The Amistad

At 4:00 AM on July 2, 1839, some twenty miles off the shore of Cuba, Cinqué led a slave mutiny aboard the Spanish vessel Amistad. The captives killed all but two of the crew. Instead of sailing back to Africa, the ship drifted north and ended up off Long Island, where it was seized by the USS Washington. The Africans were taken into custody and imprisoned.

The men who claimed to own the captives began legal proceedings to recover their "property." The attorney Roger Baldwin was hired to defend the Africans. He argued that because they had not been born in Cuba but had been kidnapped from Africa, their enslavement was illegal — and that, possessing a "natural right" to be free, they had merely been acting in self-defense. The United States government, for its part, insisted that the captives had to be returned under the terms of the Pinckney Treaty with Spain.

The Africans demanded their freedom under a writ of habeas corpus. It was denied by Associate Justice Smith Thompson, who held that the question — whether the men were property at all — belonged to the district court. There the presiding judge, Andrew T. Judson, ruled that the Africans had been illegally kidnapped and should be returned to Africa. Surprised by the decision, the government appealed; the circuit court upheld it; and the government appealed once more, this time to the United States Supreme Court.

To argue the case before the Court, the abolitionists turned to the 73-year-old former president John Quincy Adams. He agreed, and delivered an impassioned eight-hour appeal for the Africans' freedom. Justice Joseph Story wrote to his wife that Adams's argument was "extraordinary for its power, for its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the records and points of discussion." In the end the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Africans, and they were set free.