The circuit court decision of September had left the Amistad captives with an amorphous status similar to that held by many free blacks in the United States: they were neither slave nor free. Thompson’s ruling was the proper one. He could not have freed the blacks on grounds of natural rights, for that would have negated all law. The blacks’ attorneys had raised serious doubt about the Spaniards’ property claims, and yet prejudices based on race and color had combined with the Van Buren administration’s political aspirations to confuse matters. The abolitionists intended to focus on several issues, all touching the central racial problems in the United States, Did free blacks have citizenship? Were slaves simply property, devoid of rights? Did American courts have jurisdiction over the case? Can one claim salvage on human beings? In raising these questions, the abolitionists stirred arguments that further complicated an already complex situation. Now, in admiralty proceedings in Hartford, they prepared for the second phase of a sustained battle in America’s courts.
For several reasons the approaching district court trial did not promise much for the Amistad Committee and the rest of the abolitionists. First and foremost, the law was not on their side. No matter how hard they had tried to convince the public that American law was sharply out of line with natural rights, they had not been successful. Second, a long history of racial prejudice in the United States would become increasingly evident as the Amistad case progressed through the legal system. A third consideration was custom and tradition. Slavery had existed in North America since the seventeenth century and was sanctioned by the United States Constitution. The abolitionists found it no easy task to persuade Americans that slavery was suddenly immoral and unchristian. Fourth, political realities did not allow the blacks to go free. And fifth, the White House had to be careful not to prove Spanish violations of their anti-slave-trade treaties and thus provide the British with an excuse to intervene in Cuba. These points help explain why the abolitionists were particularly concerned about the district court trial.
But there was another ingredient: the presiding judge in the trial would be Andrew T. Judson, who had earned a reputation for being racially prejudiced while professing to oppose slavery. In a court case a few years earlier in Connecticut, he had led the opposition to Prudence Crandall, a young white woman who had opened a girls’ academy in the rural village of Canterbury and soon admitted only blacks, most of whom came from outside the community. During the ensuing two-year struggle, Judson, a town selectman who lived in a new house adjacent to the school, warned that the teacher intended to promote an amalgamation of the races. Judson became famous overnight—in no small measure because William Lloyd Garrison wrote a story in the Boston Liberator entitled “Heathenism Outdone,” in which he included Judson’s name in bold black letters in a list of the five townspeople who led the movement against Crandall.1 Many observers believed that Judson had received his appointment as district judge because of his role in the Crandall affair.2 In the longer term, the Crandall case probably furthered the abolitionists’ cause by showing the inseparability of racism, slavery, and civil rights.3 But in 1839 the abolitionists were more concerned about the immediate problem of Judson’s impact on the Amistad affair.4 Lewis Tappan shuddered at the prospect that someone who had taken such a stand during the Crandall espisode was now in the position of authority in the Amistad case.5
It was a matter of public record that Judson, an officer and lifetime member of the American Colonization Society, a Jacksonian Democrat, a former congressman, and now district judge, had presided over the town proceedings that eventually led to the collapse of Crandall’s school. Addressing Canterbury’s townspeople at one point in the controversy, he had warned that the school would become “an auxiliary in the work of immediate abolition” and that once this door was open New England would become “the Liberia of America.” According to a town resolution, the school was a “theater” for Crandall to “promulgate” the “disgusting doctrines of amalgamation.” A committee of ten circulated a petition denouncing “the evil consequences of bringing from other States and other towns, people of color for any purpose, and more especially for the purpose of disseminating the principles and doctrines opposed to the benevolent colonizing system.” Under great pressure, the state assembly passed the “Connecticut Black Law” in May 1833, by which black people not living in the city were barred from private schools without the permission of town leaders and which provided for the expulsion of those already there.6
Crandall was arrested. Her defense counsel, financed by Lewis and Arthur Tappan, included William W. Ellsworth, now one of the attorneys in the district court trial in Hartford. Counsel for the state included Judson and two others.
Before the jury Judson explained that he saw no problem in having blacks attend district schools, for he did not oppose education for blacks, and he certainly did not support slavery. But he then presented an argument that infuriated abolitionists. The Constitution condoned slavery, Judson declared, and each state had the right to decide whether it wanted the institution. Therefore, all antislavery groups were Garrisonians because they were resisting the Constitution and calling for dissolution of the Union. Judson solemnly warned that the abolitionists’ purpose in supporting education for blacks was to prepare them to instigate slave insurrections in the South. And finally, he argued that slavery was not an issue in the North. The United States is “a nation of white men” Judson told the jury, “and every American should indulge that pride and honor, which is falsely called prejudice, and teach it to his children. Nothing else will preserve the American name, or the American character. Who of you would like to see the glory of this nation stripped away, and given to another race of men?” He concluded with a warning: “The professed object is to educate the blacks, but the real object is to make the people yield their assent by degrees, to this universal amalgamation of the two races, and have the African race placed on the footing of perfect equality with the Americans.”7
Besides Judson’s role in it, the Crandall episode was also germane to the Amistad case because it focused on the question of whether free blacks were citizens of the United States. Crandall’s attorneys had contended that the state law of 1833 was a violation of the Constitution’s assurance to citizens of one state that they had the same rights in other states as citizens in those states. Thus, counsel continued, Article IV, Section 2, of the Constitution protected Crandall’s pupils by guaranteeing “citizens of each state . . . all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” But Judson insisted that “colored persons” were not citizens, although he refused to define what their status was. He argued that blacks brought into the country could not be naturalized and could never enjoy a citizen’s privileges and immunities; but he did not deal with the concomitant question of the position of blacks born in the United States. Abolitionists insisted that privileges and immunities related to natural rights and that government’s major purpose was to guarantee these rights.8 Ellsworth poignantly observed that for Judson the “criterion of citizenship” was “complexion”; for Ellsworth it was “birth and naturalization.” According to one of Ellsworth’s associates, the term citizen is “under a republican government, what the term subject is under a monarchy; it embraces high and low—rich and poor—male and female—white and colored—a general term which includes the whole republican family.” The American Revolution changed subjects of Great Britain into citizens of the United States. All persons were citizens by nature of the new republican nation, he insisted. The Declaration of Independence made no distinctions based on color.9
Crandall’s defense had presented an eloquent argument, clearly ahead of its time, but the court refused to deal with the constitutional question of citizenship, preferring to pass it on to others. Her counsel then appealed the case on the grounds that free blacks were American citizens and that the law of 1833 was discriminatory and not in line with the United States Constitution. Crandall was twice tried and convicted before the state’s supreme court of errors reversed the decisions on a technicality relating to information presented in the trial.10
The Crandall case brought attention to a key issue that remained unsettled until ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment following the Civil War: whether free blacks were citizens. The definition of citizenship during the antebellum period was unclear, although there was general agreement that it rested on reciprocal responsibilities of protection and obedience between state and individual. The problem was that no one had clarified how one secured citizenship, nor had anyone defined a citizen. In the United States the matter had become especially complex because under the system of federalism the same person might be a citizen both of the nation and of the state. But citizenship at one level did not automatically confer citizenship at the other. And it was unclear what rights a person might enjoy at either level if he claimed citizenship at one or both. Abolitionists nonetheless argued that either citizenship in a state carried with it citizenship of the nation or it meant that the same rights claimed in one state earned the same rights in any other state. Their point was that blacks were citizens and could not be victims of racial discrimination in any state in the Union. Not surprisingly, the Connecticut court of errors left this matter unsettled.11
The abolitionists’ anxiety over Judson and the location of the trial was understandable, for in many ways the state of Connecticut was similar to the South in racial attitudes on the eve of the Amis- tad affair. Although people in the state opposed slavery and did not favor its spread into western territories, this did not mean that they welcomed blacks.12 Indeed, of the New England states, Connecticut was perhaps the most hostile to the abolitionists.13 Separatism prevailed in the public schools, and in 1830 an antislavery advocate encountered a rock-throwing audience in one of the towns and had to be hustled from the area by the constables.14
Moreover, antiblack sentiment in Connecticut had not diminished by the time of the Amistad affair. Hartford itself had recently been the scene of a race riot. By the late 1830s a pattern seemed to have developed in Connecticut: residents of the state preferred the status quo on racial matters. While not calling for more limitations on blacks, they were not seeking more rights either.15
A great interest had developed in the Hartford community as Judge Judson convened district court proceedings at 10:00 A. M. on November 19. Both Ruiz and Montes were absent, the former still in the New York jail, the latter en route to Cuba. Seven of the Africans had been brought in from New Haven the evening before, and on the morning of the trial several antislavery men arrived from New York—among them Dr. Richard R. Madden, a staunch British abolitionist who had been on the Anglo-Spanish mixed commission to halt the slave trade to Cuba and who was now leaving his position on the island as superintendent of liberated Africans. After hearing of the Amistad trial, Madden had offered to testify about slave conditions in Cuba and to examine the African captives to determine whether they were slaves or native Africans. Excitement had grown about two weeks earlier when news spread that en route to England he intended to meet with Tappan in New York and visit the blacks in New Haven.16 Madden appeared to be a potential key witness of the blacks’ defense counsel. The atmosphere seemed conducive to an epoch-making battle over slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of man.
Judson doubtless realized that the abolitionists intended to bring these controversial matters before the court. He probably also had searched for an escape from his precarious position, for he knew what the Van Buren administration in Washington wanted—he was, after all, a loyal Jacksonian Democrat—but he also was aware of popular sympathy for the Amistad captives. Furthermore, Judson realized that his decision would be subject to review by the circuit court and perhaps by the United States Supreme Court. An ambitious man’s career could be hurt by a higher court’s reversal. Politically, socially, and legally, Judson had to walk a narrow line that would award something to all parties and at the same time allow him to escape blame for the outcome, whatever that was.
The abolitionists had one last legal procedure designed to prevent the case from coming to trial. Roger S. Baldwin made a plea in abatement, which, as in the circuit court proceedings, called for dismissal of the case on jurisdictional grounds. Lieutenant Gedney, Baldwin argued, had seized the blacks in New York and had illegally taken them to Connecticut. Since New York was a free state, the blacks had become free upon reaching its shores, making Gedney’s action a wrongful attempt to reduce them to slavery. Salvage claims were unjustified, and no Connecticut court had jurisdiction over the blacks; they had never been slaves and should go free. No trial should take place before Judson and the district court. The blacks were entitled to trial by jury in New York.17
Baldwin’s attempt to bring an end to court proceedings led to a long exchange with General Isham, acting in behalf of Gedney and Meade. Isham declared that Baldwin should handle his defense and stop interfering with questions relating to salvage: Gedney and Meade had a right to salvage for saving property. Baldwin thought this claim “most extraordinary.” The blacks were included in the libel as property, and the libelants appeared in court to seek salvage on the basis that the blacks were property; and yet the blacks were not allowed to make a denial in court. What was the consequence? If the court determined that the blacks were not property, they had to go free. No one could argue that they had committed a crime in winning liberty. Should the court prohibit the blacks’ appearance, it would violate their personal rights by denying them a chance to show that they were not property. The court had to permit them to explain the “injustice and cruelty” of their arrest. Otherwise the blacks would have no redress. The entire proceeding against them rested on Gedney’s libel. If the court would not allow a plea in abatement, the proceeding could not legally go on.18
After considerable discussion, Judson permitted counsel to argue, the issue of a plea in abatement, but curiously he warned the attorneys against inquiring into the merits of the question. The potential conflict between property claims and rights of liberty was not the issue at this time, he insisted; the only point the parties could discuss was the schooner’s location when it had been seized. If Gedney had acted wrongfully in New York, as Baldwin claimed, the judge would have to dismiss the case. If Gedney had acted on the open seas, the case was before the proper court. Judson noted that he had arranged a firsthand investigation of the matter in October and that the participants’ information was available.19
Testimony on the Amistaďs location dominated the afternoon proceedings of November 19. The two principal issues were the vessel’s location when Gedney seized it and the number of blacks on shore at the time. The defense argued that Gedney should have taken them to the nearest admiralty court—which would have been in the free state of New York. Without making the allegation explicit, Baldwin implied that Gedney had known that chances for salvage on the blacks would have been minimal in New York.20
The abolitionists intended to undercut all the libelants’ claims to salvage and hoped that out of the competing arguments the exact location of the Amistad might become clear. One group of claimants, led by Henry Green, sought salvage on the basis of an argument that worked to the abolitionists’ advantage: that the schooner and most of its occupants had been inside New York’s territorial jurisdiction when discovered. If the court awarded salvage to Green and associates, the abolitionists could argue with considerable force that Gedney had acted illegally in taking the vessel and cargo from the state. The other group, led by Gedney, declared that the Amistad and most of the blacks were on the high seas and that he and his officers had acted acceptably in proceeding to Connecticut. If the court had awarded salvage rights, Baldwin recognized, it would have tacitly approved the right of a person to move slaves from a free state in order to seek a trial in a more favorable setting. Such a decision would have had an impact on one of the major controversies on the eve of the Civil War: whether hunters of fugitive slaves could claim the same right upon capturing their prey. The abolitionists did not raise this matter in Hartford, but they had grasped the immediate importance of the salvage question: John Quincy Adams had that very day emphasized to Ellis Gray Loring that all succeeding questions hinged on it.21 Although Judson had prohibited discussion of matters touching upon the merits of the case, the allowance of salvage to Gedney would effectively reduce the abolitionists’ chances of winning the case.
Testimony by Green and his four friends made clear that in an effort to secure salvage rights to the Amistad and its cargo, they had been willing to resort to any measures to evade the American brig they knew was off Long Island. Intending to take the Amistad and its cargo to a prize court, Green had attempted to deceive the blacks into thinking that the American navy would return them to slavery and that their safest course was to accompany him. When Gedney approached the schooner, Green testified, it was less than five hundred feet from shore and at least twenty blacks were on the beach. Green and his companions already had the situation under control. Indeed, he and his associates had helped in the capture by detaining the blacks until Gedney’s men arrived on shore. Furthermore, at one time the blacks had a considerable amount of gold that was part of the present claim for salvage. Green swore that Burnah, who spoke a little English, was the black who had told him that four hundred doubloons were in the trunks and that plenty more were on the Amistad.22
If the abolitionists hoped that Green’s testimony would hold up in court, that hope began to disappear as his companions tried to confirm his story. One of them, Peletiah Fordham, drew an outburst of laughter in the crowded courtroom when he testified about the trunks brought ashore by the blacks. Cinqué, he explained, “lifted one trunk, and I heard the money rattle.” Showing less than mastery of the English language, Fordham asserted, “Me and another nigger lifted the other trunk, and then I heard some more money.” After the judge banged his gavel to restore order, Fordham, now thoroughly confused, further damaged his testimony by accidentally reversing his expression: “So we determined to have the vessel at all hazards—forcibly if we can, peaceably if we must.”23
The testimony of Green and his associates was instantly challenged by their rival salvage claimants. Gedney and Meade, both neatly and authoritatively dressed in naval uniforms that starkly contrasted with the drab apparel worn by Green and his companions, insisted that the Amistad had been at least a half mile from shore and that only eight or nine blacks had been ashore. They had acted legally because both the vessel and the majority of its occupants were on the high seas. The captain’s slave Antonio testified that he had been ashore at the time of capture and that only eight blacks had been there. After the seizure, five of them had been taken to the Washington in the Amistad's boat and three in the boat belonging to the American brig itself. The United States district attorney, William S. Holabird, introduced Burnah, who in broken English further discredited Green’s story. Moreover, Cinqué and five other blacks confirmed Burnah’s account. A newspaper correspondent at the trial claimed that the story of Gedney and Meade was “perfectly consistent” and that it was affirmed by those men who, upon Judson’s directive, had gone out in the cutter to determine the exact location of the Amistad.24
Perhaps sensing the unlikelihood of its having the case removed from Connecticut, the defense turned to its primary objective—to prove that the blacks were not slaves. Staples and Baldwin repeated the argument delivered before the circuit court the preceding September. The blacks were natives of Africa who had been born free but been kidnapped in Africa and put on a vessel “unlawfully engaged in the slave trade” by “certain persons to them unknown.” Both Spanish claimants, the attorneys insisted, were aware of the blacks’ status as free persons and were guilty of “confederating” with those illegally engaged in the slave trade and “intending to deprive them of their liberty.” Ruiz and Montes had each made a “pretended purchase” of the blacks on the Amistad from persons who had no right to them. The purchases were “null and void” and gave the claimants no title. Liberty was an ongoing process, the defense argued; anyone who denied it at any point in a man’s life was as guilty as the one who first interfered with that freedom. Ruiz and Montes had loaded the blacks onto the Amistad to be “enslaved for life.” Cinqué had led a mutiny motivated by “love of liberty natural to all men” and by a drive to go back home to families. He and the others had sought only to return to Africa or find asylum in some place where slavery was forbidden.25
The defense asserted that the blacks of the Amistad had accomplished their sole objective of securing liberty when they reached the free state of New York. Arriving at Culloden Point, they anchored less than a mile offshore and inside the state’s territorial waters. Cinqué and his friends were therefore subject only to New York’s laws and protection. But when a small number went ashore for provisions, they were “forcibly & unlawfully taken” at the command of Ruiz and Montes, whose only intention was to secure them as slaves. Gedney claimed salvage for what he termed a “meritorious act,” when in reality there was no danger and he had wrongfully taken the blacks from New York to Connecticut. They were free upon arrival in New York; they should go free now.26
After several hours of argument, Judson adjourned the proceedings until the following day. The defense had recognized that its case was not going well and that the blacks had no chance without testimony from their chief interpreter, James Covey. The black cook from the British vessel, then in New York, was born a Mende; after conversing with the captives in New Haven, he had concluded that they were all native Africans. But Covey had become too ill to travel to Hartford. Baldwin appealed for a postponement in the proceedings until Covey could testify. Judson appeared reluctant to grant the request until the libelants’ counsel, Isham and W. F. Brainard, explained that they were unable to remain in the city, because of prior engagements. Judson announced that district court proceedings would resume on January 7, 1840—in New Haven. In the meantime Judson agreed to take the testimony of Madden that afternoon at two in his chambers in the City Hotel.27
At first Judson’s decision to change the location of the trial seemed unusual—except that this perhaps suited his political purposes. Possibly he had discerned that public sympathy for the blacks’ liberty was stronger in New Haven than in Hartford. If Judson wished to remain popular in Connecticut, New Haven might be a better arena for any decision that bucked the administration in Washington.
Dr. Richard R. Madden’s testimony, it was assumed by Judson and others, would strongly support the blacks’ claim to freedom. In addition to providing a firsthand account of conditions in Cuba, Madden, by his mere presence, would suggest that the British government itself was on the side of those who sympathized with the Amistad captives. His interest in the case had grown from the moment he first heard of the mutiny. During his preparation in Havana for departure to England, he learned that the trial of the blacks for murder and piracy was about to begin. Confident that they were not Cuban slaves but bozales recently imported into the island and illegally held as slaves, he traveled a thousand miles out of his way to testify in their behalf. Some of his superiors had opposed this move, but he thought it his duty and believed that the secretary of state for the colonies would approve. He was correct. In a letter of January 1840, R. Vernon Smith of the British Colonial Office praised his zeal.28
To abolitionists in the United States, Madden’s background made him an ideal figure to give testimony in the case. In 1835 he had been appointed to safeguard freed Africans and to serve as arbitrator in the mixed-commission court in Havana. Established after Spain had agreed to terminate the slave trade between Africa and the West Indies in 1820, one court sat in British territory at Sierra Leone and the other in Spanish territory at Havana. Madden served as superintendent of liberated Africans in Cuba from 1836 to 1839. Shortly afterward he was appointed judge arbitrator in the court in Havana. When he first arrived in Havana, Madden recorded in his memoirs, that city was the capital of Spain’s colonies and the “chief commercial center” of the West Indies slave trade—“the extinction of which” was his mission. He fought virtually alone against Cuban slave traders, “then supported by the Spanish authorities.” All laws were openly violated, he noted: “Justice is bought and sold in Cuba with as much scandalous publicity as the Bozal slaves are bought and sold in the barricones.”29
Madden was a fervent foe of slavery. Only when he traveled, he continued in his memoirs, did he fathom the horror of slavery in Cuba. “I have already said,” he wrote, “and I repeat the words, so terrible were these atrocities, so murderous the system of slavery, so transcendent the evils I witnessed, over all I have ever heard or seen of the rigour of slavery elsewhere, that at first I could hardly believe the evidence of my senses.” While in Cuba, he wrote two poems describing the system. Madden’s exposure of the evils of slavery and the slave trade led to conflict with Spanish authorities that was comparable to the British consul David Turnbull’s experiences, discussed earlier. Turnbull claimed that no man could have been “more sincerely or more entirely devoted” to his duties than Madden. He was well known in the world of literature and noted for his “moral fitness” and “kindness to the African race.” For all the reasons Turnbull cited in praising Madden, Spanish officials joined slave-trading interests on the island in hating him. Spanish authorities demanded Madden’s recall, but Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston in London refused and instead expressed satisfaction with his work.30
Madden was already fairly well known in the United States before his arrival in early November 1839. During a previous visit, he had discussed the question of abolition with President Andrew Jackson. It had worked in the British West Indies, Madden told his seemingly interested host. He added, “The sooner, General, you adopt a similar measure in the United States the better. It would be a fitting finale of a great career like yours to connect it with such an act of emancipation." The president, standing before the fire in his study, broke out in laughter, turning to guests on both sides of the room and declaring, “This gentleman has just come from the West Indies, where the British have been emancipating their slaves. He recommends me to make myself famous by following their example.” To his private secretary, Jackson said, “Come here, . . . put the paper in the fire, bring in a barrel of gunpowder, and when I am placed on it give the red poker to the Doctor [Madden], and he will make me famous in the twinkling of an eye.”31
Madden had arrived with good credentials, according to abolitionists in the United States. In a letter to Tappan and other abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison introduced Madden and praised his work in Havana. Garrison also noted Madden’s literary attainments, including an “excellent work” on slavery in the West Indies. Several “abolition friends” had met him and were pleased. Madden was in the country, Garrison explained, “especially to do all that can be done to prevent the African prisoners of the Amistad being sent back to Cuba.” He hoped that the “friends of bleeding humanity” would receive Madden as an “angel of mercy.”32
The accolades heaped on Madden meant he would automatically be unpopular among anti-abolitionists and other Americans who hated trouble-making outsiders. Critics dismissed him as a hotheaded Irish abolitionist who had supported liberty for slaves in Jamaica and was so prejudiced that many of his reports contained errors favorable to his case. Had the American consul in Havana, Nicholas Trist, read Garrison’s letter, he would vehemently have disagreed with its praise. Madden, one might note, was among Trist’s most bitter critics during the unsettled controversy over whether the consul participated in the island’s slave trade for personal profit. To Secretary of State Forsyth, Trist wrote that Madden had long been retained in Havana as a “supernumerary,” a “wretched mixture of the bigot and fanatic, blended with the worldly-minded man.” In a letter to a friend, Trist insisted that Madden was filled with “malice, envy and all uncharitableness.” He added, “Truth [was] not in him.” An anonymous correspondent of the abolitionist William Ellery Channing also attacked Madden, asserting that he was “either a zealot or a hypocrite”— but “more likely both.”33
The New York Commercial Advertiser noted that Madden was the sole passenger on the schooner Texas (the same vessel that had recently taken Montes back to Cuba) as it arrived in New York on November 5 from Havana. He joined Tappan, and the two men traveled to New Haven to visit the Amistad captives. Afterward Madden confirmed his willingness to testify before the district court in Hartford.34
In Judson’s chambers during the afternoon of November 20, the clerk recorded Madden’s testimony before the small group of interested parties in the Amistad case. After testifying, Madden asked the clerk for a copy to show his government. But when the clerk began the long process of copying, Judson interrupted and called it irregular to have copies of testimony made before he had decided the question of admissibility in court. Consequently, Madden made arrangements for a copy to come from his memoranda and the notes of a reporter. But then one of the daily papers of New York somehow secured and published what it called an abstract of Madden’s testimony. Since the abstract was a poor summation, Judson decreed it necessary to publish the entire testimony after all.35
Madden’s testimony caused considerable excitement because it upheld the abolitionists’ arguments that the Amistad blacks had been imported from Africa recently. The captives were not ladinos, or acclimated blacks brought to Cuba before 1820, and they were not creoles, or blacks born on the island. The Amistad blacks, Madden declared, were “bona fide Bozal Negroes quite newly imported from Africa.” Ruiz and Montes bought them in barracoons, or slave markets, which were fitted exclusively for receiving and selling hozales in the illicit slave trade. Ruiz made his purchase on the account of his uncle, Saturnio Carrias, who was a merchant in Puerto Príncipe and who intended the blacks “for sale at that place.” All of the blacks of the Amistad had come from Don Pedro Martinez, whose slaver had brought them from Africa. Martinez and Company, Madden noted, was one of the largest illegal slave traders in Havana—a “notorious house.”36
Madden was also convinced that both licenses for the transportation of the blacks, Montes’s dated June 22 and Ruiz’s June 26, 1839, were frauds. He had seen all of the blacks except the four children, and he had seen the two permits, or trespassos; the term ladino did not describe the captives in New Haven. Montes’s trespasso was “wholly inapplicable” because the African children were too young to have been acclimated and long settled on the island. Yet, Madden explained, all slave merchants had to do to acquire a trespasso was make an application and pay fees to island authorities. Applicants wishing to move bozales simply called them ladinos. Madden declared that neither the captain general nor his officers inspected the blacks, and no one had to take an oath. Such “fraud,” Madden emphasized, could not take place without the slave traders’ “connivance” and “collusion” with Cuban authorities, who in turn received a bounty on blacks imported from Africa.37
Madden noted that it was “generally reported and believed” in Havana that the Amistad blacks fitted the pattern of the slave trade on the island. A man named Riera ran a barracoon called la misericordia, or “mercy,” which Madden had recently visited with a person who was well acquainted with the slave market. The “factor,” or “major domo” of the master, told Madden that he knew the Amistaďs blacks and that a man from Puerto Príncipe had bought them there. The factor made the remark “Que lastima” (“What a pity). Surprised, Madden asked for an explanation. The factor thought that the blacks would be executed for murder and piracy in the United States and regretted the “loss of so many valuable Bozals.”38
Madden believed that he was qualified to make a judgment on the Amistad blacks. As a resident of Havana for over three years, he had served one year as British commissioner in the mixed court, which adjudicated cases of blacks captured in slave ships by Spanish and British cruisers. And as superintendent of liberated Africans, he had had under his charge many hundreds of bozales after their court emancipation. Madden had helped register them and was experienced in determining ages. In New Haven he spoke to one black in Arabic by reciting a Mohammedan form of prayer, and a man seated beside that black immediately answered in Arabic, “Allah akbar” (“God is great”), and gave an oriental salutation. Of the captives Madden saw, Cinqué and the others appeared to be less than twenty-six years of age. Among the adults, three seemed to be nineteen or younger, which meant that they, like the four children, were too young to have been imported into Cuba before the Anglo-Spanish treaty against, the slave trade went into effect in 1820.39
At the completion of the testimony, District Attorney Holabird cross-examined Madden, hoping to discredit his story. Were not lawful slaves of Cuba, when put up for sale, also placed in the barracoons? They were not, Madden answered emphatically. Lawful slaves were not generally for sale, and, in any case, the barracoons were “for Bozal negroes only” and were part of the illegal slave trade—a process begun in Africa. Was not the native language of Africans retained for a long time on certain plantations? Holabird asked. Madden thought that the reverse was true. It had been a “matter of astonishment” to him that blacks on the plantations so quickly dropped their languages for Spanish. This observation, he explained, came from his “very intimate knowledge” of the blacks’ condition—a knowledge derived from frequent visits to plantations and into the Cuban interior.40
Not only was Madden not discredited, but his other testimony reinforced his description of the illegality of Cuban practices. Spanish authorities, he said, never interfered with “illegally captured and illegally enslaved” blacks. In exchange, they received a $10 bounty, or impost per head, which was called a “voluntary contribution” but was in reality a tax with no legal sanction. Within the last three years, nearly twenty-five thousand slaves had wrongfully been introduced into Cuba. The mixed commission was virtually powerless because its jurisdiction did not extend into cases involving blacks who had already reached Cuban shores. The court could deal only with treaty violations brought before it by captors of slave ships. The captain general alone had jurisdiction over crimes in Spanish territory.41
Madden’s performance was impressive and convincing. Abolitionists rejoiced at the confirmation of every allegation they had made about the slave situation in Cuba.42 No longer could the Van Buren administration hope for an outcome that would hide the issues in the case by ridding the country of the blacks before they became a public concern. Their return to Cuba, Madden’s testimony made clear, doubtless meant certain death, for, as the Spanish minister in the United States warned Forsyth in early September 1839, slave dealers could not condone mutiny on the Amistad without inviting other slaves to rebel. Spanish authorities in Madrid and in Havana recognized that the justice rendered Cinqué and his companions would have to stand as an awesome example of the fate awaiting potential mutineers and insurrectionists.
Madden’s firsthand observations had exposed the inhumanity inherent in returning the Amistad captives to Cuba. And yet most Americans, charitable as they claimed to be, were not willing to make their country an asylum for black insurrectionists. Madden’s testimony had focused the issues involved in the Amistad mutiny. It was now up to the contestants on all sides of the questions to argue their cases before Judge Judson when district court reconvened on January 7, 1840.