Marcus Rediker - The Amistad Rebellion - An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

AN ATLANTIC ODYSSEY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Marcus Rediker

VIKING

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Marcus Rediker, 2012

All rights reserved

Illustration credits appear on pages .

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Rediker, Marcus.

The Amistad rebellion : an Atlantic odyssey of slavery and freedom / Marcus Rediker.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-60105-1

1. Slave insurrectionsUnited States. 2. Amistad (Schooner) 3. Antislavery movementsUnited States. 4. Slave tradeAmericaHistory. 5. Sierra LeoneansUnited StatesHistory19th century. I. Title.

E447.R44 2012

326.0973dc23

2012014810

Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Carla Bolte Set in Adobe Palatino LT Std. with Bodoni Ornaments ITC

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For Wendy,

with love

D uring the moonless early hours of July 2, 1839, several captive Africans quietly slipped out of their fetters in the hold of the slave schooner La Amistad. One of them had managed to break a padlock, which made it possible to remove the chain that reeved them together and held them down in the hold below the main deck of the vessel. Forty-nine men and four children made up the human cargo of the Amistad. They had sailed from Havana, bound for the new plantations of Puerto Prncipe (Camagey), Cuba. A few hours earlier, in cramped, airless quarters below deck, they had made a collective decision to seek a different fate.

A group of four menCinqu, Faquorna, Moru, and Kimboled the way as they climbed up and out of the hatchway onto the main deck. They moved with the grace and precision of warriors accustomed to daring midnight attacks. They picked up belaying pins and barrel staves and stole over to the ships boat, where the mulatto cook and slave sailor Celestino lay sleeping. They bludgeoned him to death. As more men escaped their irons and swarmed up on deck, they opened a box of cane knives, tools they were meant to use in cutting sugar cane, but which would now serve the purpose of self-emancipation. The sight of flashing blades caused the two sailors who were supposed to guard against such uprisings to fly over the side of the vessel into the water. Captain Ramn Ferrer armed himself and fought back against the insurgents, killing one and mortally wounding another. Four or five of their comrades counterattacked, surrounding the captain and slashing him to death.

In a matter of minutes the Amistad rebels had turned the ships wooden world upside down. They captured the two men who had considered themselves their owners, Jos Ruiz and Pedro Montes, clapped them in manacles, and sent them below deck as their prisoners. They took control of the ship and organized themselves to do the hard work of sailing it. But in their new-won freedom lay a dilemma: they wanted to return to their homes in southern Sierra Leone, but none of them knew how to navigate the schooner. After some debate they decided to keep the surviving Spaniards alive in order to help them sail the vessel eastward, toward the rising sun, which had been at their backs as they made the Middle Passage on a slave ship two weeks earlier.

Montes had been a merchant ship captain; he was experienced in the ways of the sea and shrewd in the ways of men. He used his specialized knowledge of the deep-sea sailing ship to deceive his new masters. During the day, he followed orders, sailing east, but he had the sails kept loose and flapping in the wind to slow the Amistads progress. By night he steered the vessel back to the west and the north, hoping to stay near the islands of the Caribbean and the coast of North America in order to be intercepted and saved. After eight weeks, he got his wish: a U.S. Navy survey ship captured the Amistad off Culloden Point, Long Island, and carried the Africans, the Spaniards, the cargo, and the schooner to New London, Connecticut.

What would happen to these African rebels now anchored in one of the worlds leading slave societies? Would they be returned to Cuba to be triedand certainly executedfor their crimes of mutiny, murder, and piracy, as the diplomats of Spain, and many American slaveholders, demanded? Or would they, as Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic insisted, in the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade, be allowed to go free? Had they not defended their own natural rights by killing the tyrant who enslaved them? These questions would engage people of all stations and several nations in fierce debate, propelling the