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Amistad mutiny
(July 2, 1839), slave rebellion that took place
on the slave ship Amistad
near the coast of Cuba and had important political and legal repercussions in
the American Abolitionist movement. The
mutineers were captured and tried in the United States,
and a surprising victory for the country's antislavery forces resulted in 1841
when the U.S. Supreme Court freed the rebels. A committee formed to defend the
slaves later developed into the American Missionary
Association (incorporated 1846). (see also Islave trade, black
American, American Missionary Association)
On July 2, 1839, the Spanish
schooner Amistad was sailing from
Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, when the ship's unwilling passengers, 53
slaves recently abducted from Africa, revolted. Led by Joseph Cinqué,
they killed the captain and the cook but spared the life of a Spanish navigator,
so that he could sail them home to Sierra Leone.
The navigator managed instead to sail the Amistad generally northward. Two months later the U.S. Navy seized
the ship off Long Island, N.Y., and towed it into New London, Conn. The
mutineers were held in a jail in New Haven, Conn., a state in which slavery was
legal. (see also Connecticut)
The Spanish embassy's demand for the
return of the Africans to Cuba led to an 1840 trial in a Hartford, Conn.,
federal court. New England Abolitionist Lewis Tappan stirred public sympathy for
the African captives, while the U.S. government took the proslavery side. U.S.
President Martin Van Buren ordered a Navy ship
sent to Connecticut to return the Africans to Cuba immediately after the trial.
A candidate for reelection that year, he anticipated a ruling against the
defendants and hoped to gain proslavery votes by removing the Africans before
Abolitionists could appeal to a higher court.
Prosecutors argued that, as slaves, the
mutineers were subject to the laws governing conduct between slaves and their
masters. But trial testimony determined that while slavery was legal in Cuba,
importation of slaves from Africa was not. Therefore, the judge ruled, rather
than being merchandise, the Africans were victims of kidnapping and had the
right to escape their captors in any way they could. When the U.S. government
appealed the case before the U.S. Supreme Court the next year, congressman and
former president John Quincy Adams argued
eloquently for the Amistad rebels. The
Supreme Court upheld the lower court, and
private and missionary society donations helped the 35 surviving Africans secure
passage home. They arrived in Sierra Leone in January 1842, along with five
missionaries and teachers who intended to found a Christian mission.
Spain continued to insist that the
United States pay indemnification for the Cuban vessel. The U.S. Congress
intermittently debated the Amistad
case, without resolution, for more than two decades, until the American Civil
War began in 1861. (see also Congress of the United
States )
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