The Amistad Rebellion
Page 30
35. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839; “Case,” NYMH, September 22, 1839.
36. Testimony of Antonio, United States District Court, NAB; “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839; Barber, 11; “Superior Court,” NYMH, October 24, 1839.
37. “The Case of the Africans Decided,” NYMH, September 25, 1839. Antonio also wanted Burna to hold his money; he gave it to him “tied up in a stocking.” See “Herald on Amistad Trial,” NYMH, November 21, 1839.
38. Antonio, “Case,” NYMH, September 22, 1839; “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839.
39. Testimony of Antonio; Testimony of Kinna, November 19, 1839, U.S. District Court, NAB.
40. Antonio, “Case,” NYMH, September 22, 1839; “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839. The body of Celestino had apparently been thrown overboard soon after the rebellion ended.
41. Much of the evidence in this section comes from the extraordinarily long and detailed account of the post-rebellion voyage written by José Ruiz and Pedro Montes, especially the latter, who was navigating the vessel the entire time. This 6,600-word account originally appeared on the Spanish-language newspaper Noticioso de Ambos Mundos. It was translated into English and republished in the NLG on October 16, 1839. I have relied on the latter version, supplementing it with other evidence where possible. The Amistad Africans said little about the voyage.
42. “Case,” NYMH, September 22, 1839.
43. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839. The long account provided by Montes and Ruiz described extensive communication between the two Spaniards and the Africans, made possible by Antonio’s ability to translate and interpret.
44. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839.
45. Lewis Tappan to Joseph Sturge, November 15, 1841, reprinted in Sturge, Visit, Appendix E, xlvi.
46. “The Amistad African Appearance,” NYCA, September 4, 1839. The story was repeated in A True History of the African Chief Jingua and his Comrades. With a Description of the Kingdom of Mandingo, and of the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants.—An Account of King Sharka, of Gallinas. A Sketch of the Slave Trade and Horrors of the Middle Passage; with the Proceedings on Board the “Long, Low, Black Schooner,” Amistad. (Hartford, New York, and Boston, 1839), 11.
47. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839; Moore to Harned, October 12, 1852, ARC.
48. Ibid.
49. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839.
50. For a survey of the history and arts of Mami Wata, see Henry John Drewal, Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diaspora (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2008). On Mende water spirits, see M. C. Jedrej, “An Analytical Note on the Land and Spirits of the Sewa Mende,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 44 (1974): 40–41. The suggestion that irons and chains were thrown overboard is based on the fact that none of the several post-rebellion inventories of the Amistad disclosed their presence on the vessel.
51. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839.
52. Testimony of Henry Green, November 19, 1839, U.S. District Court, Connecticut, NAB.
53. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839.
54. NLG, August 28, 1839; Moore to Harned, October 12, 1852, ARC.
55. “Case,” NYMH, September 22, 1839; J. M. Harris, “Some Remarks on the Origin, Manners, Customs, and Superstitions of the Gallinas People of Sierra Leone.” Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London, 1865–1866 (London: Published for the Anthropological Society, by Trubner and Co., 1866), vol. II, 26.
56. Moore to Harned, October 12, 1852, ARC. At this point the oral history maintained that the Africans “approach[ed] New Haven and anchor[ed].” They probably thought of New Haven as the entire region rather than a city per se.
57. “The Amistad,” NLG, October 16, 1839.
58. Ibid.
59. Testimony of Green. Lewis Tappan reported on another interview with Henry Green in “To the Committee,” NYJC, September 10, 1839.
60. Testimony of Green.
61. The white men had probably seen the article, “A Suspicious Sail—a Pirate,” NYMH, August 24, 1839.
62. Testimony of Green; Testimony of Cinqué, January 8, 1840, Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, NAB.
63. “Case of the Amistad,” Charleston Courier, November 26, 1839; Testimony of Captain Fordham; Testimony of Green, Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, NAB; “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839.
64. Testimony of Cinqué, January 8, 1840, U.S. District Court, Connecticut, NAB; Moore to Harned, October 12, 1852, ARC.
65. Rough transcript of the first day’s testimony in district court at Hartford, Conn., Coll. 247—box 1, folder 6, Andrew T. Judson Papers, Coll. 247, f. 4, Manuscripts Collection, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut.
66. Testimony of Dr. Sharp, n.d., Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts for the District of Connecticut: Documents Relating to the Various Cases Involving the Spanish Schooner Armistad, NAB.
67. Libel of Thomas R. Gedney, Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, NAB. There was disagreement about the number of men on shore when the brig Washington arrived on the scene. The lowest estimate was 8–9, the highest 30. Most of the eyewitnesses, three of the white men and Antonio, put the number around 20.
68. Depositions of James Ray and George W. Pierce, December 1839, Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, NAB.
69. Testimony of Lt. Richard Meade, November 19, 1839, Records of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts, NAB; “The Low Black Schooner Captured,” NYJC, August 28, 1839; “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839.
70. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839; Moore to Harned, October 12, 1852. The Sun printed these speeches separately, with images of Cinqué, and sold them in the streets as broadsides and handbills.
71. NLG, September 4, 1839.
72. NLG, August 28, 1839.
73. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839.
Chapter Three: Movement
1. NLG, August 28, 1839; “The Spanish Piratical Schooner Amistad,” NYMH, August 30, 1839.
2. NLG, August 28, 1839.
3. On the life and legal career of Judson, see Douglas L. Stein, “The Amistad Judge: The Life and Trials of Andrew T. Judson, 1784–1853,” Log of Mystic Seaport 49 (1998): 98–106.
4. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839. It is impossible to know what was inside Cinqué’s greegree bag, but it is possible to know what kinds of things might have been there, because missionary George Thompson, who was in many ways the first ethnographer among the Mende peoples of southern Sierra Leone, inspected and wrote about such containers and their contents. When a “benighted heathen” converted to Christianity, he or she sometimes surrendered a “greegree bag” to Thompson. That of an “old conjurer” included an “old, dirty, greasy cloth, containing live bug-a-bugs (white ants), and some of their dirt from the large hillocks; also one piece of iron, and one very small antelope’s horn.” A “big-war medicine” contained “some old dirt, an iron rod about one foot long, a nail and two screws.” A third was “a goat’s horn, containing three or four pieces of leopard skin, and a piece of paper written on both sides with Arabic writing.” The inclusion of what appear to have been Quranic inscriptions, offered by “Muslim strangers” in times of war, illustrates the advance of Islam in Cinqué’s region. Thompson wrote that small bags “were tied to a string and worn about the neck!” To the missionary, these were “the delusions of Satan.” See Thompson in Africa, 152, 194, and The Palm Land, 178–79, 390. See also Jones, 77, 184; M. C. Jedrej, “Medicine, Fetish, and Secret Society in a West African Culture,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 46 (1976): 247–57; and Mariane Ferme, The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone (Berkeley: University of California P
ress, 2001), 3, 4, 5, 67.
5. For more on the legal history of the case, see R. Earl McClendon, “The Amistad Claims: Inconsistencies of Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 48 (1933): 386–412; Bruce A. Ragsdale, “‘Incited by the Love of Liberty’: The Amistad Captives and the Federal Courts,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 35 (2003): 12–24.
6. “Joseph Cinquez, Leader of the Piratical Gang of Negroes, who killed Captain Ramon Ferris and the Cook, on board the Spanish Schooner Amistad, taken by Lieut. Gedney, commanding the U.S. Brig Washington at Culloden Point, Long Island, 24th Augt 1839, Drawn from Life by J. Sketchley, Aug. 30, 1839,” lithograph by John Childs, NHCHS. The speech: “My brothers, I am once more among you, having deceived the enemy of our race by saying I had doubloons. I came to tell you that you have only one chance for death, and none for Liberty. I am sure you prefer death, as I do. You can by killing the white man now on board, and I will help you, make the people here kill you. It is better for you to do this, and then you will not only avert bondage yourselves, but prevent the entailment of unnumbered wrongs on your children. Come—come with me then–.” The same quotation appears in “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839. See also Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, in Portraits of the People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 130.
7. “Joseph Cinquez, Leader of the Gang of Negroes,…Captured by Lieutenant Gedney of the U.S. Brig Washington at Culloden Point, Long Island, August 24th 1839,” hand-colored lithograph, Stanley Whitman House, Farmington, Connecticut. Shaw dates the lithograph October 1, 1839, but the basis for this is not clear; see Portraits of the People, 130–31.
8. “Joseph Cinquez, The brave Congolese Chief, who prefers death to Slavery, and who now lies in Jail at New Haven Conn. awaiting his trial for daring for freedom,” LC. A second, smaller version of the image—perhaps a handbill—is in the Frances Manwaring Caulkins Scrapbook, reference 029.3 Scr 15, Misc. American, 1830–1850, New London County Historical Society, New London, Connecticut. Below the caption was the “Speech to his Comrade Slaves after Murdering the Captain &c and Getting Possession of the Vessel and Cargo”: “Brothers we have done that which we purposed, our hands are now clean as we have Striven to regain the precious heritage we received from our fathers. We have only to persevere. Where the sun rises, there is our home, our brethren, our fathers. Do not seek to defeat my orders, if so I shall sacrifice any one who would endanger the rest. When at home we will kill the old Man, the young one shall be saved. He is kind and gave you bread. We must not kill those who give us water. Brothers, I am resolved that it is better to die than be a white man’s slave, and I will not complain if by dying I save you. Let us be careful what we eat that we may not be sick. The deed is done and I need say no more.” The New York Sun of August 31, 1839, identified “James Sheffield of New London” as the artist, but it appears the main maritime artist of New London in this period was Isaac Sheffield (1798–1845). See H. W. French, Art and Artists in Connecticut (Boston, 1879), 60.
9. “Joseph Cinquez Addressing his Compatriots on board the Spanish Schooner AMISTAD 26th Augt 1839,” lithograph by John Childs, Chicago Historical Society (ICHi 22004).
10. This broadside was, like the others, apparently commissioned by the New York Sun. The text, though not the image, was republished in the newspaper on August 31, 1839: “Friends and brothers—We would have returned but the sun was against us. I would not see you serve the white man, so I induced you to help me kill the Captain. I thought I should be killed—I expected it. It would have been better. You had better be killed than live many moons in misery. I shall be hanged, I think, every day. But this does not pain me. I could die happy, if by dying I could save so many of my brothers from the bondage of the white man.” The speech was republished in the NYJC on September 2, 1839, and in the Charleston Courier on September 5, 1839. The speech was said to have been translated by Antonio. The print and speech provide a good example of the “print-performance culture” described by Peter Reed, Rogue Performances: Staging the Underclasses in Early American Theatre Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 4.
11. “Portrait of Cinquez” from the Monday, September 2, 1839 edition, reprinted in the NYS, September 7, 1839, Country Edition, Weekly—no. 147. The reach of the New York Sun extended all the way to Havana, where Richard Robert Madden read the paper and learned of the Amistad case. He later went to New Haven to visit the captives and subsequently gave crucial testimony. See Gera Burton, “Liberty’s Call: Richard Robert Madden’s Voice in the Anti-Slavery Movement,” Irish Migration Studies in Latin America 5 (2007): 202–03. On the rise of the penny press see James L. Crouthamel, Bennett’s New York Herald and the Rise of the Popular Press (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989) and Dan Schiller’s classic account, Objectivity and the News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).
12. Interest in the case was also great in Boston, where 4,000 copies of a September 1 “Extra” of the NYMH sold out by noon; “Boston,” NYMH, September 4, 1839.
13. “The Long, Low Black Schooner,” NYS, August 31, 1839. The correspondent even threw in a glowing phrenological analysis of Cinqué’s head, suggesting among other things that he possessed “unshaken courage, and intense love of home and kindred.”
14. Dwight P. Janes to Rev. Joshua Leavitt, New London, August 30, 1839; Dwight P. Janes to R. S. Baldwin, New London, August 31, 1839; Dwight P. Janes to R. S. Baldwin, New London, September 2, 1839; Dwight P. Janes to Joshua Leavitt, New London, September 2, 1839, ARC. See also two articles by Maria Hileman, “The Amistad’s Unsung Hero” and “Dwight Janes: Conscience of the Amistad,” both published in The Day, October 5, 1997.
15. For biographies of Tappan and Leavitt see Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1969, reprinted Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997) and Hugh Davis, Joshua Leavitt, Evangelical Abolitionist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990).
16. “The Captured Slaves,” NYMH, September 2, 1839.
17. South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun had declared slavery to be a “positive good” in 1837. See Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 10.
18. Stanley Harrold, American Abolitionists (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001), 34; James Brewer Stewart, “From Moral Suasion to Political Confrontation: American Abolitionists and the Problem of Resistance, 1831–1861,” in his Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 3–31.
19. For the background to the abolitionist movement, see Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
20. James Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (London: Charles Gilpin, 1849); Margaret Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 138.
21. “Incendiaries,” New Orleans Bee, October 11, 1839; “Mobile,” Richmond Enquirer, November 1, 1839; “Another Exciting Rumor,” NYS, September 3, 1840; “A Negro Revolt in Louisiana,” NYS, September 12, 1840; “A Negro Plot,” NYS, November 10, 1840; “A Revolt,” PF, September 22, 1840; “Slave Insurrection,” PF, September 24, 1840; “An Attempted Slave Insurrection in South Carolina,” PF, October 20, 1841; NYS, August 31, 1839; Kenneth W. Porter, The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996).
22. Fergus Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (New York: Amistad, 2005).
23. Philip M. Hamel, “Great Britain, the United States, and the Negro Seamen Acts, 1822–1848,” Journal of Southern History 1 (1935): 3–2
8; Peter Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
24. “Incarcerated Captives,” NYCA, September 6, 1839; “Conditions for Amistad Captives,” NYCA, September 9, 1839; “Case of the Captured Africans,” NYMH, September 22, 1839; “Visit to Hartford, Connecticut,” NYMH, September 24, 1839; and “Removal of the Africans to Hartford—Crim. Con. among the Savages—Exposure of the Abolition Falsehood, &c.,” NYMH, November 19, 1839; NYS, September 20, 1839; “Calvin Edson, The Living Skeleton,” Daily Chronicle, January 18, 1832.
25. “To the Committee on Behalf of the African Prisoners,” NYJC, September 10, 1839; “Removal of the Africans,” NYMH, November 19, 1839; “Incarcerated Captives,” NYCA, September 6, 1839; “The Captives of the Amistad,” Emancipator, October 3, 1839.
26. “The Captives of the Amistad,” Emancipator, October 3, 1839.
27. Anonymous, “Treatment of the Captured Africans,” November 1, 1839, ARC. This appears to have been an unpublished article written for the Emancipator.
28. Ibid. See also Emancipator, September 9, 1839.
29. “The Captured Africans of the Amistad,” NYMH, October 4, 1839. This comment referred to the Hartford jail; see below, 129–32.
30. “Private Examination of Cinquez,” NYCA, September 13, 1839; “The Negroes of the Amistad,” New Hampshire Sentinel, October 2, 1839.
31. “Captured Africans,” NYMH, October 4, 1839; “The Negroes Lately Captured,” NYMH, September 5, 1839; “The Africans,” Patriot and Democrat, September 21, 1839; “The Africans,” NYMH, October 5, 1839. Abolitionist A. F. Williams wrote that “1,000 $ was recd in Hartford & more than 1,000 $ (as I am informed) in N. Haven at 12 1⁄2 cts admission” from visitors to the jails. The figure for Hartford, where the Amistad Africans spent only two weeks in September 1839 and a few days in November, is credible, but the figure for New Haven is far too low. See A. F. Williams to Lewis Tappan, Farmington, March 13, 1841, ARC.