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Director
Stephen Spielberg deserves credit for bringing to public attention what
historians used to refer to dismissively as “the Amistad
incident.” It is the
story of a group of Africans who were captured in Sierra Leone and
brought in chains to the Americas -- and who revolted, captured their
ship, the Amistad, and eventually were seized off the coast of New England.
They won their freedom in a case before the Supreme Court and
ultimately sailed back to their homeland in Africa.
Unfortunately, Spielberg’s movie Amistad
not only distorts the historical record – arguably an inevitability in
a Hollywood feature – but also misses much of the story’s drama and
significance. Fortunately the documents are available to tell a story that
is not only truer but also more dramatic and meaningful.
In
late August, 1839 the New London Gazette
reported, "Much excitement has been created in New York for the
past week, from the report of several boats having seen a schooner, full
of Negroes, and in such condition as to lead to the suspicion that she
was a pirate."
The
"long low black schooner" was the Amistad.
A United States Navy ship sighted her near Long Island and
captured her. It took
prisoner the Africans who were in control of the ship, released two
white Spaniards they were holding, and towed the ship to New London,
Connecticut.
The next day Federal District Judge Andrew T.
Judson heard the two Spaniards give their version of the Amistad's
story. Jose Ruiz told Judge
Judson, “I bought 49 slaves in Havana, Cuba, and shipped them on board
the schooner Amistad.” Ruiz was accompanied by Pedro Montes and four children he had
bought as slaves. The Amistad
sailed for the Spaniards' plantations in another part of Cuba.
But after three days a rebellion broke out, led by Sengbe Pieh,
whom the Spaniards called Joseph Cinque.
Ruiz testified, “In the night I heard a noise in the
forecastle. All of us were
asleep except the man at the helm.
I saw this man Joseph Cinque.
There was no moon. It
was very dark. I took up an oar and tried to quell the mutiny;
I cried no! no! Then I heard one of the crew cry murder.”
The captives rushed the deck and seized the Spaniards.
“They told me I should not be hurt.
They tied our hands. The
slaves told us next day they had killed all.”
Pedro Montes added, “"They were all glad, next day, at
what had happened. They
commanded me to steer for their country.
Montes and Ruiz were ordered to head the Amistad
toward the rising sun -- back to Africa -- but at night they secretly
turned around and headed up the coast of North America.
They sailed for two months, losing ten of the Africans from lack
of food and water. Eventually
they made their way to Long Island Sound near Montauk Point.
The two Spaniards asked the court to hand over the Amistad
to Spanish officials. They
also demanded the cargo -- and they included as part of the cargo the
black men and children they claimed to own as slaves.
Judge
Andrew Judson’s background did not suggest that he would be
sympathetic to the Africans. Indeed,
in 1831 he had instigated a law restricting schools for blacks in
Connecticut and then prosecuted a young white schoolmistress, Prudence
Crandall, for admitting black girls to her school in Canterbury.
After hearing the Spaniards' hair-raising story, Judge Judson
decided that the African men should be charged with mutiny and murder
and the children held as witnesses.
A
New London abolitionist named Dwight Janes went to the first court
hearing and asked Ruiz about the captives.
“I inquired if they could speak Spanish.
He said no, they were just from Africa.”
Janes instantly grasped the significance of this fact, on which
the entire case would ultimately turn.
He immediately wrote leading abolitionists about the Amistad.
They saw it as a heaven-sent opportunity to call public attention
to the evils of slavery. They
quickly formed the Amistad
Committee and requested contributions to hire lawyers for the captives.
Their first circular described the captives as “Thirty-eight
fellow-men from Africa, piratically kidnapped from their native land,
transported across the seas, and subjected to atrocious cruelties.”
Three
veteran abolitionists led the Amistad
Committee. Lewis Tappan was
a wealthy New York merchant who with his brother founded the Journal
of Commerce. In 1834 an
anti-abolitionist crowd had ransacked his home and burned its
furnishings. Joshua Leavitt
was a lawyer and a Congregational minister who edited the abolitionist
newspaper The Emancipator in
New York. He helped found
the Liberty Party, a predecessor to the Republican Party.
Simeon Jocelyn was a draftsman who had founded and served as
minister to the first black church in New Haven.
He had tried to establish a college there for blacks but it was
blocked by anti-abolitionists.
The
Amistad Committee persuaded Roger Sherman Baldwin, a distinguished
abolitionist attorney who would later become the governor of
Connecticut, to serve as lawyer for the Africans.
(Spielberg’s presentation of Baldwin as a callow young real
estate lawyer -- initially more interested in securing his fee than in
securing the rights of the Africans and then preoccupied with winning
Cinque’s respect -- is only one of several calumnious portrayals of
abolitionists that bear no relation to reality.)
The
captives were taken to the New Haven jail, then to Hartford for trial. Justice Smith Thompson of the U.S. Circuit Court dismissed
the charges of murder and mutiny on the grounds that a United States
court could not try the captives for a crime alleged to have occurred on
a Spanish vessel. But Judge
Judson of the District Court refused to release the Africans because
they were still claimed as property by Ruiz and Montes.
They were returned to jail in New Haven.
Josiah
Willard Gibbs, a professor of ancient languages at Yale, visited the
Africans in the New Haven jail. He
was determined to break the communication barrier with the Africans.
By holding up first one, then two, then additional fingers, he
was able to elicit the Africans’ words for the numbers from one to
ten. Gibbs then went to New
York and walked up and down the docks counting out loud until he found
James Covey, an African seaman who could understand his counting.
Covey had been captured by slavers, freed, taught English, and
employed on a British warship.
(Speilberg ridicules Gibbs as a fool who confidently gives
absurdly false translations of the Africans’ speech.)
Gibbs
brought Covey to meet the prisoners and serve as their interpreter.
One of those present reported that “One of the captives, coming
to the door and finding one who could talk in his own language, took
hold of him and literally dragged him in.
All seemed overwhelmed with joy, all talking as fast as
possible.” Covey made it clear that most of the captives were Mendi, a
people who live in what is now Sierra Leone.
With
Covey to interpret, the Mendi were finally able to tell their story.
He explained that they had been captured in Africa by Africans
who sold them to European slave traders.
“Cinque was a rice farmer with a wife and three children. He was seized by four men when traveling in the road and his
right hand tied to his neck. He
was sold to the son of a neighboring king who sold him to a Spaniard.”
“Grabeau speaks four African languages.
He was caught on the road when going to buy clothes.”
“Kali was a small boy. He
was stolen in the street.” “Teme,
a young girl, lived with her mother, brother, and sister.
A party of men in the night broke into her mother's house and
made them prisoners; she
never saw her mother or brother again.”
Grabeau
described how hundreds of captives from all over the region were brought
to the slave port of Lomboko. “Slaves
are put into a prison, two are chained together by the legs.”
A Portuguese slave trader bought five or six hundred Africans and
loaded them onto the slave ship Tecora.
Grabeau recalled, “On board there was a large number of men,
but the women and children were far the most numerous.
They were fastened together in couples by the wrists and legs day
and night. The space between decks was four feet -- they were obliged,
if they attempted to stand, to keep in a crouching posture.
If they left any of the rice that was given to them uneaten, they
were whipped. It was a
common thing for them to be forced to eat so much as to vomit.
Many of the men, women, and children died on the passage.”
The
Africans were brought to Havana, in the Spanish colony of Cuba, and sold
as slaves. Cinque recalled
that when the captives were separated in Havana, most of them, himself
included, were in tears. “They
had come from the same country, and were now to be parted forever.”
Ruiz
and Montes bought fifty-three of the captives and set sail in the Amistad for their plantations in another part of Cuba.
The translator recounted Foone’s story of the voyage: “On
board the vessel he had not enough to eat or drink, only two potatoes
and one plantain twice a day, and half a teacup of water morning and
evening. He asked for more
water and was refused. For
stealing water he was severely flogged.
Powder, salt, and rum were applied to his wounds.”
The marks of his wounds were still to be seen.
Foulewa
recalled that the captives were told that a terrible fate lay ahead. “Cook told us they'd kill and eat us.” That night Cinque used a nail to break his padlock, then
unchained his companions. They
found sugar cane knives and stormed the deck.
According to Foulewa, “Cinque killed cook, because cook said he
was going to kill them and eat them.
He killed the captain after he
killed an African.”
Before their stories were known, the Amistad
Africans had often been portrayed as violent savages.
One newspaper opined, “They were hardly above the apes and
monkeys of their own Africa; the
language they jabber incomprehensible here.” Once they were able to
tell their stories through a competent translator, the Africans were
increasingly seen as victims of oppression who had fought for their
freedom. They were
portrayed as heroes in paintings, poems, and plays.
They also developed a dense and evolving set of relations with
the Yankee world into which they had been plunged.
By omitting this interaction, Spielberg misses much of the human
side of the Amistad story.
Students from Yale University began teaching the Mendi English
and instructing them in Christian religion.
An observer wrote the newspaper The
Colored American, “It would do your heart and soul good to sit and
see them learn. When they
come to a hard word, soon as they find out what it is, so that they
understand it, they will laugh right out loud, it makes them so glad.”
One of their teachers wrote, “Those who have been with them
have not unfrequently seen the tear start at the mention of the aged
father, or the defenseless wife and child, and stout men turn aside and
weep, and the little children cry as if their hearts would break.”
Asked if they wanted to return to Africa, one replied in broken
English, “Tell the
American people, that we very, very much want to go to our home.”
After
months of delay, the Amistad
case finally came to trial in New Haven, with Andrew Judson again
presiding. Lawyers for
President Martin Van Buren strove to keep the courts from letting the
Africans go free. Van Buren
had no strong views on slavery, but he needed votes from slaveholders in
the South to win reelection. His
District Attorney William Holabird secretly wrote the State Department,
“I should regret extremely that the rascally Blacks should fall into
the hands of the abolitionists, with whom Hartford is filled.”
The President had a ship waiting in the New Haven harbor to carry
the Africans back to Cuba -- and almost certain death -- should they
lose their case.
Hundreds
of spectators crowded the trial, which lasted a week.
Representatives for Spain demanded that the United States return
the Amistad and its cargo.
They cited Pickney’s treaty between Spain and the United States
which provided that “All ships and merchandise which shall be rescued
out of the hands of any pirates or robbers on the high seas [shall] be
taken care of and restored entire.”
Spain's lawyers argued that the black prisoners were
"merchandise" that should be returned along with the ship.
They pointed out that slavery was legal in Cuba, and that the Amistad's
papers showed that the blacks were legally the property of Ruiz and
Montes.
Lawyers
for the Africans answered that while slavery
might be legal in Cuba, the slave
trade between Africa and the Americas had been outlawed by a treaty
between Spain and Great Britain and had been declared a "heinous
crime" by Spain itself. The
papers saying the Africans were legal slaves of Ruiz and Montes falsely
stated they had long been slaves in Cuba.
“They are natives of Africa, and were born free, and ever since
have been and still of right are and ought to be free and not slaves.”
The
Mendi were familiar with court proceedings because Mendi society had a
legal system of its own. Cinque’s
testimony can be read in the court record: “Four men took me on the
road. Came from Mendi to
Lomboko. Three moons from
Africa to Havana; ten
nights in Havana. The cook
told us they carry us to some place, and kill and eat us.”
To
the surprise and relief of the abolitionists, Judge Judson found that
the Africans were neither slaves nor Spanish subjects.
They were therefore free by the law of Spain itself.
“Cinque and Grabeau shall not sigh for Africa in vain.
Bloody as may be their hands, they shall yet embrace their
kindred.”
The
United States government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
The abolitionists persuaded former President of the United States
John Quincy Adams to help argue their case before the Supreme Court.
One of the African children named Kale, eleven years old and a
star student, wrote him in English,
“Dear
Friend Mr. Adams,
“I
want to write a letter to you because you love Mendi people and you talk
to the great court. We want
you to ask the court what we have done wrong.
What for Americans keep us in prison.
Some people say Mendi people dolt, because we no talk American
language. Merica people no
talk Mendi language; Merica
people dolt! Dear friend
Mr. Adams, you have children, you have friends, you love them, you feel
very sorry if Mendi people come and carry them all to Africa.
We feel bad for our friends, and our friends all feel bad for us.
We want you to tell court that Mendi people no want to go back to
Havana, we no want to be killed. All
we want is make us free.”
Before
the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams, known as "Old Man
Eloquent," condemned the role played by United States government
officials as "an immense array of power" exerted "on the
side of injustice." “Have the officers of the U.S. Navy a right
to seize men by force, to fire at them, to overpower them, to disarm
them, to put them on board of a vessel and carry them by force and
against their will to another State, without warrant or form of law?”
The Supreme Court ruled that the Africans were entitled to their
liberty like any other freeborn human beings and should be free to go
wherever they wished. The
court said they had exercised “The ultimate right of all human beings
in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against
ruinous injustice.”
The
decision gave heart to abolitionists both black and white.
A New York abolitionist meeting declared, “The decision by
which the Amistad captives
were liberated has a powerful influence on the question of human rights,
not only in this country, but throughout the world.
We can behold the faint glimmering of a more auspicious morn when
the judges of our land will declare that property in man cannot be
held.”
The
Mendi greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy.
Free at last, the survivors – 35 men and boys and 3 girls --
were brought to Farmington, Connecticut by abolitionist supporters.
Charles Ledyard Norton was a child in Farmington at the time.
“When it was decided to quarter them in Farmington pending
arrangements for their return to Africa” he later recalled, “there
was consternation among the timid souls in the quiet village.
Stories of cannibalism were plentifully circulated, and there
were formal protests against forcing such a burden upon the
community.”
Nonetheless,
the supporters of the Mendi prevailed.
“Barracks were erected and here the former captives made their
home. Cinque was a born ruler and ably seconded by his lieutenant,
Grabbo, he maintained a very creditable degree of discipline among his
followers. They were, for
the most part, free to roam about, except for regular school hours, and
townsfolk soon ceased to fear them.
Anxious mamas at first trembled and kept their children behind
bolted doors, but before long it was no uncommon sight to see the big
grown-up blacks playing with little white children in village
dooryards.”
Norton’s
father was President of the New York Central Railroad and a major
supporter of the Amistad
captives. “The African
visitors were often welcomed by my father at his home.
A broad flight of steps led down from the southern piazza, and I
distinctly remember seeing the athletic Cinque turn a somersault from
these steps and then go down the sloping lawn in a succession of hand
springs, heels over head, to the wonderment and admiration of my big
brothers and myself.”
The
Mendi spent eight months in Farmington, even planting and harvesting
their own crops. But they
made it clear to their hosts that what they wanted was to go home.
So their supporters began raising money to help them return to
Africa. They hoped that the
Mendi would help set up a Christian mission in Sierra Leone.
Not
only Spielberg but also most historians writing about the Amistad
have ignored the important role that black communities played in this
effort. James Pennington,
pastor of the First Colored Congregational Church in Hartford and
himself an escaped slave, wrote, “I love the Mendians.
I love their country. I
purpose to cooperate in fitting out a mission in every possible way, and
also to give my prayers and labors to its support.”
Pennington helped form the Union Missionary Society, the first
such organization which refused to accept money from slaveholders.
Its first convention, held in Hartford, was attended by Cinque
and other of the Mendi as well as black leaders from throughout the
Northeast.
The
Union Missionary Society and the Amistad
Committee organized dozens of fundraising meetings.
At a typical one, “The Africans read from the New Testament, by
which they showed the success with which they had mastered our language,
as well as the proficiency they had made in learning to read.
They sung two hymns in English with great melody and harmony, and
sung, also, two of their native songs.
Kinna made an address in English, giving the history of their
captivity.”
Nearly
a year after the Supreme Court decision, they had raised enough money to
hire a ship for the thirty-five surviving Africans and five
missionaries. As they reached the coast of Sierra Leone, Cinque wrote Lewis
Tappan of the Amistad
Committee, “I thank all 'merican people, for they send Mendi people
home. I shall never forget
'merican people. Your
friend, Cinque.”
Some
of the Mendi returned to their home villages;
others remained at the Mendi mission.
Many of the future leaders of Sierra Leone were educated at
schools established by the Mendi mission.
Sarah Margru, one of the children from the Amistad,
returned to Africa with the other Mendi, came back to the United States
to study at Oberlin College, then went back to teach at the Mendi
mission.
In
the United States, the Amistad
Committee and the Union Missionary Society joined with other groups to
form the American Missionary Association, which became the largest
abolitionist organization in the country.
After the Civil War it founded hundreds of schools for freed
slaves in the South and many of the historically black colleges.
The Race Relations Institute it set up at Fisk University trained
many of the civil rights leaders of the 1960s.
The
“Amistad incident” played a significant role in the struggle
against slavery. It
provided an issue around which the often-divided abolitionist movement
could unite. It focused
public attention on the conflict between slavery and widely-held
religious and political values. And
it showed the humanity and the capacity for heroism of those who might
be enslaved.
The
legal decision in the Amistad
case did not challenge slavery itself.
But for the first time the United States Supreme Court asserted
that people of color had the same rights as anybody else and that the
courts must enforce them. It
would be many years, however, before the United States would actually
begin to respect the rights of people of color.
Indeed, sixteen years after the Amistad
decision, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case declared that a Negro
had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
“They are not included, and were not intended to be included,
under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore
claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides
for and secures to citizens of the United States.”
Only in the wake of the Civil War did the United States begin to
implement the racial equality that the Amistad
case had seemed to promise. Judge
Constance Baker Motley has called the Supreme Court's Amistad
decision "the first legal milestone in the long, difficult struggle
in the courts by persons of color for equal justice under law."
Twenty-two
years after the Amistad case,
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring
slaves in the South free. At
an abolitionist meeting to celebrate, Lewis Tappan pointed out the
connection between the Amistad case and the abolition of slavery.
As he spoke, he held in his hand the letter he had received from
John Quincy Adams twenty-two years before telling him the results of the
Supreme Court’s decision in the Amistad case: “The captives are free.
An
1841 letter in the abolitionist newspaper The
Emancipator prophesied, “Cinque will continue to be an object of
interest, and his name will be the watchword of freedom to Africa and
her enslaved sons throughout the world.”
A century-and-a-half later, the Amistad
captives remain a powerful symbol.
In the past few years they have been represented not only in
Spielberg’s movie but in plays, novels, and an opera.
Much of the credit for the recovery of the Amistad
story goes to grassroots citizens groups in Connecticut and elsewhere
who began to revive the Amistad’s
memory well before Spielberg started work on his movie.
On the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Amistad's
liberation, a new "Amistad
Committee" of New Haven citizens unveiled a bronze sculpture of
Cinque on the New Haven green. A
Connecticut Freedom Trail has been established to commemorate African
American historical sites, with a strong emphasis on the Amistad
story. On March 8, 1998 the
keel will be laid for a full-scale reproduction of the Amistad, which will serve as a sailing educational monument to this
formative struggle for human rights.
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