The Amistad Rebellion (49 page)

10
. Stanley Harrold, “Romanticizing Slave Revolt,” 90, 96; Douglas R. Egerton,
Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 40, 51, 109; Egerton,
Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

11
.
Arguments of Roger S. Baldwin, of New Haven, before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Case of the United States, Apellants, vs. Cinque, and Others, Africans of the Amistad
(New York: S. W. Benedict, 1841), 3. Phillip Lapsansky has written: “As part of their effort to defuse fears of violence, the antislavery movement did not produce representations of black violence, self-assertion, or control.” See his “Graphic Discord: Abolitionists and Antiabolitionist Images,” in Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds.,
The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 203; Marcus Wood,
Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865
(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000),
chap. 5
; 172–76; Heather Nathans,
Slavery and Sentiment on the American Stage, 1787–1861: Lifting the Veil of Black
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 202. Compare the racist, demeaning “bobalition” images as analyzed by Patrick Rael,
Black Identity & Black Protest in the Antebellum North
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 72–74.

12
. The article from the
Herald of Freedom
was republished in the
CA
, October 19, 1839.

13
. One minor instance of violence occurred in Farmington, Connecticut, after the Supreme Court decision, when several of the
Amistad
Africans got into a fight with a gang of local toughs and apparently beat them up. See John Pitkin Norton’s account of the fight in Norton Papers, MS 367, Diaries, vol. III: June 29, 1840–September 15, 1841, box no. 3, folder 18, entries for Tuesday, September 7, 1841, and Wednesday, September 8, 1841; A. F. Williams to Lewis Tappan, September 7, 1841, and September 23, 1841, ARC. A minor incident occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts, in November 1841, when some “fellows of a baser sort” insulted Kinna, but used no violence. See Lewis Tappan to Joseph Sturge, November 15, 1841, printed in Joseph Sturge,
A Visit to the United States in 1841
(London, 1842), Appendix E, xlviii–xlix. Tappan himself received a letter threatening tar and feathers; see Mr. Johnsting to Lewis Tappan, April 13, 1841, ARC. In
Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), Leonard L. Richards notes the decline of antiabolition mobs in the late 1830s; see
chap. 6
. See also David Grimsted,
American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).

14
. Mary Cable,
Black Odyssey: The Case of the Slave Ship “Amistad”
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1971), 121.

15
. “Funds Appeal,”
NYCA
, September 5, 1839.

16
. “Farewell Meeting at Farmington,”
Emancipator
, December 2, 1841.

17
. “The Mendians,”
Youth’s Cabinet
, December 9, 1841, and December 16, 1841; “In Iron Foundry, Elm Street,”
Emancipator
, October 28, 1841;
Emancipator
, January 30, 1840. For accountings of contributions, see “Monies Received for the Amistad Captives,”
Emancipator
, March 26, 1840; “Received for the Africans Taken in the Amistad,”
AFASR
, January 1841; “Amistad Fund,”
AFASR
, February 1, 1841; “Receipts for the Amistad Captives,”
AFASR
, March 15, 1841; “Receipts for the Liberated Africans Received since the Third Appeal,”
AFASR
, May 1, 1841; “Receipts for Liberated Africans of Amistad,”
AFASR
, October 1, 1841; “Africans of the Amistad: Receipts and Disbursements,”
Emancipator
, November 4, 1841. See also the hundreds of notes and letters that accompanied the contributions in the AMA Archive, ARC.

18
. S.L.H. to S. S. Jocelyn, Bedford, Mass., September 11, 1839, ARC;
NLG
, September 4, 1839; “Humanitas,”
NYCA
, September 13, 1839. “Joseph Cinquez” was how Cinqué was named and depicted in the early images published and circulated by the
New York Sun
.

19
. “What the Mechanics of the Country Think,”
Emancipator
, March 24, 1842; Steven Deyle,
Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 255, and chap. 8 more broadly. Other examples of how the
Amistad
campaign strengthened militance against the slave trade were reported in the
Connecticut Courant
, January 25, 1840, and the
North American and Daily Advertiser
, January 21, 1841.

20
. Henry Highland Garnet,
Walker’s Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life, and also Garnet’s Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
(New York: J. H. Tobitt, 1848). The classic work on Garnet remains Sterling Stuckey, “Henry Highland Garnet: Nationalism, Class Analysis, and Revolution,” in his
Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 138–92.

21
. Stanley Harrold,
The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), 37–38, 155; Garnet,
An Address to the Slaves
. On Ruggles,
see
Liberator
, August 13, 1841, quoted in Herbert Aptheker, “Militant Abolitionism,”
Journal of Negro History
26 (1941): 438–84;
Douglass’ Monthly
, March 21, 1863; Graham Russell Gao Hodges,
David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). On Delany, see James T. Campbell,
Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005
(London: Penguin Books, 2006), 64. See also Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Black Power: The Debate in 1840,”
Phylon
29 (1968): 19–26, republished in Patrick Rael, ed.,
African-American Activism Before the Civil War
(New York: Routledge, 2008), 50–57.

22
. John Treadwell Norton to Lewis Tappan, Farmington, February 10, 1841, and February 27, 1841, ARC.

23
. “The African Strangers,”
Friend of Man
, September 21, 1839.

24
. “The Amistad Captives,”
Liberator
, April 9, 1841; “What Have You Done?”
Emancipator
, July 22, 1841.

25
. Brown quoted in Harrold, “Romanticizing Slave Revolt,” 102. See also Stanley Harrold,
American Abolitionists
(Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001), 27, 58, 59, 63, 73, 76, 82–83, 101; Carol Wilson, “Active Vigilance Is the Price of Liberty: Black Self-Defense Against Fugitive Slave Recaptors and Kidnapping of Free Blacks,” in McKivigan and Harrold,
Antislavery Violence
, 108–27. The transformation of the abolition movement into something broader, more inclusive, and more egalitarian began in the early 1830s. See Richard S. Newman,
The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2, 106, 175.

26
. “The ‘Hanging Committee,’”
PF
, April 21, 1841.

Page numbers in
italics
refer to illustrations

abolitionists, 2, 4, 5, 8–11, 20–21, 104–8, 110, 122, 123, 228–37

Amistad
Africans’ relationship with, 123–27, 153, 155, 183, 199, 209, 217, 227, 235

appeal of lower court ruling and, 152–53

and artistic depictions of
Amistad
rebellion, 168–71

escape for
Amistad
Africans planned by, 149–51, 189, 234

in Great Britain, 105

immediatism and, 123

rebellion justified by, 169–71

slave rebels, 106–7

Supreme Court
Amistad
decision and, 191–92

Abraham, Arthur, 33, 59–60

Adams, John Quincy, 8, 127–28, 149, 186, 191, 192–92

Kale’s letter to, 180–83, 192–93, 200

speech before the Supreme Court, 3, 188, 189–90, 192, 235

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 196, 206, 208

Alcántara de Argaiz, Pedro, 187

Aldridge, Ira, 117

Amara Lalu, 37, 74

American and Foreign
Anti-
Slavery Reporter,
192

American Anti-Slavery Society, 105

American Colonization Society, 44, 97, 148, 208, 214

American Missionary Association, 53

American Revolution, 10, 171, 207, 235

Amistad
(film), 4

Amistad, La:

arrival in Long Island, 2, 8, 20–21, 87–95

cargo of, 66–67

departure from Cuba, 68–69

description of, 65–68

food supplies on, 67, 68, 70

images published of, 99, 101–2

Montes’ deceptions aboard, 82, 86

New London arrival, 96

papers of, 98, 104

prisoners shackled and chained on, 69, 75, 80

prisoners transferred to, 64–65

punishments aboard, 69–71

rebels as leaders on, 80–81

voyage after rebellion, 80–88, 122

water supplies on, 67, 68, 70, 80, 83, 85, 86

water spirits and, 84–85

weapons on, 67, 68

Amistad
Africans:

abolitionists’ relationship with, 123–27, 153, 155, 183, 199, 209, 217, 227, 235

ages of, 29–30

appeal of case to Supreme Court, 152, 183

artistic depictions of,
see
artistic depictions of
Amistad
Africans

athleticism of, 133–34

captured in Africa, 13–16, 41–43

captured in America, 91–94, 96, 122

Christianity and, 12, 120, 125, 135, 154, 156–59, 174, 178, 179, 180, 182–83, 198–201, 204, 208–11, 218–19, 221, 226

clothing of, 110, 144, 197, 218–19

cold weather and, 144, 213

as collective, 174–76, 177

communication difficulties of, 118–20, 126–27, 135–37, 209

in Cuba, 60–63, 68, 122, 132

cultural differences and, 158–59, 219

education of, 8, 12, 139–40, 153–59, 182, 183

escape plans for, 149–51, 189, 234

in Farmington, 211–13

funding for, 231–32

height of, 30

illness and death among, 108–9, 112–13, 129, 159, 175, 212–13

incarceration of, 9–11, 108–13, 116–17, 120, 122–51, 152–59, 174, 176–79, 182, 184

knives possessed by, 1, 82, 84, 140–42, 161

lack of violence toward, 230

legal defense role of, 192–93

legal hearings on, 97–99, 129–32, 142–44, 145–49, 184

at Lomboko, 49–50, 52

as Mendi People, 8, 59, 153, 174–75, 179–83, 199–202, 207

on Middle Passage, 54–60

non-abolitionist support for, 232–33

oral cultures of, 33–35

origins of, 21–31

peacemaking ritual of, 89

Pendleton and, 177–79, 183, 193–94

press coverage on, 9, 11, 99–104, 118, 120, 128–29, 230–31;
see also specific publications

return to Africa, 3, 196, 216–23, 226–27

ruling of lower court on, 147–49, 152, 160, 183, 186

singing of, 200–201, 204

slavery performances by, 158

Supreme Court and, 3, 181, 183, 184–95, 225, 234

Supreme Court decision on, 190–91, 207, 235–36

on
Teçora,
5, 19, 37, 44, 47, 51, 54–61, 63, 65, 68, 74, 122, 189

tensions among, 176–77

time-discipline and, 154

on tours, 3, 196–205, 217, 224–25, 230, 231

transported to Connecticut, 2, 8

trial in Circuit Court of Hartford, 99

visitors to, 10–11, 110–14, 118, 120, 127–29, 153

voyage back to Africa, 215–17

Amistad Committee, 120, 127, 150, 157, 161, 172, 185, 187, 191, 192, 196, 198, 204, 205, 211, 214, 216, 231, 232

Amistad
rebellion, 1–3, 8, 9–10, 12, 71–79, 94–95, 122, 237

abolitionists’ justification of, 169–71

Africans’ accounts of, 124–27, 135–39, 193

art inspired by,
see
artistic depictions of
Amistad
Africans

Celestino’s threat as catalyst of, 71–73, 74, 181–82

decision to engage in, 74–75

end of, 79–80

in popular culture and memory, 3–5, 8, 120, 197, 228–30, 232, 235

reverberations from, 224–37

warfare experience in, 73–74, 78–79

amulets, 22–24, 98

Anti-
Slavery Standard,
236

Antonio, 65, 66, 69, 76–81, 92, 98–99, 101, 104, 118, 120, 132, 147, 176, 193, 195

artistic depictions of, 161

Appeal…to the Coloured Citizens of the World
(Walker), 8–9, 108