The Captives of the Amistad/Section 1

The Captives of the Amistad. By Simeon E. Baldwin. &#91;Read May 17, 1886&#93;. The most famous case ever tried in Connecticut was that of the Amistad. None ever awakened a wider interest or a deeper feeling. There is something dramatic in the story of every law-suit; but here was a tragedy of the loftiest character, an issue to which great governments were parties. It had a large political importance, and in reviewing our history for a quarter of a century that followed its decision, I think we may fairly deem it one of the first guide-posts that pointed the way to the yet unopened grave of slavery in the United States. Our late associate, Mr. John W. Barber, published in pamphlet form in 1840, a brief account of the earlier stages of the affair, and Henry Wilson in his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, devotes a chapter to the case; but it seems worthy of a fuller record, in which both its legal and its political features can be described with greater precision and completeness.

In the Spring of 1839, a number of Africans living near the west coast, were kidnapped by some of their own countrymen, acting as the agents of Spanish slave-traders, and placed in a barracoon, at a place called Dumbomo. From thence, a Portuguese slaver, the Teçora, took them to Havana, where in a few days there were sold in two lots to a couple of Cubans, Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez. Ruiz was the largest purchaser, taking 49 of them at $450 apiece.

At this time the slave trade was no longer lawful in Spain. The law of nations did not forbid it, but in 1817, Great Britain, by a payment of £400,000, obtained the ratification of a treaty with that power, by which it was to be abolished throughout the Spanish dominions in 1820. A royal decree was promulgated to carry this stipulation into effect, but it remained practically a dead letter in her American colonies.

The chief of these Mendi captives, was Cinquè, otherwise called Cinquez, Jinqua, or Sinqua, a tall and stalwart African of commanding presence and determined spirit. A little schooner of about sixty tons was chartered to take them, with an assorted cargo of merchandise, to Guanaja, another Cuban port, and Ruiz and Montez sailed from Havana on June 28, 1839. The vessel’s papers described the negroes as ladinos, a term meaning those who had acquired a foreign language, but commonly used to designate slaves imported before 1820; and to give this more color, Spanish names were also assigned to each, at random. This was done by collusion between the authorities and the slave traders, who usually paid the Governor at Havana hush-money at the rate of $15 a head, for each slave landed at the port.

The Africans had been brought over on the Teçora in irons, but it was thought unnecessary to chain them down on this short coasting voyage. Their supply of provisions and water was scant, and two who went to the water-cask without leave were whipped for it. One of them asked the cook where they were being taken, and received for answer that they were going to be killed and then eaten. This ill-timed mockery was taken for earnest, and was the last incitement needed to rouse the captives to strike for liberty. During the second night out, they rose under the lead of Cinquè. Several of them had armed themselves with knives, of the kind used to cut the sugar-cane. The captain of the schooner was attacked, killed his first assailant, and then fell himself by a stroke from Cinquè’s knife. The cook paid for his pleasantry with his life, also at Cinquè’s hand. Montez was severely wounded. The cabin-boy, a mulatto slave of the captain, named Antonio, and Ruiz, were secured and bound. The rest of the crew escaped in one of the boats.

It was a sharp and sudden struggle. Mr. Barber made it the subject of one of his quaint wood-cuts, as a frontispiece to his history of the Amistad Captives already noticed, and Mr. Hewins, a Boston artist, painted a large picture of the scene, which is now deposited in this building, the property of our associate, Mr. Wm. B. Goodyear.

The cane-knife, of which the negroes made use, is a formidable weapon, and does its work something after the fashion of a hatchet or short bill-hook. The handle is a square bar of steel an inch thick, and the blade, which is some two feet long, widens regularly out to a breadth of three inches at the end. In the grasp of a strong arm like that of Cinquè, it is as sure and deadly as the guillotine.

It was his design, if the rising were successful, to attempt the voyage back to their native country, of which they only knew that it was “three moons” distant and lay toward the east. One of the negroes could speak a little Arabic, and another a few words of English. By signs and threats they made Ruiz and Montez take the wheel by turns, and steer to the eastward. By day, they kept this direction, but as soon as the tell-tale sun had set, they would bring the vessel gradually about and head for the north. Two months of these zig-zag courses brought the little schooner at last to a shore far from that which the Africans hoped to see.

On Sunday, August 25th, they cast anchor off what proved to be the northern coast of Long Island, not far from Montauk Point.

A reconnoitering party came ashore, some with nothing on but a handkerchief twisted around their loins, and others with blankets thrown over their shoulders. They went to the neighboring houses for water and provisions, and paid for what they got in Spanish gold, buying among other things a couple of dogs for a doubloon apiece.

The schooner had been sailing about the entrance to the Sound in an aimless way for two or three days before the landing, and the newspapers had mentioned it as a suspicious craft. On Monday, while some of the negroes were cooking on the beach and others lying down in the long grass, a party of the neighboring inhabitants drove up to find out who they were.

Banna, the new one who knew a few English words, tried to communicate with them. His first inquiry, I regret to say, was “Have you rum?” and the first information he volunteered was they had money, some of which was promptly accepted by their visitors in exchange for a bottle of gin. Cinquè who was at the time on board the schooner, was now sent for, and as soon as he was rowed over, he told Banna to ask whether this country made slaves. The reply was, “No. This a free country.” “Are there any Spaniards here?” was the next question. Again they said, “No,” and at this Cinquè whistled and all his followers sprang up and gave a shout of joy. The white men were frightened and ran to their wagons for their guns, but the blacks soon showed that they had no hostile intent, by shaking hands and presenting them with their own guns, of which they had two, a knife, a hat and a handkerchief. They asked one of their visitors, a Capt. Green, who was a sea-faring man, if he would not come on board and steer them to Sierra Leone, and he gave them some encouragement to think that he would do so the next day.

It so happened that a coast-survey brig, the Washington, was in that part of the Sound on this afternoon, and her commander, from the appearance of the Amistad as she passed her, thought the vessel was on shore, or in distress. A boat’s crew was sent to her assistance, and found only negroes on deck, armed with cane-knives. The boarding officer climbed into the rigging and ordered them below at the point of a pistol. They obeyed, and Montez and Ruiz were sent up on deck, who at once claimed protection. Cinquè with the two dogs sprang into the water and made for shore, but was pursued, retaken, and hand-cuffed. Those of the negroes who were on the beach, after a shot fired over their heads, and a display of cutlasses, were captured without resistance by an officer of the brig, falling on their knees for protection around the men on the island who had told them this was a free country.

When Cinquè was taken back, a captive, to the deck of the Amistad, the other negroes gathered about him, and he made an address which moved them very deeply. Antonio, the cabin-boy, understood enough of the words to give a summary of the speech in Spanish to a newspaper editor in New London, who translated it, very likely with some additions, in English, as follows:

“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, everyday. 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 men.”

It was thought prudent to handcuff Cinquè and keep him on the Washington over night, but the next day he made signs to his guards that if taken back to the Amistad he could show them where there was a handkerchief full of doubloons. He was promptly rowed over to the schooner, and as the negroes gathered around him with joyful greetings, he again addressed them with great earnestness and passion, until at last they all seemed on the point of rising on their captors, and he was hurried away at a sign from Antonio.

The second speech, as Antonio and the New London editor gave it to the newspapers, ran thus:

“My brothers. I am once more among you, having deceived the enemy of our race by saying that I had doubloons. I come 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 men now on board (and I will help you), make the people here kill you. It is better for you to die thus, and then you will not only avert bondage yourselves, but prevent the entailment of unnumbered wrongs on your children. Come: Come with me, then!”

But here, as I have said, he was seized and overpowered.

The Africans now numbered only 44, three of whom were young girls. During their two months voyage ten had died, and one more expired on the night of the capture.

The Washington took her prize across the Sound into New London harbor, and dispatched a messenger to New Haven to inform the United States Marshal of what had occurred. Norris Wilcox was then the Marshal, and on August 29th, Judge Judson, then the District Judge, and he were on board the cutter, to hold a Court of Inquiry. The District Attorney was Mr. Holabird of Winsted, and Judge Charles A. Ingersoll of this city, who appeared in his behalf, filed an information charging Cinquè, under his pretended name of Joseph, and 38 others, with the crime of murder and piracy. The court deemed the evidence sufficient to justify the proceeding, and they were all committed to jail to stand their trial at the next Circuit Court to be held at Hartford on September 17th. The cabin-boy, Antonio, and the three girls were also held as witnesses, and sent to jail with the others, for want of bonds.

Lieutenants Gedney and Mead, of the Washington, had also brought a suit in admiralty against the Amistad and her cargo, and “fifty-four slaves,” claiming to have rescued them for the benefit of their owners, and asking for salvage in behalf of themselves and their crew. The trial of this suit was set down for Sept. 19th, in the District Court, and Ruiz and Montez went on to New York to see the Spanish Consul, after publishing a card in the newspapers, thanking the offices of the cutter for their “rescue from the hands of a ruthless gang of African buccaniers.”

Cinquè was sent in irons to New Haven on another government vessel, and the rest of the captives were taken over in a coasting schooner, arriving here on Sunday, September 1st. The whole forty-four were crowded into four apartments in our county jail, then standing on the site of our present city Hall.

Banna was the only one of the prisoners who knew an English word, and he was master of so few that they were substantially shut out from the possibility of communicating with the outside world. Their side of their story was untold. But the very helplessness of these unfortunate people was the best assurance of defense in a community like ours. The “irrepressible conflict” between Freedom and Slavery was already drawing on. Here, on the soil of a free State, were a band of men in confinement on a charge of murder, because, when kidnapped against law, on a Spanish vessel, they had risked life for liberty, knowing, untaught, that

"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."