La Amistad (pronounced [la a.mis'tað]; Spanish for Friendship) was a 19th-century two-masted schooner, owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba. It became renowned in July 1839 for a slave revolt by Mende captives, who had been enslaved in Sierra Leone, and were being transported from Havana, Cuba to their purchasers' plantations. The African captives took control of the ship, killing some of the crew and ordering the survivors to sail the ship to Africa. The Spanish survivors secretly maneuvered the ship north, and La Amistad was captured off the coast of Long Island by the brig USS Washington. The Mende and La Amistad were interned in Connecticut while federal court proceedings were undertaken for their disposition. The owners of the ship and Spanish government claimed the slaves as property; but the US had banned the African trade and argued that the Mende were legally free.
Because of issues of ownership and jurisdiction, the case gained international attention. Known as United States v. The Amistad (1841), the case was finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the Mende, restoring their freedom. It became a symbol in the United States in the movement to abolish slavery.
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The ship
La Amistad was a 19th-century two-masted schooner of about 120 feet (37 m). By 1839 the schooner was owned by a Spaniard captain, Don Ramon Ferrer. Strictly speaking, La Amistad was not a slave ship as it was not designed to transport large cargoes of slaves, nor did it engage in the Middle Passage of Africans to the Americas. The ship engaged in the shorter, coastwise trade around Cuba and in the Caribbean. The primary cargo carried by La Amistad was sugar-industry products. It carried a limited number of passengers and, on occasion, slaves being transported for delivery or sale.
1839 slave revolt
Captained by Ferrer, Amistad left Havana on 28 June 1839 for the small port of Guanaja, near Puerto Principe, Cuba, with some general cargo and 53 slaves for the sugar plantation where they were to be delivered. These 53 Mende captives (49 adults and 4 children) had been taken from Mendiland (in modern-day Sierra Leone) and illegally transported from Africa to Havana, mostly aboard the slave ship Teçora, to be sold into slavery in Cuba. The crew of La Amistad, lacking purpose-built slave quarters, placed half the captives in the main hold, and the other half on deck. The captives were relatively free to move about, which aided their revolt and commandeering of the vessel. In the main hold below decks, the captives found a rusty file and sawed through their manacles.
On about July 1, once free, the men below quickly went up on deck and, armed with machete-like cane knives, attacked the crew, successfully gaining control of the ship under the leadership of Sengbe Pieh (later known in the United States as Joseph Cinqué). They killed the captain and some of the crew, but spared Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, the two owners of the slaves, so they could guide them back to Africa. While they demanded to be returned home, the navigator Montez deceived the Mende about the course, maneuvering the ship north along the North American coast until they reached the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. Discovered by the naval brig USS Washington while on surveying duties, La Amistad was taken into United States custody. The Mende were interned at New Haven, Connecticut, while the courts settled their legal status and conflicting international claims regarding La Amistad's ownership, as well as the status of its property, including the slaves.
Court case
A widely publicized court case ensued in New Haven to settle legal issues about the ship and the status of the Mende captives. They were at risk of execution if convicted of mutiny. This became a popular cause among abolitionists in the United States. Since 1808, the United States and Britain had prohibited the international slave trade. The ship's owners fraudulently described the Mende as having been born in Cuba and said they were being sold in the Spanish domestic slave trade, in order to avoid the international prohibition on the African slave trade. The court had to determine if the Mende were to be considered salvage and thus the property of naval officers who had taken custody of the ship (as was legal in such cases), the property of the Cuban buyers, or the property of Spain, as Queen Isabella II claimed, via Spanish ownership of the Amistad. A question was whether the circumstances of the Mendes' capture and transportation meant they were free and had acted as free men rather than slaves.
On appeal, the United States v. The Amistad case reached the US Supreme Court. In 1841, it ruled that the Mende had been illegally transported and held as slaves, and had rebelled in self-defense. It ordered them freed. Thirty-five survivors returned to Africa in 1842, aided by funds raised by the United Missionary Society, a black group founded by James W.C. Pennington, a Congregational minister and fugitive slave in Brooklyn, New York, who was active in the abolitionist movement.
Later years
After being moored at the wharf behind the US Custom House in New London, Connecticut, for a year and a half, La Amistad was auctioned off by the U.S. Marshal in October 1840. Captain George Hawford, of Newport, Rhode Island, purchased the vessel and then needed an Act of Congress passed to register it. He renamed it Ion. In late 1841, he sailed Ion to Bermuda and Saint Thomas with a typical New England cargo of onions, apples, live poultry, and cheese.
After sailing Ion for a few years, Hawford sold it in Guadeloupe in 1844. There is no record of what became of Ion under the new French owners in the Caribbean.
Legacy
A monument dedicated to the revolt on La Amistad stands in front of City Hall in New Haven, Connecticut, where many of the events related to the affair in the United States occurred.
The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, is devoted to research about slavery, abolition, civil rights and African Americans; it commemorates the revolt of slaves on the ship by the same name. A collection of portraits of La Amistad survivors that were drawn by William H. Townsend during the survivors' trial are held in the collection of Yale University.
Replica
Between 1998 and 2000, artisans at Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, built a replica of La Amistad, using traditional skills and construction techniques common to wooden schooners built in the 19th century, but using modern materials and engines. Officially named Amistad, it was promoted as "Freedom Schooner Amistad". The modern-day ship is not an exact replica of La Amistad, as it is slightly longer and has higher freeboard. There were no old blueprints of the original.
The new schooner was built using a general knowledge of the Baltimore Clippers and art drawings from the era. Some of the tools used in the project were the same as those that might have been used by a 19th-century shipwright, while others were powered. Tri-Coastal Marine, designers of "Freedom Schooner Amistad", used modern computer technology to develop plans for the vessel. Bronze bolts are used as fastenings throughout the ship. Freedom Schooner Amistad has an external ballast keel made of lead and two Caterpillar diesel engines. None of this technology was available to 19th-century builders.
"Freedom Schooner Amistad" was operated by Amistad America, Inc., based in New Haven, Connecticut. The ship's mission was to educate the public on the history of slavery, abolition, discrimination, and civil rights. The homeport is New Haven, where the Amistad trial took place. It has also traveled to port cities for educational opportunities. It was also the State Flagship and Tall ship Ambassador of Connecticut. The ship made several commemorative voyages: one in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in Britain (1807) and the United States (1808), and one in 2010 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its 2000 launching at Mystic Seaport. It undertook a two-year refit at Mystic Seaport from 2010 and was subsequently mainly used for sea training in Maine and film work.
In 2013 Amistad America lost its non-profit organization status after failing to file tax returns for three years and amid concern of the accountability for public funding from the state of Connecticut. The company was later put into liquidation, and in November 2015 a new non-profit, Discovering Amistad Inc., purchased the ship from the receiver. Amistad has now been restored to educational and promotional activity in Connecticut.
La Amistad in popular culture
- On 2 September 1839, a play entitled The Long, Low Black Schooner, based on the revolt, opened in New York City and played to full houses. (La Amistad was painted black at the time of the revolt.)
- The 1997 film Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, dramatized the historical incidents. Major actors were Morgan Freeman, as a freed slave-turned-abolitionist in New Haven; Anthony Hopkins, as John Quincy Adams; Matthew McConaughey, as Roger Sherman Baldwin, an unorthodox, but influential lawyer; and Djimon Hounsou, as Cinque (Sengbe Peah).
- The slave revolt aboard the La Amistad, the background of the slave trade and its subsequent trial are retold in a celebrated poem by Robert Hayden entitled Middle Passage, first published in 1962.
- In January 2011, Random House published Ardency, a collection of poems written over twenty years by American poet Kevin Young which "gathers here a chorus of voices that tells the story of the Africans who mutinied on board the slave ship Amistad".
- In the 1988 novel Gray Victory by Robert Skimin, depicting an alternate history in which the South won the American Civil War, a group of abolitionist conspirators infiltrating Richmond calls itself "Amistad."
- The 1999 hit single "My Love Is Your Love", performed by Whitney Houston, references the "chains of Amistad".
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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