page_title: United States v. The Amistad
section_title: Aftermath and significance
hierarchical_section_title: United States v. The Amistad / Aftermath and significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Pencil drawing of head-and-shoulders of Kimbo, African slave aboard the ship Amistad. Portrait by William H. Townsend, Sketches of the Amistad captives. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book &amp; Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Ct. [1]
context_page_description: United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518, was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison described it in 1969 as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott in 1857.
  The schooner was traveling along the coast of Cuba on its way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The African captives, Mende people who had been kidnapped in the area of Sierra Leone in West Africa, illegally sold into slavery, and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. They killed the captain and the cook; two other crew members escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende directed the two Spanish navigator survivors to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them, sailing north at night. La Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. The widely publicized court cases in the United States federal district court and eventually the U.S.
context_section_description: The Africans greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy. Abolitionist supporters took the survivors – 36 men and boys and three girls – to Farmington, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Their residents had agreed to have the Africans stay there until they could return to their homeland. Some households took them in; supporters also provided barracks for them.
  The Amistad Committee instructed the Africans in English and Christianity, and raised funds to pay for their return home. One missionary was James Steele, an Oberlin graduate, previously one of the Lane Rebels. "In 1841 he joined the Amistad Mission to Mendhi, which returned freed slaves to Africa and worked to establish a mission there. However, Steele soon found that the Amistad captives belonged to seven different tribes, some at war with one another. All of the chiefs were slave traders and authorized to re-enslave freed persons. These findings led to the decision that the mission must start in Sierra Leone, under the protection of the British.
  Along with several missionaries, in 1842 the surviving 35 Africans returned to Sierra Leone, the other having died at sea or while awaiting trial. The Americans constructed a mission in Mendiland. Numerous members of the Amistad Committee later founded the American Missionary Association, an evangelical organization which continued to support the Mendi mission. With leadership of black and white ministers from mostly Presbyterian and Congregational denominations, it was active in working for abolitionism in the United States and for the education of Blacks, sponsoring the founding of Howard University, among other institutions.  After the American Civil War, it founded numerous schools and colleges for freedmen in the South.
  In the following years, the Spanish government continued to press the US for compensation for the ship, cargo, and slaves.  Several Southern lawmakers introduced resolutions into the United States Congress to appropriate money for such payment but failed to gain passage, although it was supported by Democratic presidents James K. Polk and James Buchanan.
  Joseph Cinqué returned to Africa. In his final years, he was reported to have returned to the mission and re-embraced Christianity. Recent historical research suggests that the allegations of Cinqué's later involvement in the slave trade are false.
  In the Creole case of 1841, the United States dealt with another ship rebellion similar to that of the Amistad.
caption: Portrait of Kimbo, one of 36 men aboard La Amistad, c. 1839–1840
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