“The moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided," Adams said. At the heart of the case, Adams argued, was the willingness of the United States to stand up for the ideals upon which it was founded. In a lengthy argument beginning on February 24, Adams accused Van Buren of abusing his executive powers, and defended the Africans’ right to fight for their freedom aboard the Amistad. Adams had previously argued (and won) a case before the nation’s highest court he was also a strong antislavery voice in Congress, having successfully repealed a rule banning debates about slavery from the House floor. To defend the Africans in front of the Supreme Court, Tappan and his fellow abolitionists enlisted former President John Quincy Adams, who was at the time 73 years old and a member of the House of Representatives. Supreme Court, which heard the case in early 1841. After appealing the decision to the Circuit Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision, the U.S. District Court in Hartford ruled that the Africans were not Spanish slaves, but had been illegally captured, and should be returned to Africa. He finally found a Mende speaker who could interpret for the Africans, allowing them to tell their own story for the first time. After concluding that they were Mende, Gibbs searched New York waterfronts for anyone who recognized the language. The defense team enlisted Josiah Gibbs, a philologist from Yale University, to help determine what language the Africans spoke. Simeon Jocelyn, raised money for their legal defense, arguing that they had been illegally captured and imported as slaves. While President Martin Van Buren sought to extradite the Africans to Cuba to pacify Spain, a group of abolitionists in the North, led by Lewis Tappan, Rev.
Though the United States, Britain, Spain and other European powers had abolished the importation of slaves by that time, the transatlantic slave trade continued illegally, and Havana was an important slave trading hub. The story of the Amistad began in February 1839, when Portuguese slave hunters abducted hundreds of Africans from Mendeland, in present-day Sierra Leone, and transported them to Cuba, then a Spanish colony. authorities seized the ship and imprisoned the Africans, beginning a legal and diplomatic drama that would shake the foundations of the nation’s government and bring the explosive issue of slavery to the forefront of American politics. The enslaved Africans then revolted at sea and won control of the Amistad from their captors. Aboard the Spanish ship were a group of Africans who had been captured and sold illegally as slaves in Cuba. brig came across the schooner Amistad off the coast of Long Island, New York.
Illegally Captured and Sold Into Slavery.
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