L. Herrington 2008

This PowerPoint tells the story of Sengbe Pieh and his fellow captives aboard the the ship Amistad. Use the arrow keys in the lower left corner to navigate between the slides. If you click on the symbol of the motion picture camera on some slides you will be able to see video footage of a “Discovery” documentary about the Amistad. Please answer the questions in your packet on this PowerPoint in sentence form.

La Amistad ( Spanish : "Friendship") was a 19th-century two-masted schooner built in the United States but owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba. The ship was notable as the scene of a revolt by African captives being transported from Havana, Cuba.

Sengbe Pieh was born about 1813 in the town of Mani in the Upper Mende country of Sierra Leone in West Africa. It is said that he was to have been the son of a local chief, he was married with a son and two daughters. Sengbe, a farmer, was going to his field one day in late January 1839, when he was captured in a surprise attack by four men.

Sengbe was marched to Lomboko, a slave- trading island on the Gallinas coast, and sold to the richest slaver there, the Spaniard Pedro Blanco.

Sengbe Pieh was soon joined by many other slaves from different parts of West Africa. All these people were shipped from Lomboko in March (1839) aboard the schooner Tecora, which arrived at Havana in the Spanish colony of Cuba in June.

At a slave auction in Havana, Jose Ruiz, a Spanish plantation owner, bought Sengbe and forty-eight others for $450 each to work on his sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, another Cuban port three hundred miles from Havana. Sengbe Pieh was given the name Jose Cinque in order to make him sound like a “ladino”. Ladinos were blacks that already lived in Cuba. Since the slave trade had been outlawed by Spain, the Mendians were being transported to Cuba illegally.

On June 26, the African slaves were herded on board an American-built schooner, originally called Friendship, renamed, La Amistad, when the vessel changed to Spanish ownership. Although Spain had prohibited the importation of new slaves into her territories since 1820, Jose Ruiz was able to obtain official permits to transport the slaves.

The trip to Puerto Principe took three days, but during this trip the winds were rough. Three days out at sea, on June 30, Sengbe used a loose spike he had removed from the deck to unshackle himself and his fellow slaves. They had been whipped and mistreated and, at one point, made to believe that they would be killed and eaten on arrival.

Sengbe armed himself and the others with cane knives found in the cargo hold. He then led them on deck, where they killed the ship’s captain and several of the crew. Two of the slaves were killed in the mutiny.

The surviving Spaniards promised to return the slaves to Africa. Instead, they sailed west by day and East by night. The Amistad followed this zigzag course for two months, during which eight more slaves died of thirst and exposure.

Sengbe held command the whole time, forcing the others to conserve food and water, and allotting a full ration only to the four children. He took the smallest portion for himself.

In August, the Amistad was discovered off Long Island by the brig, U.S.S. Washington. The Africans were arrested and taken to New Haven, Connecticut, where they were charged with piracy and murder. Their trial aroused great public interest and helped to solidify the abolitionist movement in America.

Abolitionists argued that the Africans were illegally brought to Cuba, and therefore were free. The slaves had acted in self-defense when they revolted and killed the captain and crew of the Spanish vessel. The two surviving Spaniards hoped however that the vessel and the slaves would be returned to them by the court.

Several prominent abolitionists took up the cause for the slaves. After obtaining legal counsel for them, the abolitionists found a translator to take testimony from the Mendians; they learned they had been kidnapped and sent to Cuba. The Mendians' testimony became the basis of the defense's case.

The Spanish ambassador to the United States demanded that President Martin Van Buren return the ship and the Mendians to Jose Ruiz and that the matter be dealt with under Spanish law. President Van Buren agreed, preferring to return the Mendians and in so doing not alienate his southern proslavery support, but the matter had already been placed under court jurisdiction.

On January 7, 1840, the Mendians' trial began. The defense team uncovered evidence, (documents that had been forged by Jose Ruiz and the captain of the Amistad), to support the Mendians' story. The judge, persuaded by this evidence, concluded that even under Spanish law, the Mendians were free men, and ordered President Van Buren to have them transported back to Africa.

President Van Buren was furious and worried that this case would damage his standing in the South. He ordered the government's lawyers to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The abolitionists were determined to win the case. They approached John Quincy Adams to help defend the Mendians.

For the most part, Adams had been merely a lukewarm supporter of abolitionism. However, he had become interested in the Amistad case when it had been tried in the District Court. The case went before the Supreme Court on February 22, John Quincy Adams considered the date (George Washington's birthday) a good omen.

Adams's argument, extending over two days and lasting seven hours. It centered on the principle of habeas corpus (the ability of a court to detain prisoners). Also, by Spain's own laws, he argued, the Mendians were illegally enslaved. If the President could hand over free men on the demand of a foreign government, how could any man, woman, and child in the United States ever be sure of their "blessing of freedom"? The Court, with one dissenting opinion, agreed.

By the time the Court rendered its decision, John Tyler, a southern proslavery Whig, was President. He refused to provide a U.S. warship for the Mendians to return to Africa. In December 1841, several abolitionists provided a ship and missionaries who would accompany the Mendians home. Cinque returned to Mende and became a chief of his people.

The story of the Amistad is significant not because of the heroic efforts of Sengbe Pieh and the Mendians to gain their freedom; but because it foreshadowed events that would soon follow in the nation’s history. The United States Civil War would rip the country apart as the nation finally came to grips with the issue of slavery that had plagued it since its birth.