Amistad Rebels Seize Ship: A Fight for Freedom
Fifty-three West Africans led by a rice farmer named Sengbe Pieh, known to Americans as Joseph Cinque, broke free from their chains aboard the slave ship La Amistad off the coast of Cuba and seized the vessel. They killed the captain and cook but spared two crew members, ordering them to sail east toward Africa. The crew secretly navigated north instead, and the ship was intercepted off Long Island. The resulting trial traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams argued for the Africans' freedom. The 1841 ruling declared them free people who had been kidnapped, not property, establishing a landmark precedent that energized the abolitionist movement across the Atlantic.
July 2, 1839
187 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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