The Captives of the Amistad. Simeon Eben Baldwin

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СКАЧАТЬ for their guns, but the blacks soon showed that they had no hostile intent, by shaking hands and presenting them with their own guns, of which they had two, a knife, a hat and a handkerchief. They asked one of their visitors, a Capt. Green, who was a sea-faring man, if he would not come on board and steer them to Sierra Leone, and he gave them some encouragement to think that he would do so the next day.

      It so happened that a coast-survey brig, the Washington, was in that part of the Sound on this afternoon, and her commander, from the appearance of the Amistad as she passed her, thought the vessel was on shore, or in distress. A boat’s crew was sent to her assistance, and found only negroes on deck, armed with cane-knives. The boarding officer climbed into the rigging and ordered them below at the point of a pistol. They obeyed, and Montez and Ruiz were sent up on deck, who at once claimed protection. Cinquè with the two dogs sprang into the water and made for shore, but was pursued, retaken, and hand-cuffed. Those of the negroes who were on the beach, after a shot fired over their heads, and a display of cutlasses, were captured without resistance by an officer of the brig, falling on their knees for protection around the men on the island who had told them this was a free country.

      When Cinquè was taken back, a captive, to the deck of the Amistad, the other negroes gathered about him, and he made an address which moved them very deeply. Antonio, the cabin-boy, understood enough of the words to give a summary of the speech in Spanish to a newspaper editor in New London, who translated it, very likely with some additions, in English, as follows:

“Friends and Brothers: We would have returned, but the sun was against us. I would not see you serve the white man. So I induced you to help me kill the Captain. I thought I should be killed. I expected it. It would have been better. You had better be killed than live many moons in misery. I shall be hanged, I think, everyday. This does not pain me. I could die happy if by dying I could save so many of my brothers from the bondage of the white men.”^[3]

      It was thought prudent to handcuff Cinquè and keep him on the Washington over night, but the next day he made signs to his guards that if taken back to the Amistad he could show them where there was a handkerchief full of doubloons. He was promptly rowed over to the schooner, and as the negroes gathered around him with joyful greetings, he again addressed them with great earnestness and passion, until at last they all seemed on the point of rising on their captors, and he was hurried away at a sign from Antonio.

      The second speech, as Antonio and the New London editor gave it to the newspapers, ran thus:

“My brothers. I am once more among you, having deceived the enemy of our race by saying that I had doubloons. I come to tell you that you have only one chance for death, and none for liberty. I am sure you prefer death, as I do. You can, by killing the white men now on board (and I will help you), make the people here kill you. It is better for you to die thus, and then you will not only avert bondage yourselves, but prevent the entailment of unnumbered wrongs on your children. Come: Come with me, then!”^[4]

      But here, as I have said, he was seized and overpowered.

      The Africans now numbered only 44, three of whom were young girls. During their two months voyage ten had died, and one more expired on the night of the capture.

      The Washington took her prize across the Sound into New London harbor, and dispatched a messenger to New Haven to inform the United States Marshal of what had occurred. Norris Wilcox was then the Marshal, and on August 29th, Judge Judson, then the District Judge, and he were on board the cutter, to hold a Court of Inquiry. The District Attorney was Mr. Holabird of Winsted, and Judge Charles A. Ingersoll of this city, who appeared in his behalf, filed an information charging Cinquè, under his pretended name of Joseph, and 38 others, with the crime of murder and piracy. The court deemed the evidence sufficient to justify the proceeding, and they were all committed to jail to stand their trial at the next Circuit Court to be held at Hartford on September 17th. The cabin-boy, Antonio, and the three girls were also held as witnesses, and sent to jail with the others, for want of bonds.

      Lieutenants Gedney and Mead, of the Washington, had also brought a suit in admiralty against the Amistad and her cargo, and “fifty-four slaves,” claiming to have rescued them for the benefit of their owners, and asking for salvage in behalf of themselves and their crew. The trial of this suit was set down for Sept. 19th, in the District Court, and Ruiz and Montez went on to New York to see the Spanish Consul, after publishing a card in the newspapers, thanking the offices of the cutter for their “rescue from the hands of a ruthless gang of African buccaniers.”

      Cinquè was sent in irons to New Haven on another government vessel, and the rest of the captives were taken over in a coasting schooner, arriving here on Sunday, September 1st. The whole forty-four were crowded into four apartments in our county jail, then standing on the site of our present city Hall.

      Banna was the only one of the prisoners who knew an English word, and he was master of so few that they were substantially shut out from the possibility of communicating with the outside world. Their side of their story was untold. But the very helplessness of these unfortunate people was the best assurance of defense in a community like ours. The “irrepressible conflict” between Freedom and Slavery was already drawing on. Here, on the soil of a free State, were a band of men in confinement on a charge of murder, because, when kidnapped against law, on a Spanish vessel, they had risked life for liberty, knowing, untaught, that

      Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

      Footnotes

       Table of Contents

      1 ↑ Vol. 1, p. 456

      2 ↑ Executive Doc., 1st Sess., 28th Congr, vol. iv, Doc 83, p. 17.

      3 ↑ New York Sun of August 13, 1839.

      4 ↑ In the discussion which followed the reading of this paper, Professor George E. Day, D.D., stated to the Society that these two speeches were, at the time of their publication, generally supposed to be somewhat like the speeches one finds in Livy, so far as concerned the fidelity of the report.

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