The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

4. The Captives of the Amistad

C H A P T E R THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD HERE wasn't any doubt about Antonio, the mulatto cabin boy. He was a slave, property of the late Captain Ramon Ferrer of the schooner Amistad, and he was perfectly willing to return to bondage in Cuba. But what of the forty-odd Negroes, Cinque and Grabbo, Banna and Tami and the rest? Were they to be treated as runaway slaves; or as pirates and murderers; or as free menwhohad asserted their right to liberty by direct action ? And what of the Amistad herself, her cargo of merchandise, and the claims to salvage brought forward by Lieutenant Gedney and others? Such were the questions that confronted Andrew T. Judson—the man who had led the attack on Prudence CrandalPs school—late in the summer of 1839. Before they were finally answered, years later, the affair of the Amistad had engaged the attention of three sovereign governments , a former American President, a future governor of Connecticut, several Yale professors, a seaman from Sierra Leone, many abolitionist leaders, and hundreds of ordinary citizens especially in New Haven and Farmington. It had supplied antislavery men with some of their best 4 T 66 The Underground Railroad inConnecticut opportunities for propaganda, and it had established in Farmington the climate of sympathy that made that town so important a transfer point on the Underground Railroad . The story began in the West African backlands.1 There, in April of 1839, slave raiders seized Cinque and other members of the Mendi tribe, drove them to the coast, and chained them in the 'tween-decks of a blackbirder bound for the West Indies. For two months the captives endured the horrors of the Middle Passage; but they were a hardy group, for less than twenty of them died en route while more than fifty survived.2 Landed at Havana in mid-June, they were promptly sold as slaves to two Cubans named Pedro Montez and Jose Ruiz. Among these victims of the slave trade was one older man, as well as three young girls and several boys, but the majority were vigorous men in their twenties. They were not a tall people—none over five feet six inches—and in color they ranged from ebony to dusky brown; one or two were "almost mulatto bright." 3 Cinque, strongly made and athletic, with a remarkable firmness of bearing and a commanding presence, was their acknowledged leader. Grabbo, second in authority, was scarcely less impressive. The sale of these people in Cuba was completely illegal, but such happenings were common enough. Spanish law permitted the keeping of slaves in the colony but not their importation. Any slave brought from abroad was legally free the moment he set foot on shore; and a mixed British and Spanish commission, established by treaty between the two powers, sat in Havana to rule on cases involving slave ships taken at sea. In practice, however, the lawwas a dead letter. The mixed commission'spowers covered only the high seas; what happened in territorial waters or ashore was the business of the Cuban colonial government. THE CAPTIVES OF THE AMISTAD Through a widespread network of graft and corruption, those who knew the ropes could receive official title to even the newest imports from Africa, and all it cost was ten dollars a head.4 There was reason to suspect that the United States consul in Havana was involved in these practices.5 Montez and Ruiz obtained the necessary papers. Then they embarked their purchases on the schooner Amistad (the name meant "friendship") for the coastwise run to Puerto Principe. Since the voyage wasnot a long one, they did not confine their bondsmen; that was a mistake. When two of the Africans went to the water cask without leave, they were whipped for it; that too was a mistake.6 None of the captives understood Spanish, but Banna knew a few words of English and several could speak a little Arabic. And the slave Antonio, cabin boy on the schooner, had some knowledge of the Mendi tongue. Thus the Negroes were able to ask the ship's cook where they were going. And the answer, meant but not received as a brutal joke, was understood by all: they were going to be killed and eaten.7 That was the fatal mistake, for it touched off an insurrection . Under the leadership of Cinque, the...