Synopses & Reviews
This book is the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history in which African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home.
In 1839, Joseph Cinque led other blacks in a revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean. They steered the ship northward to Montauk, Long Island, where it was seized by an American naval vessel. With the Africans jailed in Connecticut and the Spaniards claiming violoation of their porperty rights, an international controversy erupted. The Amistad affair united abolotionists in the U.S. and England, drove the White house into almost any means to quiet the issue, and placed the U.S. and Spain in a confrontation that threatened to involve England and Cuba. The abolitionists, led by Lewis Tappan, Joshua Leavitt and others argued that equal justice was the central issue in the case. Appealing to natural law, evangelical arguments, and "moral suasion" in proclaiming slavery a sin, they sought to establish that all persons, black and white, has an inherent right of liberty and thereby hoped to erase the color line that formed the racial foundation of slavery. In their eyes, the mutiny on the &IAmistad offered an ideal opportunity to awaken Americans to the injustice of slavery.
In this book, Howard Jones shows how the abolotionist argument put the "laws of nature" on trial in the U.S., as Tappan and the others refused to accept a legal system claiming to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or color. Jones vividly captures the compelling drama that climaxed in a U.S. Supreme court ruling that freed the captivces and allowed them to return to Africa. He notes that many of the abolitionists were nonetheless dissatisfied with the decision because it had not rested on the law of nature; yet, he obseves, even they failed to grasp the central importance of the affair: that America's legal system had fulfilled its function of securing justice.
About the Author -
Howard Jones, is Professor of History at the University of Alabama and author of The Course of American Diplomacy and To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.
Review
"An analysis of an important moment in American history that casts a light upon politics and society during the preceding half-century, back to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and similarly illumines the approaching Civil War."--National Review. "A rousing and satisfying tale, and it is well worth hearing it again in this careful and thoughtful telling."--American Heritage
Synopsis
This volume presents the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history where African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinqu led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. The seizure of the ship by an American naval vessel near Montauk, Long Island, the arrest of the Africans in Connecticut, and the Spanish protest against the violation of their property rights created an international controversy.
The Amistad affair united Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who put the "law of nature" on trial in the United States by their refusal to accept a legal system that claimed to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or color. The mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court that pitted former President John Quincy Adams against the federal government. Jones vividly recaptures this compelling drama--the most famous slavery case before Dred Scott--that climaxed in the court's ruling to free the captives and allow them to return to Africa.
About the Author
"A nearly flawless historical study of an important episode in American diplomatic, legal, political, and ethnic history; Mutiny on the Amistad raises important questions in all of these fields and is highly recommended reading."--Journal of American Ethnic History
"Mutiny on the Amistad is based on thorough research and provides excellent and detailed coverage of its subject. It makes important contributions both to the history of slavery and to abolition, especially on the legal aspects of each."--Journal of Southern History
"[A] well-documented study of the Amistad affair....Lively."--The New York Review of Books
"An analysis of an important moment in American history that casts a light upon politics and society during the preceding half-century, back to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and similarly illumines the approaching Civil War."--The National Review
"An impressive piece of work....A well organized book, handsomely illustrated, generously documented....Valuable and illuminating."--Civil War History
"A rousing and satisfying tale, and it is well worth hearing it again in this careful and thoughtful telling."--American Heritage