Cold Open

It’s just after 3 AM, on July 2nd, 1839, off the coast of Cuba.

Plantation owner Pedro Montez shifts uncomfortably in his bunk aboard the slave ship La Amistad. The two-masted schooner doesn’t belong to Pedro, but the cargo aboard does.

A few days ago, Pedro and another plantation owner bought 53 enslaved Africans at auction in Havana. They then chartered La Amistad to transport the captives to their plantations in the east of the country. But Pedro isn’t comfortable on ships, and right now he’s tossing and turning in a vain attempt to fall asleep.

Pedro stops fidgeting when he hears a noise: a dull thud from somewhere up on deck. After lying awake for the last three nights, Pedro has grown used to the sounds of the ship but this thud seemed out of place.

Pedro lies still a few seconds longer… until he hears the noise again.

Pedro climbs out of bed and heads up on deck to investigate.

A salty breeze blows over him as he moves across the deck, looking for the source of the sound. But it’s a cloudy night, and the ship is a patchwork of shadows.

Suddenly, two men lunge out of the darkness. Pedro stares in shock - it’s two of the slaves. They should be chained up below deck, but somehow, they’re free. Pedro looks for something to defend himself with, and he finds a sailor’s knife left on top of a barrel.

But Pedro is no fighter. He swings the knife ineffectually as the men rush him and knock him to the deck. As they hold him down, Pedro sees more figures moving through the shadows. And to his despair, Pedro realizes that La Amistad is no longer in the hands of the plantation owners. It’s controlled by the men they’ve enslaved.

The captives of La Amistad may have liberated themselves, but their struggle is far from over. They’ll soon embark on a second battle for freedom—inside an American courtroom. Only after three years of legal wrangling will their case come to an end and decide the fate of the 53 Africans who broke free from their chains and seized control of La Amistad on July 2nd, 1839.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is July 2nd, 1839: The Amistad Uprising.

Act One

It’s February 1839 in the tropical rainforest of West Africa, five months before the rebellion aboard La Amistad.

Sengbe Pieh wipes the sweat from his forehead as he walks along a trail near his village. The usually busy route is today deserted, but Sengbe doesn’t pause to wonder why. Instead, his mouth waters at the thought of dinner his wife will have ready for him, and he smiles as he imagines his three children running to greet him.

Sengbe’s so lost in thought that at first he doesn’t spot the four men stepping out of the tree line ahead. By the time he does notice them, the men have blocked the path. It suddenly dawns on Sengbe that these newcomers are the reason why everyone else is missing or hiding.

Africa has been plundered by slavers for hundreds of years. Most European nations have recently outlawed the transportation of new slaves across the Atlantic, but that hasn’t stopped the trade—it’s just driven it underground. Sugar and cotton plantation owners in North America have a seemingly endless demand for unskilled labor. So, Africans are still being kidnapped, sold at auction, and forced to work by brutal overseers.

Now, Sengbe fears he’s walked right into a slave trader’s trap. He slows as he approaches the four men. None of them say a word, so Sengbe steps off the trail to pass them. He’s ready to run as soon as he’s clear—but he doesn't get the chance. The men move first, grabbing Sengbe's arms. Sengbe tries to pull away, but he’s knocked to his knees, his arms are wrenched behind his back, and his wrists are bound with rope.

The men heave Sengbe to his feet and tell him to walk. He hesitates, knowing that the direction they’ve pointed takes him away from his village. But a hard shove between the shoulder blades sends Sengbe stumbling away from his family, and into captivity.

After a long trek to the coast, Sengbe is put aboard a Portuguese slave ship bound for Havana, Cuba. He’s not alone. Dozens of other enslaved men are crammed into the hold, chained to stop them from escaping. The unsanitary conditions mean that many of them don’t survive the long voyage across the Atlantic, but Sengbe does. He’s still alive when the ship docks in Havana, two months after it left Africa.

Since importing new slaves is now illegal, Sengbe and the others are secretly transported to shore at night. Then, they're hauled onto a platform and sold at a public auction. Sengbe doesn’t speak any Spanish, so he has no idea that he’s being passed off as a Cuban-born slave to make the transaction seem legal. And according to the forged documents, his name isn’t Sengbe Pieh, but Joseph Cinque.

Sengbe is brought to a pair of plantation owners and shortly after the auction, they commission a ship to transport their new purchases to their property in East Cuba. Soon, Sengbe finds himself back in chains on La Amistad, a ship carrying 48 other enslaved men, three girls and one boy.

During the long, empty hours at sea, Sengbe wonders what he’s done to deserve this imprisonment. But after three days, he has a stroke of luck. He discovers a loose nail in the deck. Sengbe pries it out of the wood and uses it to pick the lock in the iron collar around his neck. Then, in the darkness of the early hours of July 2nd, 1839, Sengbe helps his fellow captives out of their chains too.

They then sneak up onto deck where they overpower the crew and seize control of La Amistad. Two of the enslaved men are killed in the brief fighting, as are the ship’s captain and cook. But Sengbe allows a second mate to live, as well as the two plantation owners—although it’s now them who will spend the voyage in chains.

Sengbe orders the second mate to chart a course back to Africa and freedom. The enslaved men celebrate as the ship moves into open ocean. But the second mate they spared has other plans. That night, he secretly changes the ship’s course to head northwest, away from Africa, and toward the United States.

In two months’ time, La Amistad will sight land. But Sengbe's mood will sour when he realizes it’s not the homecoming he hoped for. Instead, Sengbe and the other men of La Amistad will soon be captives once again. And this time, they won’t just face a future in chains—they’ll be threatened with execution.

Act Two

It’s August 21st, 1839, off Long Island, New York, six weeks after the Amistad uprising.

Lieutenant Thomas Gedney stares out over the prow of the USS Washington as it edges past Culloden Point. Here, the waters of Long Island Sound merge with the Atlantic—and it’s in this region that a suspicious vessel with an all-Black crew has recently been sighted. As captain of the Washington, Lieutenant Gedney has orders to patrol the area and ensure that this mysterious ship isn’t a pirate vessel.

As his ship rounds the point, Lieutenant Gedney spots the vessel in the distance. He lifts his telescope to his eye for a closer look. The ship is a two-masted schooner, matching the description he’s been given, so Lieutenant Gedney orders a change of course to intercept.

When the Washington comes alongside its target, Lieutenant Gedney sees that the sailors on board are Black and dressed in little more than rags. Sensing something is amiss, Lieutenant Gedney assembles an armed boarding party. The Black sailors make no attempt to stop them coming aboard, but since they don’t speak any English, they respond to Lieutenant Gedney’s questions with confused expressions.

This puzzling situation begins to make sense a few minutes later when two white men emerge from below deck wearing chains. They push their way to Lieutenant Gedney, shouting that their ship has been overrun by rebellious slaves. The two men claim to be plantation owners who’ve been taken hostage.

Lieutenant Gedney immediately has his crew arrest the supposed slaves and unshackle the white men. And soon after, he takes control of La Amistad and sails it to New Haven, Connecticut, where its Black crew are taken into custody and charged with murder and piracy.

The odds are stacked against the men. They don’t speak English and have no understanding of the legal system. But the enslaved Africans are not entirely without allies in America.

Over the past ten years, the anti-slavery abolitionist movement has grown in Northern states. Newspapers and societies have been established to campaign for the eradication of slavery in America. And now that a slave ship has landed on their shores, these abolitionist societies rush to help. They want to make sure that the men of La Amistad are freed rather than punished. Donations pour in for a legal fund, and abolitionist volunteers manage to find a sailor on a British vessel who speaks the same language as the enslaved men. Now finally, the Africans are able to tell their side of the story.

Speaking through this translator, Sengbe Pieh gives a first-hand account of everything that’s happened since the day he was captured. He describes in detail the hardship and inhumane treatment he and the others were subjected to during their captivity. His heart-wrenching story is enough to convince the court, and five months after their arrest, a judge rules that the men must be returned home to Africa.

But the verdict is a controversial one. America is fiercely divided over the issue of slavery. And under pressure from the slaveholding Southern states, President Martin van Buren requests that the judgment be appealed—and more than a year later, the case is heard in the United States Supreme Court.

But van Buren is not the only president to take an interest in the men of La Amistad. One of his predecessors, former President John Quincy Adams, follows the saga closely in the newspapers. Adams is himself an abolitionist, and he volunteers to represent the Africans in court. He is nearing his mid-70s and hasn’t argued a case before a judge in more than thirty years, but the offer is still gratefully accepted.

Then when his time comes to speak, Adams argues that the captives were not legally slaves, and should never have been transported across the Atlantic. That means they should be considered free men under the law—and they should not be held culpable for their actions in the uprising, which was a justifiable attempt to escape from illegal captivity.

When both sides rest no one is sure which way the court will rule. But the prospects of the men being found innocent gets an unexpected boost when one of the Supreme Court justices dies during an overnight recess. Since he was a slave owner, he was expected to be unsympathetic to the plight of the men of La Amistad.

But as it turns out, the dead justice will have no effect on the verdict. On March 9th, 1841, the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the men by seven to one. It’s a decision that will confirm that they are free to go and that Sengbe Pieh and the other captives from La Amistad will finally get the chance to return home.

Act Three

It’s November 25th, 1841, in Washington DC, eight months after the Supreme Court ruling that freed the men of La Amistad.

Sengbe Pieh pauses at the foot of a gangway and takes a moment to look around Washington’s docks. It’s been almost three years since he was abducted in West Africa. But today, he’s finally setting sail for home.

Following the Supreme Court judgment, abolitionists in America began a new round of fundraising—this time to pay for Sengbe and his fellow captives from La Amistad to go back to Africa. But not everyone will get the chance. Of the 52 other slaves who were chained up with Sengbe in the hold of La Amistad, only 34 are still alive. The others passed away on board the slave ship or in American custody.

But today, Sengbe is grateful to walk up the creaking plank and join his countrymen for the journey ahead. A small crowd has gathered to watch the Africans go, and cheers ring out over the water as the tie lines are cast off. They have a long voyage ahead of them, but at least this time they won’t be in chains.

Soon, the American abolitionists who helped free the men of La Amistad move on to new battles—over the next two decades, slavery becomes an even more controversial issue in the United States. Congressmen come to literal blows over whether to allow slavery in new territories and states. The Fugitive Slave Law compels Americans to hunt down runaway slaves who escape to the North. And the abolitionist John Brown leads his own bloody uprising in a failed attempt to end slavery by force. But it will take another 23 years and a vicious civil war before the Thirteenth Amendment finally abolishes the cruel practice in all of the United States.

By that time, Sengbe Pieh will have disappeared. The ship carrying him and the other men of La Amistad arrived in West Africa in January 1842. Soon afterward, Sengbe trekked inland in search of his family. But no one knows if he ever reunited with his wife and children. Still, whatever Sengbe's fate, he faced it as a free man—a far cry from the unhappy months he spent fighting for his life and liberty after an uprising on La Amistad on July 2nd, 1839.

Outro

Next on History Daily. July 3rd, 2013. Egypt’s first democratically elected President is ousted in a military coup.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm. 

This episode is written and researched by Rob Scragg.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.