Message:18495 In: TODAY.WW
From: KF5JRVDate: Mon, 09 Mar 26 11:02:00 Z
Newsgroups: TODAY.WW
Subject: Today in History - Mar 09
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At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the enslaved Africans who seized contr
ol of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law.
In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of enslaved pe
ople within the U.S. was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of enslaved Africans, Cuba continued
to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s.
On June 28, 1839, 53 enslaved people recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a life of s
lavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed hi
mself and the other enslaved people and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans
rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crew memb
er. Two other crew members were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purc
hased the enslaved people, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ru
iz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost near
ly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the “black schoon
er” was first spotted by American vessels.
On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New Lond
on, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. T
he two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born enslaved people, while the Spanish government called for the A
fricans’ extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advoc
ated the return of the illegally bought enslaved people to Africa.
The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. co
urt. Before a federal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on h
is own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be
returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanis
h authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson’s f
indings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.
On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachus
etts, who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans’ defense team. In Congres
s, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation’s highest court he presented a coherent argument for
the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad.
On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right
to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans depar
ted America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in
Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child
when taken aboard the Amistad, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio’s inte
grated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s, before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Mar
gru Kinson.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
Email KF5JRV@gmail.co
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