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Compare And Contrast Amistad

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In 1997, Amistad was filmed. My abstract (Internet) is going to be the compare and the contrast over two credible sources over Amistad the movie and others opinions. Amistad‘s situations go deeper than such anachronisms as President Martin Van Buren campaigning for reelection on a whistle-stop train tour. In 1840, candidates did not campaign or people constantly talking about the coming Civil War, which lay twenty years in the future. Despite the producer’s orgy of self-congratulation for rescuing black heroes from oblivion, the main characters of Amistad are white, not black. In fact, Amistad case revolved around the Atlantic slave trade — by 1840 outlawed by international treaty — and had nothing whatever to do with slavery as …show more content…

This situation violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were sold by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, murdered the captain and the cook, and ordered the sailors to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839, Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters were released and the Africans were incarcerated in New Haven, CT on charges of murder. ("The Amistad Case | National Archives." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. …show more content…

The two Spaniards who had enslaved the Africans were freed by the Americans, and the slaves were put in jail. President Martin Van Buren along with many newspaper editors, favored extraditing the Africans to Cuba. But abolitionists and other northern sympathizers won an American trial for them.
At a hearing in Hartford, the federal district court judge ruled that the Africans were not responsible for their actions because, they had been slaved the incorrect way. The case got pushed to the Supreme Court, where president John Quincy Adams, defending the Africans, argued that they should be reunited with their freedom. The Court agreed stated that since the International slave trade was illegal, person escaping should be recognized as free under the American law. (History.com Staff. "Amistad Case." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.)
The White House position in this situation was weak. Officials refused to question the validity of the certificates of ownership, which had assigned Spanish names to each of the captives even though none of them spoke that language. Presidential spokesmen stated that the captives had been slaves in Cuba, despite the fact that the international slave trade had been banned 20 years earlier and the children were no more than nine years old and spoke an African

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The trial ended with two of the three judges ruling in favor of Mrs. Emerson and John Sanford. This ruling overruled a previous precedent which was that the court usually ruled in favor of the slave when they had been moved from a free state to a slave state. This precedent was overruled because they ruled in the owner’s favor instead of the slave’s.

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The captives certainly did not know where they were sailing to or what they would face when they arrived. The language their takers spoke was different. The Africans aboard the ship with them were from different regions and tribes, so they did not speak the same languages either. Wood reveals these horrors by stating, “Their current location, future destination, and ultimate fate a mystery” (41). Wood tells how attempts at uprisings were essentially suicidal, so most slaves relied solely on their faith in hopes of being saved from their horrific

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When Esperanza and Estevan came to America they did NOT get the freedom they were hoping

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Each of the trails were staged with insubstantial evidence that any objective jury would be able to see. However, this was not the case in a culture where African Americans have been associated with many negative characteristics. The cases also seem similar to what happen to many freed slaves, when vagrant laws were passed. If African Americas were without any type of work, they were arrested and given a fine. When they were unable to pay, a benevolent white man would come to the rescue and in turn would only ask to repay the debt, a debt that would increase and would make them slaves again.

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The African were kidnapped from their native tribes in Africa. Once kidnapped they were taken to Cuba and sold to the buyers. The buyers were Montez and Ruis. After they paid for them, the Africans were considered their property.

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There was a decisive split between the delegates to decide whether or not the trade of slave should still be allowed and instituted in this nation. Many of the delegates were slaveholders; however, there were also delegates that greatly opposed the idea. The defendants argued that the slaves were “vital to their states’ economies” because of the labor intensive cash crops their lands were in abundance of. On the other hand, the delegates that opposed slavery declared that the delivery of so much slaves into the nation “would bring forth the judgment of Heaven on the country” and that it was unrighteous. The Congress could not prohibit the trade but it ended up lifting the taxes on all imported Africans.

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The African slave trade was very harsh for many reasons. This is because the idea of capture/sale was inhumane, blacks were kept in cages, conditions of ships were horrible, and one out of every three blacks died on the way over. By 1800, ten to fifteen million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas; while in Africa, fifty million human beings lives' were lost to death and slavery in those years. Blacks were easier to enslave than whites and Indians, but still were trouble to keep under thumb. These Afro-Americans rebelled by often running away and attempt to find family or sabotaging their work.

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Proposals were been made to Great Britain and Portugal, asking to admit freed African Americans into their colonies, but these request were rejected. In order to meet the operating expenses of the Society, funds came mainly from the sale of slaves who had been seized and confiscated by the government in illicit slave trade, and from funds donated by the state branches. By a congressional act in 1819, the President of the United States authorized to return any Africans captured on an American or foreign ship that was attempting to bring them into the

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Therefore, freeing the slaves was not important. All men aren’t created equally as shown in these times. The belief that slavery was wrong, was not strong enough for the the Constitution to overcome. Mr. Freehling said, “The only way Africans could be free was if they were sent back to Africa”.

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In Africa, men, women, and children were being kidnapped and sold. Once abducted from their home, Europeans would make their way back to the port to transport the slaves to the New World. Most of the time salves never knew where they would end up. Before Africans would be transported, each slave would be branded on the chest and this was a way to claim a slave for when they tried to escape (Hylton). Once boarded on a ship

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1771 Words | 8 Pages

In fact, there are records that say African voyages were made long ago before slavery even started in America. We are led to believe that Christopher Columbus came to voyage America before Africans did but there was a voyage long before Christopher Columbus. Africans were brought to the west by Americans to cultivate things like sugar and cotton; they got this idea from Muslims who had black slaves in places like Egypt and Southern Iraq who were cultivating the same thing. The type of slavery that existed in the west was much harsher. Millions of slaves were brought to the west and about 60% of them did not survive.

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Kidnapped and transported illegally, they never been slaves... the opinion in this case more narrowly asserted the Africans right to resist 'unlawful' slavery. The court ordered the immediate." This shows that the Amistad was one of many slave vessels that abused and illegally taken their slaves, the Amistad case was one that moved towards allowing for Africans to resist. This proves that the reform movements allowed for slaves to be seen as

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760 Words | 4 Pages

One of the reasons is that it is very expensive and troublesome to transport a huge number of slaves across the ocean. People were treated horribly, but in those days such actions were not crimes. Even if we consider them as crimes, they can not be regarded as

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