Amistad Slavery

As the slave era began, the race for wealth emerged. One particular case for slave trafficking didn’t go as well for the staff of the Amistad Ship. The Amistad was a slave ship, traveling to Cuba at the time. On July 2, 1839, 53 captive Africans aboard the Amistad, had broken out of their chains three days into the journey, and boarded the main deck. With weapons that they had picked up, they had killed two of the crewmembers(captain and the cook), and disarmed the rest. They commanded them crewmembers to sail them back to their homeland, but only to be fooled by the cover of darkness, as the crewmember steered the ship north instead of east eventually hitting New York. They were then approached and seized by the Navy, for being a slave ship, …show more content…
The “slave” that led the revolt against the Spanish crew on the Amistad, was a 25 year old man by the name of Sengbe Pieh(Cinque). On August 29, 1839, the Amistad was towed into New London, to which they faced discrimination and hate. Immediately as they had stepped of the ship, they were charged with murder and piracy, so Cinque and the other slaves were imprisoned in New Haven. The implications of the Amistad case were profound. If the Africans are found guilty, they would be subject to death. The Amistad Committee believed that they would need additional legal help to assure a favorable outcome for the Africans and decided to ask former President John Quincy Adams to represent them in the court of law. Representing the case would help to formulate a piece of respect for these Africans, and to treat them as humans, not property. In November 1841, Ellis Gray Loring and Lewis Tappan of the Amistad Committee paid a call on Adams at …show more content…
But, in the end the case went to court, and the court had ruled in favor of Collingwood and the owners. It wasn’t all smiles for Collingwood, a ex-slave named Olaudah Equiano brought the case to the attention of Granville Sharp, one of Britain's leading early abolitionists. Sharp and his colleagues tried to press murder charges against Collingwood and the owners, but to no avail. John Lee had stated, “This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property.” However, there attempts were not for nothing, Wilberforce would take the charge to abolish slavery. In 1784, Wilberforce lead a 50 year struggle in Parliament to abolish slavery in the British Empire. To their success, 26 years later, the British Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire. The British abolition movement inspired similar movements worldwide including a burgeoning anti-slavery movement across the Atlantic that would lead to civil war and eventual