Hidden American History

Rating: 9/10 (8 July 2007)

The Armistad case was one of the points along the road to Civil War that has been consistently overlooked. This film focuses primarily on the trial to determine the right to own certain persons said to be chattels. Taken in the British protectorate of Sierra Leone, the Armistad prisoners mutinied. Eventually brought to shore by the US Navy, the trial was in theory a contest between a US Naval officer who asserted the right of salvage and the Spanish title owners. Brought to trial in New Haven, mutineers were determined to have been free persons justifiably rebelling against their captors.
When the Spaniards appealed to the US Supreme Court dominated by Southernors sympathetic to slavery, John Quincy Adams played by Anthony Hopkins delivered an eloquent Fath of Our fathers speech which swayed the court to grant release.
The film addresses an important facet of American History too readily ignored even by careful students of American history. One of the commentators claimed never to have read anything of the armstad incident in years of reading American History; I confess to having first come across the story in the french language.