The Captives of the Amistad

Section 1

The Captives of the Amistad.

By Simeon E. Baldwin.

[Read May 17, 1886].

The most famous case ever tried in Connecticut was that of the Amistad. None ever awakened a wider interest or a deeper feeling. There is something dramatic in the story of every law-suit; but here was a tragedy of the loftiest character, an issue to which great governments were parties. It had a large political importance, and in reviewing our history for a quarter of a century that followed its decision, I think we may fairly deem it one of the first guide-posts that pointed the way to the yet unopened grave of slavery in the United States. Our late associate, Mr. John W. Barber, published in pamphlet form in 1840, a brief account of the earlier stages of the affair, and Henry Wilson in his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, devotes a chapter to the case; but it seems worthy of a fuller record, in which both its legal and its political features can be described with greater precision and completeness.

In the Spring of 1839, a number of Africans living near the west coast, were kidnapped by some of their own countrymen, acting as the agents of Spanish slave-traders, and placed in a barracoon, at a place called Dumbomo. From thence, a Portuguese slaver, the Teçora, took them to Havana, where in a few days there were sold in two lots to a couple of Cubans, Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez. Ruiz was the largest purchaser, taking 49 of them at $450 apiece.

At this time the slave trade was no longer lawful in Spain. The law of nations did not forbid it, but in 1817, Great Britain, by a payment of £400,000, obtained the ratification of a treaty with that power, by which it was to be abolished throughout the Spanish dominions in 1820. A royal decree was promulgated to carry this stipulation into effect, but it remained practically a dead letter in her American colonies.

The chief of these Mendi captives, was Cinquè, otherwise called Cinquez, Jinqua, or Sinqua, a tall and stalwart African of commanding presence and determined spirit. A little schooner of about sixty tons was chartered to take them, with an assorted cargo of merchandise, to Guanaja, another Cuban port, and Ruiz and Montez sailed from Havana on June 28, 1839. The vessel’s papers described the negroes as ladinos, a term meaning those who had acquired a foreign language, but commonly used to designate slaves imported before 1820; and to give this more color, Spanish names were also assigned to each, at random. This was done by collusion between the authorities and the slave traders, who usually paid the Governor at Havana hush-money at the rate of $15 a head, for each slave landed at the port.

The Africans had been brought over on the Teçora in irons, but it was thought unnecessary to chain them down on this short coasting voyage. Their supply of provisions and water was scant, and two who went to the water-cask without leave were whipped for it. One of them asked the cook where they were being taken, and received for answer that they were going to be killed and then eaten. This ill-timed mockery was taken for earnest, and was the last incitement needed to rouse the captives to strike for liberty. During the second night out, they rose under the lead of Cinquè. Several of them had armed themselves with knives, of the kind used to cut the sugar-cane. The captain of the schooner was attacked, killed his first assailant, and then fell himself by a stroke from Cinquè’s knife. The cook paid for his pleasantry with his life, also at Cinquè’s hand. Montez was severely wounded. The cabin-boy, a mulatto slave of the captain, named Antonio, and Ruiz, were secured and bound. The rest of the crew escaped in one of the boats.

It was a sharp and sudden struggle. Mr. Barber made it the subject of one of his quaint wood-cuts, as a frontispiece to his history of the Amistad Captives already noticed, and Mr. Hewins, a Boston artist, painted a large picture of the scene, which is now deposited in this building, the property of our associate, Mr. Wm. B. Goodyear.

The cane-knife, of which the negroes made use, is a formidable weapon, and does its work something after the fashion of a hatchet or short bill-hook. The handle is a square bar of steel an inch thick, and the blade, which is some two feet long, widens regularly out to a breadth of three inches at the end. In the grasp of a strong arm like that of Cinquè, it is as sure and deadly as the guillotine.

It was his design, if the rising were successful, to attempt the voyage back to their native country, of which they only knew that it was “three moons” distant and lay toward the east. One of the negroes could speak a little Arabic, and another a few words of English. By signs and threats they made Ruiz and Montez take the wheel by turns, and steer to the eastward. By day, they kept this direction, but as soon as the tell-tale sun had set, they would bring the vessel gradually about and head for the north. Two months of these zig-zag courses brought the little schooner at last to a shore far from that which the Africans hoped to see.

On Sunday, August 25th, they cast anchor off what proved to be the northern coast of Long Island, not far from Montauk Point.

A reconnoitering party came ashore, some with nothing on but a handkerchief twisted around their loins, and others with blankets thrown over their shoulders. They went to the neighboring houses for water and provisions, and paid for what they got in Spanish gold, buying among other things a couple of dogs for a doubloon apiece.

The schooner had been sailing about the entrance to the Sound in an aimless way for two or three days before the landing, and the newspapers had mentioned it as a suspicious craft. On Monday, while some of the negroes were cooking on the beach and others lying down in the long grass, a party of the neighboring inhabitants drove up to find out who they were.

Banna, the new one who knew a few English words, tried to communicate with them. His first inquiry, I regret to say, was “Have you rum?” and the first information he volunteered was they had money, some of which was promptly accepted by their visitors in exchange for a bottle of gin. Cinquè who was at the time on board the schooner, was now sent for, and as soon as he was rowed over, he told Banna to ask whether this country made slaves. The reply was, “No. This a free country.” “Are there any Spaniards here?” was the next question. Again they said, “No,” and at this Cinquè whistled and all his followers sprang up and gave a shout of joy. The white men were frightened and ran to their wagons for their guns, but the blacks soon showed that they had no hostile intent, by shaking hands and presenting them with their own guns, of which they had two, a knife, a hat and a handkerchief. They asked one of their visitors, a Capt. Green, who was a sea-faring man, if he would not come on board and steer them to Sierra Leone, and he gave them some encouragement to think that he would do so the next day.

It so happened that a coast-survey brig, the Washington, was in that part of the Sound on this afternoon, and her commander, from the appearance of the Amistad as she passed her, thought the vessel was on shore, or in distress. A boat’s crew was sent to her assistance, and found only negroes on deck, armed with cane-knives. The boarding officer climbed into the rigging and ordered them below at the point of a pistol. They obeyed, and Montez and Ruiz were sent up on deck, who at once claimed protection. Cinquè with the two dogs sprang into the water and made for shore, but was pursued, retaken, and hand-cuffed. Those of the negroes who were on the beach, after a shot fired over their heads, and a display of cutlasses, were captured without resistance by an officer of the brig, falling on their knees for protection around the men on the island who had told them this was a free country.

When Cinquè was taken back, a captive, to the deck of the Amistad, the other negroes gathered about him, and he made an address which moved them very deeply. Antonio, the cabin-boy, understood enough of the words to give a summary of the speech in Spanish to a newspaper editor in New London, who translated it, very likely with some additions, in English, as follows:

“Friends and Brothers: We would have returned, but the sun was against us. I would not see you serve the white man. So I induced you to help me kill the Captain. I thought I should be killed. I expected it. It would have been better. You had better be killed than live many moons in misery. I shall be hanged, I think, everyday. This does not pain me. I could die happy if by dying I could save so many of my brothers from the bondage of the white men.”

It was thought prudent to handcuff Cinquè and keep him on the Washington over night, but the next day he made signs to his guards that if taken back to the Amistad he could show them where there was a handkerchief full of doubloons. He was promptly rowed over to the schooner, and as the negroes gathered around him with joyful greetings, he again addressed them with great earnestness and passion, until at last they all seemed on the point of rising on their captors, and he was hurried away at a sign from Antonio.

The second speech, as Antonio and the New London editor gave it to the newspapers, ran thus:

“My brothers. I am once more among you, having deceived the enemy of our race by saying that I had doubloons. I come to tell you that you have only one chance for death, and none for liberty. I am sure you prefer death, as I do. You can, by killing the white men now on board (and I will help you), make the people here kill you. It is better for you to die thus, and then you will not only avert bondage yourselves, but prevent the entailment of unnumbered wrongs on your children. Come: Come with me, then!”

But here, as I have said, he was seized and overpowered.

The Africans now numbered only 44, three of whom were young girls. During their two months voyage ten had died, and one more expired on the night of the capture.

The Washington took her prize across the Sound into New London harbor, and dispatched a messenger to New Haven to inform the United States Marshal of what had occurred. Norris Wilcox was then the Marshal, and on August 29th, Judge Judson, then the District Judge, and he were on board the cutter, to hold a Court of Inquiry. The District Attorney was Mr. Holabird of Winsted, and Judge Charles A. Ingersoll of this city, who appeared in his behalf, filed an information charging Cinquè, under his pretended name of Joseph, and 38 others, with the crime of murder and piracy. The court deemed the evidence sufficient to justify the proceeding, and they were all committed to jail to stand their trial at the next Circuit Court to be held at Hartford on September 17th. The cabin-boy, Antonio, and the three girls were also held as witnesses, and sent to jail with the others, for want of bonds.

Lieutenants Gedney and Mead, of the Washington, had also brought a suit in admiralty against the Amistad and her cargo, and “fifty-four slaves,” claiming to have rescued them for the benefit of their owners, and asking for salvage in behalf of themselves and their crew. The trial of this suit was set down for Sept. 19th, in the District Court, and Ruiz and Montez went on to New York to see the Spanish Consul, after publishing a card in the newspapers, thanking the offices of the cutter for their “rescue from the hands of a ruthless gang of African buccaniers.”

Cinquè was sent in irons to New Haven on another government vessel, and the rest of the captives were taken over in a coasting schooner, arriving here on Sunday, September 1st. The whole forty-four were crowded into four apartments in our county jail, then standing on the site of our present city Hall.

Banna was the only one of the prisoners who knew an English word, and he was master of so few that they were substantially shut out from the possibility of communicating with the outside world. Their side of their story was untold. But the very helplessness of these unfortunate people was the best assurance of defense in a community like ours. The “irrepressible conflict” between Freedom and Slavery was already drawing on. Here, on the soil of a free State, were a band of men in confinement on a charge of murder, because, when kidnapped against law, on a Spanish vessel, they had risked life for liberty, knowing, untaught, that

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

Footnotes

Section 2

The anti-slavery men in New York moved first, and within three days of their landing at this port.

Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn (formerly pastor of one of our churches for colored people), Rev. Joshua Leavitt and Lewis Tappan, volunteered to act as a committee to receive funds for the defense of the Africans, and for providing them with clothing and other necessaries. They issued a public appeal, which was printed in the Emancipator, secured counsel, and endeavored to find an interpreter through whom their story could be fully learned. In this they were ably seconded by the late Professor Gibbs of the Yale Divinity School. He visited the Africans in jail repeatedly, and got from each of them the sounds which represented to him each of the first ten numerals. There was a general correspondence in the sounds given, with some dialectic variations, and Professor Gibbs then went about among the vessels in our harbor, and in that of New York, seeking to find some African sailor who was familiar with the language to which the words thus framed belonged. At last he found a boy of eighteen from Sierra Leone, James Covey, who recognized the numerals, as they were thus named to him, and had some acquaintance with English also. He was immediately brought up to New Haven, and on Sept. 9th, for the first time since their arrival on our shores, the captives were enabled to communicate freely with those about them. Covey could speak in a tongue which the captives understood—that of the Gallinas country, and they manifested the utmost joy at hearing the sound of familiar words from a friendly voice. Professor Gibbs, with his aid, at once set out to make a vocabulary of their language, which was that of the Mendi country, lying north of Liberia, and he was soon able to converse with most of them.

The government provided all the prisoners with clothing, and the men struggled as best they could into their pantaloons, laughing good-humoredly at each other as the new dress was assumed. Shawls were given to the girls, which they at once wound up into turbans for their heads.

In a few days they were put on the canal-boat for Farmington, and then driven over to Hartford, where, on Sept. 19th, the salvage case came on for a hearing.

Ruiz and Montez appeared at the same time and asked that the prisoners be delivered to them, or to the Spanish government as their lawful slaves; and Henry Green and the other citizens of Long Island, with whom the negroes had first fallen in, also filed a claim for salvage, similar to that of the officers of the Washington. In behalf of the United States a further libel was filed on the same day, stating that the Spanish minister had presented to the State Department a claim for the delivery of the Amistad and her cargo and the slaves found on board, pursuant to the treaty of 1795 between the two governments and asking either for such delivery or for their transportation to Africa, according as the law might be found to require. These suits were all in the District Court. The Circuit Court came in at the same time, to take up the indictments for piracy and murder, and writs of habeas corpus were applied for there on behalf of the Africans.

These proceedings attracted the greatest public interest. Among the counsel who appeared before the courts were Ralph I. Ingersoll and William Hungerford for the Spanish crown, Gov. Ellsworth for the Long Island claimants, Seth P. Staples and Theodore Sedgwick of New York, and Roger S. Baldwin for the Africans.

Three days were occupied in considering the various questions involved, and the first result was that the grand jury were instructed by Judge Thompson of the Circuit Court that no criminal proceedings could be maintained, inasmuch as the acts complained of were done on a Spanish vessel, and were therefore cognizable only in the courts of Spain.

Judge Judson also announced to the counsel of the salvage claimants that whatever right of that nature they might have as to the goods seized, the court had no power to sell men, women and children for their benefit.

The great question remaining was that raised by the habeas corpus petitions, and it was argued with the great fulness and vigor on both sides. “How came these negroes,” said Mr. Baldwin, “to be slaves or property? Were they born owing allegiance to the Spanish government? Not at all. They are natives of Africa. How came they so far subject to the Spanish laws as to be judged by them? How is it, when these persons come before our courts asserting their liberty, that they are to be judged by Spanish laws? Have these children” (the three little girls, the oldest not ten, had been brought into court, crying with fright, and clinging to the jailer for protection) “ever been domiciled in Spain? They were torn from their parents in Africa; forcibly landed in the island of Cuba, late at night, and cruelly sold to these men. Are they to be judged by Spanish laws, or by our own laws, or by the law of Nature? By this law, our own Supreme Court have decided that they are free.”

Mr. Staples denied that the Spanish treaty reached the case of free-born Africans, wrongfully enslaved. “Let such a claim,” he said, “be set up by the President, Senate, or Spanish minister, and let the government of this nation avow that they will surrender these victims of oppression, and I will abandon such a country, and seek my fortunes in some British island.”

There was less opportunity for rhetoric on the other side, but the legal questions involved were discussed with great learning and ability by Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Hungerford. Mr. Holabird, the District Attorney, said that he believed the negroes could maintain their right to liberty, but that the place to prove it was in the District Court, in answer to the papers which he had filed in behalf of the government, and that they must be held till this was done. On the same day, he wrote to the State Department of the decision that the court had no jurisdiction of the criminal proceedings, and that the habeas corpus petitions remained undecided, adding:

“I should regret extremely that the rascally blacks should fall into the hands of the abolitionists, with whom Hartford is filled.”

In copies of the Amistad correspondence soon after furnished to the House of Representatives, at its request, this sentence was omitted, and also the word no before jurisdiction.

On September 23rd, Judge Thompson announced the decision of the Circuit Court. “Because,” he said, “slavery is not tolerated in Connecticut, it does not follow that the right of these Spanish claimants to these negroes cannot be investigated there in the proper court of the United States. Our constitution and laws recognize the right on one man to have control of the labor of another man. The laws of the land must be construed by this court in Connecticut precisely as they would be, if it were sitting in Virginia. It is its province to determine what the laws are, not what it might be desired they should be. The question whether these men are slaves or free is rightfully before the District Court, and must be decided there in the ordinary course of law.”

The discharge of the prisoners was therefore refused, and they were brought back to the New Haven jail; but as Judge Thompson had decided that they had committed no crime against our laws, they were now give much more freedom.

Cinquè, who had been confined separately, as the ringleader in killing the captain of the Amistad, was now put with the others. His firm, though open countenance, and manly form are well preserved to us in the spirited sketch by our late honored townsman, Nathaniel Jocelyn, and the engraving made from it by Sartain, of which many copies still exist in the city.

On pleasant days the captives were taken out to the Green, in front of the jail, for exercise, and performed many wild feats of agility to the delight of crowds of spectators. Inside the jail they had plenty of visitors from curiosity or charity, so that at last the jailer came to charge an entrance fee of a shilling a head, which went to supply them with additional comforts.

Ruiz and Montez were, at about this time, arrested in New York on suits brought in the names of Cinquè and another of the captives, in an action for damages for false imprisonment. The Spanish minister appealed to the State Department for their release, and the United States District Attorney of New York was directed to lend them his assistance. Both were afterwards released on giving bail in small amount, but Ruiz lay in jail for six weeks before procuring a bondsman. Repeated applications for his relief were made meanwhile by the Spanish legation to our government, but the Secretary of State replied that the only remedy was before the courts of New York, and that the United States had done everything that Spain could properly ask. In his dispatch of Dec. 12, 1839, he used these words:

Messrs. Ruiz and Montez were first found near the coast of the United States, deprived of their property and their freedom, suffering from lawless violence in their persons, and in imminent and constant danger of being deprived of their lives also. They were found in this distressing and perilous situation by officers of the United States, who, moved towards them by sympathetic feeling, which subsequently became, as it were, national, immediately rescued them from personal danger, restored them to freedom, secured their oppressors, that they might abide the consequences of the acts of violence perpetrated upon them, and placed under the safeguard of the laws all the property which they claimed as their own, to remain in safety until the competent authority could examine their title to it, and pronounce question of ownership, agreeably to the provisions of the 9th article of the treaty of 1795.

The tone of this dispatch indicates clearly the feeling of the administration. Martin Van Buren was President, and was not yet the Martin Van Buren who headed the Free Soil ticket for the Presidency in 1848. The Secretary of State, Mr. Forsyth, was a Georgian, and had been our minister at the Court of Madrid.

Footnotes

Section 3

The diplomatic questions involved were of a delicate nature. The Spanish treaty provided that in case the inhabitants of either country, with their shipping, should be forced through pursuit of pirates or enemy or any other urgent necessity, to enter into any roads or ports of the other, they should enjoy all protection and in no ways be hindered from returning; and that all ships and merchandise of what nature soever, which should be rescued out of the hands of any pirates or robbers on the high seas, and brought into a port of either State, should be taken care of and returned entire to the true proprietor, as soon as due and sufficient proof of ownership should be made.

If the ship’s papers of the Amistad were to be accepted as true, the negroes were rightfully put on board of her as slaves, and were being lawfully transported to a Spanish port, when they rose and freed themselves, and therefore were guilty under Spanish law of piracy and murder; they were then also property and merchandise within the description of the treaty.

The friends of the Africans feared that the President and Secretary of State might take matters into their own hands, and by some mere executive order hand them over to Spain as fugitives from justice, to be sent back to Cuba and tried for murder. The Spanish minister had formally demanded their extradition as early as September 6th. In his dispatch of that date, after thanking our government for the seizure of the Amistad and release of Ruiz and Montez, he said:

“The act of humanity thus performed would have been complete, had the vessel at the same time been set at liberty, and the negroes sent to be tried by the proper tribunal, and by the violated laws of the country of which they are subjects.

“If,” he added, “they should be condemned by the incompetent tribunal that has taken upon itself to try them, as pirates and assassins, the infliction of capital punishment in this case would not be attended with the salutary effects had in view by the law when it resorts to this powerful and terrible alternative, namely, to prevent the commission of similar offenses.” The claims presented therefore were that the Amistad and her cargo be forthwith given up to her owners, and “that the negroes be conveyed to Havana, or be placed at the disposal of the proper authorities in that part of Her Majesty’s dominions, in order to their being tried by the Spanish laws which they have violated; and that in the meantime they be kept in safe custody, in order to prevent their escape.”

On Sept. 13th, Messrs. Staples and Sedgwick, the New York counsel of the “Amistad committee” which had charge of the funds contributed to defend the Africans, addressed a letter to the President, protesting against any compliance with the demand of the Spanish minister. Their claim was that, even under Cuban law, the negroes were unlawfully enslaved, and had a right to strike for their freedom.

“It is this question,” they said, “that we pray may not be decided in the recesses of the Cabinet, where those unfriended men can have no counsel, and can produce no proof, but in the halls of Justice, with the safeguards that she throws around the unfriended and the oppressed.”

This letter, together with that of the Spanish minister, was referred to the Attorney General, Felix Grundy of Tennessee. His opinion was that the demands of Spain were just; that the negroes could not be tried here for an offense committed on a Spanish ship in Spanish waters; that the government could not go behind the ship’s papers to ascertain whether they were really slaves or not, but must leave the determination of that question to the Spanish authorities; and, in conclusion, “that a delivery to the Spanish minister is the only safe course for this government to pursue.”

It is the opinion of many of the most eminent authorities in international law, that it rests in the discretion of the executive department of every government to surrender a fugitive from another country, by which his return is sought, upon reasonable proof that he has been guilty of any offence which is commonly regarded as a gross crime by civilized nations. President Lincoln in 1864, surrendered in this way to Spain, a Cuban officer named Arguelles, who had fraudulently sold into slavery some negroes placed in his custody, although still no extradition treaty existed between the two governments; and in 1876, William M. Tweed was in a similar manner surrendered to the United States, by Spain, to be tried for defrauding the city of New York.

But while the opinion of Mr. Grundy was approved by the Cabinet, and the Spanish minister confidentially informed of its main features, as early as November, it was decided to issue no warrant of extradition until the termination of the proceedings in the District Court.

These had become still more complicated by a new libel filed by the District Attorney, setting out more particularly the claim of Spain, and a petition by the Vice Consul of that nation, stating that Antonio, the mulatto cabin-boy, was the slave of the murdered captain of the Amistad, and wanted to return to slavery, and praying that he be released and put in charge of the consulate for that purpose. The owners of the merchandise on board the schooner also put in their claims for its restitution. In behalf of the Africans, a plea that the Court had no jurisdiction over them was first entered, and then withdrawn, and replaced by an answer in which they asserted their right freedom, and justified their taking possession of the vessel, as a lawful attempt to vindicate it. A good deal of testimony had also been taken, among which was a long deposition of Dr. R. R. Madden, who had been for years the British Commissioner of Liberated Africans at Havana, and stated that the slave-trade was still carried on there, by the fraudulent connivance of the authorities.