Amistad Essay, Research Paper

The touchiest subject that a person could bring up in the early 19th century was slavery. Many in the north were wholly against it while many in the south could not live properly without it. The Amistad case intensifies the already bitter feelings between these two parts of the country, and it shows how sectionalist our country had become. On one hand there were the northerners who couldn t believe that these people were being held for freeing themselves, and on the other hand there were the southerners who said that the Negro s were animals and should be sent back to Cuba to be hung. There were not only two different attitudes on what should happen to the Africans, but each group also had different opinions on how to handle the story. The northern press made much of the story, while the southern press avoided it because they didn t want to give the slave populations any ideas. (8)

When the Amistad landed in 1839, most people opposed slavery in the north, but many of them weren t abolitionists, and others didn t want to think about the subject at all. The wanted to just save the union, because if that had dispersed, all of the founding fathers work would have gone for none. The Abolitionists seized upon the Amistad case as heavensent to abet their cause. This was what they needed to get more support behind their cause, and to get the people who didn t want to talk about the subject out and gossiping. On the Spaniards side there was William S. Holabird the District Attorney at that time who thought that it was an open and shut case of murder and mutiny, and that Gedney saved the Spaniards from the blacks, and not the blacks from the Spaniards. (19) The Africans do have many intelligent abolitionists on their side, and Lewis Tappan was one of them. The Africans attorney Roger Baldwin accompanied him, along with an abolitionist named Robert Madden. Madden was a heartfelt abolitionist whose attitude is displayed in this verse:

We are not always scourging – by the way,

Tuesday in common is our flogging day.

At other times we only use the whip

To stir the drones and make the young ones skip.

Then as to food, you may be sure we give

Enough to let the wretched creatures live.

The diet s somewhat slender, there s no doubt

It would not do let them grow out. (60)

Tappan was one of the most hated men in the south, and he was the first to help the Africans case. The Africans were in the supposedly free north, but there were still many in the north that did not support their cause. The New York Express which sided with Ruiz and Montes, wrote, Cinque is a Congo. Their general character is lazy, mischievous, and apt to run away (39) You wouldn t expect someone In the north to support two Spanish slave traders, but the thought of losing the Union hurt the abolitionists cause. Also, after the verdict, some people in Farmington, Vermont, started to get sick of the Africans. One of them was pushed into a ditch after buying an oil lamp by some of the citizens of Farmington, and many people blamed what had happened on the Africans. After that even Tappan felt that they had to be sent home soon. They were a sideshow to many curious people, but a burden to many.

The south wouldn t be able to function right if the government had abolished slavery, and they didn t even want their citizens to read anything that the abolitionists sent to them. In 1835 bags full of undelivered antislavery literature were burned at Charleston the Postmaster General then said We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the community. (20) President Jackson, who did nothing to help slaves or free blacks in his terms as President, asked congress to propose a law to not even allow these incendiary publications from entering Southern states. The south was not only scared of their slaves rebelling, they were also afraid of what my come of the outcome of the Amistad case. Congress might see that no one has the right to own someone if it is against his or her will, so if they do revolt their act may be considered self-defense and not mutiny. This would be a huge loss to the Southern economy, and the common people and their representatives in Congress were not ready to deal with that. Many political big wigs from the time of Jackson until the Lincoln administration all disagreed with the ruling in the Amistad case and in 1844, C. J. Ingersoll said that the United States should pay seventy-thousand dollars in indemnity to Spain, for making the wrong decision. (153) From many of these activities, you see that the south was intimidating many of the politicians in the north from taking a stand on the issue. All you hear about, are politicians for slavery and not many against it.

The most influential person involved in the case of the Amistad s, was definitely John Quincy Adams. The former president, gave the biggest boost to their case, and gave them the most substantial testimony. He was asked to take the case, and be the Africans attorney, but he said he was too old. But he also said that he would give any assistance or council to Mr. Baldwin. (79) Adams was a strict interpretationist of the Constitution, and all of his testimony was based on his knowledge of the constitution and other legal documents. (Treaty of 1895) Adams already had a horrible reputation in the south due to his years of being President, and a member of the Republican Party, and his participation greatly worsened this. When his name came up as someone who was going to help the Africans cause, he quickly started to receive hate mail. A Virginia lady wrote to him, Gracious heavens my dear Sir, your mind is diseased on the subject of slavery You are great in everything else Your name will descend to the latest posterity with this blot on it: Mr. Adams loves to Negroes too much unconstitutionally. This was a nicely put hate mail, but it showed the attitude of many. Another thing that he received in the mail from a person in North Carolina was an engraved portrait of himself with a bullet hole through the forehead and the inscription to stop the music of John Quincy Adams. (65) Yet even with all of these dangers lurking around him, he pushed on with much determination to give the Africans their freedom.

All of these events and people involved, show what the question of slavery meant to all of them. The Amistad case was a huge event in the 19th century. The verdict not nearly as important as the implications of whom was involved, and how it was taken care of. This case was about the mistreatment of a people who had no right to be looked down upon. This case was about the people who fought for it, and the passions that they shared, and the one passion they didn t. The men involved in the Amistad case represented to sides to a case, and two philosophy s of a country separating at a rate too fast for anyone to stop.