Amistad

Steven Spielberg-directed film of 1997, named for the schooner of that name, which, on June 28, 1839, had left Havana to take 54 newly arrived slaves to Puerto Principe. Four nights later, led by Cinqué, these had mutinied, killing two crew members, and ordering the remaining three to sail to Africa.  The sailors headed instead for New York, and when on August 26 some of the mutineers went ashore near Montauk Point on Long Island for supplies, the ship was captured by a US warship. In January 1840, after the circuit court at Harford, CT had determined that actions on the high seas were outside US jurisdiction, President Van Buren agreed to Spain’s demand for the return of ship and “cargo.”  This was frustrated by an appeal to the US Supreme Court where on March 8,1841, former president John Quincy Adams, secured an acquittal of the murderers based on the illegality of international law of the African slave trade, and finally, in 1842, they were repatriated to Sierra Leone.  The film romanticizes the incident, giving the misleading impression that slavery itself was at issue.