Attitudes towards Slavery in 1839 America - Essay Example

The Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico would continue to tolerate the outlawed slave trade until the 1860s, but eventually, outlaw slavery by the end of the 1870s.
By the time of the Amistad incident, the feeling in America towards slavery had polarized. Feelings ran the gamut from the abolitionists that called for an immediate ban on slavery, to the people that felt a constitutional amendment was long overdue and included the advocates that argued slavery was a states' issue and wished to prolong the practice, primarily in the rural South for economic reasons. In the Northern States, "the rising voices of black, as well as white, abolitionists are partly responsible for ending slavery in the Northern states during the first part of the nineteenth century". According to Jackson, "if many were sympathetic to the Africans, there were plenty of others among the American press and public with only contempt for them", and Cinque, the leader of the mutineers, was described by one journalist to be "as miserably ignorant and brutalized a creature like the rest". Many people such as "Lewis Tapan, a prominent New York businessman, Joshua Leavitt, a lawyer and journalist who edited the Emancipator in New York, and Simeon Jocelyn, a Congregational" could sense the coming of the civil war over this unresolvable issue and "decided to publicize the incident to expose the brutalities of slavery and the slave trade". In 1839, the nation was deeply divided over the slavery issue and many people were willing to take a hard stance either for or against it.

Though there was significant political and emotional pressure placed on the court, the eventual decision was a correct legal finding. The case rested on three principles; jurisdiction, the mutineer's status as slaves, and the concept of slaves as property. "The Spanish minister pointed out that the Amistad mutiny took place on a Cuban vessel travelling between Cuban ports and was thus beyond the jurisdiction of American courts". The court ruled that the mutineers were "kidnapped and free Negroes, the treaty with Spain cannot be obligatory upon them; and the United States are bound to respect their rights as much as those of Spanish subjects". The court rightfully found that they had been kidnapped, since they had been taken in violation of international agreements, and since they were being held as kidnapped captives, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision. "The court declared that the blacks had never been lawful slaves and that they were kidnapped and illegally transported to Cuba. Their mutiny was an act of self-defence". Adams challenged the Court to find a more sweeping decision "on the basis of natural rights doctrines found in the Declaration of Independence". However, the majority opinion "found slavery repugnant and contrary to Christian morality, he supported the laws protecting its existence and opposed the abolitionists as threats to an ordered society. Property rights, he believed, were the basis of civilization".

The impact of the Amistad incident gave the abolitionists a social and political boost that would continue to echo into the future. "The importance of the Amistad case lies in the fact that Cinque and his fellow captives, in collaboration with white abolitionists, had won their freedom and thereby encouraged others to continue the struggle. Positive law had come into conflict with natural law, exposing the great need to change the Constitution and American laws in compliance with the moral principles underlying the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was brought to the forefront of American thought and demanded constitutional actions be taken. In addition, "Several black colleges emerged as a result of the establishment of the American Missionary Association, itself an outcome of the Amistad revolt". The Amistad incident formed the basis of the change in thinking and the legitimization of the abolitionist attitudes that would characterize the second half of the 19th century.

Most of the historical inaccuracies in the film came as the result of the need to dramatize people and events for the sake of entertainment. For example, the district court judge "was opposed to abolitionists before the trial began; his racial antipathies were strong and yet he overcame them in rendering his verdict". In the film, he was portrayed as an abolitionist to simplify the plot. In addition, Hadden (1997) contends that the judge had already decided that the captives were African, and Cinque's testimony was far less dramatic or meaningful than portrayed in the film. Lombok, a Spanish compound and stockade, "was indeed a significant export point, but it possessed no massive fortress and certainly no garrison. While the Royal Navy's Anti-Slavery Squadron did destroy Lombok and other Sierra Leone trading ports in 1840, the film's version of this as a heroic bombardment followed by the landing of a whole battalion of red-coated marines represents an extraordinary exaggeration". Many historical enactments in the film are often riddled with inaccuracies for dramatic effect.