In the period following the district court trial, the abolitionists’ distrust of the administration in Washington deepened as rumors spread that the president planned to interfere. Van Buren, according to his critics, was concerned only with the coming political campaign of 1840 and would resort to any measure to make sure the Amistad affair did not embarrass his chances for reelection. There were growing charges of executive pressure on judges, of collusion between the United States and Spain to return the blacks to Cuba, and of State Department tampering with documents relating to the case. The validity of the accusations remains questionable, but from a historical perspective, and certainly to those Americans directly involved in the matter, the events and suspicions often coincided, leaving a pattern of executive behavior that approached and sometimes crossed the bounds of legality.
Abolitionists were convinced that the executive office would interfere with the Amistad case, especially after Judson’s decision. Lewis Tappan believed that Van Buren had already done so by directing the United States district attorney to represent the Spanish minister. Seth Staples had heard of “no movements” concerning the blacks since his arrival in New York, but on the morning of his departure from New London he saw an American sloop of war in the harbor. Indeed, Staples had seen the Grampus, whose commander had been there to take the blacks to Cuba but had then received orders after the adverse court decision to resume slave-patrol duties off the west African coast. Moreover, a “gentleman” had told Staples that the president’s son, John Van Buren, had expressed “great dissatisfaction” with the district court decision in that the matter had a “great & important political bearing of which Judson had taken no notice.” John used “strong terms of disapprobation” in referring to Judson’s opinion.1
Suspicion would not abate. The Hartford Patriot and Democrat, a Whig paper, claimed that before the district court convened in New Haven, the president had sent a letter to the judge, urging him to transport the blacks in a government vessel to Havana, where they would be sold as slaves. It also claimed that the Grampus had orders to be on hand to receive them. Such a letter, according to the paper, was a “flagrant interference of the Executive with the Judiciary.” The New Haven Herald did not know whether the story was accurate, but it noted that the Grampus had been in the harbor on a “mysterious errand.” If the accusations were true, the paper remarked, this was executive interference with the judiciary that savored of Turkish democracy.2 Whether Van Buren sent a letter remains uncertain, but the presence of an American naval vessel in the dangerous, ice-laden waters off Connecticut, especially of one diverted from important duties in Africa, was proof of administration involvement. The New York Commercial Advertiser doubted the story, declaring that Van Buren was “too old a fox” to commit himself to that kind of venture.3 Yet it seemed reasonable to believe that Judson was under heavy indirect and possibly even direct pressure from the White House to render a politically favorable decision.
Months afterward, in June 1840, the New York Express fed the rumors of executive involvement in the case. Reports had circulated that despite Judson’s decision, the president intended to deliver the blacks to Spanish officials in Cuba. Evidence in “documents,” the paper charged without referring to any in particular, showed that Van Buren wanted to do this, even though it meant “certain death” for the blacks. The paper remarked that any man who would interfere with the course of justice was not fit for the presidency of a “free republic.”4
By late June the abolitionists had seen to it that the charges of presidential interference reached London. Before the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Reverend Cyrus P. Grosvenor of Massachusetts offered a resolution expressing “regret and astonishment” at his government’s action. The “interference of the National Executive” was promoting the oppression of the blacks by seeking to deliver them to “unjust claimants, and thus reducing them to absolute and perpetual slavery.” Grosvenor wanted the British government to “remonstrate with that of the United States” on the matter. Henry B. Stanton of New York City remarked before the convention that the British minister in the United States, Henry S. Fox, could be doing more in the case.5
Though the abolitionists wanted the British government to take an active role in the Amistad affair, this was not likely to occur. The case was not a subject for Anglo-American affairs; on the international front, it belonged to the United States and Spain. For this reason, the Amistad was not mentioned in either the diplomatic instructions of the Department of State or the dispatches from American ministers to England during the entire period. British interest in suppressing the slave trade, of course, could justify official statements of concern over how the outcome might affect the illegal traffic; but the case could not reach the diplomatic level unless something occurred that directly affected the relationship between the United States and England. Given the numerous existing problems between the Atlantic nations, neither wanted to see another one develop.6
And yet, Americans were concerned about British aims in Cuba. As Secretary of State Forsyth explained to the American charge in Madrid, Aaron Vail, the United States was interested in the island’s welfare. Trade, geographical proximity, slavery—these and other factors made Cuba increasingly important to American security, and made Forsyth worry about British “designs” on the island. Forsyth instructed Vail to use “tact and delicacy” in warning the Spanish government against providing “pretexts” for British actions in Cuba. Despite the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1817 prohibiting the African slave trade, the traffic went on “notorious and undisguised.” If England objected to the lack of enforcement of the treaty, Forsyth noted, it might make territorial claims on Cuba or try other means to gain influence. The United States, the secretary insisted, had a “fixed resolution” against British involvement in Cuba. He warned Vail not to put in writing any communications to the Spanish ministry on this matter, but to handle it through “informal and confidential conversations” with government officials. If Vail detected any Spanish willingness to give Cuba to the British or to any power, either temporarily or permanently, he was to warn Madrid that the United States would oppose such a move “at all hazard”—including a resort to “military and naval resources.” Forsyth wanted the Spanish government to avoid giving England any “real motive” for the “remotest pretense for interference” in Cuban affairs. Madrid should therefore adhere to a “scrupulous performance” of treaty obligations.7
Whether England would have intervened in Cuba because of the Amistad affair is a matter for speculation, but it appears that ministry officials seriously considered the possibility of placing some sort of diplomatic or naval pressure on Spain. The Times of London, which spoke for the British government, referred to the mutiny as “justifiable homicide” and argued that the blacks had become free upon entering Spanish territory. The slave-trade treaty, the paper complained, was “scandalously evaded, and not covertly, but clearly with knowledge and through connivance of the authorities, in the transatlantic dominions of Spain.” The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London exerted pressure on the government to intercede in behalf of the blacks. Madden informed the British minister Fox in Washington that Vega had argued that the Anglo-Spanish treaties against the slave trade contradicted the laws of the Indies sanctioning the traffic and were harmful to the Cuban people’s interests. The treaties with England, according to Vega’s interpretation, “were of no avail, & being of no effect they were invalid.”8
Fox reinforced growing suspicions in London by notifying Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston that the charges against Spanish officials were true. The Amistad blacks had been “illicitly imported” into Havana, and the Spaniards had held them “feloniously and piratically” in bondage on the schooner. Though they should be free in a “moral sense,” the case was complicated in the eyes of the law. Fox did not consider it “proper” or practical to interfere at this point, for he thought that public favor in the United States would bring their freedom. But if he detected a “design” on the part of the Van Buren administration to interfere with the judicial process, he would make a “formal protest” that such an act was a violation of the laws of Spain and of the Anglo- Spanish treaties against the slave trade. Palmerston agreed with Fox and directed him only to use his “good offices” in securing the blacks’ liberty. But Palmerston meanwhile instructed the British minister in Madrid to urge the Spanish government to order Cuban authorities to grant the blacks their “undeniable title” to liberty if the United States complied with the Spanish minister’s demands. Palmerston also wanted island officials to enforce the law against Ruiz and Montes for violating the slave-trade laws by buying newly imported blacks in Havana. Had Palmerston’s diplomatic efforts failed, he would have had the choice of either resorting to economic pressure or backing down. The latter alternative, of course, would have been out of the question. In a policy illustrating the influence of the abolitionists in England, Palmerston kept the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society informed of these actions.9
If Forsyth was correct in believing that the British might cite Spain’s failure to enforce the treaties as a pretext for intervention in Cuba, Palmerston had taken the first step in that direction. By the autumn of 1840, Britain had increased its requests that the government in Madrid prosecute Ruiz and Montes in Cuba. Indeed, parliamentary papers published that same year in England show that the government in London demanded the blacks’ freedom in the event that the American courts decreed their surrender to Spain.10 Had this public demand gone unanswered in Madrid and the blacks faced trial and probable execution, the British government, it seems likely, would have resorted to more-stringent measures—perhaps even a naval blockade.
Ironically, the Van Buren administration had contributed to this situation. British intervention in Cuba was more likely if the Supreme Court awarded the blacks to the Spanish minister for delivery to Cuba; if island authorities refused to free them or to arrange to execute them, public reaction in England might force its government to intervene. Had the White House accepted the district court decision and facilitated the blacks’ transportation to Africa, the action would have confirmed their status as free men and showed Spain’s violation of treaties, but their lives would have been spared and the threat of British intervention in Cuba would have markedly declined. The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court had kept alive the chances for British intervention.
During the spring Minister Argaiz in Washington resumed his protests. He had earlier called Judson’s decision a “scandalous resolution” not deserving comment. Only Spanish courts had jurisdiction in the Amistad case, he now argued, and Judson had not ruled on the basis of international law and precedents between Spain and the United States. Instead, he had decided on the basis of cargo. There was no treaty or convention between the nations that authorized inquiries into the nature of the blacks’ condition aboard. If they were bozales, the Spaniards broke Spanish law and were not subject to American law. The following month Argaiz referred to a report by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (cited earlier) in repeating his argument that vessels on a lawful voyage remained under their home government’s jurisdiction. John C. Calhoun’s resolution, unanimously approved by the Senate in mid-April, declared that a ship on the high seas, in peacetime and on a “lawful voyage,” was, by the law of nations, under the sole jurisdiction of its own country. If any uncontrollable factor forced the vessel into a foreign port, the resolution continued, it and all items aboard remained under the law of nations. This was part of the “principles of equity,” Argaiz observed.11
Forsyth soon responded that the president had not changed his position in regard to returning the schooner and its cargo to Spain. But the secretary of state reminded Argaiz that while the case was pending, his department could take no steps contrary to the verdict of the lower courts.12
Abolitionists realized that an appeal to the circuit court was tantamount to an appeal to the Supreme Court and that, to avoid further suffering for the blacks, it would be better to accept the district court’s decision. In late January 1840 Tappan intended to convince the president that returning the blacks to Africa would be wise. He remarked to Baldwin, “I was attempting a negotiation with the President & promised to relieve the courts Sc the Executive from further trouble if he would send the Africans to Sierra Leone.” But the same day Tappan wrote this letter, he received a letter from a friend in Washington who told him that the president had already directed an appeal to the circuit court. According to Tappan’s informant, the president seemed “altogether willing” to accept the decision of the district judge but feared that “it would not do” to approve the “erroneous principles” contained in that decree.13
Van Buren’s reference to legality may have been genuine, and it was clearly legitimate, but it seems safe to conclude that politics had again made the difference. Whether the “erroneous principles” were a reference to Judson’s misuse of the law of 1819 or to other matters relating to slavery and the treaty with Spain, the president was within his rights in lodging an appeal. In late March the secretary of the navy asked whether it was proper to use funds allotted to the 1819 act against the slave trade in meeting the expenses of removing the Amistad blacks, and the attorney general, Henry D. Gilpin, replied that the act did not apply. Furthermore, although Judson’s decision would rid the country of the Amistad captives, the bitter reality was that their return to Africa constituted American approval of mutiny as an escape from slavery. It is impossible to be sure of the guiding principle in Van Buren’s thinking, for his Autobiography does not mention the Amistad affair and his private papers provide little help. But it seems a reasonable conclusion that Van Buren wanted to satisfy the South and proslavery elements in his political party and that circumstances and his general attitude toward a North-South coalition of planters and plain Republicans, as he called them, shaped his policy toward the Amistad. It is certain that the case had become a national issue, as the abolitionists had wanted, and that if the president sent the blacks home without punishment for what Southerners and other Americans considered piracy and murder, this would have been tacit approval of slave insurrection.14 The politically advantageous approach—again dignified by a White House explanation that it sought only to obey the law—was to turn to the Supreme Court, whose Southern preponderance offered more than a faint hope of negating the lower courts’ decision.
Once the White House made known its appeal to the circuit court, the blacks’ defense attorneys introduced a motion in early April calling for dismissal of the appeal. The United States, Staples and Baldwin insisted, did not claim “any interest in the said appellees respectively, or either of them,” and had no right under the law of nations, the Constitution, or American laws to institute claims to property in behalf of the Spanish government. The United States could not enforce the claims of subjects of other countries.15
In early May, Judge Thompson, sitting on circuit court with District Judge Judson, refused the defense attorneys’ motion and affirmed the district court decision "pro forma": the Amistad case would go before the Supreme Court during its January term of 1841. Tappan had not been confident of dismissal. He later wrote John Scoble in London that Thompson had advised counsel to keep its arguments short to prevent any delay in forwarding the case to the higher court. Tappan noted with consolation, however, that had Thompson dismissed the appeal, the district attorney would have appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. If the Court decided that Thompson’s decision was wrong, it would remand the case for further examination. The ensuing process would take perhaps two years. The Amistad matter now stood between two governments, Thompson explained, a proper subject for the highest tribunal in the land.16
The abolitionists finally recognized the futility of fighting the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court and worked toward better conditions for the captives in the interim. Staples expressed concern about the summer confinement of the blacks, and he asked Thompson whether the children, at least, should be out on bail. But the judge replied, “They are not now before me at all. The appeal is not before the Circuit Court.” If any different arrangement proved necessary, Thompson said, it had to result from an agreement between the Spanish minister and the United States government. He could not permit bail, because it was a “singular case” beset with great difficulties. Thompson did allow, however, that the blacks were in the law’s custody and that the court could put them in a more comfortable place if the defense could establish that they had been “cruelly treated.” But this was not enough for Staples. If they were Frenchmen, he asked, would the judge permit bail? “Certainly,” Thompson replied, “they would be released under the habeas corpus.” But the laws of the United States did not allow the Africans to “stand in that point of View.” Color was the difference, he seemed to imply. In a statement illustrating the unenviable position Thompson was in, he underlined the point that American law took precedence over questions of morality: “I say again, as I have said a hundred times, that however repugnant slavery may be, sitting here as a Judge, I must recognize that the laws of this country do admit the right of property in men.”17
After Thompson refused to release the blacks on bail, defense counsel asked the court to relocate the children in private homes. According to counsel, the four youths had expressed an interest in this change. Respectable families in New Haven, the attorneys explained, were willing to take them and instruct them in education, morals, and manners. But the judge was satisfied with the jailer’s assurance that the children were not undergoing hardship. It would not “hurt them to remain as they were till January next.”18
Baldwin had meanwhile become more suspicious of the White House’s intentions after receiving no cooperation in his effort to secure documents relating to the case. When he had first cited Spanish laws and treaties in arguing that his clients were not slaves, the United States district attorney demanded that the court admit only authenticated copies of the documents. Baldwin had asked the White House for copies from State Department files, but Forsyth replied that the papers were missing, leading Baldwin to believe that the administration was engaged in a concerted effort to undercut the defense by denying essential evidence. The controversy over documents soon took a more serious turn when nonabolitionists joined Baldwin and friends in believing that the Van Buren administration had altered documents to substantiate its case.19
Baldwin had written Representative William L. Storrs of Connecticut outlining the defense counsels’ difficulty in getting authentic copies of documents that the attorney general had wanted during the district court proceedings—the treaty of 1817 and the royal decree of 1838. Thinking that the same situation could arise in circuit court, Baldwin had written Forsyth for documents from State Department files on the issue during the Adams-Onís negotiations of 1819. To Baldwin’s surprise, Forsyth replied that neither the copy of the treaty sent by Lord Castlereagh nor that sent by Luis de Onís was in the files. Baldwin wrote to the president asking him either to direct the district attorney to admit the documents referred to as authentic evidence or to accept the Spanish government’s offer to put relevant documents into the State Department files. But even though Baldwin had written this letter early in April, the district attorney stated in circuit court on April 29 that he had received no instructions from the president. Moreover, Baldwin was aware of no effort to have documents placed in State Department files. Baldwin explained to Storrs that the only way to secure the documents was to enlist the aid of the House of Representatives. Baldwin said that he would consider it a “favor” if Storrs showed this letter to John Quincy Adams, who had been secretary of state during the negotiations with Onís. Baldwin hoped that Adams would inquire whether these documents, “which it [seemed had] been withdrawn from the Department of State,” might not be among the files of other departments in Washington.20
In late April, Tappan wrote Baldwin that it was “very singular” that documents relating to foreign affairs were not on file in the office of the secretary of state. Baldwin, Sedgwick, and Staples had recently inquired about seeing the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1817, hoping to prove that Spain had prohibited the slave trade. Forsyth had replied to all three attorneys that no copy was on file. Tappan wrote his brother Benjamin, a United States senator from Ohio, asking him to see the president about the matter. Three days later Tappan wrote Baldwin again, saying that his brother saw the president, who wrote on the back of Lewis’s letter an order to the secretary of state to provide copies of the desired documents—if Forsyth considered them genuine. But the secretary was gone from his office and would not be back for a couple of days. Tappan inferred from his brother’s letter that the president’s “dignity was a little hurt” by Baldwin’s writing directly to him and not through the secretary of state or a “friend of the administration.”21
While that controversy smoldered, Baldwin opened a new question when he informed Adams of an “important error” in the translation of a Spanish document contained in the papers on the Amistad recently sent by the president to the House of Representatives. He reminded Adams that the document described the blacks shipped by Ruiz and Montes as being ladinos and as having “names by which these Africans were never known, & which none of them recognize.” And yet the district court had found the blacks to be bozales and the passports inaccurate. Now, in the translation sent to the House, Baldwin declared that ladinos was rendered “sound negroes," which gave the word an “entirely different” meaning. It may have been an honest mistake in translation but was surely convenient for the administration’s case. Put before the Supreme Court in this fashion, he noted, the issue concerning the blacks would become whether they had been sound or healthy when boarding the Amistad—not whether they were recent imports from Africa. On May 10 Adams confided to his diary that there had indeed been a “scandalous mistranslation” of the Spanish documents. Baldwin had been correct in drawing it to his attention, and Tappan had that day sent a letter repeating the charge. Within a short time, Adams pursued the matter further in Congress when he read a resolution against the detention and imprisonment of the Amistad blacks.22
In mid-June the matter reached the public when the New York Express accused the White House of having altered documents in the Amistad case. The original passport claimed that ladinos were to be shipped, and yet the district court had established that bozales were on board the schooner. In a packet of documents sent by the president to Congress, House Document 185, the word negroes was not in the original passport found in the district clerk’s office. Instead of negroes ladinos, the words sound negroes had appeared—hiding the fact that bozales were shipped. “Who ever heard of such frauds perpetrated in governmental documents, transmitted to Congress by a President of the United States?” the Express asked. “There was no accident in this manner—it was a cunningly devised fraud.”23
Adams’s involvement in the case deepened when in early December the State Department’s translator, Robert Greenhow, complained to him that Judge William Jay had accused him of an erroneous translation in Document 185 dealing with the Amistad. Jay had charged Greenhow with inserting the word negroes in the Spanish certificate, and Greenhow countered by insisting that the word sound in the printed document was not in the manuscript translation that he produced and sent to the House. Greenhow asked Adams to clear him of the charges.24
The following day, December 10, Adams brought the matter before the House and introduced a motion to establish a five-man committee to investigate whether Document 185 had been “falsified.” He explained that he had found discrepancies between the manuscript of the document and its printed version. In the manuscript the word ladino had been inserted in the translations of both permits. Also, in the printed document the word sound had been substituted. In the document of April 15, 1840, he explained, there were two sets of papers: one certificate granted in Havana in the form of passports for forty-nine negroes ladinos, and a second for the three girls and calling them negras ladinas. But in the new document submitted by the president to the House, it read forty-nine “sound negroes.” That was the translation presented to the House by its printer. “Sound negroes,” Adams declared, was a “fraudulent translation.”25
Adams referred to a paper in his hand containing Judge Jay’s review of government proceedings in regard to Ruiz and Montes. Jay claimed that after the “Havana fraud,” there was a new one— an “extraordinary falsification of papers, perpetrated, probably, in the Department of State.” A passport for Africans imported prior to 1820 was, by “State necromancy, converted into a bill of health for forty-nine negroes.” The legal presumption now, Jay declared, was that the term ladino meant an African slave imported before the slave trade was illegal. These permits were the only evidence that the Amistad blacks were slaves and could be the only justification for a government decision to surrender them. It was obviously important to twist the translation to conceal the central fraud of the Havana official. If the blacks were claimed as ladinos, Jay pointed out, there was sufficient evidence that they were bozales. But if the claim was to “sound negroes,” or healthy negroes, there was no proof that they had been unhealthy at the time the island officials issued the permits.26
Adams himself was appointed head of the congressional inquiry into what he feared was still another part of a conspiracy against the blacks. In his diary, he wrote of “deep anguish of heart” caused by the “abominable conspiracy, Executive and Judicial, of this Government, against the lives of those wretched men.” He intended to carry the matter as far as facts would allow.27
But it soon became obvious that if the White House were culpable, the Adams committee would be unable to prove it. A short time before Christmas the proofreader for the printing house of Blair and Rives, John H. Trenholm, testified that he had ordered the compositor to make the change. He explained that when comparing the proof sheet with the manuscript, he had been unable to make out the word ladino, He thought that it was an English word and that sound seemed to fit best in terms of spacing and context. He did not know that ladino and ladina applied to black slaves, and he thought that their meaning was “sound.” Moreover, he added, it was common practice for the proofreader to make necessary grammatical alterations. When asked whether he was aware of the administration’s interest in the subject of the documents, Trenholm replied that he knew only what he had read in the newspapers. Thomas S. Geddes, the compositor at the printing house, testified that by Trenholm’s direction he had substituted sound for ladino and ladina. Yet Greenhow, the State Department translator, insisted that sound could in no way be the correct translation.28
In preparing the committee’s report, Adams encountered more obstacles in his attempt to prove fraud. To show his disapproval of proofreaders’ altering public documents without authorization, he had wanted to include a statement that the proofreader had committed the falsification. But two Democratic members of the committee, James McKay from North Carolina and William Med- ill from Ohio, opposed any statements of censure. The only duty of the committee, they declared, was to present the facts. Adams felt frustrated with the restrictions and wrote a report declaring that the proofreader had committed a falsification, but he did not include a statement of censure. The committee, however, wanted statements absolving the proofreader of “bad intention,” the house printers of responsibility, and the Van Buren administration of “all knowledge or participation in the wrong.” After a lengthy, acrimonious session, the committee adjourned without indicating whether it approved the report. But on January 4 there passed in the House of Representatives a motion for printing the report as Adams had written it.29
Adams remained perplexed by the episode. He was convinced that the White House had interfered in the Amistad case before, and he was not sure of its innocence now. He realized that errors could be made in the copying of documents, and yet he found it difficult to believe that coincidence explained a mistranslation of words that altered the entire thrust of the documents in the administration’s favor. It was too convenient. He vowed, however, to be more careful about “his own suspicions in the imputation of motives.”30
Throughout, the abolitionists had become increasingly concerned about their fourth and final confrontation with the Van Buren administration. Tappan had tried to bolster the abolitionists’ hopes by referring to correspondence published in Washington and by remarking, “Even some of the friends of Mr. Van Buren say [the trial] is ‘outrageous.’” Tappan said he was confident that public opinion would support “strong measures” for the blacks’ “deliverance.” And yet he revealed doubts when he wrote to John Scoble that the White House was “decidedly against these Africans” and would resort to any means to return them to Cuba. Baldwin wrote to Forsyth citing Thomas Jefferson as a precedent that the United States government had no power except by treaty to deliver anyone for punishment who had sought asylum in the country. Moreover, under the treaty of 1795 the executive could not surrender the blacks as property. According to the Constitution, Baldwin noted, “All cases in law or Equity, arising under the laws of the U.S. and Treaties made by their authority” belong to the judiciary. Surely the president would “not feel himself at liberty to interfere with” the “appropriate jurisdiction” of the court. The abolitionist Amos Townsend, Jr., expressed his concern to Tappan that the Supreme Court would prove unable to resist “the opinions & minds of men in power.” To turn over the blacks to “murderers,” he added, would be a “violation of all right principles human & divine.”31
Abolitionists feared that as the election of 1840 neared, the Van Buren administration would become more determined to secure a favorable outcome of the Amistad case. In late October the National Anti-Slavery Standard of New York criticized the president for politicizing the case. Van Buren wanted it to languish in the courts until after the election. In that way he would remain uncommitted in a question “so delicate in southern sensibilities.” It was a “base game,” according to the paper. The blacks would be “disposed of” in the way most “popular and expedient” for the administration. “No other men, but Africans or colored men, would have been detained an hour.”32
The abolitionists tried to keep the plight of the captives before the American public. The Amistad Committee asked the Reverend Leonard Bacon to deliver an address on the subject at New York’s Broadway Tabernacle in May. Tappan wanted eight to ten of the “most intelligent” Africans there to read and sing. The purposes of the meeting were to raise money for the support and education of the blacks and “to awaken an interest in the community” in their returning home with “the gospel in their hands & hearts.” The Connecticut Observer noted that the blacks were in Westville, about two miles from New Haven, where they were reading and writing English, studying the New Testament, and becoming “civilized” and, it was hoped, “Christian men.” Perhaps, the paper added, God had brought the Amistad blacks to the United States for Christians to make them His “most honored ambassadors to the dark continent of Africa.” For those who could not travel to New Haven, Peak’s Museum in New York had re-created the captives in wax, along with scenes of the mutiny. Boston’s Amory Hall went a step farther: it had wax figures on display—with hair from the captives’ heads.33
Not all the publicity was favorable. In New Haven there was exhibited a painting 135 feet long and entitled The Massacre on Board the "Amistad." The artist showed the captain with cuts on head and breast, down on one knee with head drooping and left arm hanging, while Konoma, or “the Cannibal,” held the dying man’s right wrist and with his other hand aimed a dagger at his heart. An abolitionist letter called the charge of cannibalism “supremely ridiculous,” saying that Konoma had pointed his teeth “to make the ladies love him.” The writer, probably Tappan, added that Konoma was the most “inoffensive, harmless, quiet, cowardly, submissive” of all these “creatures.” Cinqué was “perhaps the most prominent character” in the painting. Armed with a cane knife, he was trying to free himself from other blacks who were preventing him from killing Ruiz and Montes. Fuliwa was near Cinqué, shown with a “countenance expressive of deep malignity—the index one would think of a heart joyous in deeds of darkness—looking with hellish satisfaction on the scene.” Again, the letter claimed that Fuliwa was a “kind hearted man” who hated meanness, wrong, & blood” and wanted others to “do right.” The painting was “most unjust.”34
In mid-May the abolitionists’ suspicions seemed confirmed: the Liberator reprinted an article from the New Haven Herald entitled “Extraordinary Proceedings,” which revealed White House involvement in both the Ruiz episode in New York and the Grampus affair in Connecticut. Quoting from documents that the Van Buren administration released to the House of Representatives, the writer charged that the American public would “learn with astonishment” that, despite the district court ruling of January 1840 declaring the Amistad captives to be free blacks kidnapped in Africa, the president of the United States, “REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE,” was offering aid to the alleged slaveowners. The United States was pledged to support the Treaty of Ghent promoting abolition of the slave trade, and yet the White House was “volunteering its aid in behalf of the slave traders, and using its power and influence to rivet still closer the chains of their victims!” Furthermore, the article continued, the Van Buren administration dispatched the Grampus to New Haven, under presidential orders, “in anticipation” of a court decree permitting Lieutenant John S. Paine to transport the blacks to Cuba.35 At this point, one may note, the writer accused the executive of illegal involvement in both instances. He was not yet aware of the president’s willingness to go one step farther and obstruct the constitutional right of appeal.
Tappan was convinced more than ever that the White House would interfere in the case. To Baldwin he wrote, “The Executive has been tricky I fear.” Though Van Buren had allegedly written the district attorney to acknowledge the validity of the documents copied in court reports—“provided they were genuine”—Holabird had assured Tappan that he had received no instructions from the president. Just that day, September 9, Tappan had received letters from both the acting secretary of state and Forsyth; they said that the president had ordered instructions to go to Holabird, but without stating what the instructions were. Though Forsyth referred to his letter to Holabird of April 30, Tappan commented, “I do not believe it amounts to much.”36
Tappan’s observation was accurate. Though the president saw no reason to deny the defense counsels’ request, Forsyth reminded Holabird that the documents in question were not “relevant or competent evidence.” In the attorney general’s opinion, the matter belonged in the courts of Spain. Only if the American Supreme Court decided that such evidence was proper could Holabird follow the president’s suggestions to recognize it as genuine.37 Thus the administration was prepared to admit the documents as authentic but was confident that the Court would rule that it lacked jurisdiction. The documents would not be important, the Court would turn over the business to Spain, and the president would be absolved of accusations of interference with judicial proceedings.
The abolitionists believed that the blacks were in great danger of being returned by the White House to Cuba and, in a suggestion that clearly was unlawful, began considering the possibility of removing them from the country should the Supreme Court decision deny them their freedom. James G. Birney, once a slaveholder and now an abolitionist and a lawyer, pointed out that the blacks should stay together as the trial neared. “If it is the design to bail them out,” he wrote, “in order to secure their freedom by forfeiting the bonds, in case the Court shall decide against their freedom, this also it might be well to do.” Townsend agreed. If the “design” was “to bail them out in order to secure their persons & then let them be among the missing,” he likewise favored keeping them together.38 Thus, while the abolitionists were incensed at the suspicion that Van Buren was flaunting the law, they were prepared to engage in similar activity.
Tappan notified Baldwin in mid-October that he was trying to persuade Judge Thompson to allow the “bailing” of the blacks. He had no indication that Thompson would agree; it would put him in an “awkward position.” The judge had refused the Amistad Committee’s offer to board the children without charge because the government’s cost of keeping them was small. Consequently, the committee had offered to take all of the blacks on the same terms. In about two weeks, however, Tappan again wrote Baldwin, complaining, “Judge Thompson takes no notice of our last petition!” About a week later Tappan informed Baldwin that the judge had notified him of his refusal to put the blacks in the custody of the committee partly because he believed that it was not authorized to make such an application. On Baldwin’s recommendation, Tap- pan dropped the bailing idea.39
That same month the full story of executive involvement in the Grampus affair became public when both the Emancipator and the Liberator published documents showing that the president had ordered the vessel’s commander to take the blacks to Cuba "before an appeal could be interposed.” Under presidential order, American authorities in Connecticut were to put the blacks on the Grampus “unless an appeal shall have actually been interposed.” Correspondence between the secretaries of state and navy, along with that between the secretary of state and the United States district attorney, proved that the executive intended to subvert the right of appeal.40
The abolitionists had made serious charges against the president in the Ruiz and Grampus episodes; and yet the accusations had little impact on the American public. This was primarily because many Americans saw the abolitionists as a vocal but small minority of fiery-eyed fanatics whose goal was to destroy the Union either by racial amalgamation or by racial war. But there was possibly another reason. Van Buren, as president of the United States, was the supreme law-enforcement officer in the country and was doubtless assumed by the public to be above committing any illegal or unethical action. Furthermore, even had the Whigs picked up the issue, in an election year the easiest approach to such accusations would have been to dismiss them as politically motivated. For the abolitionists to have a chance at persuading other Americans to accept their arguments, they had to find support from nonabolitionists.
In view of the coming battle before the Supreme Court, the abolitionists wanted a nationally known figure to lead the defense. Of the three attorneys, only Baldwin had proved highly satisfactory. Indeed, the Amistad Committee would soon terminate Staples’s services; Tappan complained that he did not explore deeply enough the morality and legality of the case. Though Sedgwick would stay on, Tappan did not believe that he could “argue a case well.” Yet there was a problem with Baldwin: he lacked the national prominence that the struggle now needed. With this thought in mind, Tappan in May informed Daniel Webster, the renowned legal figure and veteran of many appearances before the Supreme Court, that the Amistad Committee wanted him to lead the blacks’ defense before the Supreme Court. But Webster declined, explaining to Tappan that he did not wish “to continue or extend his practice in that Court.” Besides, he added, the men already retained were “very Eminent” and needed no assistance. In mid-October, Tappan wrote Baldwin that the committee would write Rufus Choate of Boston, whom it had considered at the outset of the case. Within a week, however, Baldwin replied that even though Choate was an “able man,” his health was not good, and he did not attend the Supreme Court regularly. Tappan had meanwhile asked Choate in Boston to serve as associate counsel for the blacks; but Choate declined because of other commitments and the shortness of the notice.41
It should have come as no surprise that Webster and Choate declined to defend the Amistad captives. Webster may have meant what he said to Tappan, but other factors undoubtedly influenced his decision. He was from Massachusetts, a state that certainly opposed slavery, but he was only moderately antislavery and had enormous respect for the law—even if it sanctioned slaves as property. At the time of the Amistad affair, he was also tied up in another slavery case before the Supreme Court—that of Groves v. Slaughter. Furthermore, he had no use for abolitionists and little sympathy with their effort to capitalize on the case. Finally, Webster was interested in the presidency, and an alliance with abolitionists was not the way to higher office. As for Choate, he opposed the abolitionists as dangerous to the Union and wanted to keep the slavery issue quiet.42
After both Webster and Choate had turned down the offer, the abolitionists turned to John Quincy Adams. While in Boston to see Choate, Tappan had asked “friends of the cause” whether Adams would serve as senior counsel. The idea seemed “very desirable.” However, it appeared unlikely that he would accept, for he was aging and had not argued a case in the courtroom for over three decades. Yet he was a fervent supporter of fundamental liberties— for blacks as well as for whites—and he hated slavery. Tappan joined Ellis Gray Loring, Adams’s longtime friend, in the nine-mile ride from Boston to see the elderly statesman at his home in Quincy. Adams at first seemed opposed to accepting the position, but he finally consented to work as senior counsel with Baldwin and Sedgwick. He also agreed to make the closing argument before the Supreme Court.43
According to Adams’s memoirs, Loring and Tappan had “earnestly entreated” him to aid the defense. Adams tried to excuse himself on the basis of “age and inefficiency,” his duties in the House, and his “inexperience” for the past thirty years as a trial lawyer. But they prevailed upon him “so much” in a case involving “life and death” that he gave in. After all, he was already indirectly involved. Direct involvement in the case seemed only a matter of time. Tappan left Adams his scrapbooks containing printed materials he had collected on the case. Loring assured Adams that Baldwin would provide a complete brief.44
Tappan had to be careful not to alienate Baldwin in informing him that Adams was replacing him as senior counsel. He explained to Baldwin that Adams felt “deeply” about the Amistad case and would devote his “best powers” to it. Adams’s “station, age, character,” Tappan noted, would “give an importance” to his involvement in the cause. To safeguard against ill feelings, Tappan praised Baldwin as the one who had “borne the burden & heat of the argument,” and he noted that Adams was pleased to be associated with the person he considered the “principal advocate” in the matter. Adams wrote Baldwin in November that he had agreed to serve at the “urgent request” of Tappan and Loring. His reluctance, he declared, rested “entirely and exclusively” upon recognition of his own “incompetency to do justice” to the blacks. In every other way, Adams explained, he had “no higher object of ambition” than to be counsel for those “unfortunate men.” If Baldwin was disgruntled about Adams’s involvement in the case, he did not show it. He told Adams of his “great satisfaction” over his joining the fight and would send him the materials on the case.45
Adams made immediate preparations for the monumental task before him. He left Boston on November 16 for Hartford and was in New Haven the following day to talk with Baldwin. In Baldwin’s office they discussed the case for two hours. Adams joined him in visiting the blacks in Westville. The thirty-six men were in one chamber about thirty feet by twenty feet. All but one were under thirty years of age, Adams wrote in his memoirs, and none seemed taller than five and a half feet. Cinqué and Grabeau, the “two chief conspirators,” had “very remarkable countenances.” Adams did not see the three girls; they were now living with the family of Colonel Stanton Pendleton, the jailer. He later told Tappan that the visit had given him “much pleasure.” But he was unhappy with the clothing, bedding, and other items furnished the blacks.46
In late November, Adams met with Attorney General Gilpin in his office in Washington and urged him to suggest to the president that the parties dismiss the case by “consent without argument.” This would be “expedient” for “obvious reasons,” Adams emphasized. But Gilpin told Adams that no dismissal could take place without an argument before the Supreme Court, because the Spanish minister had demanded the return of the blacks and because the circuit court had earlier refused a motion to dismiss. Adams must have known that this last-ditch effort would fait and that the January rendezvous before the Supreme Court would take place.