources. The Africans demonstrated “great joy,” although not “the tumultuous outbreak of feeling which the first decision of the lower court produced.” They were wary and subdued in their response as they remembered their previous disappointment more than a year earlier, when they thought they had won their freedom, only to have the United States district attorney appeal the case and extend their incarceration.
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The visitors wanted to know what the Africans would do now that they were truly free. Would they return to Africa or would they remain in America? Townsend thought many of them might prefer to stay, especially when they said, “America country good country—America people good people—set we free.” Cinqué then answered the question directly, saying “We talk together and think—then I tell.” They would hold a communal meeting to make a decision, “one and all.” Kinna added that he would follow Cinqué’s advice: “He great man—he get us all free—he President.” “Yes,” added Grabeau with his impish sense of humor, “he President of the poor.”
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As the word of the verdict spread, so did the ecstasy of the abolitionist community. Many, including John Quincy Adams, used the Bible to interpret the joyful moment, turning to Isaiah 61:1 and the biblical Jubilee: God had sent his people “to proclaim liberty to the captives” and to open “the prison to them that are bound.” As soon as he heard the verdict Adams wrote to the Amistad Committee, “The Captives are free!” Townsend commanded, with Old Testament gravity, “Bless the Lord, for his right hand hath gotten him the victory. The oppressor is confounded, and the oppressed delivered.” The
Youth’s Cabinet
praised the faith that had brought “deliverance to the captive,” and “the opening of the prison doors to them that were bound.” The abolitionist movement in Philadelphia announced a “public Thanksgiving” involving the ministers of six congregations to celebrate “liberty to the captive,”
while the New York Anti-Slavery Society suggested that “thanks be given in all the churches of the land, in view of the decision.” The
Colored American
joyously announced that “our long-imprisoned brethren…ARE FREE on this soil, without condition or restraint.” The “people of color” of Columbus, Ohio, “deeply touched with the result of the trial of the Amistad captives,” wrote expressions of gratitude to Baldwin and Adams.
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Knowing that the public would, after the verdict, once again hunger for reading material about the Africans, the
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter
brought out a special edition “extra” on March 15, 1841, featuring several of John Warner Barber’s engravings (although not the one of the rebellion), news of the destruction of Pedro Blanco’s slave factories, and excerpts of the speeches by Baldwin and Adams before the Supreme Court. The Amistad Committee advertised the availability of Sartain’s portrait of
Cinque, Chief of the Amistad Captives
for purchase. The image was now a symbol of victory: “It is hoped that every friend of human rights throughout the country will secure one of these engravings, and preserve it in memory of Cinque not only, but of the righteous triumph of justice and humanity over cruelty and oppression in the decision that has set the arrested captives free.”
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Knowing too that the
Amistad
Africans would be in ever greater demand by the admiring public, the abolitionists moved them immediately out of the New Haven region, twenty-eight miles away, to Farmington, under the watchful eyes of an “abolition town” in general, and gentleman farmer John Treadwell Norton, who had founded the local Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, in particular. When his son, John Pitkin Norton, found out on March 16, 1841, that the Africans were “coming here en masse to morrow to stay for a time & continue their education,” he explained why: “The circus & menagerie proprietors & managers of theatres are gathering around them in New Haven like so many sharks & it is on that & other accounts thought best to remove them hither.”
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