Changes

In August of 1839, the Spanish cargo schooner La Amistad came aground off the coast of Long Island, New York. The United States found itself with an explosive legal and diplomatic case that would pit the American system’s ability to provide justice for all on its shores against the federal government’s ability to enforce its treaty obligations where the jurisdiction of states is involved.

====Legal battle over the status of the Africans began====

The district court judge ruled that the Africans were not Spanish slaves, being captured as free men in Africa, and he ordered the U.S. to release them from prison and transport them back to Africa. Rejecting the argument that the Africans were the Spanish traders’ private property and their sale subject to salvage claims, the judge ruled that the Washington officers’ salvage payments be taken from the remaining cargo of the Amistad. The U.S. Government, feeling pressure from Spain and fearing Southern outcry against the court’s advocacy of African freedom, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

To argue against the U.S. Government for the Africans’ freedom, the Christian Missionary Association convinced former President and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to come out of retirement and face the predominantly southern Supreme Court bench.

In a masterpiece of American law, Adams presented the case of the Africans’ freedom as a test of the American republic’s sincerity in the ideals it espoused abroad. The Supreme Court ruled for the Africans, accepting the argument that they were never citizens of Spain and were illegally taken from Africa where they lived in a state of freedom. The court acknowledged that the United States’ argument that it had obligations to Spain under the treaty, but said that the treaty “never could have been intended to take away the equal rights of [the Africans].” The 53 Africans returned to their homeland and the job of resisting Spain’s continued demand for damages passed onto incoming Secretary of State Daniel Webster.