After Van Buren’s successor, John Tyler, refused to pay for repatriation, abolitionists again raised funds. Justice Joseph Story delivered the majority opinion, writing that “There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt, that these negroes ought to be deemed free.”īut the Court did not require the government to provide funds to return the Africans to their homeland, and awarded salvage rights for the ship to the U.S. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 to uphold the lower courts’ decisions in favor of the Africans of the Amistad. "I ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate men, than this Declaration.” The Verdict “The moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided," Adams said. At the heart of the case, Adams argued, was the willingness of the United States to stand up for the ideals upon which it was founded. In a lengthy argument beginning on February 24, Adams accused Van Buren of abusing his executive powers, and defended the Africans’ right to fight for their freedom aboard the Amistad. Adams had previously argued (and won) a case before the nation’s highest court he was also a strong antislavery voice in Congress, having successfully repealed a rule banning debates about slavery from the House floor. To defend the Africans in front of the Supreme Court, Tappan and his fellow abolitionists enlisted former President John Quincy Adams, who was at the time 73 years old and a member of the House of Representatives. Supreme Court, which heard the case in early 1841. After appealing the decision to the Circuit Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision, the U.S. District Court in Hartford ruled that the Africans were not Spanish enslaved peoples, but had been illegally captured, and should be returned to Africa. He finally found a Mende speaker who could interpret for the Africans, allowing them to tell their own story for the first time.
After concluding that they were Mende, Gibbs searched New York waterfronts for anyone who recognized the language. The defense team enlisted Josiah Gibbs, a philologist from Yale University, to help determine what language the Africans spoke. Simeon Jocelyn, raised money for their legal defense, arguing that they had been illegally captured and imported as enslaved workers. While President Martin Van Buren sought to extradite the Africans to Cuba to pacify Spain, a group of abolitionists in the North, led by Lewis Tappan, Rev. Though these criminal charges were quickly dropped, they remained in prison while the courts went about deciding their legal status, as well as the competing property claims by the officers of the Washington, Montes and Ruiz and the Spanish government.
The Court Battle BeginsĬharged with murder and piracy, Cinque and the other Africans of the Amistad were imprisoned in New Haven. Newspaper's depiction of the revolt aboard the Amistad.
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