AMISTAD

Rev. Sheldon W. Bennett, Ph.D.

December 7, 1997

The opening of Stephen Speilberg's movie Amistad this week promises to impress on wide audiences a most unusual and critical episode in American history, a story that has been largely forgotten and unknown. It is the story also of perhaps the crowning triumph of John Quincy Adams' impassioned crusade against slavery during the final decade of his remarkable life. (My sermon this morning will be longer than usual, but then, it is a long movie!)

The story of the Amistad and its Africans served powerfully at the time, 1839 to 1841, twenty years before the outbreak of civil war, to focus American consciousness on the evils of slavery which were corrupting the nation. Now, a century and a half later, the movie Amistad may well serve to focus our own consciousness on the struggle we still have today to rid American society of what one popular news weekly calls "The Long Shadow of Slavery."

It's a powerful story. I understand from reviews that it is emotionally wrenching to experience the scenes of cruelty and violence that were the fact of the slave trade. I have read how it took great sensitivity in the filming, that only blacks were allowed to put chains on other black actors, and that people cried during the filming of such scenes. The Amistad story is also inspiring as it portrays the essential power of human worth and dignity in the face of oppression and the evil. I have not yet seen the movie or previews, so I tell the story this morning as best I read the actual history.

As I told the children, this is the story of 52 Africans, including 3 young girls, who had been seized by slave-traders - Africans as well as Spanish - in what is now Sierre Lione in West Africa. These 52 were mostly Mendi people, who were loaded and packed in as cargo under dreadful conditions along with several hundred other Africans on the Portuguese slave ship Tecora. Some one-third of these Africans died or were killed on the voyage across the Atlantic to Cuba - the terrible ordeal which was known as "The Middle Passage."

Spain had signed treaties with Great Britain outlawing international slave trade, a crime punishable by death. But slavery itself was legal in Cuba and was crucial to its economy and politics, as it was also in the Southern United States. Corrupt officials in Havana would overlook the sale as slaves of these Africans, who had just been brought from Africa in obvious violation of international treaties.

The 52 Mendis who had survived the crossing were unloaded in Havana and immediately sold to two Cuban traders, a Mr. Ruiz and a Mr. Montes, who then loaded them onto a coastal schooner, La Amistad. Their plan was to take the Africans to another port in Cuba and sell them to plantation owners. Spanish authorities, for the customary bribe, issued the necessary license and ship's legal papers for the Amistad. These fraudulent papers identified the Amistad Africans as legal slaves, long time in Cuba and possessing Spanish names, names which the Mendis could not even recognize.

There was a remarkable young man among them. His African name was Singbe-Pieh, who became known as Joseph Cinque. Cinque was a born leader. He had been trained to become a tribal chief, and he was an unusually striking and charismatic figure. He held firmly to a single goal - freedom and to get his people back to Africa. With cunning, planning and skill, Joseph Cinque managed a dramatic takeover of the Amistad while it sailed off the coast of Cuba.

They killed the captain and the cook, too. The cook had earlier taunted the Africans by gesturing that they would all be killed and eaten when they landed. Two other crew members leaped overboard and escaped in a ship's boat. But the two Spaniards, Ruiz and Montes, were spared in order to help navigate back to Africa, and also the cabin boy Antonio, who was a slave.

The Africans knew they had to sail to the east, toward the rising sun, which the could do by day. But by night, the Spaniards tricked them by changing course to the north and west. Their goal was to land in a slave port in the southern United States.

And so they zig-zagged, haltingly and generally northwards. Stories circulated along the coast of sightings of a strange schooner run by black men. Were they pirates? Two months passed. The Africans ran short of water and food. Things were desperate. Several died. Finally in August, 1839, the Amistad arrived off Long Island, New York, and the Africans sent a boat ashore in hopes of finding water, food and supplies. They were spotted by a United States coastal survey brig, Washington, which took the Amistad and the Africans on board into custody, including those who had gone ashore. The ship and its occupants were taken to New London, Connecticut.

You can imagine the excitement. The two Spaniards told lurid tales about revolting slaves, "a ruthless gang of African buccaneers," of piracy and murder. The Africans spoke no language anybody could understand. A federal judge impounded the ship, charged the Africans with murder, and had them imprisoned at New Haven. There they created a sensation. Thousands of people paid an admission fee to visit the jail and see for themselves these foreign Africans.

The Spanish government demanded by international treaty that President Van Buren release the Amistad and return it and its cargo to its Spanish owners. The Spaniards claimed ownership of the Africans as slaves. Meanwhile, the officers of the Washington filed suit for salvage rights under maritime law, as did several Long Island men with whom those Africans who had gone ashore had been bargaining when the government ship Washington had arrived on the scene.

Anti-slavery activists, and especially the well-known abolitionist Lewis Tappan, were quick to see the potential of the Amistad incident to focus public attention on the slavery issue, an issue that was becoming more and more volatile every year. So, too, did President Van Buren, who had strong political concerns for his re-election campaign. Van Buren wanted to see the Amistad and the Africans turned over to Spanish authorities and taken to Cuba as soon and with as little notice as possible. He did not care that such action would condemn the Africans to certain death, or worse.

Unfortunately for Van Buren, but fortunately for the Africans, they were already under control of the judiciary branch of our government. President Van Buren could not simply hand the Africans over to the Spanish government without a serious breach of the Constitutional separation of powers.

That's how things stood in September of 1839. Lewis Tappan formed an Amistad Defense Committee and set about raising funds. He made the plight of the Africans, their justice, and the larger humanitarian issue of slavery in America the focus of an intense journalistic campaign. Just as the arrest of Rosa Parks became crucial as a symbolic event to focus the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Amistad case played a similar role for the anti-slavery movement in the 1840s.

Then, there was the problem of language. How could the Africans tell their own story? One of the abolitionists, Prof. Gibbs, was a linguist at Yale. By holding up fingers, he learned from the Mendi Africans their sounds for the numbers one through ten. Then, by spending time on waterfront he found an African who recognized the dialect and could carry on a simple conversation with the prisoners.

But a more fluent speaker of both English and Mendi had to be found to serve as a competent interpreter. A dictionary of Mendi words was compiled. Then later, Prof. Gibbs, with his small vocabulary, haunted the docks of New Haven and New York. Amazingly, he did find a man who was a Mendi, who had himself been rescued from a slave trader, which had been seized on the high seas by a British warship.

The situation for the Africans was complicated, in terms of the existing law. There is not time to explain it all here this morning, even if I understood it. But as the federal Circuit and District Courts opened session in late September in Hartford, it seems that there were three main legal questions before the court, as I understand the case. First, were the Africans actually slaves and therefore property to be restored to their owners according to treaties between the United States and Spain, and as Spain demanded? Or second, were they fugitive criminals to be handed over and tried for piracy and murder? Or third, were they in fact free people, justified in rising up, seizing the Amistad, and even killing the captain and cook as they sought to free themselves from an illegal bondage?

For President Van Buren seeking re-election, the third question, the question of freedom, was deeply disturbing. It was terrifying for Southern slave holders, who feared similar uprisings. And it was terrifying for Northerners, too, who themselves feared any discussion of slavery as bad for business - bad for their business in textiles, bad for their investments in sugar cane plantations in Cuba, and bad, because everyone feared that even to talk about slavery would threaten the Union. Van Buren dared not risk his alliance with the Southern slavery interests.

Proceedings in the lower courts were legally complex and technical, involving issues of international and maritime law, treaties, and property rights. Lawyers for the Africans' defense, led by Roger Baldwin, had first moved for a writ of habeas corpus for the three African children, who had not been charged with murder, but were being held only as witnesses. For the court to have granted the motion would have required the court either to release the children, or to make some specific charge against them. But even more importantly, to have granted the motion would have required the court to hear the full range of issues around the case - not only the technical rights of property, but also the larger issues of slavery and of natural law as it gives rise to inalienable human rights and personhood. Of course, as both the abolitionists and the court well knew, the real issue at stake was slavery, slavery which in the eyes of the law was still legal in most of the United States, as it was in the Spanish colonies. Throughout the proceedings, the Africans, and especially Joseph Cinque in his almost regal dignity, were a powerful presence in the courtroom.

In the end, the Circuit Court in Hartford decided that if murder had been committed, it had been committed on a Spanish ship in Spanish territorial waters. Therefore that court said it had no jurisdiction, and therefore there was no need to consider habeas corpus. But the salvage suits were still pending in the District Court, which included the three girls, where the claimants had a right to make their case, and to that end the Africans must remain held.

President Van Buren expected the lower court to order return of the Africans to the Spaniards as property. So he ordered a Navy ship to standby in New Haven harbor ready to take the Africans immediately to Cuba, and consequently their death. But the District Court, while granting salvage rights as to the ship and its material cargo, ruled in January of 1840 that since slave trade was illegal in Connecticut, no price could be placed on the Africans, even if they had been slaves. But the Court went further. The Court looked behind the formality of the ship's papers and found that these Africans had never been lawfully slaves, even under Spanish law. Therefore, the court declared them free and ordered President Van Buren to return them not to Cuba, but to Africa!

As the cabin boy Antonio was in fact a slave, the Court ordered his return to his owners. But, Antonio took matters in hand and walked out of the Court, where he was whisked away to safety and freedom by abolitionists.

President Van Buren could not let this ruling stand, the President immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, which was not scheduled to convene until one year later in January of 1841. Meanwhile the Africans, now only 39 in number including the three girls, were to be held in jail in New Haven, although in somewhat less restrictive conditions with fresh air and exercise. Students from Yale Divinity School met with them regularly and taught them English and to read the Bible. Joseph Cinque's strengths of leadership proved important in keeping his people’s spirits strong during their long imprisonment.

At the same time the abolitionists kept the fires of journalism and media controversy well stoked. Meanwhile, all this time, John Quincy Adams had been following the Amistad case with keen interest. He knew Lewis Tappan and corresponded with him about the case.

At the same time, the Amistad Defense Committee knew they had a much more difficult challenge before the Supreme Court than with the lower courts. The majority of the court were Southern slave-holders or sympathizers. The Chief Justice was Roger Taney of Maryland, who more than a decade later would hand down the infamous Dred Scott decision, a decision strongly favorable to slavery. The Attorney General was expected to argue by international law that the Court could not go behind the formality of the ship's papers which said the Africans were slaves. How could the Court be persuaded to go behind the papers? Where would they find the courage?

The Committee knew they needed a powerful advocate, someone whose character and reputation was of national stature, someone well versed in the issues, who could argue the case forcefully, and who would command respect of the Court. John Quincy Adams was such a man. Lewis Tappan came to Boston, and with Elis Loring, a well-known Boston attorney and anti-slavery advocate, rode to Quincy, and they called on John Quincy Adams - the great statesman, former Secretary of State, former President of the United States, and now forceful advocate against slavery in Congress.

At first Adams declined. At the age of 74, he said he was too old, and he was too oppressed by his duties in the House of Representatives, where in fact, as Old Man Eloquent as he was becoming known, he had fully engaged his impassioned crusade to bring slavery at last to the floor of Congress. Moreover, he said, he had not argued a case before the Court for more than thirty years and was no longer familiar with the forms and technicalities. But he would offer his consultation.

That was not enough. They needed him before the court. "It's a case of life and death for these unfortunate men," they persisted. Adams at last agreed. "I will argue the case before the Supreme Court," he announced. His son Charles Francis Adams was opposed to his father's taking the case. Just beginning his own political career as a candidate for the state legislature, young Adams feared that his father's involvement would embarrass his own political ambitions - so controversial and so feared was the issue of slavery, even in Massachusetts.

Father and son debated at some length. John Quincy Adams remembered how he himself as a young man had once stood in the British museum before the historic Magna Carta and had seen among the signatures that of Saer de Quincy, who according to Abigail's accounting, was their own ancestor. In fact, there is apparently little basis to her claim, but then, how could you argue with Abigail? Was not the right of habeas corpus at the very heart of the Magna Carta? Was not this what was most at stake in the Amistad case? These are the questions that moved the distinguished champion of free and just government.

Recall - habeas corpus is the right by which a prisoner must be produced by a government before a court of law and cause shown why that prisoner is to be held. How could he, John Quincy Adams, not defend before the Supreme Court the Constitutional principle of habeas corpus as the greatest protection for free people whatever their color? No matter his family’s objections. He must do it.

Like his father, John Adams, John Quincy Adams hated slavery. He especially hated the Constitutional compromise that allowed slavery to so dominate American politics, to so pervert the founding ideals of human rights, equality and liberty, and as he believed, to cost both his father and himself their Presidencies.

For his father, John Adams, slavery had been as a "gangrene," as a "black cloud" hanging over the country, but he had kept these thoughts mostly to himself and had compromised to secure independence and establish union. As a young man, John Quincy Adams had not thought too much about slavery until 1820. Then, as a member of President Monroe's cabinet, as Secretary of State, he had wrestled with the dilemma of the Missouri compromise. His conscience was heightened by lengthy private discussions with his then friend John C. Calhoun, a Southerner. It was then that John Quincy Adams came to feel passionately "that slavery (was) the great and foul stain upon the ...union."

He came to conclude that "the bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution ... is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified." Prophetically, he feared that the union would one day break on slavery and that a terrible war would be necessary before the union could be restored on the basis of emancipation. That was in 1820. Now, in 1840, as a Representative from Massachusetts, Adams had become fiercely bold, outspoken, passionate and powerful in his leadership stand against slavery - even to endure threats against his life and efforts to censure, and even expel him from Congress.

As the day before the Supreme Court approached, Adams became increasingly agitated. With the many demands on his time, he felt he had not adequately prepared, although he had been working on his argument for months. He had not prepared a manuscript, but would speak extemporaneously, using his great stack of accumulated documents as reference. He was worried that he might not be able to hold his passion and temper in appropriate check. The Court was not Congress. The stakes were very high.

The day came. The Courtroom was crowded with spectators and journalists. After opening arguments by the Attorney General for the President, and by Roger Baldwin, who was Adams’ associate for the defense, John Quincy Adams rose to his feet and began to speak. For four and one-half hours he spoke. The legal details of his argument are technical and complex. But as he spoke his voice rose in a "blaze of righteous scorn," as one historian described. The years of his old age dropped away, he voice grew strong, he become totally animated. Adams was bitter in his sarcasm at those who would make slaves out of resolute free men. He damned an Executive power that would for political expediency turn them over to the vengeance of foreign slave-holders. He expanded his argument to embrace broad ideals of human morality.

The justices could only stare in amazement. After four and one-half hours, the court adjourned for the day. "Extraordinary," wrote Justice Joseph Story in his diary, the most learned member of the court, from Massachusetts and an old Madison appointment. "Extraordinary for its power, and its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion." The points far beyond the record and points of discussion, of course, were those of human rights, human worth and dignity and liberty!

That night, one of the justices died in his sleep - one of the majority Southerners. When the court reconvened a month later, John Quincy Adams took up the argument again, for another three hours. He ridiculed the opinion of the Attorney General. He arraigned the Secretary of State for giving priority to foreign claims. He excoriated the President for his political motivations.

Above all, Adams argued the ancient principle of habeas corpus. Suppose the President had turned the Africans over to Spanish authorities, as he had wanted. What would have happened to habeas corpus? "What would have been the tenure," Adams thundered, "by which every human being in the Union, man, woman, or child, would have held the blessing of freedom? Would it not have been by the tenure of executive discretion, caprice, or tyranny ... at the dictate of a foreign minister? Would it not have disabled forever the effective power of habeas corpus?"

As he closed his argument, he offered an extraordinary reflection on his own appearance before the court 37 years before. Now "I appear again," he said "to plead the cause of justice, and now of liberty and life, in behalf of my fellow men," ... where before he had argued for rights of property. Then, casting his eyes across the court, he said it was still the same court, but different judges. Adams said he now sought in vain those honored and honorable persons who had listened to him then. He invoked their names. "Marshall, Cushing, Chase, ... where are they? Gone! All gone!" And he offered his fervent prayer that each of the judges before him this day, when at last called to their final account, would be received with as little to answer for, and with the approving sentence - "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." And Adams then sat down.

Justice Joseph Story presented the opinion of the Court. The Africans were deemed free. The abolitionists raised funds and the surviving Africans did return to Sierre Lione in the company of missionaries. Joseph Cinque did return to this village, only to find it had been destroyed and no trace of his family, perhaps killed by marauders or taken into slavery. Cinque is today a national hero of Sierre Lione, and his portrait is on its money. The writer and critic Gore Vidal, in a recent article in the New Yorker magazine, argues that John Quincy Adams is himself a hero, a true hero of our American institutions of justice and liberty.

The struggle to realize our nation's founding ideals of justice, equality and liberty is now ours today. I commend President Clinton in his call for dialogue, and the meeting at Akron this past week, as one small step. The terrible legacy of slavery still casts its long shadow on our consciousness. We must engage the debate in our time, just as John Quincy Adams did in his. Today the issues are those of affirmative action, economic justice, equality of quality education and so forth. Not as guilt. But as confronting injustice and working to realize the promise of the ideals we hold.

May the spirit of Joseph Cinque and that of John Quincy Adams shake hands in friendship, as we ourselves carry on with the work.

Amen.