The Amistad Case

By James P. Walsh

Connecticut served as the site of one of the most interesting and puzzling affairs in American legal history. The episode began in 1839 when a group of about fifty newly enslaved Africans, led by a man called Cinque, seized control of a Spanish slaveship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. The Africans killed most of the crew and ordered the survivors to sail the ship back to Africa. Instead, the crew steered the ship for Cuba and wound up off course in Long Island Sound, where a United States naval vessel captured the vessel. A number of legal issues arose. The Spanish government claimed that the Africans were murderers and demanded that they be returned to their rightful "owners." On the other hand, international law forbade the slave trade with Africa, and it was argued that the Africans were kidnap victims with the right to resist their kidnappers. The United States Navy claimed ownership of the Amistad and its cargo because of the right of salvage on the high seas. Abolitionists immediately seized upon the case as a chance to vindicate the right of slaves to liberate themselves, even by force of arms.

The Africans became the special concern of Connecticut abolitionists. Roger Sherman Baldwin (1793-1863), one of the state's most prominent lawyers and a future governor, deserves much of the credit for defending them. The most important issues, whether the Africans were guilty of piracy and murder, went to the United States Supreme Court where Baldwin and John Quincy Adams, the former president, succeeded in having the Africans exonerated in March 1841.

While their status was being fought over in the courts, the Africans became heroes to the people of Connecticut and neighboring states. They were constantly on tour, speaking through translators of their home and the evil of slavery. Cinque was especially admired because he seemed to have the same classical, patriotic qualities that Americans found in George Washington. At one point, when it looked as though the United States government might respond to Spanish pressure and send the Africans back into slavery, some in Connecticut prepared to defy the government by sending the Africans to safety in Canada. In a sense, the Amistad case portended the massive defiance of Federal law in the North that followed passage of the stringent Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

It would be nice to say that everything ended happily after the Supreme Court victory in 1841; such, however, was not the case. Instead of returning the Africans immediately to their homeland, the Connecticut abolitionists installed them in Farmington where they were given a crash course in Christianity. A house was built for them, and some of the abolitionists talked of allowing the Africans to stay in Farmington permanently. This idea disturbed the local residents and led to random attacks on the Africans, culminating in a near riot in September 1841. The people of Connecticut did not want the Amistad heroes to be returned to slavery, but neither did they want more blacks in the state. Racism and abolitionism were not incompatible attitudes in nineteenth-century Connecticut.

For Further Reading

There is a good account of the episode in William A. Owens, Slave Mutiny (New York, 1952).

* Entry under revision.