| THE AMISTAD MUTINY |
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• What happened aboard the Amistad? • What was the American government's position regarding the incident? • Why was the case so complicated? • What former President championed the cause of the Amistad prisoners? • What was the outcome of the trial? • Where were most of the illegally obtained slaves shipped during the 1800s? • How extensive were American efforts to check the trans-Atlantic slave trade? • What was the Middle Passage? • How historically accurate is the movie Amistad? |
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Although the slave trade (though not slavery itself) had been outlawed by the United States, Great Britain, and Spain since the very early 1800s, it persisted well into the nineteenth century. Between the mid-1500s and the mid-1800s, some 11 million captured Africans were deported across the Atlantic Ocean, under ghastly conditions, to be auctioned into slavery. It was the largest known forced migration of people in all of history. Great Britain had, admirably but pompously, assumed international leadership in the fight against the slave trade, boasting to have enlisted "every state in Christendom which has a flag that sails on the ocean, with the single exception of the United States of North America" in the crusade. Other European nations, including Spain and Portugal, allowed their vessels suspected of carrying slaves to be searched by British naval authorities. The United States, however, would not grant such permission; nor did it care to dispatch enough of its own ships to effectively police the seas. Consequently, the most common flag for slave-trafficking vessels—by the 1850s, almost exclusively used—was that of the United States. There is even some evidence indicating slaves from Africa were being landed by American ships on the coast of Georgia until just before the Civil War! In 1862, Congress finally consented to British search of American vessels. No doubt the trans-Atlantic slave trade was perpetuated by America's hesitation to cooperate with countries of Europe, as well as its own inconsistent enforcement of the ban on slave commerce. The slave trade was part of the commercial network commonly referred to as the "triangular trade" because the most common round-trip routes (there were several) resembled a triangle. One version involving the slave business began in New England, where vessels carrying rum would depart for Africa. Once there, the rum was exchanged for slaves. Then, the ship would recross the Atlantic, transporting its chattel cargo to the West Indies, where the slaves were sold for sugar and molasses. Finally, these products were shipped to New England to be distilled into rum. And so it went. Each third of the trip meant a handsome profit for the experienced trader. The portion of the voyage that brought slaves to America (considered the middle leg of the triangle) was known as the Middle Passage. It generally took the better part of two months to complete. The infamous Middle Passage was nothing short of a living hell. As many as 600 blacks, sometimes even more, were cast into irons and then tightly packed into the dank and fetid cargo hold of a single ship. So great was the profit for each slave delivered that most vessels were stocked to their utmost capacity. The captives were sparsely fed—a handful of warm vegetable mush per day was typical. The stench of blood, sweat, vomit, and excrement filled the three- or four-foot-high holds. Air vents on the side of the ship were closed when the seas became rough or the rain heavy, hence many of the Africans suffocated or were overcome by the extreme heat. The excruciating torment of the Middle Passage even caused some slaves to turn against others, as one eyewitness revealed: "The sense of misery and suffocation was so terrible in the 'tween-decks—where the height sometimes was only 18 inches—that the unfortunate slaves could not [even] turn round. In their frenzy some killed others in the hope of procuring more room to breathe." The African women were often sexually abused by their captors. Additional atrocities faced those slaves who offered resistance or became ill. The unruly were mercilessly whipped and beaten into submission; the sick were simply tossed overboard, weighted with chains, to the sharks. Slaves would be heaved into the ocean too should a ship run low on food or if detection by legal authorities seemed probable. Deaths due to diseases such as dysentery and smallpox were common. (There are cases on record of entire shiploads, including the crew, going blind from ophthalmia.) Some historians estimate the average mortality rate of the Middle Passage at upwards to 15 percent, although there were numerous times when half or two-thirds of the slaves were dead upon a ship's arrival in the West Indies. In a sense, those who died were the lucky ones. In February of 1839, a large group of African tribesmen from the Mende-speaking region of Sierra Leone were abducted by Portuguese slave traders and exported aboard the Tecora to Cuba, then a Spanish colony, for sale. Upon arriving in Havana, 53 of the natives (49 men and 4 children) were transferred to a Spanish schooner, the Amistad, for final delivery to the Caribbean plantations of their purchasers, Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz. On the fourth day out, the slaves somehow managed to escape their shackles and take control of the ship. (Fortunately for the mutineers, the Amistad was atypically undermanned for a slave ship.) In the melee, two crew members were killed—the captain and the mulatto cook, the latter whom had apparently taken perverse pleasure in taunting the bound slaves during the journey. Two seamen escaped in a boat. Most of the remaining crew were forced ashore. Montes and Ruiz, along with a young cabin boy, were detained. Under the leadership of one particularly strong and courageous member of their force, named Sengbe Pieh (his captors called him Cinque), the liberated Africans ordered Montes and Ruiz to steer them back to Sierra Leone. Although the Spaniards obediently sailed eastward during daylight hours, they covertly navigated a northwesterly course at night. For many miles, unbeknownst to the Africans, the Amistad zigzagged a route adjacent to, but beyond vision of, the American coastline. After drifting at sea for nearly two months, the ravaged vessel dropped anchor off the Long Island coast so that a party of men could row ashore to replenish the ship's vastly depleted food and water supplies. The next day, the Amistad was intercepted by the USS Washington on routine patrol for piracy and maritime smuggling. The commander had been placed on alert by reported sightings of a suspicious ship, full of black passengers with swords in hand, sailing erratically. The daring Cinque tried to elude the sailors by leaping into the ocean, but he was soon apprehended. The Africans were promptly arrested and confined at New London, Connecticut, pending disposition of the American government. Since the revolt, ten of the 53 mutineers had perished, owing to starvation or because thirst drove them to gulp medicine found on the Amistad. Surely some of them were killed in the mutiny itself. At a preliminary hearing, federal judge Andrew Jackson ordered the Africans held on charges of murder and piracy, whereupon they were jailed in several rooms above a tavern in New Haven. Conditions there were relatively relaxed; the children were taken on wagon rides while the men were occasionally allowed to stroll on the green across the street. Cinque, however, regarded as especially dangerous, was manacled and placed in a separate cell. For a fee of 12½ cents, staid local citizens could file through the jail to view the exotic creatures. Upon learning of the Africans' plight, a circle of influential northern abolitionists, led by New Yorker Lewis Tappan, organized a determined campaign to secure their freedom. The "Amistad Committee" hired a young property lawyer, Roger Sherman Baldwin, to represent them. He was assisted by Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick, Jr. Additionally, the Committee began an immediate search for someone who understood the natives' strange language. Public vigilance for the safety and care of the Africans ran high. The subsequent court case was a judicial octopus. Montes and Ruiz claimed the slaves as duly purchased property. Using Secretary of State John Forsyth as spokesman, Queen Isabella of Spain (a nine-year-old child at the time) pressed for return of the slaves and the Amistad to Cuba, citing treaties with the United States to support the demand. Spain also insisted on protection for Montes and Ruiz. Even the commander of the patrol vessel that overtook the Amistad, Lieutenant Thomas Gedney, got into the picture by claiming "salvage rights" to the seized cargo, human though it was. Unfortunately for Cinque and his comrades, President Martin Van Buren wanted the situation quickly and quietly resolved—not only was he reluctant to create an international incident over such a relatively small matter, but election day was approaching and the New York Democrat was in dire need of pro-slavery southern support to win four more years in the White House. Due adjudication of the Amistad blacks would certainly not garner Van Buren any votes in the South! Hence, the case was as much an economic matter and political dispute as it was a moral crusade and philosophical argument. Adding to the sticky situation was the fact that Baldwin and his associates had yet to crack the language barrier. For this, time was on their side—the trial date was five months away. But as the days and weeks went by, the Africans were growing increasingly fearful they would be executed. Three more of their party would soon succumb to disease. During their five-month incarceration at New Haven, the Amistad prisoners became somewhat of a national sensation. A play about the mutiny, entitled The Black Schooner, or the Pirate Slaver Amistad, ran at for New York theaters. The owner of a wax museum made masks of the Africans for display. A color portrait of Cinque, standing in his supposed African homeland, was produced for sale. Another artist painted a 135-foot-long panoramic mural, titled The Massacre on board the schooner Amistad, in which "26 of the principal characters" were depicted engaging in murderous mutiny. More and more curious New Englanders, as many as 5,000 daily, showed up at the jail to gawk at the Africans. Numerous journalists clamored for justice. Still, the majority of the country's press advocated extradition of the Africans to Cuba. The trial commenced in Hartford during January of 1840. United States Attorney William Holabird petitioned Judge Smith Thompson to remand the Africans to the government and let the President decide their fate. Baldwin challenged the role of the United States government as self-appointed agent for Spain. He also suggested that had the Amistad mutineers been white, they readily would have been granted asylum. After three days of arguments, Thompson ruled that because the alleged crimes were committed aboard a foreign vessel in foreign waters, the American court system had no jurisdiction to determine the murder and piracy charges. This settled half the issue—the Africans were effectively cleared of any crimes. Hence, they no longer faced possible long-term imprisonment or execution (so long as they remained in the United States). Criminal jurisdiction now decided, the property question was left unresolved. Were the blacks free or were they property? And if they were property, of whom? District court would answer that issue. The trial was scheduled for November, then later postponed to the following January. In the meantime, two critical developments would weigh heavily on the outcome of the trial. Josiah Gibbs, a Yale professor and expert on foreign languages, was able to locate a Mende-speaking person to act as an interpreter. How Gibbs managed to find his man was a bit of a miracle. Gibbs learned from the Africans some basics of their language. Then he circulated the New York waterfront counting aloud to ten in the Mende language while scanning the crowd for someone who seemed to understand. His ingenious search uncovered ex-slave James Covey, now a British seaman. Shortly thereafter, a key witness surfaced. Dr. Richard Madden, who had served as the British anti-slavery commissioner in Cuba, volunteered to explain to the court how the Cuban system of slavery functioned. Testifying in judge's chambers, Madden told how the Cubans submitted fraudulent documents and operated through corrupt officials to circumvent the ban on the slave trade. He went on to describe the trauma of the Cuban slave market. Finally, Madden informed the judge that the return of the Amistad blacks to Havana would mean certain execution. Baldwin, sorting through the tangled case, presented a rather simple argument. He reasoned that since the accused were born not into slavery, but in Africa, they are free people, and therefore entitled to fight for their freedom, as they did aboard the Amistad. The date of the Africans' abduction was crucial to Baldwin's presentation. Since the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been outlawed by international treaty effective in 1820, any capture, transport, and subsequent sale of Africans after that date was illegal. That the Amistad blacks were born in Africa was readily accepted by the judge, who stated he was "fully convinced" and to deny it was "idle." But exactly when had they been seized? On the second day of trial, Cinque, who had maintained exceptional dignity through the entire affair, was called to testify. Covey served as his interpreter. The courtroom audience fell deathly silent as Covey relayed Cinque's detailed description of the harrowing treatment Cinque and his countrymen were subjected to during their trans-Atlantic voyage to Havana, during the auction, and aboard the Amistad. Another African, Grapeau, also took the witness stand. The week-long trial winding down, the White House, anticipating a decision against the Africans, secretly dispatched a navy schooner, the Grampus, with instructions to load the Africans and set sail for Cuba immediately following the verdict, not allowing the defense counsel sufficient time to file an appeal. The abolitionists had their own vessel waiting to rescue the Africans if need be. The court's decision was read before an overflow crowd. The Africans, ruled the judge, were "born free and ever since have been and still of right are free and not slaves" owing to the fact they had had been seized in violation of "their own rights and of the laws of Spain." He closed by saying, "Cinque and Grapeau shall not sigh for Africa in vain." The second half of the case was now settled—the Africans were free! It was a short-lived freedom. The increasingly anxious Van Buren, in an effort to appease the southern white faction, ordered the decision to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. It was a disheartening blow for the Africans, for not only did it pull the rug out from under their district court victory, but also because chances of the Supreme Court upholding the lower court ruling were dismal. Most of the nine justices held southern sympathies; indeed, at least six were themselves slaveowners. It would take nothing short of another miracle to free the Amistad unfortunates, it seemed. For this new challenge, the abolitionists sought to bolster their counsel. After being turned away by Daniel Webster, the thunderous political bastion of the North, the abolitionists approached former President John Quincy Adams. To this point little more than an interested observer in the affair, Adams complied with hesitations, pleading "age and inefficiency." Age, perhaps; inefficiency, hardly. His presidency had been a mediocre one, at best, but the gruff Massachusetten, now in his 70s, was a spectacular congressman. Adams was an ardent foe of slavery, if not so much outright, certainly at heart. (He viewed abolitionists with skepticism, considering many of their actions to be fanatical.) The South detested him. Now, both sides had played their trump. The stage was set for a judicial battle royale! While awaiting the Supreme Court hearing, which was a year away, the Africans were detained in a large house at nearby Westville. During that time, they were tutored in the English language and introduced to Christianity by Yale students. One of the children, an 11-year-old boy named Kale, learned to read and write English remarkably well. He even composed a letter to Adams. "Dear Friend Mr. Adams," it read, "I want to write a letter to you because you love Mende people and you talk to the grand court....We want to ask the court what we have done wrong. What for Americans keep us in prison?...Mende people have got souls. We think we know God punish us if we tell lie. We speak truth. All we want is make us free." The Supreme Court case of United States v. Schooner Amistad opened in February of 1841. Attorney General Henry Gilpin spoke first; Baldwin next. Two days into the trial, it was Adams's turn to address the Court. He focused on the government's self-assumed role as Spain's claimant. The Court recessed for a week. When it reconvened, Adams attacked Van Buren's order to the Grampus, a clear violation of the judicial process and the rights of the accused Africans, as an "abominable conspiracy." According to Adams, the President's handling of the entire Amistad situation represented "utter injustice." The high court took eight days to reach its decision. By an 8-1 majority, the Africans were found to have never been lawful slaves since they had been kidnapped and illegally transported to Cuba. Hence, their revolt was an act of self-defense. Adams had overcome executive interference ad nauseam as well as heavy pressure levied by southern politicians—the famed John C. Calhoun of South Carolina among them—to score a resounding legal victory. After nearly 18 months of uncertainty, the Africans were declared free by the mightiest court in the land! There would be no more judicial gamesmanship. The Supreme Court ruling was based purely on interpretation of law. In essence, it established that the United States should treat as free men any slaves who escaped from illegal bondage. Although the Amistad case was one of the most publicized trials of the entire antebellum period, it did not set a major precedent, nor did it alter the staus of slavery in America. Some scholars hasten to point out that, predictably, the verdict might very well have been different had the slaves killed an American captain, or had they been Alabama or Georgia or Virginia slaves rebelling against their southern plantation owners. Nearly two years since they were first kidnapped in Sierra Leone, and after enduring three exasperating trials, Cinque and his fellow captives were finally free to leave America. Ironically, many of the Amistad Committee were reluctant to send the Africans on their way. The Amistad incident had showcased abolitionism well, elevating the American consciousness regarding slavery to an all-time high. But now that the fanfare had subsided, there would be no more national headlines, at least until the abolitionists could latch on to another crisis for their furious cause. The Africans moved into a specially constructed barn in Farmington to await their freedom voyage. Adams and Tappan tried unsuccessfully to convince the new President, John Tyler, to furnish a vessel for the trip. Instead, money was raised to charter a ship, the Gentleman. By November, it was ready to set sail from New York. Their total number now reduced to 35 (another four had died of disease and one had drowned, a possible suicide), the entire lot of freedmen elected to return home. They were accompanied by four Americans assigned to establish a mission in Sierra Loene. Cinque promised to protect them, acknowledging that "Mende people do well, but not all. Some bad people, same as here." A cheering crowd assembled to see them off. Before departing, the grateful Africans presented a Bible to Adams in absentia. The compelling story of Cinque and his companions is now a much more familiar one thanks to the riveting 1997 Steven Spielberg movie Amistad. The film has been favorably compared to another of Spielberg's masterpieces, Schindler's List—the former does for blacks what the latter did for the Jewish community of the Holocaust (both films were scripted by Steve Zaillian). Amistad stars Nigel Hawthorne as the cunning Van Buren, Anthony Hopkins as the tenacious Adams, Djimon Hounsou as the heroic Cinque, and Matthew McConaughey as the aspiring Baldwin. Also featured is Morgan Freeman, cast as Theodore Joadson, a former slave, now a well-to-do businessman who is one of the Amistad Committee's chief figures. The character is fictional, although it's entirely conceivable that a person or two of his makeup took part in the affair. Associate Justice Joseph Story, who announced the Supreme Court's decision, is portrayed by Harry Blackmun, a real-life Court justice who retired in 1994. Other than Freeman's character and Cinque's escape (instead of using his fingers to claw a spike from a wooden beam, he surreptitiously obtained a loose nail from on deck), most of the film's ahistorical content concerns Adams. In the true course of events, the pragmatic Adams did not deliver an appeal to the human conscience of the Supreme Court, as he does in the movie version, where it's his impassioned summons of the memories of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and of course the senior Adams, that seems to carry the day. Instead, the thrust of his argument was strictly technical and jurisdictional. (Still, we can be certain his Puritan faith and devotion to the principles of the Declaration of Independence were stirring in his soul, even if he did not put those feelings to words.) Further, Adams did not invite Cinque to his home, nor did he hail Cinque as a hero. Beyond these relatively minor Hollywood fabrications, the movie is well-researched. Even the Mende language and costumes are authentic. The closing credits acknowledge Black Mutiny: The Revolt on the Schooner Amistad, by William A. Owens, as a major source of reference material. Amistad provides an important lesson in American history. But it does not stop there. The movie probes the fiber of one's heart. It challenges its viewers to realize that slavery, with all its unspeakable horrors, is more than just a nasty chapter in a history book, sandwiched somewhere between the Missouri Compromise and the Civil War. The inhumanity of slavery should not be that easy to pass off. Amistad can make you uncomfortable, if you have the moral courage to allow it. View Amistad—your squirming means it was time well spent. Martin Van Buren lost his bid for re-election in 1842 to military hero William Henry Harrison by a fairly substantial margin. Four years later, Van Buren's party passed over him to nominate James K. Polk for the White House, whereupon the disgruntled Van Buren separated from the Democratic Party to enter the 1848 election as the Free Soil Party candidate. Interestingly, his vice-presidential running-mate was Charles Francis Adams, the youngest son of Van Buren's chief adversary in the Amistad affair! During the campaign, Van Buren ironically took a rather firm stand against slavery, stating, "The minds of nearly all mankind have been penetrated by a conviction of the evils of slavery." He lost again, finishing a distant third with no electoral votes, prompting Polk to call Van Buren "the most fallen man I have ever known." Entering retirement, Van Buren spent some time in Europe before returning to New York to live out his years in placid obscurity. He died in 1862. John Quincy Adams remained in the House of Representatives until 1848, when death halted his commendable life-long service to his country. The final words of "Old Man Eloquent" were: "This is the last of earth. I am content." And well he should have been. Upon arriving back in Africa, Cinque sadly discovered most of his family had vanished, either through intertribal warfare or themselves taken as slaves. He kept his pledge to watch over the four American missionaries. Reportedly, Cinque became a prosperous trader in Sierra Leone. A complete epilogue of the Amistad hero would be remiss if it neglected an additional item. It's possible Cinque wasn't quite the angelic figure portrayed in the movie. In The Oxford History of the American People, Samuel Eliot Morison maintains that on occasion, Cinque himself engaged in slave trafficking. Opponents of Morison's unnerving assertion claim that any strands of evidence linking Cinque's business dealings to the slave trade are unverified. Just the thought of such a bizarre footnote to the Amistad story is disconcerting, to say the least. As for the other Amistad prisoners, they simply dispersed. One of them, a young girl, eventually returned to the United States to attend classes at Oberlin College in Ohio. Four of the Supreme Court justices who rendered the Amistad decision would still be sitting on the bench in 1857, when the infamous Dred Scott case determined that blacks, whether free or slave, held no legal rights. One of those four Amistad justices was Roger B. Taney, who was the Chief Justice during Scott v. Sandford, considered by many authorities to be a judicial sham. And what happened to the eager young attorney who took on the Amistad case? Roger Baldwin went on to become governor of Connecticut. A reproduction of the Amistad was recently completed in Connecticut. Incidentally, the English translation of "amistad" is "friendship." No doubt the word came to mean something quite different in the Mende language. The Amistad movie itself became embroiled in a judicial battle. Charges surfaced that the movie was plagiarized from Echo of Lions, a minor historical novel written by Barbara Chase-Riboud a decade earlier. An accompanying lawsuit threatened to block the movie's release. Apparently, there were definite similarities between the stories presented by the movie and the book, but logic dictates overlap since both are based on an actual historical event. Is there such a thing as copyright infringement on history? While many Africans were kidnapped by white slave traders, many others were captured by blacks, as was the case in the Amistad incident. The idea of blacks entrapping their brethren into slavehood might be puzzling, if not downright troubling, to some people. However, it must be understood that such incidents were not simple cases of blacks betraying members of their own race. In Africa, slavery was an ancient institution. Often, prisoners-of-war, criminals, or members of lower-class tribes were enslaved by more powerful clans or sold by chiefs to white slave traders. Hence, the African concept of slavery was based on power or class or lineage, rather than race, as we in America have come to understand it. The common denominator in both systems, of course, is that the slave was viewed as a commodity. Once slavery became linked with capitalism and expanding world trade, it became a moral question, the issue of preference among Americans today. To call the commercial system involving the African slaves "triangular" is a bit of an oversimplification. Actually, it was more complicated than that, for it was comprised of several diverse interlocking routes. Some of the voyages had three legs; others were direct shuttles. The majority of illegally deported slaves did not go to the United States. They were shipped to Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica. Only about five percent, in fact, were sold to North American plantation owners. Slavery became the backbone of agriculture in the Deep South during the 1800s. Still, on the eve of the Civil War, less than a quarter of southern families owned any slaves at all. Most Americans know the most famous slave trader of the 1800s, although not by name. That's because Reverend John Newton is popular for what he did after his conversion to abolitionism. He penned the hymn "Amazing Grace." Appropriately, it is included on the soundtrack of Amistad. |
