New Haven is mostly known as the place where Yale University occupies the center of the city. In the 1800s, it had significantly more importance. Up until 1873, New Haven was the co-capital of Connecticut. In 1840, the city had nearly 13,000 people, somewhat larger than Savannah, Georgia. By 1860, the population had tripled, growing to 39,000. By the time of the Civil War, New Haven had more people than Richmond, Virginia. In 1839, New Haven was in the headlines of newspapers in the Americas and Europe because people who were held as slaves on the ship La Amistad were held in a jail there awaiting their fate. Today, there is a sizeable monument next to the Town Green honoring those freedom seekers.
Mende captives were illegally transported from West Africa, where they had been illegally captured by Portuguese slave-catchers, to Cuba where they were sold to two Spanish plantation owners. They were loaded aboard the ship La Amistad to be transported to Puerto Príncipe where their buyers plantations were. Along the way, Sengbe Pieh, known as Joseph Cinqué, broke free and freed the other enslaved people and the captives soon took over the ship. There were 53 enslaved Mende on La Amistad, which included three children. The revolt happened on July 2, 1839.
Cinqué told the now-captive plantation owners and sailors to bring them back to Africa, but the Spanish instead steered north up the coast of the United States. They were first spotted by Americans as the ship near Sandy Hook, New Jersey in August. A ship from the Collector of the Port of New York was sent to investigate the vessel since reports came back claiming that it was an illegal slave-trading vessel. On the 23rd of August, a pilot boat caught up with the ship off of Fire Island near Long Island. By the 26th of August the ship was taken by a United States revenue cutter vessel near Montauk, Long Island. Everyone on board was transported to New Haven.
Below is the New Haven Town Green from the La Amistad monument. The monument is where the prison was located in 1839 where the enslaved Africans were held. The two churches in the photo were there at the time and local residents watched the imprisoned Africans from the buildings. You can see the hand of one of the captives Africans memorialized on the right.
This monument was installed in 1992. Artist Ed Hamilton sculpted the monument. The monument has three sides, with a fourth side on the ground that can only be seen from the buildings nearby that depicts a face. Each of the three sides depicts Cinqué. The side below shows Cinqué back in Africa before he was kidnapped.
The monument is fourteen feet high and it is made of bronze.
Cinqué has traditional clothing and accoutrements of life in West Africa.
The captives were exercised on the Green, with many local citizens coming to observe them. Some came to show support for the prisoners, but others came for exotica. Jailors also charged citizens a fee to come in the prison to view them.
Behind Cinqué are a family living life together.
This side depicts Cinqué defending his freedom in the courthouse. The inscription says: “On this site, the Amistad Africans were jailed awaiting trial for piracy and murder. To aid their struggle for freedom, the Amistad Committee formed, counting in its number ministers Simeon Jocelyn, Joshua Leavitt, and James Pennington; merchant Lewis Tappan; professor Josiah Gibbs; and lawyer Roger Baldwin. The Africans were tried twice prior to their ultimate triumph before the United States Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams courageously defended them. Sengbe Pieh and his followers were declared Free Persons.”
The plantation owners wanted the captives to be returned to them. The captain of the revenue cutter wanted prize money for his capture. Spain wanted compensation. President Martin Van Buren wanted to extradite the Africans back to Cuba. Abolitionists began organizing a defense for the captives. Working with the Africans, they argued that their captivity was illegal and that the plantation owners had not right to hold the captives as slaves. The two plantation owners were arrested in New York in October of 1839. Many pro-slavery figures in the South condemned the imprisonment. Both were released on bond and fled the United States. Their interests were then represented by the Spanish government.
Roger S. Baldwin, a lawyer from New Haven, and New York attorneys Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgewick were engaged to represent the Africans in Federal District Court.
The lawyers argued that “…each of them are natives of Africa and were born free, and ever since have been and still of right are and ought to be free and not slaves…” Amistad was engaged in an illegal international slave trade. The lawyers argued that while the Africans had suffered “great cruelty and oppression” on the Amistad, they were “incited by the love of liberty natural to all men” to revolt and take over the ship and seek asylum.
The district court ruled that the Africans were not slaves and that their kidnapping was illegal. The court ruled that the captives could use force to overcome their kidnappers. The decision was affirmed in the circuit court.
The Federal government filed for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court. Former President John Quincy Adams and Baldwin defended the Africans in the Supreme Court and won.
In his oral argument, Adams said that the President, Democrat Martin Van Buren was not motivated by respect for the law, but out of sympathy for the Spanish government and the plantation owners. He said:
“This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with utmost pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy – and a sympathy the most partial and injust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.”
On March 9, 1840, the court returned a decision upholding the lower courts’ decree. Justice Joseph Story wrote the opinion, in which he said:
“It is also a most important consideration, in the present case, which ought not to be lost sight of, that, supposing these African negroes not to be slaves, but kidnapped, and free negroes, the treaty with Spain cannot be obligatory upon them; and the United States are bound to respect their rights as much as those of Spanish subjects. The conflict of rights between the parties, under such circumstances, becomes positive and inevitable, and must be decided upon the eternal principles of justice and international law. If the contest were about any goods on board of this ship, to which American citizens asserted a title, which was denied by the Spanish claimants, there could be no doubt of the right to such American citizens to litigate their claims before any competent American tribunal, notwithstanding the treaty with Spain. A fortiori, the doctrine must apply, where human life and human liberty are in issue, and constitute the very essence of the controversy…Upon the merits of the case, then, there does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt, that these negroes ought to be deemed free…”
Finally, there is the protagonist waiting to be transported back to Africa.
The Supreme Court immediately freed the captives. By this time there were only 36 survivors. Abolitionists took them to Farmington where they could stay with supporters while waiting to be transported back to Africa.
Cinqué is at the docks, with the other refugees behind him including a child.
The inscription reads: “The Africans sought to return home. To raise funds for their voyage and to further the anti-slavery cause, they engaged in a series of speaking tours. In 1841, after a sojourn that profoundly influenced the abolitionist movement, they set sail, free at last.
To commemorate the heroism of the Amistad Africans and those who shared in their quest for freedom, the 1989 Amistad Committee commissioned his sculpture by Ed Hamilton and dedicated it on September 26, 1992.”
The inscription says: This monument is a memorial to the 1839 Amistad Revolt and its leader, Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinque. Sengbe Pieh was one of the millions of Africans kidnapped from their homes and transported in bondage to the Americas. Sold into slavery in Cuba, he and forty-eight other men, and four children were bound aboard the schooner La Amistad. During a storm, Sengbe Pieh successfully freed himself and his fellows. The Africans seized the ship, but their offers to steer La Amistad homeward were thwarted. After futile weeks at sea, they were captured off Long Island by the U.S.S. Washington.
In 1997 the movie Amistad was released by Steven Spielberg.
The New Haven Green is a sixteen acre New England town green similar to others in the region. It is at the center of town, with governmental and religious structures around it. In 1638 it opened and it was a marketplace. When the state had two capitals, the capitol building was here. Also, approximately 5,000 people are buried in the green since it was a cemetery up until 1821. The tombstones have been relocated but the remains are still there.
Below is the New Haven City Hall. It was built during the Civil War in 1861 and its annex is from the Reconstruction Era from 1871 to 1873. On the left side is a plaza where the Amistad memorial is located. As previously mentioned, this is where the prison was when the Africans were held as prisoners.
All color photos were taken by Pat Young. To see more sites Pat visited CLICK HERE for Google Earth view.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
