Amistad Mutiny Case

The Amistad Mutiny was a successful slave uprising led by captured African Joseph Cinqué (1814-1879) on the Spanish vessel, La Amistad, in 1839 off the Cuban coast. Following the revolt the ship was seized off the coast of New York and the Africans on board became the centre of the American national discussion on slavery, and the focus of competing claims on the vessel and their persons. A series of court cases followed, pitting President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) administration against northern abolitionists, Spanish claims on the Amistad vessel, declarations of ownership by Cuban plantation owners, and Naval salvage rights. The Amistad affair gained national attention, highlighting the barbaric nature of the slave trade. Ultimately the American Supreme Court ruled in favour of the kidnapped and enslaved individuals, allowing many of the survivors to return to Africa. In 1839 Portuguese and Spanish slavers, in violation of anti-slavery laws, kidnapped over fifty West Africans near Sierra Leone and smuggled them onboard Portuguese ships as cargo into Havana and re-register them as legitimate Cuban Slaves. In this manner the Amistad

v. The Amistad (1841), led by Adams, became a debate regarding the nature and limits of property and human rights, and the contradiction between natural laws highlighted in the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the rights of foreign nations and property owners in America. On March 9, 1841, Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) rendered the court 's decision against the federal government, stating that Pinckney 's Treaty did not apply as the Spanish slave trade was illegal according to the Anglo-Spanish Treaty (1817), and that the Amistad captives were kidnapped persons and therefore not slaves. Hence, they were free on the basis of their natural rights, and could not be sent back to Cuba. In 1842 the remaining thirty-five survivors from the Amistad chartered the ship Gentleman and returned to