John Quincy Adams and the Amistad Case
On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down it's decision in the case of United States v. Amistad. The case arose out of an incident occurring on July 2, 1839 when a group of captive Africans who were on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad rebelled, killing members of the crew and demanding that the ship take them to freedom. By misdirection, the surviving crew members sailed the ship in the direction of the east coast of the United States. The vessel was apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. A widely publicized court case resulted in which members of the abolitionist movement argued before the US courts for the release of the Africans.
In 1840, a federal trial court found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic had been illegal, because the international slave trade had been abolished, and the captives were thus not legally slaves but free. Given that they were illegally confined, the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, and the case for the captives was argued by Roger Sherman Baldwin and former president John Quincy Adams. Adams made the closing argument.
The case was dramatized in a 1997 movie called Amistad starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Adams. In his 2008 book Mr. Adams' Last Crusade, author Joseph Wheelan describes the argument that Adams made before the court in part at page 182:
Spain had insisted that the Treaty of 1795 required the United States to return the Africans to Spanish custody, but Adams pronounced the treaty irrelevant to Spain's demand. Having negotiated a renewal of the treaty with Spain's minister in 1819 when he was secretary of state, Adams said "I am certain that neither of us never entertained the idea that this word merchandise in Article 9 would ever apply to human beings." Not a single article of the treaty had any application to this case, he said. If the treaty had any utility at all in the question, it would be in the sense of assisting those in need - namely the Africans. "They were in distress," he said. The Africans' enemies had brought them into U.S. waters and even now were trying to reduce them from freedom to slavery, as a "reward" for the Africans having spared the slave-traders' lives in the fight for the ship. "If the good offices of the government are to be rendered to the proprietors of shipping in distress, they are due to the Africans only."
Adams asked the justices to imagine that the Amistad was an American vessel with a cargo of African slaves that had tied up at a U.S. port. "The captain would be seized, tried as a pirate and hung! And every person concerned, either as owners or on board the ship would be severely punished."
Wheelan describes the release of the decision and Adams' response on pages 184-5 as follows:
On March 9, Justice Joseph Story, whose service since 1812 made him the court's senior member by ten years, read the decision. After reviewing the facts and case law, he concluded. "There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt that these Negroes ought to be deemed free; and that the Spanish treaty interposes no obstacle to the just assertion of their rights." In seizing the Amistad, the Africans had only exercised "the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice." The decision made no mention of the Van Buren administration's efforts to thwart the legal process. Justice Story later wrote to his wife that Adams' presentation was an "extraordinary argument... Extraordinary for its power and its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion."
"The captives are free!" Adams wrote to Roger Baldwin, who had returned to New Haven. "Yours in great haste and great joy, J. Q. Adams." The New York Commercial Advertiser described the ruling as "a great and glorious triumph for humanity."
With relief, Adams expressed his private conviction - a mistaken one, as events would show - that "it was the last occasion upon which I should ever be called to stake my personal, moral, intellectual and political character upon issues involving the lives, fortunes and characters of others, as well as my own."
In 1840, a federal trial court found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic had been illegal, because the international slave trade had been abolished, and the captives were thus not legally slaves but free. Given that they were illegally confined, the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, and the case for the captives was argued by Roger Sherman Baldwin and former president John Quincy Adams. Adams made the closing argument.
The case was dramatized in a 1997 movie called Amistad starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Adams. In his 2008 book Mr. Adams' Last Crusade, author Joseph Wheelan describes the argument that Adams made before the court in part at page 182:
Spain had insisted that the Treaty of 1795 required the United States to return the Africans to Spanish custody, but Adams pronounced the treaty irrelevant to Spain's demand. Having negotiated a renewal of the treaty with Spain's minister in 1819 when he was secretary of state, Adams said "I am certain that neither of us never entertained the idea that this word merchandise in Article 9 would ever apply to human beings." Not a single article of the treaty had any application to this case, he said. If the treaty had any utility at all in the question, it would be in the sense of assisting those in need - namely the Africans. "They were in distress," he said. The Africans' enemies had brought them into U.S. waters and even now were trying to reduce them from freedom to slavery, as a "reward" for the Africans having spared the slave-traders' lives in the fight for the ship. "If the good offices of the government are to be rendered to the proprietors of shipping in distress, they are due to the Africans only."
Adams asked the justices to imagine that the Amistad was an American vessel with a cargo of African slaves that had tied up at a U.S. port. "The captain would be seized, tried as a pirate and hung! And every person concerned, either as owners or on board the ship would be severely punished."
Wheelan describes the release of the decision and Adams' response on pages 184-5 as follows:
On March 9, Justice Joseph Story, whose service since 1812 made him the court's senior member by ten years, read the decision. After reviewing the facts and case law, he concluded. "There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt that these Negroes ought to be deemed free; and that the Spanish treaty interposes no obstacle to the just assertion of their rights." In seizing the Amistad, the Africans had only exercised "the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice." The decision made no mention of the Van Buren administration's efforts to thwart the legal process. Justice Story later wrote to his wife that Adams' presentation was an "extraordinary argument... Extraordinary for its power and its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion."
"The captives are free!" Adams wrote to Roger Baldwin, who had returned to New Haven. "Yours in great haste and great joy, J. Q. Adams." The New York Commercial Advertiser described the ruling as "a great and glorious triumph for humanity."
With relief, Adams expressed his private conviction - a mistaken one, as events would show - that "it was the last occasion upon which I should ever be called to stake my personal, moral, intellectual and political character upon issues involving the lives, fortunes and characters of others, as well as my own."