Question: Build a movie plot around this: which year this movie takes place? 1839
Answer:
Amistad is the name of a slave ship traveling from Cuba to the United States in 1839. It is carrying African people as its cargo. As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the United States, Cinque, a leader of the Africans, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. The mutineers spare the lives of two Spanish navigators to help them sail the ship back to Africa. Instead, the navigators play out the Africans and sail north to the east coast of the United States, where the ship is stopped by the American Navy, and the 53 living Africans imprisoned as runaway slaves.In an unfamiliar country and not speaking a single word of English, the Africans find themselves in a legal battle. District Attorney William S. Holabird brings charges of piracy and murder. The Secretary of State John Forsyth, on behalf of President Martin Van Buren (who is campaigning for re-election), represents the claim of Queen Isabella II of Spain that the Africans are slaves and are property of Spain based on a treaty. Two Naval officers claim them as salvage while the two Spanish navigators produce proof of purchase. A lawyer named Roger Sherman Baldwin, hired by the abolitionist Tappan and his black associate Joadson (a fictional character[1]) decides to defend the Africans.Baldwin argues that the Africans had been captured in Africa to be sold in the Americas illegally. Baldwin proves through documents found hidden on Amistad that the African people were initially cargo belonging to a Portuguese slave ship, The Tecora. Therefore, the Africans were free citizens of another country and not slaves at all. In light of this evidence, the staff of President Van Buren has the judge presiding over the case replaced by Judge Coglin, who is younger and believed to be impressionable and easily influenced. Consequently, seeking to make the case more personal, on the advice of former American president (and lawyer) John Quincy Adams, Baldwin and Joadson find James Covey, a former slave who speaks both Mende and English. Cinque tells his story at...