The Amistad Rebellion

by Marcus Rediker

  One of these was the normally bright and cheerful Foone, a rather short man at five feet two inches, with a “Herculean frame” and athleticism: he was an excellent swimmer. When news arrived from people knowledgeable about the Gallinas Coast that warfare might make it difficult for the “Mendi People” to find their way to their inland homes, the effect was demoralizing: “Nearly all of the Mendians became sad & became indifferent as to work or study,” recalled A. F. Williams, who was helping to oversee their time in Farmington.

  Foone in particular was hit hard by the news. He “lost all activity of body & mind,” he became gloomy, and on several occasions he was seen weeping profusely. When asked what was the matter, he answered, “He was thinking about his Mother.” He felt he would never see her again. When Foone said he was going to swim (and bathe) in the Farmington River on Thursday, August 7, several of his comrades tried to talk him out of it, saying it was the same day of the week on which Mr. Chamberlain had drowned and was therefore unlucky. Foone was determined to go and was finally joined by two teenage members of the group. Soon after he went in, he sank in ten to twelve feet of water. His smaller mates, panic-stricken, tried to save him but could not. They climbed out of the river and cried for help. Grabeau and Burna came running and dove into the water to search for Foone. After Burna surfaced with his friend’s limp, muscular body in tow, a local doctor tried to revive him, without success.

  The “Mendi People” were devastated by the death. Along with “a col’d man one of their best friends,” Williams spent two full days with them and came to a sad conclusion: “I have no doubt Foone drowned himself.” He had been seen weeping the morning of his death. He had expressed to Burna his fear of not living long enough to get home. Burna, ever the good shipmate, promised to “take care of his child” if he himself should return.

  Williams discovered that most of the group no longer trusted the Americans to help them get home. They believed that they “should never see their Fathers & Mothers, Brothers & Sisters or their Children & that they will all die in America.” Williams also came to understand a traditional West African spiritual belief: “They believe that when they die they will go immediately to Mendi & some of them think the sooner the better.” It so happened that Foone was not the only person entertaining the thought. Sessi, who was something of an elder among the group, had considered jumping out of a tall tree, cutting his throat, or taking his life as Foone had done, in the Farmington River. Kinna, meantime, was keeping track of the deaths of his shipmates. He told Williams, “8 men die on board schooner, 6 die in New Haven, & now one die in Farmington.” He added, “I don’t know, I think all die pretty soon & we never see Mendi.”

  Williams did his best to explain the meaning of the correspondence about the Gallinas Coast, and reiterated, as sincerely as he could, the abolitionist commitment to have them “restored to the bosom of their families” as soon as possible. The news of Foone’s death rippled through the antislavery community. Arrangements to go to Mende had to be made soon, lest others go back there by their own means, joining Foone and their own revered ancestors in spirit if not in flesh.

  As the late summer gave way to their third fall in America, the remaining thirty-five Amistad Africans recovered their spirits, taking renewed interest in work and study. Williams was especially encouraged when several of the advanced students stepped up to teach while their regular instructor was away. But now a new problem approached—the chill of a New England winter. Cinqué complained, “Cold catch us all the time.” He and his comrades had had enough: “We want to see no more snow. We no say this place no good, but we afraid of cold.” This added greater urgency to the quest for both money and a plan to go home.61

  A Mission Plan

  Reverend Pennington opened the Hartford meeting of August 18–19, 1841, with a sermon to forty-three delegates from six states, including many of the leading black abolitionists of the day, some of them, like Pennington himself, formerly enslaved. They decided to form the Union Missionary Society and to undertake work in Africa. They elected officers, most of them African American. (The absent Tappan was made an “auditor” but declined the post.) The entire proceedings were concluded with “delightful harmony.” A special feature of the meeting was noted in the report of the Colored American: “Joseph Cinque and four of his countrymen were present, and enrolled their names as members of the Convention, which added much interest to the meeting.” Once again the Amistad Africans actively shaped their own fate.62

  Moved by the initiative, less than a week later the Amistad Committee decided officially that “when these Mendians return to their native land, it is desirable that a mission should be formed in that country, and that an appeal be made to the Christian public for funds for that object.” The committee consciously separated itself from the American Colonization Society and its donations received of slaveholders, for such an association would be “contrary to the feelings and principles of a large majority of the donors to the Amistad fund, and of the friends of the liberated Africans.” The committee issued a new appeal for funds, highlighting the “evangelization of Africa.” What was presented to the public as an “Appeal on behalf of the Amistad Africans” was subtly mistitled: it was not an appeal for them alone, but rather a request to finance a new Christian abolitionist project, the Mende Mission.63

  Cinqué and the “Mendi People” had their own idea about how this would work. “Their plan,” wrote one of their teachers, William Raymond, in October 1841, was “for all to help together & somewhere in the vicinity of Cinque’s town to settle down and commune a new town & persuade their friends to come & join them.” This was the traditional way a Mende warrior settled a town, but this one would have a cultural twist: they “would adopt American dress & manners so far as may be.” Out of gratitude for those who had worked so hard on their behalf, they would build a house for the teachers and a new community on an African model.64

  Abolitionists had their own notion of a proper mission and it did not include leadership by a Mende warrior. They began to search for missionaries to carry the word of God to the heathens in Africa. Benjamin Griswold was the first and perhaps most likely choice, and indeed from January 1840 until November 1841 he seriously considered the prospect, but in the end he declined to go. Other candidates included the Quaker Joshua Coffin, who seemed a certain choice in September 1841: Tappan wrote that he had “been selected as the proper individual to go to Sierra Leone on this important mission.” His abolitionist credentials consisted of “his noble daring, skill and perseverance in visiting Mississippi, and bringing off Isaac Wright, a New York colored young man, who had been sold into slavery by a Yankee Captain.” This history, “together with his general intelligence, eminently qualify him for such an undertaking.” Coffin would later write An Account of some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, and others, which have occurred, or been attempted, in the United States and elsewhere, during the last two centuries, published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860, in which he included the Amistad rebellion. Yet in the end he would not accompany the Amistad insurrectionists to their homelands.65

  The committee finally chose five missionaries. William Raymond and James Steele, both former students of Oberlin College and committed abolitionists, led the way. Raymond, who was twenty-six years old, had worked among self-emancipated Africans in Canada, taught the Amistad Africans in Farmington, and assisted on the final fundraising tour. The thirty-three-year-old Steele had studied at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. The “Lane Rebel” came to Oberlin, where he edited and printed the Oberlin Evangelist. In 1840 he married the beautiful Frances Cochran, but she died, suddenly and unexpectedly, prompting the young widower, who was suffering a “deep depression,” to sign on for the Mende Mission on short notice. The other three missionaries were Raymond’s wife, Elizabeth, and Henry and Tamar Wilson, free people of color from Barbados now living in Hartford and members of Pennington’s church. The Amistad Committee was now making prep
arations for the return of thirty-five Africans, with these five missionaries, to their native land.66

  Reversing the Middle Passage

  On Friday, November 26, the Amistad Africans boarded the barque Gentleman, commanded by a Captain Morris, in New York. They would spend the night on board, under conditions very different from the last time they had been on a deep-sea vessel. Lewis Tappan had arranged for the missionaries and the female passengers to be accommodated in the captain’s cabin, the African men in steerage. An observer noted, “Nothing could exceed the delight manifested by the Mendians as they found themselves started on their way.” The “Mendi People” continued to contribute to their own freedom struggle. Having raised through their tours more than enough money to pay for the voyage they were beginning, they now brought aboard food they themselves had produced, in their large truck patch in Farmington, for the voyage. The dream of going home was at hand.67

  The day of departure brimmed with emotion. Lewis Tappan spoke on behalf of the Amistad Committee, Cinqué on behalf of the “Mendi People.” The former wished Godspeed to the mission. He was pleased that the Gentleman was “a thorough temperance vessel, and takes neither rum nor powder to the Coast of Africa.” Instead it brought free people and the word of God. The latter was his usual eloquent self, thanking his friends who had helped to make this historic day possible. He “pledged himself to take good care of them [the missionaries] in Mendi.” When the time came for parting everyone embraced. As abolitionist A. F. Williams noted, “the young ladies wept, the young men wept, the old ladies wept, & the old men wept, & all right together.” Some of the Amistad men sobbed aloud as tears streamed down their faces. Speaking “was out of the question, they could only express their deep regret at parting in a flood of tears.” Tappan later wrote “The vessel sailed this morning with a fine breeze.” His fondest hope was, “May the smiles of the Lord Jesus be upon it.” Now began a second freedom voyage, this time with proper navigational knowledge and equipment on board.68

  The Atlantic recrossing was uneventful. No one was hungry or thirsty, no one was whipped, no one raised arms, and no one died. Everyone was in good health as the Gentleman neared the harbor of Freetown, Sierra Leone. While still at sea, Cinqué wrote to Lewis Tappan: “captain good—no touch Mendi People.” To people who had had traumatic experiences under three violent ship captains—on the Teçora and the Amistad, and in the person of William Pendleton, brother of jailer Stanton—this was in itself excellent news. Kinna also wrote to Tappan, although with difficulty because of the rolling of the ship: “We have been on great water. Not any danger fell upon us.”69

  Yet all was not well aboard the Gentleman. The issue was, who was actually in charge of this repatriation. Was it the missionaries, William Raymond and James Steele? Or was it Cinqué and the “Mendi People”? Cinqué had no doubt about the matter. They were sailing to his country, where his local knowledge and connections would guide the mission. He wrote to Tappan, “big man” to “big man”: “You give Cinque two white men and one colored man to go with Cinque.” He would take them, first to Freetown, then to “my country.” Once there, he would “make house and take care of white man.” He still planned to create his own settlement in the way of the Mende warrior. Tappan, Raymond, and Steele, however, had other plans. The working misunderstanding that had been forged between the Amistad Africans and the American abolitionists was beginning to break down.

  Return

  The arrival of the Gentleman, full of people who had reversed the Middle Passage, was a big event and a rare one, in Freetown or anywhere else in West Africa. Those aboard the vessel understood just how unusual such returns were. Cinqué had written to President Tyler in October 1841: “When we are in Mendi we never hear such a thing as men taken away and carried to Cuba, and then return home again.” Mende people made up the largest share of those shipped out of the Gallinas Coast in the 1830s, and one of the largest groups brought to Cuba on slavers and to Freetown on captured slavers. Kinna agreed, during the “Mendian Exhibition” tour in November: “I ask Mendi people, ‘You ever know Mendi to come back to father and mother, when darkness-white man catch him?’ They say, ‘No, never come back. We never no more see him.’” Their comments revealed how widely known was the experience of enslavement and transatlantic shipment, and how unusual they knew their own return to be. They had waged a titanic struggle against the “darkness white men” for more than two years now, since they arrived at Pedro Blanco’s factory in early 1839.70

  The Gentleman was not the only vessel to arrive in Freetown harbor on January 13, 1842. It so happened that a British naval vessel was bringing to port a captured slave ship, to be anchored alongside several others already awaiting condemnation in the Court of Mixed Commission. It must have been an eerie sight, and smell, as the soon-to-be-repatriated Amistad Africans encountered at close quarters the kind of vessel on which their Atlantic saga of slavery and freedom began. The memory of their own earlier experience must have increased their elation at the prospects of freedom that now lay before them.71

  Homecoming excitement was not theirs alone. Previous communications with political and religious officials in Freetown had prepared the way, and many port city residents had been alerted to the imminent return of the wayward sons. Among Freetown’s forty thousand inhabitants, most of them Liberated Africans taken from captured slave ships, were thousands of “Kossa” or Mende people. “There are multitudes in this colony who speak their language—some of them being recaptured persons, and some having come here voluntarily,” observed missionary James Steele. Cinqué’s own brother Kindi fit both descriptions: liberated from a slave ship, he had returned home to Mende country, then chose to come back to work in Freetown. He and other relatives and friends of the Amistad Africans were among the hundred or so Mende people who greeted the arriving vessel.72

  The arrival itself was a moment of truth for all of the transatlantic passengers, African and missionary alike. What would the Amistad Africans do when they were back among their own people, on African soil? The missionaries had hoped the Africans would go ashore singing a hymn, to show Christian discipline and announce new identities. The Africans had other ideas. They rushed ashore in an almost ecstatic state, encountering and embracing friends and family. Cinqué found his brother, Bartu found his “countrymen,” and Grabeau, who apparently knew more people than most because of his wide travels as a merchant, found his kin and “old acquaintances.” James Steele wrote that soon after going ashore, “The Mendians have found many of their friends and relatives.” For some, joy swelled to delirium.73

  Especially striking, upon their arrival, was the Africans’ change in attitude to the Western clothing they wore. According to Raymond and Steele, “Some of them indicate a strong desire to lay aside their clothing and return to their former savage life of nakedness.” As they stripped off the most outwardly visible aspects of their newly acquired “civilization,” the missionaries saw a regression to heathenism and “licentiousness.” They solemnly denounced it at the time and in their correspondence to abolitionists in America after their arrival. The desire of the Africans to revert to “country fashion” was a continual source of friction.74

  The shedding of clothes was not simply a repudiation of the hard work the abolitionists had done in the New Haven jail to educate the Africans and to make them Christians. It laid bare the cultural conflict that had been there all along, which the abolitionists now began, for the first time, to understand. Snatched from Africa without a trace and now returning to Freetown, home to more than fifty displaced African nations and ethnicities, the Amistad Africans had to show everyone who they were. The easiest and most convincing way to do this was to show one’s “country marks,” the ritual scarifications by which the peoples of Freetown recognized and understood, cooperated and fought with, each other. Raymond and Steele saw that the Africans were eager to show “the gree-gree marks as they call them, which are found upon their bodies.” The missionaries even
came to see that these marks had deep cultural significance: “These are marks of honor, diplomas which have great meaning with them.” Because the Africans kept the secrets of the Poro Society while they were in America, no one had understood that they received these marks “when they pass through certain branches of learning, or acquit themselves of feats of agility or danger, and are then entitled to change their names or adopt an addition to them, and not before.” The cicatrices variously signified the young man’s initiation, the warrior’s conquest of fear and mastery of acrobatic maneuver, and the man’s quest for ultimate spiritual knowledge. These people were Africans, and indeed they had acted as such throughout their ordeal—no matter that the white men could not understand them. Now they were Africans back in Africa. The configuration of historical forces had once again been changed by an oceanic voyage.75

  This set of truths, and the geopolitical situation in which they emerged, shocked the missionaries. They were taken aback not only by their own “brethren,” but by the Mende people they encountered in Freetown. They considered them “warlike” and “troublesome,” noting that some had been involved in the slave trade. Indeed a large group of them had recently caused a whole new set of problems for the Sierra Leone colony when they armed themselves, moved into a region of Temne territory called “Aquia,” and squatted on the fertile, unoccupied land to grow rice. They fought the Temne and they also fought each other.76

  During the first few months in Sierra Leone, as the missionaries searched for land on which to build the mission, about two-thirds of the Amistad Africans deserted the project, a sure sign that the parties’ ideas about the future had diverged. Some found work as wage laborers in Freetown or other towns nearby. Several of the men worked with Cinqué on a trading expedition by canoe to Bullom country, while several others labored, together, in a nearby town called Waterloo. In new material circumstances the “Mendi People” transformed themselves into work teams. Yet probably a majority of the Amistad Africans managed, in one way or another, to get home to the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children for whom they had longed. There is no way to be sure, for after leaving the mission most of them disappear from the historical record.77