Before dawn on July 2, they either broke or picked the locks on their chains. Grabbing a dagger and a club, the captain managed to kill one African and mortally wound another. Two other crew members threw a canoe overboard and jumped into the water after it, whereas the cabin boy stayed out of the fighting altogether.
Ruiz and Montes, meanwhile, were relieved of their weapons, tied up and ordered to sail back to Sierra Leone. Having all grown up away from the ocean, the Africans depended on Ruiz and Montes for navigation. During the day, the two Spaniards set an eastward course, as they had been told to do.
At night, however, they headed north and west in the hope of being rescued. After passing through the Bahamas, where the Amistad stopped on various small islands, it moved up the coast of the United States. News reports began to appear of a mysterious schooner, with an all-Black crew and tattered sails, steering erratically. With little to drink onboard, dehydration and dysentery took a toll, and several Africans died.
Finally, on August 26, a U. Navy brig ran into the Amistad off the eastern end of Long Island. Ruiz and Montes were freed at once, while the Africans were imprisoned in Connecticut, which, unlike New York, was still a slave state at the time. It Just Surfaced. As the Africans languished in poorly ventilated jail cells, thousands of curious visitors paid an admission fee to come look at them. Yet they faced a formidable suite of opponents.
The naval officers who captured the Amistad claimed salvage rights to both the vessel and its human cargo, as did two hunters who had come across some of the Africans looking for water along the Long Island shoreline. Ruiz and Montes likewise wanted their so-called property back, whereas the Spanish and U. Believing the court would take his side, President Martin Van Buren sent a Navy ship to pick up the Africans and transport them away before the abolitionists could file an appeal.
The Van Buren administration immediately appealed to a circuit court and then to the Supreme Court, basing its argument on a treaty between Spain and the United States that contained anti-piracy provisions. Top Skip to main content. The schooner, its cargo, and all on board were taken to New London, CT. The plantation owners were freed and the Africans were imprisoned on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement and the case went to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut.
The plantation owners, government of Spain, and captain of the Washington each claimed rights to the Africans or compensation. President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba.
However, abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Had it not been for the actions of abolitionists in the United States, the issues related to the Amistad might have ended quietly in an admiralty court.
But they used the incident as a way to expose the evils of slavery and generate significant opposition to the practice. The brig Washington that seized the Amistad was commanded by Lt. In maritime law, compensation is allowed to persons whose assistance saves a ship or its cargo from impending loss. Gedney claimed that it was with great difficulty and danger that he and his crew were able to recapture the Amistad from the Africans.
They claimed that, had they not seized the vessel, it would have been a total loss to its "rightful" owners. At that time in U. But the Spaniards secretly changed course at night, and instead the Amistad sailed through the Caribbean and up the eastern coast of the United States. On August 26, the U. The naval officers seized the Amistad and put the Africans back in chains, escorting them to Connecticut, where they would claim salvage rights to the ship and its human cargo.
Charged with murder and piracy, Cinque and the other Africans of the Amistad were imprisoned in New Haven. Though these criminal charges were quickly dropped, they remained in prison while the courts went about deciding their legal status, as well as the competing property claims by the officers of the Washington, Montes and Ruiz and the Spanish government.
Joshua Leavitt and Rev. Simeon Jocelyn, raised money for their legal defense, arguing that they had been illegally captured and imported as slaves. The defense team enlisted Josiah Gibbs, a philologist from Yale University, to help determine what language the Africans spoke.
After concluding that they were Mende, Gibbs searched New York waterfronts for anyone who recognized the language. He finally found a Mende speaker who could interpret for the Africans, allowing them to tell their own story for the first time. In January , a judge in U. District Court in Hartford ruled that the Africans were not Spanish slaves, but had been illegally captured, and should be returned to Africa.
Supreme Court, which heard the case in early To defend the Africans in front of the Supreme Court, Tappan and his fellow abolitionists enlisted former President John Quincy Adams , who was at the time 73 years old and a member of the House of Representatives.
At the heart of the case, Adams argued, was the willingness of the United States to stand up for the ideals upon which it was founded. But the Court did not require the government to provide funds to return the Africans to their homeland, and awarded salvage rights for the ship to the U. Navy officers who apprehended it.
In November , Cinque and the other 34 surviving Africans of the Amistad the others had died at sea or in prison awaiting trial sailed from New York aboard the ship Gentleman, accompanied by several Christian missionaries, to return to their homeland. Educator Resources: The Amistad Case. National Archives. John Quincy Adams and the Amistad Case, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
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