Amistad Case

Amistad Case. In 1839, in violation of Spanish law, Spanish slave traders transported over forty enslaved Africans to Cuba. Here they were transferred to another vessel, the Amistad. After a mutiny led by an African named Cinque from the Mendi tribe in Nigeria, the blacks seized the vessel and ordered surviving crew members to return to Africa. Instead, a U.S. warship seized the vessel off Long Island and towed it to New London, Connecticut. Spain demanded the return of the mutineers to Cuba for trial; the Amistad's owners, citing Pinckney's Treaty of 1795 between the United States and Spain, demanded the return of the vessel and its cargo, including the Africans.

Abolitionists formed an Amistad committee and hired lawyer Roger Baldwin to defend the Africans. A federal judge in Hartford declared the blacks free, since the slave traders' action had been illegal, and instructed President Martin Van Buren to return them to Africa. Van Buren, however, who favored extraditing the slaves to Cuba for trial, did not comply. On appeal, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

The former President John Quincy Adams, arguing for the defense, declared that, based on the Declaration of Independence, the Amistad mutineers were free persons and justified in defending their freedom. In an 1841 decision written by Justice Joseph Story (U.S. v. The Amistad), the high court ruled for the defense, finding that Pinckney's Treaty did not apply, and that since Spain had banned the slave trade, the Africans had been enslaved illegally. Abolitionists, while pleased, had hoped for a broader ruling based on natural law. Private contributions financed the slaves' return to Africa. Although the Taney court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision eroded the impact of the Amistad verdict, it nevertheless stands as a historic milestone in the struggle against slavery and racial oppression.
See also Antislavery; Scott v. Sandford; Slavery: The Slave Trade.

Bibliography

Howard Jones , Mutiny on the Amistad, 1987.
Karen Zeinert , The Amistad Slave Revolt and American Abolition, 1997.

Carolyn Williams