The Captives of the Amistad/Section 4

The trial came on in this city and in the old court-room in this building on January 7, 1840, before Judge Judson.

Another name had by this time been added to those of the prisoners’ counsel—that of John Quincy Adams, still in vigorous old age, and a leading member of the House of Representatives. To most lawyers an admiralty case comes seldom, and when it comes, requires special study; but of all admiralty cases ever brought in America this probably presented points of the greatest intricacy and importance. Mr. Adams was first consulted in regard to it by Ellis Gray Loring, after the decision in the habeas corpus cases, on September 23, 1839, and on October 1st he writes in his diary that it “now absorbs a great part of my time, and all my good feelings.”

He did not appear at New Haven, nor was his presence needed to crowd the court-room. The public feeling had become more and more intense the longer the Africans were held in captivity. They had made friends for themselves by their intercourse with our citizens at the jail. Professor George E. Day, of our Theological Seminary, then an assistant instructor there, had been engaged to give them regular instruction, as well as some notions of the Christian religion, and he had found them apt scholars.

The trial lasted a week, and during the closing days of argument hundreds of spectators, in order to keep their seats, remained in the court-room during the entire noon recess, which lasted over two hours. The decision was that the officers of the Washington were entitled to salvage on the vessel and cargo, but not on the negroes, as, even if they were slaves, they had no value in Connecticut; that Green and the other ’long-shore-men had done nothing for which they could claim compensation; that Antonio was a born slave and must be returned to Cuba; that the other prisoners were freeborn and only kidnapped into slavery, and therefore free by the law of Spain itself; and that they should be delivered to the President of the United States, to be by him transported back to Africa, under a statute passed in 1819, applicable to slaves illegally imported into this country in violation of the Act of Congress of 1808, prohibiting slave-trade.

Rev. Mr. Ludlow, one of the local committee in charge of the interests of the Africans, hurried to the jail with the glad tidings that they were declared free, and were to be sent back to their own country. All but one rose with the utmost emotion and prostrated themselves at this feet in joy. One remained sitting, not understanding the Mendi language in which the decision had been made known, but as soon as a comrade, who knew a common language, told him the good news he was at once on the floor with the rest.

Judge Judson had been appointed to office by President Van Buren not long before the capture of the Amistad, and as a lawyer he had been best known as having brought the criminal proceedings against Prudence Crandall for setting up a boarding-school at Canterbury, his own town, for colored girls, at which she received pupils who did not reside in Connecticut. His decision was quite a disappointment to the Administration, which was not mitigated by the language in which it was expressed. “Cinquez and Grabeau,” read the opinion, “shall not sigh for Africa in vain. Bloody as may be their hands, they shall yet embrace their kindred.”

The ship-of-war which the Secretary of State had promised the Spanish minister had been dispatched to this port, under secret orders, the week before the court was to sit. It was the schooner Grampus, Lieut. Paine, and its commander was directed to report to the District Attorney immediately upon his arrival, “in order that he may receive the earliest information of the decision of the Court and advise with him as to the mode of carrying it into effect.” The memorandum from the State Department to the Navy Department, upon which the Grampus was sent out, read as follows: , January 2, 1840.

The vessel destined to convey the negroes of the Amistad to Cuba, to be ordered to anchor off the port of New Haven, Connecticut, as early as the 10th of January next, and be in readiness to receive said negroes from the Marshal of the United States, and proceed with them to Havana, under instructions to be hereafter transmitted.

Lieutenants Gedney and Mead to be ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed in the same vessel, for the purpose of affording their testimony in any proceedings that may be ordered by the authorities of Cuba in the matter.

These orders should be given with special instructions that they are not be communicated to any one.

The Grampus arrived in port while the argument was in progress, and bore a warrant signed by the President to the Marshal of the District, commanding him to deliver to Lieutenant Paine, and aid in conveying on board the vessel under his command, all the negroes late of the Spanish schooner Amistad in his custody, under process now pending before the Circuit Court. The court in question was not the Circuit but the District Court, and the District Attorney had to dispatch a special courier back to Washington to get a new warrant, as that sent on would, he wrote, be no justification if “the pretended friends of the negroes obtain a writ of habeas corpus.” The marshal also desired further instructions as to whether the warrant should be executed if the decision were in favor of the release of the prisoners, or if the decree should be appealed from. The messenger arrived at Washington on Sunday, and an immediate reply, marked Confidential, was sent back, with a new warrant in the proper form, and these significant instructions for the Marshal:

"With reference to the inquiry from the Marshal, to which you allude, I have to state, by direction of the President, that, if the decision of the court is such as is anticipated, the order of the President is to be carried into execution unless an appeal shall actually have been interposed. You are not to take it for granted that it will be interposed. And if, on the contrary, the decision of the court is different, you are to take out an appeal, and allow things to remain as they are until the appeal shall have been decided."

The Grampus was not the only ship in New Haven harbor, during those exciting days, under secret orders.. The members of the Amistad committee, or some of them, in connection with Nathaniel Jocelyn, a brother of Rev. S. S. Jocelyn of the committee, had another vessel here ready to receive the Africans, in case of an adverse decision, and run them off to some more friendly shore. Plans had been laid for their rescue from the jail, for this purpose, if necessary by force; but Judge Judson’s decision happily averted any occasion for attempts to resist the authority of the law.

An appeal was promptly taken by the Government to the Circuit Court, which in April, 1840, sustained the decision, and thereupon a final appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States.