Abbreviations
African Captives |
The African Captives: Trial of the Prisoners of the “Amis- tad” on the Writ of Habeas Corpus before the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut, at Hartford; Judges Thompson and Judson, September Term, 1839 (N.Y.: American Antislavery Society, 1839) |
African Repository |
The African Repository and Colonial Journal (Wash., D.C.: American Colonization Society, monthly) |
AHN |
Estados Unidos, Expedientes, Sección de Estado, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Spain |
AMA |
American Missionary Association |
ARC |
Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, La. |
DS |
Department of State |
FARC |
Federal Archives and Records Center, Waltham, Mass. |
GPO |
Government Printing Office |
H. Exec. Doc. 185 |
U.S. Congress, House Executive Documents, no. 185, 26th Cong., 1st sess. (1840) |
JQA |
John Quincy Adams |
LC |
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. |
Memoirs of JQA |
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874–77) |
MHS |
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. |
NA |
National Archives, Washington, D.C. |
Side-light |
Annie Heloise Abel and Frank J. Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, 1839–1858; Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (N.Y.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1979; originally published in 1927) |
Yale |
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. |
1. This account is based on the following sources: Testimony of Lt. Richard W. Meade, Nov. 19, 1839, 7–9, U.S, District Court, Records for Conn., FARC; Deposition of Dr. [?] Sharp, Nov. 19, 1839, 10, ibid.; Deposition of James Ray (crew member of Washington), Dec. 3, 1839, 147–48, ibid.; Deposition of George W. Pierce (crew member of Washington), Dec. 3, 1839, 149, ibid.; 15 Peters 518, 521– 22 (1841); John W. Barber, A History of the Amistad Captives (New Haven, Conn.: E. L. & J. W. Barber, 1840), 3–6; Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), app. E, xxxii, xxxiv; Augustus F. Beard, The Story of the "Amistad,” pamphlet published by AM A (n.d.), in ARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 27, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 30, 1839, 2; N.Y. Morning Herald, Sept. 2, 1839, 2; Albany (N.Y.) Argus, Sept. 7, 1839, 3; Boston Liberator, Sept 6, 1839, 143.
2. As reported by an observer in the Albany (N.Y.) Argus, Sept. 7, 1839, 3.
3. R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story; Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 368.
4. Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 41–43.
5. Garrison privately admitted that for practical reasons abolition would have to be gradual. Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1960), 61 n. 28.
6. Elbert B. Smith, The Death of Slavery: The United States, 1837–65 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1967), 34.
7. Ibid., 36. Lawrence J. Friedman shows how abolitionists often moved from one position to another, depending on circumstances. See his Gregarious Saints: Self and Community, in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U. Press, 1982). On the concept of a government of God, see ibid., 48, 64; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1973), esp. 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 57; James B. Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 1976), 53.
8. See George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1971), chap. 2. On mob violence of the 1830s, see Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing" : Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1970); Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1961), 100–102; Stewart, Holy Warriors, chap. 3.
9. Richard K. Crallé, ed., The Works of John C. Calhoun, 6 vols. (N.Y.: D. Appleton, 1853–57), 2:631.
10. On the shift to political abolitionism during the late 1830s, see Merton L. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (De Kalb: Northern Ill. U. Press, 1974), 121. See also Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1976).
11. Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, March 9, 13, 1840, Benjamin Tappan Papers, MS Div., LC; Stewart, Holy Warriors, 50, 53, 142-43; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 57; Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 48, 64, 75, 93, 104-5; Staples quote from African Captives, 36–37. Staples’s position probably came from Locke’s argument that every man had a right to his life, liberty, and estate, the three of which he designated as “property.”
Chapter 1. The Mutiny
1. Testimony of Grabeau (black captive on Amistad), Nov. 19, 1839, 20, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. Testimony of David F. Bacon (observer in Africa), Nov. 19, 1839, 25, ibid.; Curius Dentatus to JQA, Dec. 19, 1840, John Adams Family Papers, MHS; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Oct. 12, 1839, 1; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 5, 1839, 2; Joshua Leavitt to George W. Alexander, March 25, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade: Precolonial History, 1450–1850 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 84 (originally published as Black Mother); Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518– 1865 (N.Y.: Viking, 1962), 107–8; William H. Smith, A Political History of Slavery, 2 vols. (N.Y.: Putnam’s, 1903), 1:53–60; Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London: Oxford U. Press, 1962), 184, 220, 229; Edwin P. Hoyt, The “Amistad” Affair (N.Y.: Abelard-Schuman, 1970), 24–25, 29–30.
2. Bacon testimony on Africa before U.S. Dist. Ct., Jan. 9, 1840, in newspaper clipping in Baldwin Family Papers, Box 186, Yale.
3. Ibid.; Lewis Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 10, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 14, 1839, 1;N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 30, 1839, 2; Gra- beau’s account in George E. Day to eds. of N.Y. Journal of Commerce, Oct. 8, 1839, printed in “Narrative of the Africans,” in African Captives, v. Published by the abolitionists, this account of the trial is the fullest available and contains useful background information. Affidavit by Bahoo (African from Bandaboo), Sept. 29, 1839, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, 47–48; Hoyt, “Amistad” Affair, 26–27.
4. N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 30, 1839, 2; Testimony of Fuliwa (black captive on Amistad), Nov. 19, 1839, 21, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Bacon testimony, Jan. 9, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 186, Yale; Cross-examination of Cinqué at district court trial of Jan. 1840, cited in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 2; Cinqué’s explanation to jailer in New Haven, Conn., cited ibid., Jan. 15, 1840, 1.
5. Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 10, 1839; Grabeau’s account, African Captives, v; Testimony of Fuliwa, 21, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
6. Grabeau’s account, African Captives, v; Tappan to N.Y. American, Sept. 16, 1839, 2; Charles Butler to JQA, Dec. 25, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS; U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., 68-insert, FARC.
7. Tappan to N.Y. American, Sept. 16, 1839, 2; Butler to JQA, Dec. 25, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
8. Public letter from Tappan to Leavitt, Nov. 15, 1841, cited in Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), app. E, xliv; Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817–1886 (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1967), 39.
9. David Turnbull, Travels in the West: Cuba, with Notices of Porto Rico and the Slave Trade (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840), 57, 59-61. See also Butler to JQA, Dec. 25, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS. A few months after his withdrawal, Turnbull, accompanied by free British blacks, returned to Cuba as superintendent of liberated Africans. The Cuban governor, Gerónimo Valdés, accused him of organizing a rebellion, had his companions shot, and had Turnbull imprisoned and then deported. See Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 75-77.
10. Turnbull, Travels, 61–62.
11. U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., 68-insert, FARC; Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 28. For a good account of the situation in Cuba, see David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U. Press, 1980).
12. Philip S. Foner, A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States, 2 vols. (N.Y.: International Publishers, 1962), 1:189-90; Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 40-43; Murray, Odious Commerce, chap. 13.
13. Foner, History of Cuba, 1:190–91; Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 42; Murray, Odious Commerce, 272, 274, 276.
14. Foner, History of Cuba, 1:172–74; Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 46, 51; Murray, Odious Commerce, 82, 114–16.
15. Murray, Odious Commerce, ix, 51, 71, 77, 78; Foner, History of Cuba, 1:174; reformer quoted ibid., 179–80.
16. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 39, 47, 50, 54–55, 62; Murray, Odious Commerce, 100, 103, 106.
17. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 61–63; Murray, Odious Commerce, 101, 103; Hubert H. S. Aimes, A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511– 1868 (N.Y.: Putnam’s, 1907), 125–28, 133–35; Royal Decree from Ministry of Marine, Commerce, and Colonies in Madrid to governor-general (captain general) of Cuba, Nov. 2, 1838, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Thomas F, Buxton; The African Slave Trade, and Its Remedy (London: John Murray Albemarle, 1840), 26.
18. Turnbull, Travels, 343-44, 348-49. See also Murray, Odious Commerce, 120.
19. Trist to J. Kennedy & [?] Campbell & [?] Dalrymple, July 2, 1839, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Havana, 1783-1906, NA. Trist, consul in Havana from 1833 to 1841, came under heavy attack for allegedly collaborating in the slave trade for personal gain, but a congressional and State Department investigation in 1840 turned up insufficient evidence to sustain the charge. See Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 63; Warren S. Howard, A mer- ican Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837– 1862 (Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1963), esp. chap. 2.
20. Turnbull, Travels, 155–57.
21. Ibid., 62–63, 344; Charles Butler to JQA, Dec. 25, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
22. Butler to JQA, Dec. 25, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
23. For the Spanish foreign minister’s suspicion of British interests in Cuba, see Aaron Vail, American minister to Spain, to sec. of state, Jan. 15, 1841, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, 1792–1906, NA. On Spanish fears of British intervention in Cuba, see Murray, Odious Commerce, esp. chap. 7, but also 113, 286. For Spain’s internal problems, see James M. Callahan, Cuba and
24. Grabeau’s account, African Captives, v; Ruiz and Montes version of mutiny, translated from the Spanish paper Noticioso de Ambos Mundos of New York, and printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Oct. 5, 1839, 2; Testimony of Fuliwa, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Testimony of Antonio (cabin boy slave belonging to Captain Ferrer of Amistad), Nov. 19, 1839, 21–23, ibid.; Passports enclosed ibid., 68-insert; Public letter from Tappan to Leavitt, Nov. 15, 1841. Among the popularized versions of the Amistad affair, two of the best are Fred J. Cook, “The Slave Ship Rebellion,” American Heritage 8 (Feb. 1957): 60- 64, 104–6; William A. Owens, Black Mutiny: The Revolt on the Schooner "Amistad" (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1968), originally published in 1953 as Slave Mutiny.
25. Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 10, 1839; Grabeau’s account, African Captives, v; Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 21, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; 15 Peters 522 (1841); Hoyt, "Amistad" Affair, 33-34.
26. Public letter from Tappan to Leavitt, Nov. 15, 1841; Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 21, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Hoyt, "Amistad" Affair, 36–37.
27. Public letter from Tappan to Leavitt, Nov. 15, 1841; Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 22–23, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Cinqué testimony before district court in Conn., Jan. 8, 1840, cited in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; Sturge, Visit, app. xliv–xlv.
28. Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 21-23, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Captives of the Amistad," Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, vol. 4 (New Haven, 1888), 333.
29. Testimony of Fuliwa, Nov. 19, 1839, 21, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 21-23, ibid.; Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; Judicial investigation of Aug. 29, 1839, Montes account of mutiny, printed in Albany (N.Y.) Argus, Sept. 7, 1839, 3; Judicial investigation of Aug. 29, 1839, Montes, Ruiz, and Antonio accounts of mutiny, printed in N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4; Sturge, Visit, app., xlv–xlvi.
30. Ibid.
31. Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 22-23, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. The fate of the two sailors remains in question. At least one writer believes that they lowered the stern boat and made it to shore. See Hoyt, "Amistad" Affair, 38-39. But this seems unlikely. Hoyt himself admits that the Amistad was nearly twenty miles offshore. Besides, one wonders whether the two men could have fought off the blacks while lowering a boat. Furthermore, if they survived either a swim or a rowing to shore, word of their exploits would surely have reached the newspapers. Probably the Amistad blacks were correct when they later declared that the two sailors drowned. Sturge, Visit, app. xlv.
32. Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 22-23, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny.
33. Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 23, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; "Introductory Narrative,” African Captives, iii; Sturge, Visit, app., xlv.
34. Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny.
35. Ibid.; "Introductory Narrative,” African Captives, iii; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4.
36. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1839, 2; Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; "Introductory Narrative,” African Captives, iii; Sturge, Visit, app., xlv. The merchant vessel was the Eveline.
37. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1839, 2; N.Y. Whig, Aug. 28, 1839, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Oct. 5, 1839, 2.
38. From among many newspaper stories highlighting the mysterious black schooner, see the following: N.Y. Whig, Aug. 26, 1839, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1839, 2; Aug. 30, 1839, 2; Sept. 4, 1839, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Aug. 28, 1839, 2; Aug. 31, 1839, 2; N.Y. Sun, Aug. 29, 1839, 3; Morning Courier & N.Y. Enquirer, Aug. 30, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4; Wash. National intelligencer, Aug. 28, 1839, 3; Boston Liberator, Sept. 6, 1839, 143.
39. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1839, 2.
40. Testimony of Antonio, Nov. 19, 1839, 22, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
41. Ruiz and Montes translated version of mutiny; Cross-examination of Schy- ïer Conklin (one of the five men encountered by blacks on beach), Nov. 19, 1839, 12–13, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Oct. 5, 1839, 2.
42. Testimony of Cinqué, Nov. 19, 1839, 19, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Testimony of Grabeau, Nov. 19, 1839, 20, ibid.; Testimony of Henry Green, Nov. 19, 1839, 1-4, ibid.; Cross-examination of Green, Nov. 19, 1839, 5- 6, ibid.; Testimony of Peletiah Fordham (one of the five men encountered by blacks on beach), Nov. 19, 1839, 13–14, ibid.; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 30, 1839, 2. The four men with Green were Fordham, Conklin, Aaron Fithing, and Seymor Sherman. Green et al. suit, Sept. 19, 1839, 2, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
43. Testimony of Green, Nov. 19, 1839, 2–4, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Cross-examination of Green, Nov. 19, 1839, 5-6, ibid.; Testimony of Fordham, Nov. 19, 1839, 14–15, ibid.; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 30, 1839, 2.
44. See the Introduction for details of Gedney’s capture of the Amistad.
45. Morning Courier & N. Y. Enquirer, Aug. 30, 1839, 2.
46. N.Y, Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1839, 2; Wash. National Intelligencer, Aug. 28, 1839, 3.
47. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 4, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4.
48. "Introductory Narrative,” African Captives, iii.
49. Ibid.; N.Y. Evening Star, Aug. 31, 1839, 4; Boston Liberator, Sept. 6, 1839; 143; Warrant from president of U.S. to Marshal Norris Willcox, Aug. 29, 1839, U.S. Circuit Ct. Records for Conn., Sept. Term, FARC; Andrew T. Judson to Willcox, Aug. 29, 1839, ibid.
50. Willcox to Judson, Sept. 19, 1839, U.S. Circ. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
51. Gedne's libel claim, Sept. 19, 1839, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. In admiralty law, a libel is the written claim filed by the plaintiff.
Chapter 2. Abolitionists and “This Matter of Color”
1. Larry Gara, “Who Was an Abolitionist?” in Martin Duberman, ed., The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press, 1965), 33, 40, 51.
2. Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (N.Y.: Praeger, 1972), 17; Lawrence J. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U. Press, 1982), 18.
3. Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1960), 61 n. 28; Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830–1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State U. Press, 1949), 5-6; idem, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 94–96; Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Cooperation (Urbana: U. of Ill. Press, 1972), 223; Merton L. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (DeKalb: Northern Ill. U. Press, 1974), 37; Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1978), introd. and n. 1; Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850 (N.Y.: Random House, 1967), 29, 207, 264–65 n. 22, 270– 71 n. 55.
4. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve U. Press, 1969), ix–x.
5. Quoted in Emancipator, Sept 26, 1839, 87.
6. Sorin, Abolitionism, 41, 59–60; Dillon, Abolitionists, 67.
7. Dillon, Abolitionists, 106.
8. Ibid., 106–7.
9. Ibid., 60; Sorin, Abolitionism, 41; Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 15, 21, 26.
10. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, xi; Sorin, Abolitionism, 47; Dillon, Abolitionists, 57; Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 18.
11. Dillon, Abolitionists, 29.
12. Sorin, Abolitionism, 18, 19, 55; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 45-46, 55.
13. Dillon, Abolitionists, 58, 59.
14. See Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 230; Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 16– 21.
15. Sorin, Abolitionism, 47, 57.
16. David Brion Davis, “Slavery and Sin: The Cultural Background,” in Duberman, ed., Antislavery Vanguard, 31.
17. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 225,
18. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 81–83.
19. Sorin, Abolitionism, 17; National Anti-Slavery Standard (N.Y.), Oct. 22, 1840, 78.
20. Sorin, Abolitionism, 55; Dillon, Abolitionists, 40.
21. Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1970), 42ff., 114, 115, 122, 155, 166.
22. See ibid, for an excellent study showing that the anti-abolitionists were primarily “gentlemen of property and standing” concerned about their social positions as well as about miscegenation.
23. Ibid., 36; Nye, Garrison, 94.
24. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 84.
25. Ibid., 83.
26. Davis, “Slavery and Sin,” 3.
27. Janes to Rev. Joshua Leavitt, Aug. 30, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. Janes to Roger S. Baldwin, Aug. 30, 1839, ibid.; Lewis Tap- pan to Baldwin, Nov. 11, 1839, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 35, Yale; Testimony of Sullivan Haley, Nov. 19, 1839, 17, U.S. Dist. Court Records for Conn., FARC. Testimony of Janes, Nov. 19, 1839, 17, ibid.; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 4. An attempt to identify Janes’s official position yielded no results. Neither the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University nor the New Haven Colony Historical Society has information on him. Janes probably worked in the customs office.
28. Janes to Leavitt, Aug. 30, Sept. 2, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Janes to Baldwin, Aug. 30, 31, 1839, ibid.
29. Janes to Leavitt, Aug. 30, 1839, ibid.; Janes to Baldwin, Aug. 30, Sept. 2, 1839, ibid.
30. Janes to Baldwin, Aug. 31, Sept. 2, 1839, ibid.
31. Janes to Baldwin, Sept. 2, 1839, ibid.
32. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 87, 89; Gilbert H. Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830–1844 (N.Y.: American Historical Association, 1933), 25–27; Dwight L. Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (Ann Arbor: U. of Mich. Press, 1961), 171; Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U. Press, 1962), 111; Samuel W. S. Dutton, An Address at the Funeral of Roger Sherman Baldwin, February 23, 1863 (New Haven, Conn.: Thomas J. Stafford, 1863), 4–18, in ARC. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order instructing officials to release a prisoner from unlawful imprisonment unless they file formal charges.
33. Simeon Jocelyn’s brother, Nathaniel, who later painted the famous portrait of Cinqué, also worked for the underground railroad by opening his house as a refuge for runaways. He was prepared to use force to free the Amistaďs blacks. Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 110–11; Townsend to Baldwin, Aug. 30, 1839, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 35, Yale; Seth Staples to Baldwin, Sept. 4, 1839, ibid.; Staples to Tappan, Sept. 4, 1839, Lewis Tappan Papers, Correspondence, 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Townsend to Tappan (erroneously listed as to Simeon Jocelyn or Joshua Leavitt), Sept. 6, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
34. Clarence W. Bowen, “Arthur and Lewis Tappan” (Paper read at the fiftieth anniversary of the N.Y. City Anti-Slavery Society, at the Broadway Tabernacle, Oct. 2, 1883), 1–2, 10–13, in ARC; Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), 4–5; Sorin, Abolitionism, 50; Dumond, Antislavery, 218.
35. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 176.
36. Ibid., xiv, 177; Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, May 2, 1841, 26, MS Div., LC.
37. Dillon, Abolitionists, 129–30; Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, Nov. 14, 1839, 103–07, MS Div., LC; Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, Nov. 14, 1839, Papers of Benjamin Tappan, MS Div., LC.
38. Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 180–81.
39. R. Earl McClendon, “The Amistad Claims: Inconsistencies of Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 48 (Sept. 1933): 388; Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 69; Lewis Tappan, History of the American Missionary Association: Its Constitution and Principles (N.Y.: AMA, 1855), in ARC; Augustus Field Beard, The Story of the “Amistad,” pamphlet published by AMA (n.d.), in ARC.
40. Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, 35; Nye, Garrison, 59–61.
41. Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, 164; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 206.
42. Emancipator, Sept. 5, 1839, 74; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 6, 1839, 2; Sept. 11, 1839, 2; N.Y. American, Sept. 12, 1839, 3. Many letters containing small contributions are in the AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
43. Choate wrote a letter to the Emancipator in which he argued that if the blacks’ counsel could show that the purpose of the mutiny was to win liberty rather than to commit robbery or piracy, no American court would convict the accused. See Jean V. Matthews, Rufus Choate: The Law and Civic Virtue (Philadelphia: Temple U. Press, 1980), 195-96, 241; Choate to Lewis Tappan, Sept. 7, 1839, ARC; Lewis Tappan to Baldwin, Sept. 12, 1839, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 35, Yale; Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839, 82. Governor William W. Ellsworth of Connecticut had offered his assistance. Though in 1833 he had served as defense counsel in the Prudence Crandall case, involving an abortive attempt to establish a black girls’ school in the state, the abolitionists apparently showed no interest. Dumond, Antislavery, 212; Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 168.
44. Townsend to Tappan, Sept. 6, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. For newspaper reaction favorable to blacks, see N.Y. Sunday Morning News, Sept. 1, 1839, quoted in Emancipator, Sept. 12, 1839, 77; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 2, 1839, 3; Buffalo Commercial Advertiser and Journal, Sept. 4, 1839, quoted in Emancipator, Sept. 26, 1839, 85; N.Y. American, Sept. 4, 1839, 2; The Albion (N.Y.), Sept. 7, 1839, 287; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 7, 1839, 1; N.Y. Whig, Sept. 10, 1839, 2.
45. “Introductory Narrative,” Oct. 15, 1839, African Captives, iv. Ferry deposition, Sept. 7, 1839, in U.S. Circuit Court Records for Conn., FARC; Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 9, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 14, 1839, 1; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 206.
46. Visitors to the jail paid a small charge to the keeper, who perhaps for publicity reasons told greatly inflated stories of the mutiny. He claimed that he gave the proceeds to charity after first meeting the prisoners’ needs. Leavitt to Amistad Committee, Sept. 6, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 7, 1839, 2; Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 9, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 14, 1839, 1; Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 10, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 14, 1839, 1; Tappan to N.Y. American, Sept. 16, 1839, 2; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 207.
47.Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. L. N. Fowler, “Phrenological Developments of Joseph Cinqués, Alias Gin- qua,” American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 2 (1840): title page, 136– 38, in ARC.
51. Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 69; Beard, “Story of the Amistad," ARC; “Introductory Narrative," African Captives, iv–v; Roland H, Bainton, Yale and the Ministry; A History of Education for the Christian Ministry at Yale from the Founding in 1701 (N.Y.: Harper, 1957), 87, 153–54; Rollin G. Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven, 1638–1938 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. Press, 1953), 299.
52. Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 9, 1839, printed in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 14, 1839, 1; Tappan to N.Y. American, Sept. 16, 1839, 2. As was shown earlier, Portuguese slave merchants, not Spanish, had bought Cinqué in Africa.
53. In autumn 1841 the captives learned that a recent book described their homeland of Mende as Kossa. They explained to Tappan and others that this was not the correct name—that Kossa was a derogatory name applied to the Mendes by the British, who disliked them. See article entitled “The Mendi People," from N.Y. Evangelist (founded by Tappan family and at one time edited by Joshua Leavitt), reprinted in African Repository 17 (1841): 318. See also K. L. Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone: A West African People in Transition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 72. Sorin, Abolitionism, 50, 79. For Cinqué’s later district court testimony in January 1840, see below, chap. 7.
54. Lewis Tappan to Baldwin, Sept, 12, 1839, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 35, Yale; Leavitt to Baldwin, Sept. 16, 1839, ibid.; Henry B. Stanton to Tappan, Sept. 12, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Ellis Gray Loring to Emancipator, Sept. 3, 1839, printed in Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839, 82; Wyatt- Brown, Lewis Tappan, 161, 171, 189, 227, 230; Sorin, Abolitionism, 51.
55. JQA to William Jay, Sept. 17, 1839, John Adams Family Papers, JQA Let- terbook, MHS; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 103; Dillon, Abolitionists, 116.
56. Staples and Sedgwick to president of U.S., Sept. 13, 1839, in H. Exec. Doc. 185, pp. 63–64.
Chapter 3. The Politics of Justice
1. Charleston Mercury quoted in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 7, 1839, 2; Richmond Enquirer, Sept. 10, 1839, 3. The Emancipator later observed that Southern papers were generally silent on the Amistad issue, “doubtless feeling that it is quite desirable to quiet the matter as soon as possible.” See issue of Oct. 10, 1839, 94.
2. N.Y. American, Sept. 4, 1839, 2. The N.Y. Advertiser & Express agreed with the American. See issue of Sept. 7, 1839, 2.
3. N.Y. Sunday Morning News, Sept. 1, 1839, quoted in Emancipator, Sept. 12, 1839, 77; N.Y. Evening Star, Sept. 5, 1839, 2; N.Y. Daily Express, Sept. 5, 1839, 20.
4. N.Y. Evening Star, Sept. 4, 1839, 2.
5. Ibid., Sept. 12, 1839, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 13, 1839, 2.
6. See the following issues of N.Y. Morning Herald: Sept. 9, 1839, 2; Sept. 10, 1839, 2; Sept. 14, 1839, 2; Sept. 17, 1839, 2.
7. Calderón to Forsyth, Sept. 6, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S. to the DS, 1790–1906, NA. See also Calderón to First Secretary of State, Sept. 6, 1839, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 104, AHN
8. Ibid.
9. Spanish paper quoted in N.Y. Advertiser á Express, Sept. 11, 1839, 1.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. For a further exploration of the chances for British intervention in Cuba, see below, chaps. 8 and 9. American and Spanish concerns over this matter become clear in Aaron Vail, American minister to Spain, to Forsyth, Jan. 15, 1841, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, 1792–1906, NA. On Spain’s fears of British abolitionist activity in Cuba, see David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U. Press, 1980), esp. chap. 7. On Canadian border issues, see Howard Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843 (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press', 1977).
13. See Major L. Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: U. Press of Kansas, 1984), 153–54; Francis F. Wayland, Andrew Stevenson: Democrat and Diplomat, 1785–1857 (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 115–18; John B. Moore, History and Digest of the International Arbitrations to Which the United States Has Been a Party, 6 vols. (Wash., D.C.: GPO, 1898), 1:408–19; Charles M. Wiltse, John C Calhoun, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Mer- rill, 1944–51), 3:63; Jones, Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 80-81.
14. See Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1834).
15. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton believed that the reason for the administration’s support for Calhoun’s resolution was that it promoted sectional unity, which translated into Van Buren’s reelection. “This was one of the occasions on which the mind loves to dwell,” Benton declared, “when, on a question purely sectional and Southern, and wholly in the interest of slave property, there was no division of sentiment in the American Senate.” Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years' View; or, A History of the American Government for Thirty Years from 1820 to 1850, 2 vols. (N.Y.: D. Appleton, 1856), 2:183.
16. My examination of Trist’s dispatches to Washington covered the period April 1839 through March 13, 1842. U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Havana, 1783–1906, NA.
17. See Alvin L. Duckett, John Forsyth: Political Tactician (Athens: U. of Ga. Press, 19, 62), 184; Memoirs of JQA, 10:255; Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837–1862 (Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1963), 33–36.
18. Duckett, Forsyth, 182–83.
19. Ibid., 33–34.
20. See Louisville Committee to Van Buren, April 2, 1840, Martin Van Buren Papers, MS Div., LC; Van Buren to Louisville Committee (published), April 21, 1840, ibid.; Dixon Lewis to Van Buren, July 15, 1840, ibid. See also Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1848 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1959), 131–33, 136; Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (N.Y.: Columbia U. Press, 1959), 132; Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press, 1984), 361-63; John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1983), 385, 388–89, 466–68. Calderón to First Sec. of DS, Sept 6, 1839, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 104, AHN.
21. Holabird to Forsyth, Sept. 5, 1839, H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 39; Holabird to Forsyth, Sept. 9, 1839, ibid.; Forsyth to Holabird, Sept. 11, 1839, ibid., 40.
22. Duckett, Forsyth, 185-86; Wilson, Presidency of Martin Van Buren, 155; Forsyth to Van Buren, Sept. 18, 23, 1839, Van Buren Papers, MS Div., LC; Woodbury to Van Buren, Sept. 22, 1839, ibid. A search of the Kendall and Woodbury Papers in the Library of Congress revealed nothing on the Amistad. Nor is there any reference to the case in either the Autobiography of Amos Kendall, ed. William Stickney (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1872), or in Joseph H. Parks, Felix Grundy: Champion of Democracy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. Press, 1940). As Parks indicates, there are no substantial collections of Grundy papers.
23. For Grundy’s opinion, see Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States, 3:485-92. See also John B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, 8 vols. (Wash., D.C.: GPO, 1906), 5:852. Story was a highly respected legal scholar, but his nationalist point of view did not have universal appeal. “Comity” referred to courteous acceptance by one nation of the laws and institutions of another. On this subject see Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1981).
24. The American legal scholar was Henry Wheaton. For the Smith case see 27 Federal Cases 1167 (1820). For Palmer see 3 Wheaton 610 (1818).
25. For the Antelope case see 10 Wheaton 66 (1825). See also John T. Noonan, Jr., The Antelope: The Ordeal of the Recaptured Africans in the Administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams (Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1977).
26. Duckett, Forsyth, 185; Wilson, Presidency of Martin Van Buren, 155.
27. See Justice Story’s reasoning on this point in U.S. v. Amistad, 15 Peters 592, 593–94 (1841).
28. The final argument concerning the continuity of the slave trade from Africa to Puerto Príncipe was consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Maryland. This was the “original package” case, although the Court was divided over the question. For the case see 12 Wheaton 419 (1827).
29. Emancipator, Sept. 12, 1839, 77–78; Side-light, 185, 185 n. 140.
30. N.Y. Evening Post, Sept. 17, 1839, 2.
31. Emancipator, Sept. 12, 1839, 78.
Chapter 4. “The Inherent Property of Liberty”
1. William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1977), 157 n. 24.
2. Rev. Francis Wayland to Lewis Tappan, Oct. 2, 1839, ARC; Leavitt’s address before the convention, June 15, 1843, in Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, June 13–20, 1843, 122, located in ARC. Lewis Tappan believed that if counsel could establish that the Amistad blacks were persons, the Spaniards’ case for return of property would collapse. On Tappan’s views see William S. Holabird, U.S. district attorney, to Sec. of State John Forsyth, Sept. 21, 1839, in H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 40.
3. Wiecek, Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism, 134, 157 n. 24; Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. Press, 1975), 183–87.
4. Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1982), 240–41. Section 14 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that “either of the justices of the supreme court, as well as judges of the district courts, shall have power to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment.—Provided, That writs of habeas corpus shall in no case extend to prisoners in gaol, unless where they are in custody, under or by colour of the authority of the United States, or are committed for trial before some court of the same, or are necessary to be brought into court to testify.” U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:82. In Ex Parte Tobias Watkins of 1830, Chief Justice John Marshall indicated the problems ahead when he declared that the act of 1789 authorized the Supreme Court “and all the courts of the United States and the judges thereof, to issue the writ ‘for the purpose of inquiring into the cause of commitment.”’ He noted the law’s “general reference to a power which we are required to exercise, without any precise definition of that power.” 3 Peters 201 (1830). The only reference to a writ of habeas corpus in the Constitution is in Article I, Section 9, which concerns suspension of the writ during emergencies. Amendments V and VI of the Bill of Rights allude to the writ, when they refer to the process of indictment and trial and permit one to read into it the judicial power to enforce these provisions. During the nineteenth century, however, the Bill of Rights was a limitation not on state courts but on federal courts.
5. African Captives, 7. Holabird to Forsyth, Sept. 21, 1839, H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 40; Deposition of Theodore Sedgwick, blacks’ attorney, Sept. 18, 1839, U.S. Circuit Court Records for Conn., FARC. Sedgwick warned Tappan that the federal courts had established the principle that slaves were property and that the only way to win the Amistad captives’ freedom was to cite Spanish laws and treaties in proving that they were never legally slaves. See Sedgwick to Tappan, Oct. 12, 1839, Lewis Tappan Papers, Correspondence, 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
6. Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 18, 1839, in Emancipator, Sept. 26, 1839, 86; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 20, 1839, 2; African Captives, 7.
7. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 20, 1839, 2; Tappan to Amistad Committee, Sept. 18, 1839, in Emancipator, Sept. 26, 1839, 86.
8. African Captives, 7; Richmond Enquirer, Sept. 24, 1839, 2; Wash. National Intelligencer, Sept. 21, 1839, 3; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 21, 1839, 1; Ger- rit Smith to Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839, 82; letter (n.d.) from lady to Emancipator, Sept. 19, 1839, 82; Bryant’s poem, ibid.
9. African Captives, 7, 30–34.
10. Ibid., 7, 8.
11. Holabird in U.S. Circ. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Ellsworth in U.S. District Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. See also Holabird, ibid, 33-34.
12. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 20, 1839, 2.
13. African Captives, 7-8.
14. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 21, 1839, 1; Deposition of Augustus Hanson, U.S. Circ. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. The defense later presented an affidavit of another native African, Bahoo from Bandaboo, who also testified that the girls were Mandingoes. He claimed that he had known them in Bandaboo and that they had come from Africa with him on the same slaver. African Captives, 27. See also ibid., 7.
15. African Captives, 8–9. For the congressional act of March 3, 1819, see U.S. Statutes at Large, 3:532-34.
16. African Captives, 9–12.
17. Ibid., 12-13.
18. Ibid.,13, 15.
19. Ibid., 14–15.
20. Ibid., 16–17. For the Antelope case see 10 Wheaton 66 (1825).
21. African Captives, 15–18.
22. Ibid., 19–20.
23. Ibid., 20.
24. Ibid., 20–21.
25. Ibid, 21-22.
26. Ibid, 28.
27. Ibid, 29.
28. Ibid, 30.
29. Ibid. 34-35.
30. Ibid, 35-36. According to a vague statement found in the New York Advertiser & Express, Ruiz was partly educated in Connecticut. See issue of Sept. 21, 1839, 1.
31. African Captives, 36-37; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 25, 1839, 1. For the Eugénie case, see 26 Federal Cases 832 (1822).
32. African Captives, 37.
33. Ibid, 38.
34. Ibid, 38–39.
35. Ibid, 39-40.
36. Ibid, 42.
37. lbid, 43–44.
38. Ibid, 44, 47; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 24, 1839, 2.
39. African Captives, v, 47; Augustus F. Beard, The Story of the “Amistad”, pamphlet published by AMA (n.d.), in ARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 8, 1839, 2; Rollin G. Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven, 1638–1938 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. Press, 1953), 273; Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U. Press, 1962), 70–71.
40. African Captives, 47; Charleston Mercury, Sept. 28, 1839, quoted in Emancipator, Oct. 31, 1839, 106; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 24, 1839, cited ibid. Sept. 26, 1839, 86; N.Y. American, Sept. 28, 1839, 2; N.Y. Morning Herald, Oct. 1, 1839, 2; Emancipator, Oct. 10, 1839, 94. Numerous papers called for the blacks’ freedom on the bases of natural rights and self-defense. See Emancipator, Sept. 26, 1839, 85–86, for a list of these in New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. See also N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Sept. 27, 1839, 1.
41. Sedgwick to Tappan, Oct. 12, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp, 1809–72, MS Div., LC. The New York Evening Star probably used the law to protect slavery. See issue of Sept. 28, 1839, 2. In a later issue, the Star emphasized that the case was not a “struggle for freedom” and that Americans could not allow “fictitious sympathy” to approve acts of insurrection. The law had to protect civilization from the “lawless hordes of Savages.” Ibid, Oct. 4, 1839, 4.
Chapter 5. “A National Matter”
1. Lewis Tappan to Rev. Leonard Bacon, Oct. 4, 1839, Bacon Family Papers, Box 5, Yale; Tappan to eds., N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 1, 1839, 1.
2. Memoirs of JQA, 10:132–35; Ellis Gray Loring to JQA, Sept. 23, 1839, John Adams Family Papers, Corresp., MHS; Tappan to Loring, Nov. 30, 1839, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve U. Press, 1969), 189.
3. Adams to Loring, Oct. 3, 1839, Adams Family Papers, JQA Letterbook, MHS.
4. Ibid. For the Palmer case, see 3 Wheaton 610 (1818). For the Antelope, see 10 Wheaton 66 (1825).
5. Loring to Adams, Nov. 14, 1839, Adams Family Papers, Corresp., MHS.
6. Ibid.
7. Adams to Loring, Nov. 19, 1839, JQA Letterbook, ibid.
8. Emancipator, Oct. 10, 1839, 94; N. Y. Evening Star, Oct. 24, 1839, 2; New Orleans Times Picayune, Oct. 17, 1839, 2; N.Y. Morning Herald, Oct. 1, 1839, 2; Oct. 3, 1839, 2; Oct. 4, 1839, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Nov. 20, 1839, 2. On racial prejudice in the antebellum North, see Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1961).
9. Tappan to Bacon, Oct. 4, 1839, Bacon Family Papers, Box 5; Tappan to Joseph Sturge, Oct. 19, 1839, Side-light, 60.
10. George E. Day to eds. of N.Y. Journal of Commerce, Oct. 8, 15, 1839, in African Captives, iii–v.
11. Tappan to Bacon, Oct. 4, 1839, Bacon Family Papers, Box 5; Tappan to Sturge, Oct. 19, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Tappan to Roger S, Baldwin, Oct. 12, 1839, Baldwin Papers, Box 35, Yale.
12. Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, 93–96, MS Div., LC; N.Y. Times & Commercial Intelligencer, Oct. 19, 1839, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 18, 1839, 2; N.Y. Morning Herald, Oct. 18, 1839, 2; Tappan to Sturge, Oct. 19, 1839, Side-light, 60.
13. Tappan to Sturge, Oct. 19, 1839, Side-light, 55; Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), 5; Theodore Weld to Gerrit Smith, Oct. 23, 1839, Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822– 1844, 2 vols., (N.Y.: D. Appleton-Century, 1834), 2:811.
14. Bayard Tuckerman, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, 2 vols. (N.Y.: Dodd, Mead, 1889), 1:385; N.Y. Times & Commercial Intelligencer, Oct. 19, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Star, Oct. 19, 1839, 2; Oct. 22, 1839, 2; Wash. Globe, Oct. 30, 1839, 3; N.Y. Democratic Republican New Era, Oct. 24, 1839, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Oct. 19, 1839, 4; New Orleans Times Picayune, Oct. 29, 1839, 2; Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 25, 1839, 4. A sojourner slave was a personal servant taken by his master in travel. Arguments developed over whether the slave automatically became free upon entering a free state. The Supreme Court held in Groves v. Slaughter in 1841 that the Constitution protected a citizen’s right as sojourner to carry his property anywhere—even if that property included a slave. Many Northern courts, however, denied such right. On the Groves case see 15 Peters 449 (1841).
15. Spanish paper quoted in Emancipator; Oct. 24, 1839, 102; Pedro Alcantara de Argaiz to Sec. of State John Forsyth, Oct. 18, 1839, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 8, AHN; Argaiz to Forsyth, Oct. 22, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S. to the DS, 1790–1906, NA.
16. Eastern newspapers’ views summarized in Oberlin Evangelist (Ohio), Oct. 23, 1839, 180; Forsyth to Argaiz, Oct. 24, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in the U.S. from the DS, 1834–1906, NA. Note also in Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, AHN. Lewis Tappan was confident that the president would not return the blacks to the Spanish. To his brother Benjamin, a United States senator from Ohio, he wrote, “Mr. V. B. will hardly attempt it. Too many of his personal friends are interested on the other side.” Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, Oct. 8, 1839, Benjamin Tappan Papers, MS Div., LC.
17. Forsyth to Argaiz, Oct. 24, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in U.S., NA. Note also in Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, AHN.
18. Forsyth to Benjamin F. Butler, Oct. 24, 1839, H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 64. A copy of this note is in Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, AHN.
19. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 23, 1839, 2; Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, 95, MS Div., LC; “The Spaniards—Ruiz and Montes,” ca. Oct. 26, 1839, unpublished letter to ed. of Emancipator, not signed, but clearly written by Tappan. In AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. The records consulted in this study did not include Judge Inglis’s first name.
20. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 26, 1839. The N.Y. Evening Post agreed with the judge’s observations on slavery. If he had decided in favor of the Spaniard, Cinqué’s counsel could have argued that this took away the plaintiff's action since a slave could have no remedies by civil action against his master. Post cited in Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 1, 1839, 2.
21. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 26, 1839, 1; Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 1, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Post cited ibid. The Emancipator criticized Inglis for deciding, in chambers, “one of the gravest points of law as easily as he could light his cigar.—He says that a slave cannot bring an action against his master in the courts of New York, because he is property.” No man, the Emancipator insisted, could be the property of another in the free state of New York. See issue of Nov. 7, 1839, 110.
22. Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 1, 1839, 2.
23. N.Y. American, Oct. 28, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Post cited in Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 1, 1839, 2; Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, 95– 96, MS Div., LC.
24. Argaiz to Forsyth, Nov. 5, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S., NA.
25. Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 5, 1839, 2, 3; Emancipator, Nov. 7, 1839, 110.
26. Butler to Forsyth, Oct. 28, 1839, II. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 65; Aaron Vail, acting sec. of state, to Butler, Nov. 9, 1839, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA; Butler to Vail, Nov. 18, 1839, II. Exec. Doc. 185, pp. 66-67.
27. N.Y. Evening Journal, Feb. 5, 1840, cited in Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 27, 1840, 1; Butler to Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 10, 1840, ibid.; N.Y. Evening Star, Feb. 1, 1840, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Feb. 8, 1840, 3; N.Y. Semi-Weekly Express, Feb. 12, 1840, 2; N.Y. American, Feb. 7, 1840, 2; Tappan to John Scoble, Dec. 10, 1839, Side-light, 61.
28. Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 5, 1839, 2; N.Y. Evening Star, Feb. 12, 1840, 2; Emancipator, Nov. 7, 1839, 110; N.Y. American, Feb. 7, 1840, 2; Tappan to Sco- ble, Dec. 10, 1839, Side-light, 61.
29. Argaiz to Forsyth, Nov. 29, Dec. 25, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S., NA. Argaiz’s charges of intrigue are in the note dated Dec. 25. For the Forsyth quotation, see Argaiz to First Sec. of DS, Oct. 24, 1839, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 9, AHN. In this same note, Argaiz explained that he had asked a fellow Spaniard to accompany him as a witness to hear the secretary of state’s position on the arrests. Argaiz later called Van Buren a “Northern man with Southern principles” who could not free the Amistad blacks because of the “numerous Southern votes that he was counting on.” Argaiz to First Sec. of DS, March 20, 1841, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 88, AHN. Forsyth wrote Argaiz an elaborate defense of the administration’s policy of nonintervention in the judicial process in New York. See Forsyth to Argaiz, Dec. 12, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in U.S., NA.
30. N.Y. Evening Star, Feb. 1, 1840, 2; New Orleans Times Picayune, Feb. 21, 1840, 2; Vindex letter in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Feb. 8, 1840, 3; Fiat Justitia letter in N.Y. Semi-Weekly Express, Feb. 12, 1840, 2.
Chapter 6. “Neither Slave . . .”
1. Wendell P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885–89), 1:320, 322.
2. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1872–77), 1:458.
3. Merton L. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (De Kalb: Northern Ill. U. Press, 1974), 92–93.
4. For accounts of the Crandall affair, see Bernard C. Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1893), 45–52; Jarvis M. Morse, A Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 1818–1850 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. Press, 1933), 193–96; Alice F. Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1944), 506–8; Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 62-64; Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1960), 64–65; Dwight L. Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (Ann Arbor: U. of Mich. Press, 1961), 211–17; Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1961), 126-31; Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1970), 38–40; Edmund Fuller, Prudence Crandall: An Incident of Racism in Nineteenth- Century Connecticut (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U. Press, 1971); Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (N.Y.: Praeger, 1972), 66; Philip S. Foner and Josephine F. Pacheco, Three Who Dared: Prudence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner—Champions of Antebellum Black Education (West- port, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984), 5–46.
5. Tappan to John Scoble, Jan. 20, 1840, Lewis Tappan Papers, Correspondence, 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
6. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:322–23; Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut, 48–50.
7. Judson quoted in Dumond, Antislavery, 214.
8. Ibid., 215.
9. Ibid., 216.
10. Ibid., 212.
11. Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice under Law; Constitutional Development, 1835–1875 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1982), 94–95; William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1977), 162–67. In the Dred Scott case of 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of the Supreme Court tried to resolve the question by ruling that the word citizen in the Constitution did not include blacks. Associate Justice Benjamin R. Curtis vigorously dissented, arguing that at the time the Founding Fathers adopted the Constitution free blacks had been citizens of individual states under the Confederation. Surely, he declared, the Constitution did not take away citizenship from any of the people by whom it was established. Furthermore, every native-born free person who was a citizen of the state in which he resided was also a citizen of the United States. Individual states, Curtis argued, had the power to decide which people should become citizens. As citizens of the several states, they therefore enjoyed the rights of national citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution. For the Scott case see 19 Howard 393 (1857). Although Curtis’s argument at first appeared more charitable than Taney’s, a close examination of the matter suggests that Curtis meant only that free blacks born in states allowing their citizenship were also to have national citizenship; no state could grant citizenship to a resident born in another state. Thus, a free black with citizenship did not lose his rights by moving to a state denying black citizenship, but neither did a free black born in a state barring black citizenship gain those rights by moving into a state recognizing them. On this matter see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1978), 407–8. See also James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1978), 329–31.
12. Morse, Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 192.
13. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 40.
14. Morse, Neglected Period of Connecticut’s History, 192–93. Although slavery was legal in Connecticut until 1848, no more than forty slaves were in the state by the 1830s. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 193, 196–97.
16. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 20, 1839, 2; Garrison to Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Joshua Leavitt, or James G. Birney, Nov, 1, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
17. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 20, 1839, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Nov. 23, 1839, 4.
18. Ibid, The records consulted for this study fail to mention Isham’s first name.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 20, 1839, 2; ibid., Nov. 21, 1839, 2; testimony of Captain Peletiah Fordham, Nov. 19, 1839, 15, U.S. Dis, Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. Defense argument by Staples and Baldwin, Nov. 19, 1839, 42–45, ibid.; Adams to Loring, Nov. 19, 1839, John Adams Family Papers, JQA Let- terbook, MHS.
22. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 21, 1839, 2.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Defense argument by Staples and Baldwin, Nov. 19, 1839, 42–43, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
26. Ibid., 43–45.
27. N.Y. American, Nov. 21, 1839, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 21, 1839, 2; Joshua Leavitt’s account of district court proceedings, in Emancipator, Nov. 28, 1839, 122.
28. Thomas M. Madden, ed., The Memoirs (Chiefly Autobiographical) from 1798 to 1886 of Richard Robert Madden (London: Ward & Downey, 1891), 82; Smith letter referred to ibid., 81–82.
29. Louis Ruchames, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1971), 535 n. 1; Thomas M. Madden, ed., Memoirs . . . of Richard Robert Madden, 74–77; Deposition by Richard R. Madden, Nov. 20, 1839, 133, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
30. Thomas M. Madden, ed., Memoirs . . . of Richard Robert Madden, 77–80; David Turnbull, Travels in the West: Cuba, with Notices of Porto Rico and the Slave Trade (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840), 42, 164.
31. Thomas M. Madden, ed., Memoirs . . . of Richard Robert Madden, 96.
32. Garrison to Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Joshua Leavitt, or James G. Birney, Nov. 1, 1839, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
33. Trist to Forsyth, Sept. 9, 1839, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Havana, 1783–1906, NA; Trist to Joseph Tuckerman (the friend), Dec. 2, 1839, Nicholas Trist Papers, MS Div., LC; Richard R. Madden, ed., Letter to W. E. Channing, D.D., on the Subject of the Abuse of the Flag of the United States in the Island of Cuba, and the Advantage Taken of Its Protection in Promoting the Slave Trade (Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1839), 3; Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London: Oxford U. Press, 1962), 217-18. On accusations against Trist, which a congressional and State Department inquiry in 1840 did not substantiate, see Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837– 1862 (Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1963), esp. chap. 2; Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886 (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1967), 63. On Madden’s charges against Trist, see his letter to Channing cited above, and David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge U. Press, 1980), 105-6.
34. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 5, 1839, 2; Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 343-44.
35. Leavitt’s account of district court proceedings, in Emancipator, Nov. 28, 1839, 122.
36. Madden deposition, Nov. 20, 1839, 133, 135, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Madden testimony in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov, 25, 1839, 2; Side-light, 60 n. 14; 15 Peters 534 (1841).
37. Madden deposition, Nov. 20, 1839, 134, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; 15 Peters 534 (1841); N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 25, 1839, 2.
38. Madden deposition, Nov. 20, 1839, 136, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; 15 Peters 535 (1841).
39. Madden deposition, Nov. 20, 1839, 133, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; 15 Peters 536–37 (1841); N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 25, 1839, 2.
40. Madden deposition, Nov. 20, 1839, 137–39, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; 15 Peters 536–37 (1841); N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 25, 1839, 2.
41. Ibid.
42. Tappan to Joseph Sturge, Nov. 23, 1839, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. At one point during Madden’s visit to the United States, he talked with President Van Buren, who criticized the abolitionists and agreed with Andrew Jackson’s earlier assessment that they were dangerous to the Union. See Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, Nov. 14, 1839, ibid.
Chapter 7. “. . . Nor Free”
1. See R. Earl McClendon, “The Amistad Claims: Inconsistencies of Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 48 (Sept. 1933): 391; Argaiz to Forsyth, Nov. 26, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S. to the DS, 1790–1906, NA. The reference is to Holabird’s statement before the circuit court on September 21, 1839. For this statement see above, chap. 4.
2. Forsyth to Argaiz, Dec. 12, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in the U.S. from the DS, 1834–1906, NA.
3. Argaiz to Forsyth, Dec. 30, 1839, ibid.; Memorandum from DS to Sec. of Navy James K. Paulding, Jan. 2, 1840, H. Exec. Doc. 185, pp. 67–68; Paulding to Forsyth, Jan. 3, 1840, ibid., 68; Forsyth to Argaiz, Jan. 6, 1840, ibid., 38.
4. Forsyth to Holabird, Jan. 6, 12, 1840, H. Exec. Doc. 185, pp. 55, 56.
5. Of numerous studies on the Van Buren presidency, only a few call attention to its questionable actions during the Amistad affair. According to Samuel Flagg Bemis, the president was bent upon maintaining his Southern constituency and used every power at his command to support the Spanish government’s stand regarding the blacks. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (N.Y.: Knopf, 1956), 393, 393–94 n. 22. An earlier writer accuses Van Buren of “indecent haste” in trying to dispense with the problem. See William H. Smith, A Political History of Slavery, 2 vols. (N.Y.: Putnam’s, 1903), 1:57. Another historian speaks of the administration’s “shameful attempt to deceive the people of the United States, including the courts.” John R. Spears, The American Slave-Trade: An Account of Its Origin, Growth and Suppression (London: Bickers, 1901), 188. A recent biographer of Van Buren calls his policies a “total and reprehensible disregard for the Africans’ rights.” See John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1983), 467.
6. Memo from DS to Paulding, Jan. 2, 1840, H. Exec. Doc. 185, pp. 67–68; Forsyth to Holabird, Jan. 6, 1840, ibid., 55.
7. Lt. John S. Paine to Paulding, Jan, 5, 1840, U.S. Naval Records, Letters Received from Officers, NA.
8. Paulding to Paine, Jan. 6, 1840, U.S. Dept, of the Navy, Sec. of Navy Letters to Officers, Ships of War, NA; Paulding to Gedney, Jan. 8, 1840, ibid.; Paulding to Commander James Renshaw, Jan. 8, 1840, ibid.; Paulding to Paine, Jan. 8, 1840, ibid.; Paulding to Charles Robinson, officer on Grampus, Jan. 7, 1840, ibid.; Forsyth to Paulding, Jan. 7, 1840, H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 68.
9. Paine to Paulding, Jan. 10, 1840, U.S. Navy, Letters Received by Sec. of Navy from Officers below the Rank of Commander, 1802–1884, NA; Paulding to Willcox, Jan. 10, 1840, end. ibid.; Willcox to Paine, Jan. 10, 1840, end. ibid.
10. Paine to Paulding, Jan. 10, 1840, ibid. See president’s order and DS letter in Forsyth to Paulding, Jan. 7, 1840, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA. It is noteworthy of Paine’s feelings against the slave trade that in March of that same year, he, without authorization from Washington, signed an agreement for cooperation with the British commander William Tucker of the Wolverine for mutual suppression of the African slave trade. The White House repudiated the Paine-Tucker agreement of March 11, 1840. See Tucker to Paine, March 10, 1840, U.S. DS, Notes from British Legation in U.S. to the DS, 1791–1906, NA; Paine to Tucker, March 10, 1840, ibid.; Tucker to Rear Admiral George Eliot, March 12, 1840, ibid.; Fox to Forsyth, Aug. 15, 1840, ibid.
11. Paine to Paulding, Jan. 14, 1840, U.S. Navy, Letters Received by Sec. of Navy from Officers below Rank of Commander, NA; Tappan to JQA, May 8, 1840, John Adams Family Papers, MHS.
12. Paulding to Paine, Jan. 13, 1840, U.S. Dept, of Navy, Sec. of Navy Letters to Officers, Ships of War, NA.
13. Emancipator, Nov. 28, 1839, 122.
14. Baldwin to eds. of Wash. National Intelligencer, Dec. [?] 1839, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 35, Yale.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Tappan to Scoble, Dec. 10, 1839, Side-light, 61–62; Tappan to Loring, Nov. 30, 1839, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
18. Tappan to Sturge, Dec. 14, 1839, Side-light, 63–64.
19. Tappan to Scoble, Jan. 20, 1840, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Tappan to Richard R. Madden, n.d., but probably Jan. 20, 1840, ibid.; Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Captives of the Amistad," Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 4 (1888): 347; Side-light, 69 n. 32; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 4.
20. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11. 1840, 4; Claims by José Antonio Tellenicas and House of Aspe & Laca of Cuba, 3, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. Holabird announcement ibid., 4.
21. Defense argument, 47-51, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Haley testimony, 17, ibid.; Janes testimony, 17, ibid.; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2. As was shown earlier, Janes’s official position was uncertain, but he probably was a customs officer. See above, chap. 2, n. 30. Presumably Haley held a similar position.
22. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 4.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; Haley testimony, 17, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Janes testimony, 17, ibid. The black who spoke some English was Burnah.
25. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 7, 1840, 4; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; Covey testimony, 18, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Pratt testimony, ibid., 1–2. Tappan wrote the captain of the British Buzzard that someone would take care of Covey while he waited to testify. Tappan to Captain Charles Fitzgerald, Nov. 1, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
26. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 2, 4; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; Gibbs’s testimony, 24, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Tappan to Madden, n.d., but probably Jan. 20, 1840, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. This Gibbs was the elder.
27. Ibid. For Gibbs’s article in the New Haven Palladium, see its reprint in Boston Liberator, Nov. 15, 1839, 184.
28. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2.
29. Ibid.; Cinqué testimony, 19–20, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid. See above, chap. 2, for Cinqué’s earlier account given to Tappan and others in the New Haven jail.
32. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 10, 1840, 2; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 2.
33. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 11, 1840, 2.
34. Daily Herald (N.Y.), Jan. 10, 1840, clipping end. in Baldwin Family Papers, Box 186, Yale.
35. Ibid.
36. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 15, 1840, 1.
37. Ibid.; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 11, 1840, 2.
38. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 15, 1840, 1; John W. Barber, A History of the Amistad Captives: Being a Circumstantial Account of the Capture of the Spanish Schooner Amistad. . . (New Haven, Conn.: E.L. & J.W. Barber, 1840), 8.
39. Statement by Vega, 145, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 15, 1840, 1.
40. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 15, 1840, 2. In circuit court in 1839, Isham declared, “We intend to claim salvage for the Slaves but we do not propose to ask to have them sold with the vessel & Cargo.” Isham to Charles A. Ingersoll (not to be confused with Charles J. Ingersoll, representative from Pennsylvania), clerk, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. Either Isham mixed his stories or he did not regard slaves as “human flesh.”
41. N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
42. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2; Judson’s decision, 56ff., U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC. See also Boston Liberator, Jan. 24, 1840, 13–14. For Webster’s argument in the Bevans case, see 3 Wheaton 336 (1818).
43. Judson’s decision, 56, 58, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
44. Judson’s decision, 58, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
45. Judson’s decision, 66-68, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
46. Judson’s decision, 66–67, 69–70, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2. Judson never acknowledged the validity of the Spanish government’s charge of murder, because, in his view, the blacks had mutinied in self-defense after being kidnapped. But even if he had recognized the charge as valid, he could still have refused to approve the blacks’ return to Cuba as criminals, because there was no treaty provision between the nations for extradition.
47. Judson’s decision, 69–70, U.S. Dist Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
48. Ibid.
49. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2; Tappan to Madden, n.d., but probably Jan. 20, 1840, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
50. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2.
51. Baldwin, “Captives of the Amistad," 349; Charles A. Dinsmore, “Interesting Sketches of the Amistad Captives,” Yale University Library Gazette 9 (Jan. 1935): 51-55.
52. Judson’s decision, 70, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 1. Maurice G. Baxter shows that the Eugénie case left unresolved the question of whether America’s courts could enforce another country’s legislation. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the negative. See his One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1984), 162. For the Eugénie case see 26 Federal Cases 832 (1822). For the Antelope see 10 Wheaton 66 (1825). See also R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 347-50.
53. Lewis Tappan wrote his brother Benjamin that the blacks were either slaves or freemen; “and being freemen they ought to be free.” Their return to Africa was “another matter.” To a friend, Lewis Tappan wrote, “They ought to have been liberated here.” And to Madden, Tappan declared that the abolitionists believed that Judson should have “instantly liberated them.” Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, Jan. 15, 1840, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Lewis Tappan to G. Bailey, Jan. 15, 1840, ibid.; Lewis Tappan to Madden, Feb. 3, 1840, ibid.
54. Boston Liberator, Jan. 17, 1840, 11; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, San. 15, 1840, 2; N.Y. Evening Post, Jan. 15, 1840, 2; Ludlow quoted in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1840, 2; Sedgwick to Baldwin, Jan. 16, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale.
55. Sedgwick to Baldwin, Jan. 16, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Tappan quote in Lewis Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814-69, Jan. 19, 1840, 115, MS Div., LC; Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, Jan. 15, 1840, ibid., Corresp., 1809–72; Lewis Tappan to Scoble, Jan. 20, 1840, ibid.; Lewis Tap- pan to William W. Ellsworth, Jan. 21, 1840, ibid.; Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Griswold, Jan. 30, 1840, ibid.
56. Forsyth to Holabird, Jan. 17, 1840, H. Exec. Doc. 185, p. 57; U.S. district attorney appeal, 70–71, U.S. Dist. Ct. Records for Conn., FARC; Spanish owners’ appeal, 71, ibid.
Chapter 8. The Politics of Democracy
1. Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, April 27, 1840, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Staples to Baldwin, Jan. 21, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Sec. of Navy James K. Paulding to Lt. John S. Paine of Grampus, Jan. 25, 1840, U.S. Dept, of Navy, Letters to Officers, Sec. of Navy to Ships of War, NA.
2. Hartford and New Haven papers cited in N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, Feb. 12, 1840, 2. See also Boston Liberator, Feb. 28, 1840, 36. One of the president’s supporters, the attorney Ralph Ingersoll of Connecticut, did not believe the charge and asked Van Buren for a written denial that he could show voters in the state. There is no record of a reply from the White House. See Ingersoll to Van Buren, Feb. 15, 1840, Martin Van Buren papers, MS Div., LC.
3. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Feb. 12, 1840, 2.
4. N.Y. Express, June 9, 1840, 2.
5. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Proceedings of the General Anti- Slavery Convention, Called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and Held in London, from Friday, June 12th, to Tuesday, June 23rd, 1840 (London: British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1841), 508–11. In ARC.
6. On British relations, see U.S. DS, Diplomatic Instructions of the DS, 1801- 1906: Great Britain, NA; U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Great Britain, 1791–1906, ibid.
7. Forsyth to Vail, July 15, 1840, William R. Manning, ed., The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860, 12 vols. (Wash., D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1932-39), 11:23–24. On America’s interest in Cuba see Lester D. Langley, The Cuban Policy of the United States: A Brief History (N.Y.: John Wiley, 1968), esp. 21-24.
8. Times of London, Oct. 7, 1839, 4; Resolution by abolitionists in Glasgow, calling on British government to intercede in behalf of Amistad blacks, Oct. 15, 1839, cited in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 25, 1839, 2; Letters on Amistad case from John Murray, secretary of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, read into minutes of meeting of Nov. 26, 1839, of British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, item 394, 470–71, in Papers of Brit and For. Anti-Slavery Soc., London, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Eng. The British Emancipator of London referred to an address by John Scoble and others that led a delegation of the British and Foreign Xnti-Slavery Society to see Lord Palmerston, who stated that the Amistad case had been referred to the queen’s advocate for advice on the approach the British government should use in the case. Cited in Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 9, 1840, 4. See also minutes of meeting of Nov. 26, 1839, item 97, 120, Papers of Brit, and For. Anti-Slavery Soc.; “Case of the Amistad," Memorials and Petitions, Nov. 1839 to Aug. 1843, 1–3, ibid. Madden to Fox, Nov. 25, 1839, in AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Madden to Joseph Sturge, Dec. 22, 1839, in minutes of Brit, and For. Anti-Slavery Soc., item 111, 132–33, Papers of Brit, and For. Anti-Slavery Soc. See also Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo- American Antislavery Cooperation (Urbana: U. of Ill. Press, 1972), 326–27.
9. Fox to Palmerston, Nov. 29, 1839, Great Britain, British and Foreign State Papers, 116 vols. (London: James Ridgway, 1812–1925), 28:927-28; Palmerston to Fox, Dec. 21, 1839, ibid., 926–27; Palmerston to Minister J. J. Jernigham, Dec. 21, 1839, ibid., 574–75; Palmerston to secretary of Brit, and For. Anti-Slavery Soc., Dec. 23, 1839, read into minutes of meeting of Dec. 27, 1839, item 111, 131– 32, Papers of Brit and For. Anti-Slavery Soc. The papers of Lord Palmerston, temporarily housed in the Royal Historical Manuscripts Commission in London, contain nothing important on the Amistad.
10. Jernigham to H. E. D. Evaristo Perez de Castro in Madrid, Jan. 5, 1840, Great Britain, Foreign Office, FO 185/184/1840, Embassy & Consular Archives: Spain: Corresp., Public Record Office, Kew Gardens, Eng.; D. R. Clarke, acting superintendent of liberated Africans in Havana, to Lord John Russell, May 12, 1840, end. in Palmerston to Arthur Aston in Madrid, Aug. 6, 1840, in ibid., FO 185/182/1840; Palmerston to Aston, Aug. 6, 1840, ibid.; Jernigham to Spanish minister of foreign affairs, Don Joaquin María de Ferrer, Nov. 11, 1840, ibid.; Aston to Palmerston, Nov. 14, 1840, ibid., FO 185/183/1840; reference to parliamentary papers in N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Dec. 17, 1840, 110.
11. Argaiz to Forsyth, Jan. 24, 1840, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 29, AHN; memorandum end. in Argaiz to Forsyth, March 20, 1840, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S. to the DS, 1790–1906, NA; Argaiz to Forsyth, April 24, 1840, ibid.
12. Forsyth to Argaiz, May 9, 1840, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in the U.S. from the DS, 1834–1906, NA.
13. Tappan to Baldwin, Jan. 27, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale.
14. Gilpin to Sec. of Navy, April 11, 1840, Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the U.S., 3:510. The Richmond Enquirer declared that, according to defenders of the blacks, if slaves rose in rebellion, the whites would become captives to “black masters” and everyone would owe the murderers “compassion” and “sympathy." See edition of Jan. 2, 1840, 4.
15. Motion for dismissal of appeal by U.S. district attorney, by Staples and Baldwin, April 7, 1840, U.S. Circuit Ct. Records for Conn., FARC.
16. Report by Tappan on Thompson’s decision, printed in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 2, 1840, 2; Tappan to Scoble, May 2, 1840, Side-light, 70; Boston Liberator, May 8, 1840, 73. See 15 Peters 519, 532 (1841). After the circuit court upheld the appeal to the Supreme Court, Staples tried another approach. He argued that there could be no appeal from the circuit court in cases involving property valued at less than $2,000. The basis for his claim lay in Section 22 of the Judiciary Act of 1789: “And upon a like process, may final judgments and decrees in civil actions, and suits in equity in a circuit court, brought there by original process, or removed there from courts of the several States, or removed there by appeal from a district court where the matter in dispute exceeds the sum or value of two thousand dollars, exclusive of costs, be re-examined and reversed or affirmed in the Supreme Court, the citation being in such case signed by a judge of such circuit court, or justice of the Supreme Court, and the adverse party having at least thirty days’ notice.” U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:84. Thompson, however, explained that that principle had no bearing on admiralty cases. He was correct. The Judiciary Act of 1789 applied the monetary stipulation only to civil suits and equity cases, and Article III of the Constitution states that the country’s judicial power extends to “all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction.” See N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 2, 1840, 2.
17. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 2, 1840, 2.
18. Ibid.
19. Baldwin to William L. Storrs, Connecticut representative in Congress, May 4, 1840, John Adams Family Papers, MHS. The letter is addressed to John Quincy Adams, rather than to Storrs, which probably is an error. In any case, the letter is also in the Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale. Forsyth to Baldwin, March 3, 25, 1840, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA.
20. Baldwin to Storrs, May 4, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
21. Tappan to Baldwin, April 24, 27, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, April 24, 1840, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. This letter is also in the Van Buren Papers, MS Div., LC. See Forsyth to Staples and Sedgwick, March 14, 1840, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA; Forsyth to Baldwin, March 25, 1840, ibid.
22. Baldwin to Storrs, May 4, 1840, Adams Family Papers, MHS; Memoirs of JQA, 10:287, 296.
23. N.Y. Express, June 12, 1840, 2.
24. Memoirs of JQA, 10:370. By this time Adams had joined the blacks’ defense team with Baldwin and Sedgwick. Staples had been removed. Explanation follows in text.
25. Ibid.; N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Dec. 17, 1840, 111.
26. N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Dec. 17, 1840, 111.
27. Ibid.; Memoirs of JQA, 10:373; U.S. Cong., House of Representatives, House Report 51, “Alteration of Doc. H. R. No. 185—Amistad Case," Jan. 4, 1841, 26th Cong., 2d sess., 1.
28. Memoirs of JQA, 10:377, 379; House of Reps., HR 51, “Alteration of Doc. H.R. No. 185,” 1, 3, 4, 6–7; Boston Liberator, Dec. 18, 1840, 202; ibid., Jan. 15, 1841, 11.
29. Memoirs of JQA, 10:382, 385-86, 389.
30. Ibid., 391.
31. Tappan to Baldwin, May 5, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Baldwin to Forsyth, Sept. 9, 1840, ibid.; Tappan to Scoble, May 5, 1840, Sidelight, 70; Townsend to Tappan, Sept. 14, 1840, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
32. N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Oct. 22, 1840, 78.
33. Tappan to Rev. Bacon, April 15, 1840, Bacon Family Papers, Box 5, Yale; Conn. Observer quoted in African Repository 16 (1840):301; Peale’s Museum reference in N.Y. Evening Star, June 16, 1840, 2; Amory Hall reference in Boston Liberator, July 10, 1840, 111.
34. Unsigned letter pertaining to painting, April 25, 1840, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. The letter was probably written by Lewis Tap- pan. On the same day, he wrote a friend in New Haven expressing the same complaints. See Tappan to Benjamin Griswold, April 25, 1840, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. The artist was A. Hewins.
35. Boston Liberator, May 15, 1840, 79.
36. Tappan to Baldwin, Sept. 9, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale.
37. See Forsyth to Holabird, April 30, 1840, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA.
38. Birney to Tappan, Oct. 2, 1840, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Townsend to Tappan, Oct. 3, 1840, ibid.; Boston Liberator, Oct. 23, 1840, 170.
39. Tappan to Baldwin, Oct. 16, Nov. 3, 11, 21, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale.
40. Emancipator story in Boston Liberator, Oct, 23, 1840, 111.
41. Tappan to Baldwin, April 24, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale. To Ellis Gray Loring, Tappan wrote that Staples had “learning, weight of character,” but did “not feel greatly, nor possess the boldness becoming this occasion.” Tappan to Loring, Oct. 19, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. Assessment of Sedgwick ibid. Tappan to Webster, May 10, 1840, Harold D. Moser, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence, vol. 5, 1840– 1843 (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College and U. Press of New England, 1982), 36–37. Moser could find no reply from Webster to Tappan and concluded that he declined the offer. Ibid., 37 n. 2. The Amistad Research Center recently acquired the letter containing Webster’s refusal and confirming Moser’s supposition. See Webster to Tappan, May 13, 1840, ARC. Tappan to Baldwin, Oct. 16, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Baldwin to Tappan, Oct. 19, 1840, ibid.; Tap- pan to Baldwin, Oct. 28, 1840, ibid.
42. For Webster’s views on slavery, see Maurice G. Baxter, One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard LJ. Press, 1984), 90, 414–15, 418. On Choate see Jean V. Matthews, Rufus Choate: The Law and Civic Virtue (Philadelphia: Temple U. Press, 1980), 195–96, 241.
43. Tappan to Baldwin, Oct. 28, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale. Simeon Jocelyn from the Amistad Committee considered Adams a man of “honesty and opinion.” Jocelyn to Tappan, Oct. 21, 1840, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. A Virginian accused Adams of being so “diseased” on the subject of slavery that his name had become “odious” in the South. Because of this, the writer told Adams, “your name will descend to the latest posterity with this blot on it: Mr. Adams loves the negroes too much, unconstitutionally .” Letter from a Virginian to JQA, Dec. 31, 1839, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
44. Memoirs of JQA, 10:358; Tappan to Baldwin, Oct. 28, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale.
45. Tappan to Baldwin, Oct. 28, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Adams to Baldwin, Nov. 11, 1840, ibid.; Baldwin to Adams, Nov. 2, 1840, ibid.
46. Memoirs of JQA, 10:359–60; Tappan to Baldwin, Nov. 21, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Townsend to Tappan, Oct. 3, 1840, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
47. Memoirs of JQA, 10:361–62, 372.
Chapter 9. “Oh How Shall I Do Justice . . .?”
1. Memoirs of JQA, 10:383.
2. John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1983), 471; Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press, 1984), 373.
3. Major L. Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: U. Press of Kansas, 1984), 207; Robert G. Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington: U. Press of Kentucky, 1957), 255, 256 n. 14.
4. Niven, Van Buren, 470–72; Cole, Van Buren and the American Political System, 373; James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837–1841 (Lexington: U. Press of Kentucky, 1970), 190.
5. Tappan to Baldwin, Dec. 24, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 13, 1841, 2; Walton Perry, “The Mysterious Case of the Long, Low, Black Schooner,” 360, in ARC. Wilson to Adams, Dec. 25, 29, 1840, John Adams Family Papers, MHS. Wilson also wrote Baldwin about Hyde, although Baldwin had been aware of Hyde’s story over a year earlier. See Wilson to Baldwin, Dec. 29, 1840, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 36, Yale; Tappan to Baldwin, Nov. 11, 1839, ibid., Box 35.
6. See Adams to Loring, Oct. 3, Nov. 19, 1839, Adams Family Papers, JQA Letterbook, MHS.
7. Baldwin brief ibid., Corresp.; Memoirs of JQA, 10:383, 387, 397, 402, 409–10. To his son Charles Francis, John Quincy Adams explained that in 1783 he had seen in the British Museum in London the signature and seal of Saer de Quincy on the original parchment of the Magna Carta. That he was a descendant of Saer de Quincy had never had real impact until he contemplated defending the Amistad captives. Gedney’s seizure of the blacks was a “gross violation” of the principles underlying the Magna Carta because he had acted without a warrant. Adams’s great responsibilities to liberty had caused him “agony of soul” from the day he agreed to serve as counsel. See JQA to Charles Francis Adams, April 14, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
8. Kale and Kinna to Adams, Jan. 4, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS; Cinqué to Baldwin, Feb. 9, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale.
9. Adams’s notes on Amistad case, Feb. 7, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. See Angel Calderón de la Barca to Forsyth, Sept. 6, 1839, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the U.S. to the DS, 1790–1906, NA; Argaiz to Forsyth, Nov. 26, 1839, ibid. The Spanish text in the latter note was: “resultando de aqui que la vindicta publica no se halla aun satisfecha; porque es preciso no olvi- dar que la Legacion de Espana no pide la estradicion de esclavos, sino la de asesinos.”
14. Argaiz to Forsyth, Jan. 19, 1841, ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. The Spanish minister’s changing emphases become apparent upon reading the following notes to the Department of State: Calderón to Forsyth, Sept. 6, 1839, ibid.; Argaiz to Forsyth, Nov. 26, 1839, Jan. 19, 1841, ibid. In September 1839 Calderón warned that if the “crime in question” went unpunished, the result would be more “revolt and evasion.” Spanish paper quoted in N.Y. Advertiser & Express, Sept. 11, 1839, 1.
17. Vail to Forsyth, Jan. 15, 1841, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, 1792–1906, NA.
18. Ibid.
19. Townsend to Tappan, Jan. 18, 1841, AM A papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Memoirs of JQA, 10:399–401; Fox to Adams, Jan. 17, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
20. Fox to Forsyth, Jan. 20, 1841, U.S. Congress, Sen. Docs., No. 179, “Message from the President of U.S.,” Feb. 12, 1841, 26th Cong., 2d sess., 27–28.
21. Forsyth to Fox, Feb. 1, 1841, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in the U.S. from the DS, 1834–1906, Great Britain, NA.
22. For emphasis on the McLeod affair in Anglo-American relations, see Great Britain, Foreign Office, FO 5: U.S., vols. 359–64 (1841), PRO, Kew Gardens, Eng.
23. Townsend to Tappan, Jan. 18, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Tappan to Roger M. Sherman (the friend), Jan. 20, 1841, ibid.; Tappan to Townsend, Jan. 20, 1841, ibid.; Tappan to Norton, Jan. 20, 1841, ibid.; Thomas Fessenden to Tappan, Jan. 25, 1841, ibid.
24. Townsend to Tappan, Jan. 18, 1841, ibid.
25. Townsend to Tappan, Jan. 22, Feb. 12, 1841, ibid.
26. Memoirs of JQA, 10:396-97; Key to Tappan, Jan. 6, 1841, Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Tappan to Baldwin, Jan. 20, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale.
27. “Veto” in N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Jan. 21, 1841, 129. See Side-light, 185, 185 n. 140.
28. “Veto” in N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Jan. 21, 1841, 129.
29. Leavitt to Tappan, Jan. 16, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Townsend to Tappan, Jan. 18, 1841, ibid.
30. Jay to Tappan, Jan. 23, 1841, ibid.
31. Tappan to Adams, Jan. 8, Feb. 13, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
32. Lewis Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, March 9, 13, 1840, Papers of Benjamin Tappan, MS Div., LC.
33. Tappan to Baldwin, Jan. 20, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Leavitt to Tappan, Jan. 16, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
Chapter 10. “The Eternal Principles of Justice”
1. Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 3 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1922), 2:316. See also Carl B. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 5; The Taney Period, 1836–64 (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1974).
2. Associate Justice Joseph Story believed that only the maintenance of the constitutional compromise on slavery could preserve the Union. Worked out in Philadelphia in 1787, it provided that Congress could not interfere with the importation of slaves before 1808 and that three-fifths of the slaves in the United States would count in determining taxation apportionment and representation in the House. Six years later, in 1793, Congress passed a fugitive-slave law to help the states enforce a similar clause in the Constitution. Story used the principles underlying these specific provisions to argue that the only way to deal with the slavery question was through compromise. See R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 357, 365–66.
3. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court, 5:63, 66-67; Warren, Supreme Court in United States History, 2:313–15.
4. Memoirs of JQA, 10:431; Swisher, History of the Supreme Court, 5:57, 67; Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, 354. The full name of the case was Somerset v. Stewart. Story's work on conflict theory was Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1834). In it, he declared that, under the Somerset decision, when a slave from Africa or any other slaveholding country entered England, he became “ipso facto a freeman.” In the United States, he wrote, “there is no doubt, that the same principle pervades the common law of the non-slaveholding states in America.” Ibid., 92–93. For a penetrating analysis of the Somerset case, see William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1769–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y,: Cornell U. Press, 1977), chap. L See also Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1981), 16-17, 38-40, and numerous other references to the case.
5. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court, 5:11–13. See also Charles G. Haines and Foster H. Sherwood, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government and Politics, 1835–1864 (Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1957), 96–110.
6. Memoirs of JQA, 10:429, 437; U.S. Supreme Court, “Minutes of the Supreme Court of the United States,” 4373, 4376, NA; U.S. Sup. Ct., “Dockets of the Supreme Court of the United States,” case 2310, The United States v. The Libellants & Claimants of the Schooner Amistad á c. and the Africans mentioned & described in the General Libels & claims," ibid.; 15 Peters 541-47 (1841).
7. 15 Peters 547-49 (1841).
8. Memoirs of JQA, 10:429; U.S. Sup. Ct., “Minutes,” 4379; 15 Peters 549, 551, 560 (1841).
9. 15 Peters 550 (1841). Baldwin’s notes on the case showed that he based his motion on the following factors: the appellees owed no allegiance to Spanish law or dependencies; they were not assassins; they were not guilty of crimes or violations of laws; no power existed in any government department of the United States—by Constitution, law, or treaty—to surrender them for trial as fugitives or criminals upon the demand of the Spanish minister; the blacks had never been property belonging to Ruiz and Montes, but had been and were free; the United States had not instituted a suit here or in the lower courts charging the blacks with a crime or any other act justifying imprisonment; and, in a point not upheld by law (see above, chap. 8, n. 16), he declared that if they were slaves, none was valued at $2,000, the minimum necessary for property questions to come before the Supreme Court. See Baldwin’s notes for January term of Supreme Court, in Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale. For the Miln case, see 11 Peters 102 (1837).
10. Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1982), 103; 15 Peters 550–51, 556, 560–61 (1841). Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention were published in 1840.
11. 15 Peters 550-51, 553, 554 (1841).
12. Ibid., 558–59.
13. Ibid., 551–52, 554.
14. Ibid., 565–66.
15. N.Y. American, Feb. 27, 1841, 2; Memoirs of JQA, 10:430.
16. U.S. Sup. Ct., “Minutes,” 4381; Memoirs of JQA, 10:427, 431.
17. John Quincy Adams, Argument of John Quincy Adams, before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Case of the United States, Appellants, vs. Cinqué, and Other Africans, Captured in the Schooner Amistad (N.Y.: S. W. Benedict, 1841), 3–4, 6, 8–9, reprinted in The Basic Afro-American Reprint Library (N.Y.: Arno Press, 1969). See manuscript of Adams’s speech before Supreme Court on Amistad case, in Lewis Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC. Adams’s argument did not appear in Peters’s Reports, because he failed to get his manuscript to the court reporter on time. For this reason, it is impossible to be sure how much of Adams’s Argument was actually delivered before the Court, and how much he later added to his own published version of the proceedings. He probably managed to present most of the points he intended. In any case, he had made most of his charges before the House of Representatives and, in one form or another, in the newspapers. See Adams to Peters, May 3, 19, 1841, John Adams Family Papers, JQA Letterbook, MHS.
18. JQA, Argument, 11.
19. Ibid., 49–50.
20. Ibid., 79; Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), app. E, xxxviii–xl.
21. MS of Adams’s speech, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
22. Ibid.; Sturge, Visit, app. E, xxxix.
23. JQA, Argument, 65-66.
24. Ibid., 15, 29, 30.
25. Ibid., 13–14, 20–21, 42. Adams was referring to the Adams-Onís Treaty.
26. JQA, Argument, 23, 42.
27. Ibid., 16, 38, 42–43,71.
28. Ibid., 46–47.
29. Memoirs of JQA, 10:396-97, 431, 435.
30. Joseph Pickering (the observer) to Adams, March 12, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 4, 1841, 2; N.Y. American, Feb, 27, 1841, 2; N.Y. Evening Post, March 2, 1841, 2; Garrison to Elizabeth Pease, March 1, 1841, Walter M. Merrill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1973), 18; Norton to Tappan, Feb. 27, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. Barbour reference in extract of letter by unidentified writer, published in Richmond Enquirer, March 9, 1841, 3; William W. Story, ed., Life and Letters of Joseph Story, 2 vols. (Boston: Little & Brown, 1851), 2:348.
31. Memoirs of JQA, 10:431–32; U.S. Sup. Ct., “Minutes,” 4382; N.Y. American, March 4, 1841, 2.
32. Memoirs of JQA, 10:437; 15 Peters 572, 591 (1841).
33. 15 Peters 570-71 (1841); U.S. Sup. Ct., “Minutes,” 4395.
34. 15 Peters 575-76 (1841).
35. Ibid., 576–79.
36. Ibid., 578.
37. Ibid., 580–81.
38. Ibid., 581–82.
39. Sedgwick to Tappan, Oct. 12, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
40. 15 Peters 583 (1841).
41. Ibid., 583–84.
42. Ibid., 584–86.
43. Ibid., 586–87.
44. Maurice G. Baxter, Daniel Webster and the Supreme Court (Amherst: U. of Mass. Press, 1966), 20; 15 Peters 593 (1841); Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. Press, 1975), 102; Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, 355-58.
45. Sedgwick to Tappan, Oct. 12, 1839, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC.
46. 15 Peters 596–97 (1841). For the congressional act of March 3, 1819, see U.S. Statutes at Large, 3:532–34. There is nothing of importance on the Amistad in the Joseph Story Papers housed in either the Library of Congress or the Massachusetts Historical Society.
47. U.S. Sup. Ct., “Minutes,” 4415–16; Swisher, History of the Supreme Court, 5:194; 15 Peters 519–20, 592, 597 (1841). See also Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, 368-69. Taney’s opinions in other cases indicate that he considered blacks to be subject to the states in which they were at the time, and probably not open to federal intervention. He undoubtedly did not concur with Story’s statements relating to “eternal principles of justice.” See Carl B. Swisher, Roger B. Taney (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1936), 418.
48. 15 Peters, 520, 593
49. Ibid., 593–94; Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 3 vols. (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1833), 1:276. See also Cover, Justice Accused, 105, 112.
50. 15 Peters 595-96 (1841); Cover, Justice Accused, 112.
51. 15 Peters 520, 594–95 (1841).
52. Ibid., 597.
53. For correspondence relating to Adams’s failure to have the manuscript ready for publication, see n. 17 above. Peters even delayed publication of the volume including the Amistad case to give Adams more time to submit his manuscript. When Adams still failed to furnish it, Peters explained, “As many of the points presented by Mr. Adams, in the discussion of the cause, were not considered by the Court essential to its decision: and were not taken notice of in the opinion of the Court, delivered by Mr. Justice STORY, the necessary omission of the argument is submitted with less regret.” See 15 Peters 566 (1841).
54. Ibid., 597. Leavitt told Tappan that he was “not very sorry” that the blacks were “in the hands of Daniel Webster instead of John Forsyth.” Leavitt to Tap- pan, Feb. 15, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. Though Webster had not accepted the invitation to defend the Amistad captives before the Supreme Court, the abolitionists had reason to believe that he would not uphold his predecessor’s position on the case. In late 1819, during the debate over Missouri’s admission to the Union, Webster had set out his position on slavery— that Congress should prohibit its extension on constitutional grounds. See Maurice G. Baxter, One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1984), 89, 90.
55. Cover, Justice Accused, 109, 114–16.
56. Leavitt quoted in William Jay, A View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery (Utica, N.Y.: G. F. Hopkins, 1844; originally published in 1839), app.
57. Adams to Tappan, March 9, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS; Adams to Baldwin, March 9, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale.
Chapter 11. In Perspective
1. Emancipator, Oct. 10, 1839, 94; Mobile Commercial Register & Patriot, March 24, 1841, 2; Charleston Courier, March 15, 1841, 2; New Orleans Times Picayune, March 23, 1841, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 11, 1841, 2; March 20, 1841, 2; Baldwin to Adams, March 12, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Baldwin to Amistad Committee, March 12, 1841, ibid.; Samuel Peckham (observer) to Tappan, Feb. 3, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. Leavitt to Adams, March 18, 1841, John Adams Family Papers, MHS; Smith to Weld, March 14, 1841, Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844, 2 vols. (N.Y.: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), 2:863. Despite this favorable reaction to the decision, Adams criticized the Supreme Court in a long letter to the Amistad Committee, which the New York Commercial Advertiser published. Adams believed that the Court sidestepped many of the issues, including the charge of executive interference. See Adams to Amistad Committee, March 17, 1841, Adams Family Papers, JQA Letterbook, MHS; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 23, 1841, 2.
2. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 20, 1841, 2.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.; Townsend to Tappan, March 11, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Banna to Tappan, March 12, 1841, ibid.; Kinna to Tappan, March 13, 20, 28, 1841, ibid.
5. Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875 (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1982), 104; Tappan to Baldwin, April 9, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Leavitt to Adams, Aug. 29, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC. At one public exhibition attended by Joseph Sturge, Tappan’s friend and a leader of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, a large crowd jammed the assembly, paying the high price of half a dollar, which went into a fund to transport the blacks back to Africa. Fifteen of them were present, including Kale and the three girls, and Cinqué spoke Mende in a “very animated and graceful” manner. Kale spoke English, and each of the others read from the New Testament. These public displays, Sturge wrote, made it “impossible for any one to go away with the impression, that in native intellect these people were inferior to the whites.” Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842), 50–51. For accounts of this exhibition, see N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 13, 1841, 2, and African Repository 17 (1841); 164–65. See also Lewis Tappan Papers, Journals and Notebooks, 1814–69, 35, MS Div., LC.
6. Tappan to Baldwin, March 26, April 1, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Amistad Committee to Baldwin, April 15, 1841, ibid.; The Amistad Case, 210 (personal copy of Tappan’s), in ARC. Whereas Staples and Sedgwick were reimbursed for expenses, Adams declined any compensation. Amistad Committee to JQA, April 15, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS.
7. Amistad Committee to Adams, March 24, 1841, Adams Family Papers, MHS; Leavitt to Alexander, March 25, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Leavitt to Committee of British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, April 28, 1841, ibid.; Memoirs of JQA, 10:455. Adams undoubtedly based his stand on the Logan Act of 1798, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.
8. Amistad Committee to Baldwin, March 11, 24, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Baldwin to Leavitt, March 12, 1841, ibid.; Tappan to Baldwin, April 1, 1841, ibid,; Baldwin to Tappan, et al, April 2, 1841, ibid.; Adams to Amistad Committee, April 3, 1841, Adams Family Papers, JQA Letterbook, MHS (letter also in ARC); Extract of letter from Adams, April 3, 1841, end. in Tappan to Baldwin, April 13, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Staples to Tappan, April 9, 1841, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Sedgwick to Tappan, March 18, 1841, ibid.
9. Amistad Committee to Baldwin, March 11, 24, 1841, ibid.; Baldwin to Leavitt, March 12, 1841, ibid.
10. Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middle- town, Conn.: Wesleyan U. Press, 1962), 77; Extract of letter from Adams, April 3, 1841, end. in Tappan to Baldwin, April 13, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Tappan to Baldwin, April 1, 1841, ibid.; E. B. Sherman to Simeon E. Baldwin, Feb, 16, 1888, ibid., Box 87; John Dougall to Leavitt, April 26, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Long Island Farmer (N.Y.), May 11, 1841, 2; N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 13, 1841, 2.
11. Kinna to Baldwin, March 15, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; New Haven Herald, March 16, 1841, cited in N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 19, 1841, 1.
12. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 19, 1841, 1. Ralph Ingersoll had appeared as attorney against the Amistad blacks during the hearings before Judge Smith Thompson in Hartford in September 1839. Charles A. Ingersoll was a clerk during the early stages of the Amistad court proceedings in Connecticut. He is not to be confused with Charles J. Ingersoll, the Democratic representative from Pennsylvania.
13. Ibid., March 20, 1841, 2. At Baldwin’s request, Tappan retained the legal assistance of General [?] Kimberly. Ibid.
14. Ibid.; Tappan to Simeon Jocelyn, March 18, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
15. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser, March 20, 1841, 2.
16. Ibid.; Tappan to Jocelyn, March 18, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC.
17. Tappan to Amistad Committee, March 19, 1841, printed in N.Y. Journal of Commerce and reprinted in Boston Liberator, March 26, 1841, 50.
18. American Missionary (published by AMA of N.Y.), Jan. 1858, 2, in ARC; Tappan to Jocelyn, March 18, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ibid.; A. F. Williams to Tappan, June 3, 4, Aug. 18, Sept. 7, 1841, ibid.; L. M. Booth (the contact) to Tappan, June 4, 1841, ibid.; John F. Norton (abolitionist in Connecticut) to Tappan, Aug. 9, 1841, ibid.; New Haven Herald (n.d.) cited in Richmond Enquirer, March 30, 1841, 2; Niles' National Register (Balt.), Aug. 21, 1841, 400; Amistad Committee pamphlet (n.d.), A1258, 4, in ARC.
19. Kale letter in Emancipator, March 25, 1841, quoted in Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 74–76.
20. Scoble to Aberdeen, Dec. 10, 1841, “The Amistad Captives,” 77, Papers of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, London, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Eng.; Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 78-79.
21. Baldwin to Adams, March 12, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale; Baldwin to Leavitt, March 12, 1841, ibid.; Augustus F. Beard, The Story of the "Amistad,” pamphlet published by AMA (n.d.), A1437, ARC: Tappan to Benjamin Griswold, Jan. 30, 1840, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; Tappan to Dr. Richard R. Madden, Feb. 3, 1840, ibid.
22. Adams to Baldwin, March 17, 1841, Adams Family Papers, JQA Letter- book, MHS; Adams to Baldwin, March 17, 1841, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 37, Yale.
23. Memoirs of JQA, 10:446–47.
24. Ibid., 11:23–24; Leavitt to Tappan, June 30, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Leavitt to Adams, Aug. 29, 1841, ibid.; Jocelyn and Tappan to Pres. Tyler, ca. late Aug. 1841, in Adams Family Papers, MHS; Tappan to Adams, April 21, 1841, ibid.; Tappan to Sturge, Sept. 25, 1841, Side-light, 83- 84; Fletcher Webster, acting sec. of state, to Tappan, Oct. 6, 1841, U.S. DS, Domestic Letters, NA; Tyler to Tappan, Oct 20, 1841, Tappan Papers, Corresp., 1809–72, MS Div., LC; African Repository 17 (1841): 35.
25. Leavitt to Alexander, March 25, 1841, AM A Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Leavitt to Buxton, March 29, 1841, ibid.; Scoble to Tappan, Oct. 19, 1841, ibid. Neither the papers of Lord Aberdeen nor those of Sir Robert Peel, both housed in the British Library (formerly called the British Museum) in London, contain anything important relating to the Amistad. There is nothing on the Amistad in the Lord John Russell Papers stored in the PRO in Kew Gardens, Eng.
26. Covey to Tappan, April 29, 1841, AMA Papers, Box 197, “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Tappan to Leavitt, Nov. 15, 1841 (public letter), Sturge, Visit, app. E, xli–xliii, xlvi–xlvii, li; Long Island Farmer (N.Y.), Dec. 17, 1841, 2; William W. Anderson in N.Y. to Commanders of Brit, vessels on African coast, Nov. 19, 1841, in James B. Covey Corresp., “Sierra Leone” folder, ARC; Fox to Tappan, Nov. 20, 1841, ibid.; Fox to Lt. Col. Sir John Jeremie, Brit. gov. of Sierra Leone, Nov. 20, 1841, end. ibid.; Tappan to Jed [?] Frye, Nov. 23, 1841, ibid.; N.Y. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Dec. 9, 1841, 105–6; African Repository 17 (1841): 345; Scoble to Aberdeen, Dec. 10, 20, 1841, 77-80, Papers of Brit, and For. Anti-Slavery Soc.; Stratford Canning to Scoble, Dec. 25, 1841, ibid,, 80; Brit. It. gov. of Sierra Leone, W. Fergusson, to Tappan, et al. (n.d.), end. in Tappan to J. H. Tredgold, Dec. 18, 1841, ibid., 81–82; Oberlin Evangelist, Dec. 22, 1841, 206; Niles’ National Register (Balt.), April 23, 1842, 128; Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 80; Robert S. Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College from Its Foundation through the Civil War, 2 vols. (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College, 1943), 1:258; T. J. Alldridge, A Transformed Colony: Sierra Leone (London: Seeley, 1910), 260.
27. Most of the blacks returned to Mende, although some stayed in Sierra Leone to work with the missionaries. Ten of the males, including Covey, joined the three females in choosing not to return to Mende. In 1846 the Amistad Committee merged with other missionary societies to form the American Missionary Association, and three years later one of the three female captives of the Amistad, Margru (renamed Sarah Kinson), began work as a missionary after studying at Oberlin College in Ohio at AMA expense. Cinqué returned to his people, although he eventually worked as interpreter for the AMA mission at Kaw-Mende until his death about 1879. See Amistad Committee pamphlet (n.d.), A1258, ARC; Long Island Farmer (N.Y.), April 19, 1842, 2; Niles’ National Register (Balt), July 16, 1842, 311; African Repository 18 (1842): 158; 19 (1843): 154é56; Oberlin Evangelist, Oct. 12, 1842, 167; Nov. 5, 1845, 182; Tappan to Scoble, April 25, 1843, Side-light, 133; American Missionary, Jan. 1847, 20; Nov. 1847, 2; Feb. 1851, 26; Nov. 1850, 4; June 1854, 59; Jan. 1858, 1; Charles A. Dinsmore, “Interesting Sketches of the Amistad Captives,” Yale University Library Gazette 9 (Jan. 1935): 55; Michael E. Strieby, “Oberlin and the American Missionary Association” (Address delivered at Oberlin, Oct. 23, 1891), in ARC; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1969), 76, 78–79; Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Captives of the Amistad," Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 4 (1888): 364; Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 81; Fletcher, History of Oberlin College, 1:259–60; Alldridge, Transformed Colony, 261. On the AMA, see Clifton H. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association, 1846–1861: A Study of Christian Abolitionism,” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1958. The Spanish could not have known, but Fox had assured Palmerston that the Supreme Court’s “just and virtuous decision” eliminated the need for “all further interference” in Spanish-American affairs. Fox to Palmerston, March 9, 1841, Great Britain, Foreign Office, FO 185/184/1841, Slave Trade: Corresp., PRO, Kew Gardens, Eng.
28. Argaiz to First Sec. of DS, March 9, 1841, Leg. 5584, Exp. 1, no. 86; March 20, 1841, ibid., no. 88, AHN; Argaiz to Webster, March 17, April 5, 11, May 27, 29, Sept. 24, 1841, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA.
29. Fletcher Webster, acting sec. of state, to Argaiz, May 3, 1841, U.S. Congress, House Documents, 191, 17 Cong., 3d sess., 5:3; Webster to Argaiz, Sept. 1, 1841, June 21, 1842, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in the U.S. from the DS, Spain, 1834–1906, NA.
30. Argaiz to Webster, Sept. 24, 1841, June 27, 1842, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Aaron Vail, U.S. charge in Madrid, to Webster, Nov. 30, 1841, William R. Manning, ed., The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860, 12 vols. (Wash., D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1932–39), 11:326–28; Vail to Webster, Dec. 28, 1841, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, 1792–1906, NA. Spanish authorities in Cuba demanded that London withdraw its consul, David Turnbull, whom they regarded as the “avowed and unblushing tool of the British Society of Abolitionists.” Even a high-ranking British official in Madrid thought Turnbull had “allowed his zeal to get the better of his discretion.” See Hubert H. S. Aimes, A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511–1868 (N.Y.: Putnam’s, 1907), 135–39, 141–43; Arthur Aston to Lord Palmerston, Feb. 23, 1841, GC/AS/171/3, Lord Palmerston Papers, Broadlands MSS, Royal Historical MSS Commission, London, Eng. By permission of the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives. See also Forsyth to Vail, July 15, 1840, U.S. DS, Instructions, Spain, NA; Vail to Webster, Dec. 28, 1841, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, NA. The Spanish were also concerned that the United States itself might be looking for a reason to intervene in Cuba. See Aimes, History of Slavery in Cuba, 138.
31. Vail to Webster, Feb. 12, 1842, U.S. DS, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Spain, NA; Irving to Webster, Dec. 5, 1842, Kenneth E. Shewmaker, ed., Papers of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers, vol 1, 1841–1843 (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College and U. Press of New England, 1983), 226–28; Argaiz to Webster, Sept. 24, 1841, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA.
32. Tyler to House of Representatives, Feb. 27, 1843, in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 11 vols. (N.Y.: Bureau of National Literature, 1896–1910), 4:232; House Docs., 191, 1–2; Legaré to Webster, March 2, 1842, Shewmaker, ed., Papers of Webster, 1:204; Argaiz to Webster, June 27, 1842, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA. On the Creole, see Howard Jones, “The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt,” Civil War History 21 (March 1975): 28-50. Questions had arisen about the legality of Gedney’s request for salvage, but Secretary of the Navy James K. Paulding investigated the matter and found the claim “perfectly satisfactory.” See Paulding to Gedney, Feb. 3, 7, 1840, U.S. Dept, of Navy, Sec. of Navy, Letters to Officers, Ships of War, NA.
33. Upshur to Irving, Jan. 9, 1844, Manning, ed., Dipl Corresp. of U.S., 11:31–32; Irving to Upshur, March 2, 1844, ibid., 336.
34. Report from Committee on Foreign Affairs, April 10, 1844, U.S. Cong., House Reports, 426, 28th Cong., 1st sess., 2:1–3. The committee members were Ingersoll, chairman; Robert B. Rhett of South Carolina (Dem.); Lemuel Stetson of New York (Dem.); William H. Hammett of Mississippi (Dem,); John White of Kentucky (Whig); John B. Dawson of Louisiana (Dem.); Samuel C. Sample of Indiana (Whig); William P. Thomasson of Kentucky (Whig); and Henry Williams of Massachusetts (Dem.). This Ingersoll, of course, was not the one earlier involved in the Amistad Case.
35. Ingersoll Committee Report, House Reports, 426, 28th Cong., 1st sess., 2:3.
36. Ibid., 9.
37. Ibid., 9–12.
38. Ibid., 12–14.
39. Ibid., 1: U.S. Cong., Congressional Globe, App., 1843–44, 28th Cong., 1st sess., 13:500.
40. The Papers of Charles J. Ingersoll, MS Div., LC, contain no references to the Amistad.
41. Cong. Globe, App., 1843–44, 28th Cong., 1st sess., 13:500–504. Congress passed the “gag resolution” in 1836 to halt debates on petitions to end the domestic slave trade in the nation's capital. John Quincy Adams led the fight against the rule as a violation of freedom of speech and finally won its repeal in 1844.
42. Ibid., 504, 534, 538; Memoirs of JQA, 12:12–13. The House vote was eighty- six to sixty-two.
43. Adams's public letter to inhabitants of his home congressional district in Mass., printed in Wash. National Intelligencer, April 3, 1845, 2; Memoirs of JQA, 12:186.
44. Calderón to Calhoun, Dec. 4, 1844, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Calderón to Buchanan, Jan. 29, 1846, ibid.
45. Buchanan to Ingersoll, March 19, 1846, House Reports, 753, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 4:1; Calderón to Buchanan, June 18, 1846, U.S. Cong., Senate Docs., 29, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 3:8.
46. House Reports, 753, 29th Cong., 1st sess., 4:4–17; Calderón to Buchanan, Sept. 20, Dec. 29, 1846, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Cong. Globe, App. 1846–47, 29th Cong., 2d sess., 16:437–38, 506; House Journal, 29th Cong., 2d sess., 483. The margin was 113 to 40. Of the 113 nays, 97 were Northerners, leaving only 16 from the South (including one representative from Missouri who was born in Virginia). Among the 40 yeas were only 4 from the North; the remaining 36 included one representative from Missouri who had retired on an Arkansas plantation. Political differences were less distinct: among the 113 nays were 55 Whigs, 51 Democrats, 2 Republicans, 3 “Americans,” and 2 with no announced party affiliation; among the 40 yeas were 3 Whigs, 36 Democrats, and 1 with no affiliation. Ibid., 483–84.
47. Polk’s Third Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 7, 1847, in Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 4:551; Buchanan to James J. McKay, chairman, House Ways and Means Committee, March 2, 1847, Sen. Docs., 29, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 3:11; Calderón to Buchanan, March 11, 1847, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Buchanan to Calderón, March 19, 1847, U.S. DS, Notes to Foreign Legations in U.S., Spain, NA; T. C. Reynolds, sec. of U.S. Legation in Madrid, to Buchanan, July 8, 1847, U.S. DS, Dispatches, Spain, NA; Buchanan to Romulus Saunders, U.S. minister to Spain, Sept. 29, 1847, U.S. DS, Instructions, Spain, ibid.; John B. Moore, ed., The Works of James Buchanan: Comprising His Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, 12 vols. (N.Y.; Antiquarian Press, 1960; originally published in 1908-11), 7:423-24.
48. Judson to Baldwin, Dec. 18, 1847, Baldwin Family Papers, Box 44, Yale.
49. Cong: Globe, 1847–48, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 17:101.
50. Cong. Globe, App. 1847–48, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 17:1126, 1128–29.
51. Chase to Van Buren, Aug. 21, 1848, Martin Van Buren Papers, MS Div., LC; Butler to Van Buren, Oct. 3, 1848, ibid.; James R. Beys (the other supporter) to Van Buren, Oct. 19, 1848, ibid.; Van Buren to Beys, Oct. 24, 1848, ibid.; Salmon P. Chase Papers, ibid.
52. Cong. Globe, App., 1847–48, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 17:1129.
53. Calderón to Buchanan, Aug. 22, 1848, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Calderón to Sec. of State John M. Clayton, Nov. 20, 1849, ibid.; Calderón to Webster, Aug. 14, 1850, ibid.; Calderón to Webster, Jan. 8, 1851, ibid. As in previous years, the United States warned that cession of Cuba to any foreign power would be the “instant signal for war.” See Clayton to Daniel M. Barringer, U.S. minister to Spain, Aug. 2, 1849, Manning, ed., Dipl. Corresp. of U.S., 11:70. See also R. Earl McClendon, “The Amistad Claims: Inconsistencies of Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 48 (Sept. 1933): 386-412.
54. Cong. Globe, 1850–51, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 30:385, 401–3. The vote was forty-three to six. Clay’s notoriety was not always deserved. The Compromise of 1850, usually considered his handiwork, but more rightfully attributable to Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, stipulated the following: California’s admission to the Union as a free state; abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C.; establishment of a federally enforced fugitive-slave law; institution of the principle of “popular sovereignty” in determining the existence of slavery in the territories of Utah and New Mexico; and an amicable settlement of a boundary controversy between Texas and New Mexico.
55. Sen. Reports, 301, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 1:2–7; Sen. Reports, 158, 32d Cong., 1st sess., 1:1–78; Cong. Globe, 1851–52, 32d Cong., 1st sess., 21, pt. 1:702, pt. 2:902–3; John B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, 8 vols. (Wash., D.C.: GPO, 1906), 5:854; Moore, ed., Works of Buchanan, 10:141, 252–53, 349–50; Cong. Globe, 1857–58, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 27, pt. 1:517; ibid., 2d sess., 28, pt. 1:1-2; Sen. Reports, 36, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 1:1–7; Sen. Journal, 35th Cong., 2d sess., 7; Sec. of State Lewis Cass to Augustus Dodge, U.S. minister to Spain, Jan. 6, 1858, Manning, ed., Dipl. Corresp. of U.S., 11:226. Both Democratic presidents during the late 1850s, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, appealed to Congress to honor the Amistad claims. They were derisively called “doughfaces” because they were Northerners with Southern policies. See Pierce’s First Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 5, 1853, in Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 5:209; Buchanan’s First Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 8, 1857, ibid., 446; Buchanan’s Second Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 6, 1858, ibid., 511; Buchanan’s Third Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 19, 1859, ibid., 561.
56. Cong. Globe, App., 1854–55, 33d Cong., 1st sess., 23:55; Cong. Globe, 1857– 58, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 27, pt. 1:442–45. For the Dred Scott Case, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (N.Y.: Oxford U. Press, 1978).
57. Cong. Globe, 1858–59, 35th Cong., 2d sess., 28, pt. 1:1–2, 904–5.
58. Calderon to Webster, April 19, 1852, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Spanish Minister Manuel Bertran de Lis to Sec. of State Edward Everett, Nov. 11, 1852, Sen. Exec. Docs., 19, 32d Cong., 2d sess., 3; Bertran to Calderón, Nov. 11, 1852, House Docs.,, 20, 32d Cong., 2d sess., 3:3; Calderón to Everett, Jan. 6, 1853, U.S. DS, Notes from the Spanish Legation, NA; Moore, Digest of International Law, 5:853–54; Sec. of State William L. Marcy to Pierre Soulé, U.S. minister to Spain, July 23, 1853, Manning, ed., Dipl. Corresp. of U.S., 11:160-61; Calderón to Soulé, April 18, 1854, ibid., 759–60; Soulé to Calderón, April 20, 1854, ibid., 761–64. For Southern territorial objectives during the 1850s, see Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. Press, 1973).
59. Dodge to Cass, Aug. 15, 1857, Manning, ed., Dipl. Corresp. of U.S., 11:926– 29; Dodge to Cass, Aug. 25, 1858, ibid., 951. The Cuban-claims issue stemmed from a hurricane on the island in 1844, after which the government in Havana permitted duty-free importation of goods for six months, only to revoke the decree suddenly. Among those importers hurt by this action were Americans, who had lodged a claim for indemnification with the Spanish government.
60. R. Earl McClendon, “The Two-Thirds Rule in Senate Action upon Treaties, 1789-1901,” American Journal of International Law 16 (Jan. 1932): 45-46; Moore, Digest of International Law, 5:854; Moore, ed., Works of Buchanan, 11:28, 29; 12:237; Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 5:642; William Preston, U.S. minister to Spain, to Cass, March 6, June 28, 1860, Manning, ed., Dipl. Corresp. of U.S., 11:977, 977 n. 2; Preston to Cass, Oct. 25, 1860, ibid., 993-94.
61. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 12th ed., 4 vols. (London: Strahan and Woodfall, 1793), 1:62.