Freedom Refound – True tale of Amistad rooted in CT history
- Today Magazine Online
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• Heroic and Horrific Slavery Case Went to U.S. Supreme Court
This is a revised version of a story that was previously published in Today Magazine and Today Online — Today editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert contributed to this report
By Nishant Gopalachar
Special to Today Magazine
The remarkable case and amazing legacy of the Amistad has deep roots in Connecticut’s Farmington Valley. From March to November 1841, the town of Farmington was the temporary home for the kidnapped African captives — mostly Mendi from current-day Sierra Leone — who commandeered the slave ship Amistad.
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While they were in Farmington, “abolitionists provided housing, schooling and the fundraising necessary for the Mendis’ passage back to their homeland,” according to the Farmington Historical Society website.
In February 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted free Africans in eastern Africa and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a major hub for the slave trade — “this abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence,” according to the U.S. National Archives website.
In Havana, “the Africans were classified as native Cuban slaves and purchased at auction by two Spaniards, Don Jose Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez,” per the Cornell Law School website.
The two plantation owners originally planned to move the African men to a different part of Cuba, so they were chained and placed on the cargo schooner Amistad — Spanish for "Friendship" — for the coastal voyage.
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Three days into this journey, Sengbe Pieh — a 25-year-old known as Cinque to his captors — broke out of his chains and released the other captives. The kidnapped African men took the ship and killed most of the Amistad’s crew, including the captain. Ruiz and Montez survived.
Using the sun to navigate by day, the Africans steered the ship east for a return trip across the Atlantic Ocean to their African homeland. However, at night the two Spaniards changed course unbeknownst to the African men and tried to return to Cuba, per the Cornell Law School site.
The zigzag journey continued for multiple months, and Ruiz and Montez ultimately steered the ship north. On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was captured by the U.S. brig Washington near the coast of Long Island, New York. The African men were imprisoned and charged with murder.
The U.S. government seized the ship, and on August 29 the Amistad was brought to New London, Connecticut. Local abolitionists hired three lawyers — Roger S. Baldwin of New Haven and Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick of New York — to defend the African men.
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According to court documents as reported by the National Archives, their defense was based on the fact that the Africans were “born free, and ever since have been and still of right are and ought to be free and not slaves.” While enduring “great cruelty and oppression” aboard the Amistad, they were “incited by the love of liberty natural to all men” to forcibly take of ship and seek asylum.
The African men faced trials in Hartford and Washington D.C. that lasted 18 months, per the Farmington Historical Society. In February 1841, lawyer and former U.S. president John Quincy Adams began to argue the Amistad case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On March 9, 1841, the court rendered its decision, declaring the Africans to be free people who had been kidnapped illegally and granting them permission to return to their homeland. Nine days later, they arrived in Farmington.
Supreme Court senior justice Joseph Story wrote the court’s decision, affirming the Africans' right to resist unlawful slavery and noting that it is “the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.”
Indeed, our nation's highest court essentially viewed these illegally abducted men not as horrific murderers — per the prosecution's opinion — but instead as heroic freedom fighters. +
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• Editor's Note
Legendary director Steven Spielberg produced a historical movie released in 1997 based on the true Amistad account, called simply "Amistad" — numerous other movies address the history of slavery and the American Civil War, including: 12 Years A Slave, Amazing Grace, Django Unchained, Emancipation, Free State of Jones, Glory and Lincoln
• This story first appeared in the September 2021 edition of our monthly Today Magazine — the topic is timeless and still relevant today
• Nishant Gopalachar is a 2022 Avon High School graduate who worked as a Today Magazine intern via Avon High's Achieve program in the spring and summer of 2021 — he is a student at Rutgers, New Jersey's state university
Featuring community news that matters nationwide, Today Magazine Online aims to record Connecticut’s underreported upside — covering the heart of the Farmington Valley and beyond
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• Discovering Amistad website — New Haven-based nonprofit
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