A lawyer named Roger Sherman Baldwin, hired by the abolitionist Lewis Tappan and his black associate Theodore Joadson, decides to defend the Africans.īaldwin argues that the Africans had been kidnapped from the British colony of Sierra Leone to be sold in the Americas illegally. Meade, claim them as salvage while the two Spanish navigators, Pedro Montez and Jose Ruiz, produce proof of purchase. Secretary of State John Forsyth, on behalf of President Martin Van Buren (who is campaigning for re-election), represents the claim of the Spanish government that the African captives are property of Spain based on a treaty.
Holabird brings charges of piracy and murder. In an unfamiliar country and not speaking a single word of English, the Africans find themselves in a legal battle. Instead, the navigators misdirect the Africans and sail directly north to the east coast of the United States, where the ship is stopped by the American Navy, and the surviving Africans imprisoned as runaway slaves. The mutineers spare the lives of two Spanish navigators to help them sail the ship back to Africa. Joseph Cinqué, a leader of the Africans, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship.
La Amistad is a slave ship transporting captured Africans from Spanish Cuba to the United States in 1839.
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