| |
KF5JRV > TODAY 02.07.19 12:45l 7 Lines 4181 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 9773_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jul 02
Path: IZ3LSV<IW8PGT<LU4ECL<I0OJJ<EA2RCF<LU9DCE<GB7YEW<AB0AF<KF5JRV
Sent: 190702/1141Z 9773@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQK6.0.18
Early in the morning, Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rise upagainst their captors, killing two crewmembers and seizing control ofthe ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on asugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba.In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing theAfrican slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the UnitedStates was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on theimportation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captiveAfricans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to itscoffee plantations until the 1850s.On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana,Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at PuertoPrincipe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known asCinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Earlyin the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose upagainst their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold,killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmemberswere either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes,the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinqueordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During theday, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vesselin a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly twodifficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africansperished, what became known as the “black schoonerö was first spotted byAmerican vessels.On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistadoff the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut.Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending aninvestigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the returnof their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish governmentcalled for the Africans’ extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracyand murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionistsadvocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S.abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before afederal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English byhis new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13,1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegallyenslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial forpiracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back toAfrica. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Burenappealed the decision, but another federal district court upheldJudson’s findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to theabolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistadcase. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who hadserved as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829,joined the Africans’ defense team. In Congress, Adams had been aneloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation’s highest court hepresented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 othersurvivors of the Amistad.On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled, with only one dissent, thatthe Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised anatural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with thefinancial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africansdeparted America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa.Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in SierraLeone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the Africaninterior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard theAmistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originallynamed Margru, she studied at Ohio’s integrated and coeducational OberlinCollege in the late 1840s before returning to Sierra Leone asevangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson.
73, Scott kf5jrv
KF5JRV @ KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
