Америка-Африка құқығы: "Амистад" ісінің тарихы

1841 U. S. Supreme Court case on the legality of the Atlantic slave trade

United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U. S. (15 Pet.) 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international diplomacy as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison described it in 1969 as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. La Amistad was traveling along the coast of Cuba on her way to a port for re sale of the slaves. The Africans, Mende people who had been kidnapped in the area of Sierra Leone, in West Africa, illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. They killed the captain and the cook; two other crew members escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende directed the two Spanish navigator survivors to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them by sailing north at night. La Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Marine (later renamed the United States Revenue Cutter Service and one of the predecessors of the United States Coast Guard) and taken into custody. The widely publicized court cases in the U. S. federal district court and eventually the Supreme Court in Washington, D. C., in 1841, which addressed international issues, helped the abolitionist movement. In 1840, a federal district court found that the transport of the kidnapped Africans across the Atlantic Ocean on the Portuguese slave ship Tecora was in violation of US laws against international slave trade. The captives were ruled to have acted as free men when they fought to escape their kidnapping and illegal confinement. The court ruled the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. Under international and Southern sectional pressure, U. S. President Martin Van Buren ordered the case appealed to the Supreme Court. It affirmed the lower district court ruling on March 9, 1841, and authorized the release of the Mende, but it overturned the additional order of the lower court to return them to Africa at government expense. Supporters arranged for temporary housing of the Africans in Farmington, Connecticut, as well as funds for travel. In 1842, the 35 who wanted to return to Africa, together with U. S. Christian missionaries, were transported by ship to Sierra Leone.

On June 27, 1839, La Amistad ("Friendship"), a Spanish vessel, departed from the port of Havana, Cuba, for the Province of Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were Captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montes, all Spanish nationals. With Ferrer was Antonio, a man enslaved by Ferrer to serve him personally. Ruiz was transporting 49 Africans, who had been entrusted to him by the governor general of Cuba. Montez held four additional Africans, also entrusted to him by the governor general. As the voyage normally took only four days, the crew had brought four days' worth of rations and had not anticipated the strong headwind that slowed the schooner. On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Joseph Cinqué, freed himself and the other captives using a file that had been found and kept by a woman who, like them, had been on the Tecora, the Portuguese ship that had transported them illegally as slaves from West Africa to Cuba. The Mende killed the ship's cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The Mende also killed Captain Ferrer, and the armed struggle resulted as well in the deaths of two Africans. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende spared the lives of the two Spaniards who could navigate the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, if they returned the ship east across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. They also spared Antonio, a creole, and used him as an interpreter with Ruiz and Montez. The crew deceived the Africans and steered La Amistad north along the East Coast of the United States, where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor half a mile off eastern Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went ashore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk. The vessel was discovered by , a revenue cutter of the United States Revenue Marine (later renamed the United States Revenue Cutter Service and one of the predecessors of the United States Coast Guard) while Washington was conducting hydrographic survey work for the United States Coast Survey. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, commanding the cutter, saw some of the Africans on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of La Amistad and the Africans. Taking them to the Long Island Sound port of New London, Connecticut, Lieutenant Gedney presented officials with a written claim for his property rights under international admiralty law for salvage of the vessel, the cargo, and the Africans. Gedney allegedly chose to land in Connecticut because slavery was still technically legal there, under the state's gradual abolition law, unlike in nearby New York State. He hoped to profit from sale of the Africans. Gedney transferred the captured Africans into the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, where legal proceedings began. Antonio Vega, vice consul of Spain, libelled for "the slave Antonio" on the grounds that the man was his personal property. The Africans denied that they were slaves or property and argued that the court could not "return" them to the control of the government of Spain.

In 1998 a memorial was installed at the Montauk Point Lighthouse to commemorate the Amistad. On August 26, 2023, the Montauk Historical Society, together with the Eastville Community Historical Society and the Southampton African American Museum, erected a historic marker near Culloden Point in Montauk where the Amistad was anchored in 1839. The slave revolt aboard La Amistad, the background of the slave trade and its subsequent trial is retold in a celebrated poem by Robert Hayden entitled "Middle Passage", first published in 1962. Howard Jones published Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy in 1987. A movie, Amistad (1997), was based on the events of the revolt and court cases, and Howard Jones' 1987 book Mutiny on the Amistad. African American artist Hale Woodruff painted murals portraying events related to the revolt on La Amistad in 1938, for Talladega College in Alabama. A statue of Cinqué was erected beside the City Hall building in New Haven, Connecticut in 1992. There is an Amistad memorial at Montauk Point State Park on Long Island. In 2000, Freedom Schooner Amistad, a ship replica, was launched in Mystic, Connecticut. The Historical Society of Farmington, Connecticut offers walking tours of village houses that housed the Africans while funds were collected for their return home. The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, has numerous resources for research into slavery, abolition, and African Americans.