The case of the Amistad (1839-41) Flashcards
The slave ship Tecora
- Sails 1839 to Cuba with Africans abducted from Sierra Leone
- June 1839 arrives in Havana where Africans are sold and given fake papers saying they were always enslaves.
Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz
•Montes- 58 years old Cuban businessman
•Ruiz- 24 years old
oCuban investor
•Both had purchased some of the Amistad “slaves”, now sailing on the ship to their plantations.
USS Washington (revenue cutter)
- Commanded by Lt. Thomas Gedney
- Ruiz speaks English, tells of the mutiny, asks for return of the ship
- Ruiz and Montes identify Cinque as the leader.
Gradual Emancipation
- At the age of 18, the children of slaves are free
- After the revolution, Massachusetts and new Hampshire end slavery
- All the other northern states move to gradual emancipation during period 1776-1804
Article 1 section 9
oThe migration or such importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to he year 1808.
Touissaint Louverture
•Killed many of the farmers in Haiti
•50,000 French soldiers killed trying to stop the rebellion
oAll for the fight of slavery.
Gabriel Prosser’s Plot (1800)
- Near Richmond VA
- Blacksmith that was sold out by owner to do various jobs for other people.
- Used his freedom to plan a rebellion
Tallmadge Amendment
•The slave owners and their slaves could move there but once the slaves kids turned 25 they would be given their freedom.
Denmark Vesey (1822)
- Born in Africa, enslaved in Saint Domingue, the Charleston
- Plans rebellion for July 14, 1822 (Bastille Day)
- 131 trials
- 72 found guilty of conspiracy
- 35 hanged
- 37 exiled
American Colonization Society (1817)
•Private society that many famous people joined
oJames Monroe
oFrancis Scott Key
•wanted to expatriate all free black people to Liberia
Lowell system (1840s)
- Mill owners provide supervised environment for young frm to women to work in
- Includes education and cultural offerings
- Idea was to avoid creation of a permanent, degraded wage earning class like in England.
Nat turner’s rebellion (1831)
- Turner and 70 followers kill over 60 people
* Southampton county, VA
John C Calhoun
Slave owner of about 80 slaves
•Gag rules
•Censorship of the mails
•Slavery as a “positive good” that Christianize slaves who receive lifelong security. Creates a leadership class of white men, while eliminating class divisions
Cinque
- Son of a west African Mende village leader
- Around 26 years old
- Captured by tribesmen of Ley people because Cinque allegedly owed a creditor a debt
- Through interpreter tells of their abduction by African slavers, the slave “factory” in lomboko, the gruesome middle passage aboard the Portuguese ship Tecora, being sold in Cuba and their mutiny
Roger Baldwin
•46, year old Yale educated lawyer known for representing the poor
James Covey
Mende translator
•Sold into slavery in Africa 1819 at age 12
•Ship bound for cuba intercepted by British warship
•Joins the british navy
•Arrives in new york in 1839
•Speaks Mende
Queen Isabella II
- Child queen
- 9 years old
- wants the Amistad turned over to Spain and the alleged slaves tried for insurrection in Spanish courts
john quincy adams
- 73 years old
- president 1825-1829
- blamed slaveholders for ruining his presidency
- becomes an abolitionist
- takes an interest in the Amistad case
- asks government papers on case be opened
- Tappen and Baldwin recruit him
- Known for his oratory (nicknamed “old man eloquent”)
- “God willing we will make you free”
Lewis Tappan
•Wealthy merchant and abolitionist
•Saw interracial marriage as the solution to racism
•$20,000 bounty on his head for mailing abolitionist literature to South
•believes the arrival of the Amistad detainees is a “providential occurrence”
oPays for a defense team for the alleged slaves
The friends of the Amistad
- pays for the detainees legal defense
* publish pro detainee flyers and posters
Martin Van Buren
- Orders a navy ship readied to transport prisoners to Spanish of they lose
- Wants them whisked off before an appeal can be filed
Joseph Story
- 61 year old Joseph Story from MA
* had called slavery “unnecessary, unjust, and repugnant to eternal maxims of social justice.”
