Amistad Boat sailing from New Haven, CT

The Mutiny

Introduction
In 1839, slaves aboard a ship called the Amistad revolted to secure their freedom while being transported from one Cuban port to another. Their leader was Sengbe Pieh, a young Mende man, but popularly known in United States history as Joseph Cinque. The slaves had been kidnapped mostly from the neighborhood of the Colony of Sierra Leone and sold to Spanish slavers. They eventually received their freedom in 1841, after two years' internment in the United States awaiting the verdict of the courts regarding their "revolt" This was the celebrated Amistad Case, an episode far better known in the United States than on the other side of the Atlantic. But the incident had a far-reaching impact on both sides, influencing the course of American history and especially the development of Afro-American culture, while, in Sierra Leone, leading to the inauguration of American missionary activity that trained many of the elite group that led the nationalist movement to achieve independence from colonial rule.

Capture and Enslavement
Sengbe Pieh, the hero in this episode, was born about 1813 in the town of Mani in Upper Mende country, a distance of ten days' march from the Vai or Gallinas coast. Said 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, his right hand tied to his neck. He was taken to a nearby village where he passed three days with a man called Mayagilalo, apparently the boss of his captors. Indebted to the son of the Vai King Manna Siaka, Mayagilalo gave over Sengbe to him in settlement. After staying in Siaka's town for a month, Sengbe was marched to Lomboko, a notorious slave-trading island near Sulima on the Gallinas coast, and sold to the richest slaver there, the Spaniard Pedro Blanco, whose activities had helped to make King Siaka wealthy as well.

At Lomboko, Sengbe was imprisoned with other slaves, while fresh ones joined them for the two months they were there, waiting to be transported across the Atlantic. Most of the captives came from Mende country, but others were Kono, Sherbro, Temne, Kissi, Gbandi (in present-day Liberia), and Loma (in present-day Liberia and in Guinea, where they are known as Guerze). Some, who did not speak Mende, learned the language during their forced journey through Mende country to the coast. Most were farmers, but it is said that others were hunters and blacksmiths. This is surprising, because all over West Africa blacksmiths held a sacred place in society and could neither be enslaved nor killed even in war.

All these people were shipped from Lomboko in March aboard the schooner Tecora, which arrived at Havana in the Spanish colony of Cuba in June. At a slave auction following advertisement, 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. Pedro Montez, another Spaniard bound for the same port, bought four children, three girls and a boy. On June 26, the fifty-three Africans were herded on board an American-built schooner, originally called Friendship, but changed to the Spanish La Amistad when the vessel changed ownership and registration to a Spanish subject. Although Spain had prohibited the importation of new slaves into her territories since 1820, the two Spanish planters were able to obtain official permits to transport their slaves. They chartered the Amistad from Ramon Ferrer, who was both owner and captain. Apart from the fifty-three Africans and their Spanish owners, the schooner carried a crew comprising the master, Ferrer; his two black slaves, Antonio (the cabin boy) and Celestino (the cook); and two white seamen. The ship also carried a cargo of dishes, cloth, jewelry, and various luxury items and staples. The cargo was insured for $40,000. Ruiz insured his forty-nine slaves for $20,000, while Montez insured the four children for $1,300.

The Revolt
The trip to Puerto Principe usually took three days, but the winds were adverse. 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 maltreated and, at one point, made to believe that they would be killed for supper 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 Captain Ferrer and the cook Celestino and wounded the Spaniard Montez. But Sengbe spared Montez' life together with those of Ruiz and Antonio, the cabin boy. The mutineers lost two of their own party, killed by Captain Ferrer. The two white seamen managed to escape from the Amistad in a small boat.

Sengbe then ordered the Spaniards to sail in the direction of the rising of the sun, or eastward towards Africa. At night, however, Montez, who had some experience as a sailor, navigated by the stars and sailed westward, hoping to remain in Cuban waters. But a gale drove the ship northeast along the United States coastline. The schooner followed a 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.

Recapture
The Amistad drifted off Long Island, New York, in late August 1839. Sengbe and others went ashore to trade for food and supplies and to negotiate with local seamen to take them back to Africa. News soon got around about a mysterious ship in the neighborhood with her "sails nearly all blown to pieces." It was the "long, low, black schooner," the story of which had been appearing in newspapers in previous weeks as the ship cruised northeast along the U.S. coastline. Reports said that Cuban slaves had revolted and killed the crew of a Spanish ship and were roaming the Atlantic as buccaneers.

On August 26, the United States survey brig Washington, under command of Lt. Commander Thomas R. Gedney, sighted the battered schooner near Culloden Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. The United States Navy and the Customs Service had previously issued orders for the capture of the ship; and Commander Gedney seized the Amistad and took her in tow to New London, Connecticut, arriving there the following day. Gedney sent a message at once to the United States Marshall at New Haven who, in turn, notified United States District Judge Andrew Judson. The latter was certainly no friend of the black man, for in 1833 he had prosecuted a Miss Prudence Crandall for admitting Negroes into her school in Canterbury, Connecticut.

Judge Judson held court on board the Washington on August 29, in New London harbor, examining the ship's documents and hearing the testimony of Ruiz and Montez, as well as their urgent request that the ship and all its cargo, including the Africans, be surrendered to the Spanish Consul in Boston. Judson immediately released Ruiz and Montez and ordered that Sengbe and the others be tried for murder and piracy at the next session of the Circuit Court, due to open on September 17 at Hartford, Connecticut. The Africans were consigned to the county jail in New Haven.

Meanwhile, Ruiz had renamed Sengbe Pieh "Jose Cinque" in order to show that Sengbe was not a recent importee and that he, Ruiz, was therefore not guilty of violating the prohibition law of 1820. Cinque, being a Spanish approximation of Sengbe, soon found further distortion in the press as "Cinquez," "Sinko," "Jinqua," etc. When the Amistad was captured off Long Island, a reporter from the New York Sun witnessed Sengbe's defiance of his captors and repeated attempts to escape. Sengbe jumped overboard and had to be dragged back onto the ship: he urged his fellow slaves to fight against hopeless odds, and was taken away to the American vessel and separated from his men; he made such violent protest that the naval officers allowed him to remain on the Washington's deck, where he stood and stared fixedly at the Amistad throughout the night. The New York Sun reported: He evinces no emotion...and had he lived in the days of Greece or Rome, his name would have been handed down to posterity as one who had practiced those most sublime of all virtues -- disinterested patriotism and unshrinking courage.

The Abolitionists Step In
At this time, the U.S. anti-slavery movement was in disarray, with divergent views on several issues -- political action, women's rights, American churches and slavery, and the basic nature of American government. The Amistad Case provided a focal point for rallying the dispersed ranks of the abolitionists, as they all came out in defense of the captives, fully convinced of their innocence. This was put forth in the Herald of Freedom:

Cinques is no pirate, no murderer, no felon. His homicide is justifiable. Had a white man done it, it would have been glorious. It would have immortalized him. Joseph Cinques ought not to be tried. Everybody knows he is innocent. He could not be guilty.

The paper added that Lt. Commander Gedney had no authority to capture the Amistad, she being "the lawful prize of Commandant Joseph Cinques....That she was 'suspicious' looking, is no warrant."

The Abolitionists Step In continued...
return to American Slavery Exhibit - Part 3

References:
Image credit:Amistad boat http://www.jobcentral.org/ct/
Image credit: The Mutiny http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/AMI_MUT.JPG
International Information Program, USINFO.STATE.GOV, The Amistad Revolt, Arthur Abraham
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/archive/amistad/