The Amistad Affair - Law, Slavery & Abolition

Categories: Slavery And Freedom

On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African called Cinque, freed himself and the opposite slaves and planned a mutiny. Feb nine, 2010 in June 1839, fifty two African captives revolted as they were being transported at the Spanish schooner Amistad from Havana to Guanaja, Cuba. Led by means of Joseph Cinque, a Mende from the Sierra Leone area of West Africa, the rebels ordered two surviving Spaniards to sail the ship eastward to Africa.

The group sailed eastward at some stage in the day, but veered north-westward at night, hoping to stumble upon a British deliver patrolling for vessels engaged in the illegal slave change or to reach a friendly port.

Four months in advance, the Africans have been illegally shipped to Cuba; a third of the captives died along the manner. During the 1830s, Cuba, the sector's leading sugar producer, imported over one hundred eighty, 000 slaves in violation of a law prohibiting the importation of slaves from Africa after 1820.

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In overdue August, the US. Washington seized the Amistad close to the Long Island coast. When the Amistad turned into captured, there have been 39 African men and four youngsters on board. A listening to became held in New London, Connecticut, and the Africans have been charged with mutiny, murder, and piracy. They have been then sent to New Haven, in which the adults have been located in a jail cell, 20 by 30 feet in size.

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For 18 months, the Amistad rebels remained confined to their cellular. Spectators paid 12 and a 1/2 cents to look at them.

Abolitionists quickly took up the cause of the Amistad rebels. They insisted that because the Africans have been illegally imported into Cuba and were free at the time that they entered U.S. Waters, the rebels ought to be released from jail. The district court docket decide discovered on their behalf, however President Martin Van Buren (who came from a Dutch-American own family that had once held slaves in New York and who became determined to maintain southern support for his re-election bid) ordered the case appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Amistad Affair case raised vital problems of law and justice: whether or not captives had a right to revolt towards their captors and whether American courts have jurisdiction over crimes committed outdoor this country. In September 1939 letter, William S. Holabird (1794?-1855), the U.S. District legal professional in Connecticut and a staunch Jacksonian Democrat, informed the Van Buren management that there was no felony basis for returning the Africans to Spanish government in Cuba. He argued that the United States had no right to attempt the Africans because their rebellion had taken vicinity on a Spanish vessel at the open sea and concerned best Spanish subjects. President Van Buren also ordered a ship to take the rebels to Cuba before the District Court should render its verdict. Both tries to hinder justice failed.

Updated: Nov 01, 2022
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The Amistad Affair - Law, Slavery & Abolition. (2020, May 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-amistad-affair-law-slavery-abolition-essay

The Amistad Affair - Law, Slavery & Abolition essay
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