Mutiny on the Amistad: the saga of a slave revolt and its impact on American abolition, law, and diplomacyThis 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. |
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Mutiny on the Amistad: the saga of a slave revolt and its impact on American abolition, law, and diplomacy
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictIn this well-crafted narrative Jones has fleshed out what was heretofore a footnote in the history of the American antislavery movement. The cause of the small band of black slaves who had mutinied ... Read full review
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
The Mutiny | 14 |
Abolitionists and This Matter of Color | 31 |
Copyright | |
10 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American ... Howard Jones No preview available - 1988 |
Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American ... Howard Jones No preview available - 1988 |
Common terms and phrases
abolition Abolitionism abolitionists Adams Family Papers Adams's Advertiser & Express African Captives African slave trade Amistad affair Amistad blacks Amistad captives Amistad Committee Antislavery Antonio Argaiz argued argument Baldwin Family Papers Benjamin Tappan British Buren administration Calderon captain cargo Cinque circuit court Cong Connecticut Corresp Cuba Cuban decision declared district attorney district court Emancipator executive FARC foreign Forsyth Gedney Gilpin habeas corpus Havana Haven Holabird ibid illegal insisted issue John John Quincy Adams Joseph Story Judson jurisdiction justice ladinos Leavitt Lewis Tappan liberty Madden Martin Van Buren mutiny N.Y. Advertiser N.Y. Commercial Advertiser nations Pinckney's Treaty political president Records for Conn Ruiz and Montes schooner Sept Sierra Leone Simeon Jocelyn slavery Spain Spaniards Spanish Spanish law Spanish minister Story Supreme Court Tappan Papers testimony treaty of 1795 trial U.S. Dist U.S. DS United vessel White House writ of habeas wrote Yale York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Mutiny on the Amistad: the saga of a slave revolt and its impact on American abolition, law, and diplomacy |
| Author | Howard Jones |
| Edition | illustrated, revised |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 1987 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Sep 18, 2008 |
| Length | 271 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / General History / United States / 19th Century Political Science / General Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies Social Science / Slavery |
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