Amistad Movie

Some five hundred years ago, ships began transporting millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. This massive population movement helped create the African Diaspora in the New World. Many did not survive the horrible ocean journey. Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa

In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. The Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. In August 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However, abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The case went to the Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants' case. Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial. http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/amistad_case/amistad_case.html

In a special document display in Washington, the National Archives and Records Administration is featuring two documents from its holdings that relate to the Amistad affair. The materials include John Quincy Adams' request, in his own hand, for papers relating to the lower court trials of the Amistad, January 23, 1841, and the Supreme Court decision United States v. the Amistad, March 9, 1841. The documents are incorporated into "American Originals: Part III," the major exhibition featuring milestone documents.

The dramatic story of the Amistad, which was featured in a major motion picture that opened in December, is found among the court records at the National Archives - Northeast Region at Waltham, MA, and in the Supreme Court records at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In 1839, 53 African natives were kidnapped .from an area now known as Sierra Leone and illegally sold into the Spanish slave trade. They were transported to Havana, Cuba and sold at auction as native Cuban slaves to two "Spanish gentlemen." The Spaniards were transporting the Africans and other cargo to another part of Cuba on board the Spanish schooner Amistad when the Africans staged a revolt, seizing control of the schooner, killing the captain and the cook, and driving off the rest of the crew. The two "Spanish gentlemen" were ordered to sail back to Africa. By day, the Spaniards sailed eastward and by night they surreptitiously sailed westward, hoping to land back in Cuba or the southern United States. The ship was seized and towed to New London, Connecticut, where the imprisoned Africans began a lengthy legal battle to win back their freedom. Early documents from the National Archives - Northeast Region contain testimony and depositions relating to the first sightings of the Amistad off Long Island, New York. Lt. R.W. Meade, USN, testified on August 29, 1839, that "said schooner was manned by forty-five Negroes some of whom had landed near said (Montauk) Point. . . Also on board [were] two Spanish Gentlemen who represented and were part owners of the cargo and of the Negroes on board who were slaves belonging to said Spanish Gentlemen. . ." while on said voyage from Havana to Principe the said slaves rose upon the captain and crew of said schooner and killed and murdered the captain and one of said crew and two more of said crew escaped and got away from said schooner. . ." Abolitionists seized upon the case as a vehicle to publicly display the cruelties of slavery and the slave trade. The freedom of the Africans became entangled in the conflicting claims of the Spaniards who had brought the "human cargo" and the Americans who had salvaged the ship. The case captured national and international attention as it made its way through the lower courts to the US Supreme Court, where the cause of prisoners was argued by former US President John Quincy Adams. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that all of the Africans were legally free--that they had never been slaves because the African slave trade was illegal and that they should be released and allowed to return to Africa. The Court also affirmed that ". . . it was the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice." Three years after they were kidnapped, in January 1842, the 35 surviving Africans finally returned to their homeland where they established a mission colony which formed the basis for the eventual independence of Sierra Leone from Great Britain.

And this was all because of the demands of European consumers for New World crops and goods helped fuel the slave trade. Following a triangular route between Africa, the Caribbean and North America, and Europe, slave traders from Holland, Portugal, France, and England delivered Africans in exchange for products such as colonial rum, sugar, and tobacco. Eventually the trading route also distributed Virginia tobacco, New England rum and indigo and rice crops from South Carolina and Georgia. A strong family and community life helped sustain African Americans in slavery. People often chose their own partners, lived under the same roof, raised children together, and protected each other. Brutal treatment at the hands of slaveholders, however, threatened black family life. Enslaved women experienced sexual exploitation at the hands of slaveholders and overseers. Bonds people lived with the constant fear of being sold away from their loved ones, with no chance of reunion. Historians estimate that most bonds people were sold at least