The Amistad Rebellion

by Marcus Rediker

  More important than any tension within the group was the long, formative struggle between the Africans and jailer Stanton Pendleton. He diminished the collective when he moved Margru, Kagne, and Teme from the jail to his household, then tried to keep them there after the rest of the Amistad Africans were moved from New Haven to Westville in September 1840. This aggravated tensions that had been roiling between the jailer and his charges for months over issues of labor, discipline, and racism. Abolitionists may have held a favorable opinion of Pendleton, but the Amistad Africans took a decidedly different view, leading to explosive confrontations in February 1841.

  One of the first hints of conflict was reported in the Hartford Courant and the Boston Courier in early September 1840: “One of them [the Amistad Africans] was put in irons the other day, for an attempt to assault his keeper, who restrained some of his ‘largest liberty.’” The source of the conflict was not disclosed, though perhaps a clue can be found in reference to some of the African attitudes: “Their notions of property are entirely Agrarian: ‘What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is my own.’” The conflict may have spurred the abolitionists to make arrangements to move the captives to a jail in Westville, which happened less than a week later.47

  When, a few months later, one of the proslavery newspapers resorted to racist stereotypes to suggest that the Amistad Africans were lazy and shiftless and refused to work, Cinqué, in a conversation with his teacher, Sherman Booth, revealed a previous history of conflict over labor issues: “My people work for Pendleton plenty and he never pay.” They worked on the roads, in taverns, and elsewhere around New Haven. So valuable was their labor that Pendleton told Tsukama to wash his clothes on his own time, on Sunday, so that he would be available for other work on weekdays. Tsukama objected to “working on the Sabbath” (Christianity had material advantages), to which Pendleton replied, “What does a ‘nigger’ care for Sunday?” Pendleton also required the Amistad Africans to do their own cooking and woodcutting. Cinqué indignantly asked, “We no work?! Man no work, he no eat—he die, he no work.” Reflecting his rising knowledge of the gospel of “free labor” and the labor theory of value, he stated: “We all work, if men pay; but no pay, we no work.” He and his comrades insisted on choice in the labor market: “We no work any more for Mr. Pendleton [even] if he pay.” Still, Cinqué would not reduce all to an economic logic: “We work for [abolitionists] Mr. Tappan and Mr. Townsend without pay, because they good friends.”48

  James Covey also clashed with Pendleton, partly because his translations had made possible the arrest of Ruiz and Montes, with whom Pendleton apparently sympathized. Covey also refused to treat Pendleton “with the Defference and respect [to] which his station entitles him.” The jailer retaliated by limiting Covey’s access to the Africans until the abolitionists could smooth the matter over.49

  A big confrontation with Pendleton occurred in early February 1841, after the move to the less populous Westville, just northwest of New Haven, which would have limited the income the jailer received in New Haven for admission to see the popular prisoners. The Amistad Africans and their abolitionist allies had begun their efforts to remove Margru, Kagne, and Teme from the jailer’s household, and to reattach them to the group, which made him furious. Pendleton spread what Cinqué called a “bad rumor,” which was the subject of much “jail talk” among the “Mendi People.” Pendleton claimed that the abolitionists were not telling the truth about their plans for the Amistad Africans: “they tell you lie: Mendi people not go to Mendi.” They would go to Havana. Worse, Pendleton said of Tappan, for whom he had a special dislike, “he all destroy you.” Cinqué responded to Pendleton’s allegation with Christian patience, saying, “Mr. Tappan in New York, he was very good man and Mr. Townsend, and God will bless them.”50

  Lurking behind the “bad rumor” was a history of antagonism that had been building during a yearlong term in the New Haven jail. Cinqué alleged, “When we in New Haven, he whip Mendi people too hard.” Now the angry jailer had arrived in Westville cursing, with chains in his hands, and he was threatening to do so again. At this moment Cinqué the warrior seemed to be having trouble with the Christian command to “love thy enemies.” But in a letter to Baldwin in which he explained the confrontation, he said dutifully, “We forgive him and he curse us and he whip us and all he do that is not better for us.” He wanted Baldwin’s assurance that Pendleton would not do this again.

  The Africans also wrote a group letter to Tappan, alleging frankly that Pendleton was a violent, racist, exploitative, ungodly man. He had whipped Fuli and Kinna and he had threatened to “kill the Mendi People,” all of them. He said “all black people no good”; they “stink.” He sought “to make all black people work for him.” He was, in short, a “wicked man,” the very kind denounced in the Bible. He and his entire family were “all bad—do not love God.” It was clearly time to remove the girls from his household.51

  The Mendi People

  During the winter of 1840–1841, almost two years after their initial enslavement in Africa and about seventeen months after they had been confined in American jails, the Amistad Africans began to think of themselves and to represent themselves in a new way in the letters they wrote in greater numbers as their studies of the English language advanced. They now proudly called themselves “the Mendi People.” That this was a collective decision was made clear in a newspaper article that appeared under the headline “The Mendi People.” The first line read, “Thus the Africans, late of the schooner Amistad, call themselves.”52

  The new name represented an apotheosis of their long-standing fictive kinship. Drawing on the additive nature of Mende and other surrounding cultures, they achieved a new level of social bonding through a two-sided process that took place inside the jail: the linguistic and cultural assimilation of the non-Mende people to the ways of the numerically dominant Mende among them, and the creation of a new “we,” a collective identity, against a newly perceived “they” in the external world. In a real sense, a language community became a political community. The collective would use its new name to make claims—about who the group was and what its future should be.

  The “Mendi People” was an unusual social formation, a complex compound for which there was no precise equivalent in West Africa, not even in Mendeland. Indeed, Professor Gibbs seemed to discover that Mende stood for all Africa. When he asked the captives to translate “I go to Africa,” they answered “gna gi-ya Men-di.” The “Mendi People” was thus a multiethnic entity, which included Mende, Temne, Kono, Gbandi, Loma, and Gola people. It was American in its genesis: it arose in relation to, and antagonism with, the learning of the English language and the ways of Christianity. In other words, as the abolitionists insisted that the Amistad Africans become new people, they in turn insisted on an African identity. This process of ethnogenesis was driven by specific struggles in jail: the Africans invented themselves as the “Mendi People” as they faced hardships that required a collective response. They used the new collective name to make three fundamental political demands: to shape their legal defense, to protect themselves against violence, and to insist upon their own rights to self-emancipation and ultimately repatriation.53

  The earliest recorded reference to the “Mendi People” as a chosen form of identity and belonging appeared in a famous letter said to have been written by the young boy Kale to John Quincy Adams on January 4, 1841. In truth, the letter was a collective composition, explained teacher Sherman Booth: Kale was “assisted by some of the other Africans,” especially, it would seem, by Cinqué and Kinna, both of whom were leaders within the group and advanced in their own studies. They composed the letter after Adams visited the New Haven jail in November and “in view of his having been engaged as one of their counsel” for the Supreme Court hearing. In other words, the Amistad Africans wanted to communicate to Adams who they were and what he should say on their behalf. The letter, which oddly has never been treated by scholars with the careful atten
tion it deserves, is the single best surviving expression of collective goals and identity the Amistad Africans produced.54

  The letter begins in the idiom of love and friendship: Kale addresses Adams as his friend at the outset, mentions the former president’s “love” for the “Mendi People,” emphasizes friendship as a primary human value, and closes with “your friend.” This is an African language of alliance, applied to the relationship that has developed between abolitionists and insurrectionists during the jail encounter. Kale wants Adams to know that he and his comrades have ideas about what to do: “Mendi people think, think, think,” but most Americans do not know what they think. Booth knew some of their thoughts: “We tell him some.” The eleven-year-old Kale therefore told the seventy-three-year-old Adams what to say on their behalf to the “Great Court,” the Supreme Court: “Dear friend, we want you to know how we feel.” The letter expresses both indignation and confidence in their cause: “We want you to ask the court what we have done wrong. What for Americans keep us in prison.” Their rebellion was a just act, warranting no incarceration.

  Kale also states, and comments on, what he considers to be the most important legal facts of the case: first and foremost, the “Mendi People” were indeed “Mendi People.” They were born in Mende country. They had not been born, or had lived long, in Havana; they had been in the city only ten days before being taken on board the Amistad. They had not learned the Spanish language, Kale explained, and had not, therefore, become legal “ladino” slaves. José Ruiz had lied about these issues in his testimony to the court. Kale insisted, “We want you to tell court that Mendi people no want to go back to Havanna. We no want to be killed.” The goal was unequivocal: “All we want is make us free not send us to Havanna.” Freedom meant going home.

  Kale also rehearsed basic historical facts about the rebellion. He stressed the threatened cannibalism of Celestino and the reaction of his shipmates: “Cook say he kill he eat Mendi people. We afraid. We kill cook.” He also stated that the plan for the uprising did not originally include killing Captain Ferrer: “Then captain kill one man with knife and cut Mendi people plenty. We never kill captain if he no kill us.” He made a case for armed self-defense.

  Kale recalled the powerful emotional moment at Culloden Point, Long Island, when the Amistad Africans learned from white men on shore that they had managed to work their way to a “free country.” The white men had said, “We make you free,” and indeed the promise had been reiterated endlessly by abolitionists during the time in jail. Even Judge Andrew Judson declared them free and commanded the government to take them home. Was it all a lie, Kale now wondered aloud in his letter to Adams, and does not the Christian God punish liars?

  Most of the letter discussed what happened during the “17 moons” the “Mendi People” had spent in jail. Kale detailed the progress they had made in their studies: they had learned to read and write; they had studied the Bible. “We love books very much.” He objected to the implication that the “Mendi People” were somehow stupid, just because they spoke a different language. He asked, pointedly, “Americans no talk Mendi. Americans crazy dolt?” He answered those who had criticized the Amistad Africans as having been too happy, too sad, or too angry while in jail. He applied the Golden Rule from the book of Matthew, 7:12: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” He puts the shoe of African experience on the American foot: “Dear friend Mr. Adams, you have children and friends. You love them. You feel very sorry if Mendi people come and take all to Africa.”

  The letter concludes with a strong assertion of collective agency: “If court ask who bring Mendi people to America,” you say “We bring ourselves. Ceci hold the rudder.” Throughout the letter, Kale maintains a parity between “the Mendi People” and “the America people.” Indeed, it seems that the idea of the “Mende People” was a creative adaptation of political language the Amistad Africans heard during their time in jail about the powerful, sovereign “American people.” But Kale went further, commenting specifically on the relationship between the abolitionists and the insurrectionists, saying, in essence, we have held up our end of the deal. We have learned your language and your religion. Now you must hold up your end of the deal: you must win the court case here in your country and you must help us to get home to ours. In making these overt and subtle demands, Kale uses the phrase “Mendi People” nineteen times. The letter—and its sovereign subject—made quite an impression on Adams and others around the country.55

  A second important moment in the use of the “Mende People” occurred soon after the letter was written, in the aftermath of jailer Pendleton’s visit to Farmington in early February 1841, when he threatened reenslavement, vilified the abolitionists, and tried to cut off access to food and water. Fuli referred to the “Mendi People” in a letter he wrote to Lewis Tappan about the attack, and Cinqué did the same, sixteen times, in a letter to Roger S. Baldwin about the tense, angry encounter. The closing of the ranks at a time of danger was inscribed in the “Mendi People.”56

  The biggest danger was now at hand. The United States Supreme Court was scheduled to hear the Amistad case January 25, 1841. The Van Buren administration had appealed the lower court ruling in favor of the Africans, with clear intent. Now the fate of the “Mendi People” lay in the hands of nine justices, a majority of whom, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, had southern backgrounds. As the legal debate resumed and intensified, numerous newspapers reported a spate of rumors, all saying in one way or another that “these poor fellows are, after all, to be given up to the Spanish authorities.”57

  CHAPTER SIX

  Freedom

  By February 1841, the Amistad Africans had appeared in American court five times. The first was on the deck of the U.S. brig Washington at the docks of New London, Connecticut, where Judge Andrew Judson of the United States District Court held a hearing on August 29, 1839, soon after they came ashore, to consider charges of piracy and murder. A second set of hearings was held in Hartford between September 19 and 23, presided over by Judson and Smith Thompson of the U.S. Circuit Court. In October Lewis Tappan brought charges of violent assault and false imprisonment against José Ruiz and Pedro Montes on behalf of four of the Amistad Africans, which resulted in a new set of hearings before judges Inglis and Jones in New York. The original case resumed in Hartford November 19, but James Covey’s sickness required postponement to January 7–13, 1840, in New Haven. When the United States Supreme Court convened in Washington on February 22, 1841, to make a definitive ruling about whether the Amistad Africans would be returned to their “owners” under the provisions of the Pinckney Treaty of 1795, the Africans were not present in the courtroom. They awaited the verdict in jail in Westville, Connecticut.

  Anxiety about the big palaver had settled over the Africans about two months earlier, reported their teacher Sherman Booth. The case was originally scheduled for January. Cinqué was losing weight because of “mental disquiet.” By the time the court began its deliberations, nerves were on edge in the jailhouse. Every day the leader of the Africans came to Booth to ask, “What the Grand Court say? Tell me.” The “Mendi People” knew that this would be the final judgment. Their fates, and their necks, hung in the balance of pro-and antislavery forces that met in Washington, DC.1

  By this time the adult Amistad Africans had enough experience with the law to be wary. Indeed, four of them were in Connecticut because they had fallen afoul of it in their homelands and were sold into slavery for “criminal conduct.” All were accustomed to palavers held in the bari, the communal meeting house where disputes about law and custom were argued and settled, often with eloquent speeches given by parties on both sides of the dispute to a king, chief, or head man, a group of elders, and the interested part of the community in attendance. The local leader usually consulted with the elders in reaching a judgment, which all parties would be obliged to accept. Occasionally a verdict might be appealed to the jurisdiction o
f a more powerful regional leader, but issues of justice were usually decided locally. Behind the palavers stood the Poro Society, which to a large extent determined the rules and practices that would be followed in the legal procedure. This would have been the framework in which the Amistad Africans interpreted their legal experience in the United States. They knew courtroom argument and drama, but not the larger American system of law, especially its federal jurisdictional structure and lengthy process of appeal. Amos Townsend Jr. noted that the Africans were accustomed to a “summary process” of trial “in their own country,” and that the delay caused by appeal was hard for them to understand and endure.2

  In Washington, interest in the case quickened as the court date approached. Visitors surged into the capital from out of town, including abolitionists such as Joshua Leavitt, a member of the Amistad Committee, from New York, to report on the hearings. As excitement mounted, abolitionists circulated for sale John Sartain’s mezzotint portrait of Cinqué. The Spanish-language newspaper Noticioso de Ambos Mundos, published in New York, asked, provocatively, whether the United States government would consider “uprising, mutiny, and murder the best recommendation in order not to comply with the provisions of a treaty.” Once again the court chambers would fill with spectators, including recent presidential candidate Henry Clay and Senator John J. Crittenden, both of Kentucky, among others. Everyone understood that the court would decide issues of national and international significance.3