Plot Summary for
Amistad (1997) More at IMDbPro »
AMISTAD is about a 1839 mutiny onboard a slave ship that is traveling towards the
Northeast Coast of America. Much of the story involves a court-room drama about the
slave who led the revolt. Written by Michael Hatch
Amistad is the name of a slave ship traveling from Cuba to the U.S. in 1839. It is carrying
a cargo of Africans who have been sold into slavery in Cuba, taken on board, and chained
in the cargo hold of the ship. As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the U.S., Cinque, who
was a tribal leader in Africa, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. They continue to
sail, hoping to find help when they land. Instead, when they reach the United States, they
are imprisoned as runaway slaves. They don't speak a word of English, and it seems like
they are doomed to die for killing their captors when an abolitionist lawyer decides to
take their case, arguing that they were free citizens of another country and not slaves at
all. The case finally gets to the Supreme Court, where John Quincy Adams makes an
impassioned and eloquent plea for their release. Written by M Parkinson, Sarasota, FL,
USA
Amistad is a 1997 Steven Spielberg film based on the true story of a slave mutiny that
took place aboard a ship of the same name in 1839, and the legal battle that followed. It
shows how, even though the case was won at the federal district court level, it was
appealed by President Martin Van Buren to the Supreme Court, and how former
President John Quincy Adams took part in the proceedings.
The film begins in the depths of the schooner La Amistad, a slave-ship carrying captured
West Africans into slavery. The film's protagonist, Sengbe Pieh, most known by his
Spanish name, "Cinqué," painstakingly picks a nail out of the ship's structure and uses it
to pick the lock on his shackles. Freeing a number of his companions, Cinqué initiates a
rebellion on board the storm-tossed vessel. In the ensuing fighting, several Africans and
most of the ship's Spanish crew are killed, but Cinqué saves two of the ship's officers,
Ruiz and Montez, whom he believes can sail them back to Africa.
After six weeks have passed, the ship is running out of food and fresh water, and Cinqué
is growing angry with Yamba who believes keeping the Spaniards alive is the only way
to get back to Africa. During the night, they pass another vessel, carrying a group of
wealthy English-speaking passengers having a dinner party on deck. The next day, they
sight land. Unsure of their location, a group of African men take one of the ship's boats to
shore to fetch fresh water. While there, La Amistad is found by a military vessel bearing
an American flag - the Spaniards have tricked the Africans by sailing directly for the
United States.
Captured by the American Navy, the Amistad Africans are taken to a municipal jail in
New Haven, Connecticut, where the ship's occupants, and a tearful Cinqué, are thrown
into a grim dungeon, awaiting trial.
The film's focus now shifts to Washington, D.C., where a session in the House of
Representatives introduces John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), the elderly former
President and politician. While strolling in the gardens, Adams is introduced to two of the
country's leading abolitionists; the elderly freed slave Theodore Joadson (Morgan
Freeman) and Christian activist Mr. Tappan (Stellan Skarsgård), both of whom are
leading shipping magnates in New England and co-proprietors of the pro-abolitionist
newssheet "The Emancipator". The two have heard of the plight of the Amistad Africans
and attempt to enlist Adams to help their cause. Adams, apparently verging on senility,
refuses to help, claiming that he neither condemns nor condones slavery. News of the
Amistad incident also reaches current President of the United States, Martin Van Buren
(Nigel Hawthorne), who is bombarded with demands for compensation from the juvenile
Spanish Head of State, Queen Isabella II of Spain (Anna Paquin). At a preliminary
hearing in a district court, the Africans are charged with "insurrection on the high seas",
and the case rapidly dissolves into conflicting claims of property ownership from the
Kingdom of Spain, the United States, the surviving officers of La Amistad, and the
officers of the naval vessel responsible for re-capturing the slave-ship. Aware that they
cannot fight the case on moral grounds, the two abolitionists enlist the help of a young
attorney specialising in property law; Roger Sherman Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey).
At the jail, Baldwin and the abolitionists, along with a nervous Professor of Linguistics,
attempt to talk to the Amistad Africans, but neither side is able to understand anything the
other party says. In the prison, events among the Africans are accelerating. Yamba,
Cinqué's apparent rival for authority amongst the Africans, has converted to Christianity
and is now resigned to his death, believing that execution will send them to a pleasant
afterlife. The death of a young man provokes the Africans into a furious demonstration
against the American authorities, screaming and chanting in their native languages as a
prison riot threatens. As the hearings drag on, Baldwin and Joadson regularly walk round
the city docks, counting numbers in the Mende language, in an attempt to recruit an
interpreter. They eventually happen upon a black sailor in the Royal Navy, James Covey
(Chiwetel Ejiofor).
Using Covey's linguistic abilities, Baldwin and his companions are able to talk to Cinqué.
In his first speaking role in the courtroom, Cinqué, through a series of flashbacks, tells
the haunting story of how he became a slave.
Cinqué, a peasant farmer and young husband and father in West Africa, was kidnapped
by African slave-hunters and taken to the slave fortress of Lomboko, an illegal facility in
the British Protectorate of Sierra Leone. There, he and hundreds of other captured
Africans were loaded onto transatlantic slave-ship (Tecora). Cinqué tells of the various
horrors of the Middle Passage, including frequent rape, horrific torture, and random
executions carried out by the crew, including the deaths of fifty people deliberately
drowned in order to save food. Upon their arrival in Cuba, Cinqué was sold at a slave
market and purchased, along with many other Tecora survivors, by the owners of La
Amistad. Once aboard La Amistad, Cinqué was able to free himself of his shackles, and
began the slaves' rebellion for freedom.
The courtroom drama continues as District Attorney William S. Holabird (Pete
Postlethwaite) and Secretary of State John Forsyth (David Paymer) press their case for
property rights and dismiss Cinqué's story as a mere piece of fiction. While exploring the
impounded vessel La Amistad for much-needed evidence to support the Africans' claims,
Baldwin happens upon a notebook, stuffed into a crevice by Ruiz and Montez to conceal
the evidence of illegal slave-trading. Using the book as hard evidence of illegal trading,
Baldwin calls expert witnesses including Captain Fitzgerald (Peter Firth), a British naval
commander assigned to patrol the West Africa coastline to enforce the British Empire's
anti-slavery policies. As Fitzgerald is cross-examined by the haughty Holabird, tension in
the courtroom rises, ultimately prompting Cinqué to leap from his seat and cry "Give us
us free" over and over, a heartfelt plea using the English he has learned. Cinqué's plea
touches many, apparently including the judge - in a court ruling, Judge Coglin (Jeremy
Northam) dismisses all claims of ownership, rules that the Africans were captured
illegally and not born on plantations, orders the arrest of the Amistad's remaining crew on
charges of slave-trading, and authorizes the United States to convey the Amistad Africans
back to Africa at the expense of the nation.
While Cinqué, Joadson, Baldwin, and the jubilant Africans celebrate their victory, a state
dinner at the White House threatens to overturn the ruling. While conversing with the
Spanish Ambassador to Washington, Senator John C. Calhoun launches into a damning
diatribe aimed at President Van Buren, emphasising the economic importance of slaves in
the South, and ends his tirade with a concealed but clear threat that should the
government set a precedent for abolition by releasing the Amistad Africans, the South
will have little choice but to go to war with the north. With his advisors warning that the
Amistad incident could bring the United States one big step closer to civil war, President
Van Buren orders that the case be submitted to the Supreme Court, dominated by its
Southern slave-owning judges. Furious, Mr. Tappan splits with Joadson and Baldwin,
who break the news to an enraged and disgusted Cinqué. In need of an ally with legal
background in the intricacies of Supreme Court workings, Baldwin and Joadson meet
again with John Quincy Adams, who has been following the case carefully. Adams,
aware that Cinqué is now refusing to talk to Baldwin, invites the African leader to his
home. While Adams gives him a rambling tour of his greenhouse, Cinqué's emotional
reaction to seeing a West African violet, native to his homeland, convinces Adams to
assist the case.
At the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams gives a long and passionate speech in defense
of the Africans. Arguing that if Cinqué were white and had rebelled against the British,
the United States would have exalted him as a hero; and that the Africans' rebellion to
gain their freedom was no different to the Americans' rebellion against their oppressors
some seventy years earlier. Arguing that condemning the Amistad Africans would render
the principles and ideals of the Constitution worthless, he exhorts the judges to free the
Africans, stating that the looming threat of civil war will simply be the final battle of the
American Revolution. His case made, the United States awaits the Supreme Court's
ruling.
On the day of judgement, Justice Joseph Story (Harry Blackmun) announces the Supreme
Court's decision on the case. Believing that the Amistad Africans were illegally
kidnapped from their homes in Africa, United States laws on slave ownership do not
apply. Furthermore, since that was the case, the Amistad Africans were within their rights
to use force to escape their confinement. The Supreme Court authorizes the release of the
Africans and their conveyance back to Africa. Legally freed for the second and final time,
Cinqué bids emotional farewells to his companions; shaking Adams' hand, giving
Joadson his most treasured possession, a lion tooth which is his only memento of Africa,
and thanking Baldwin in English. As Cinqué is about to leave, Baldwin clasps Cinqué
and bids a farewell, in the Mende language, to the African leader.
The end of the film depicts various scenes. Royal marines assault the Lomboko Slave
Fortress, killing the slavers and freeing the kidnapped Africans held within the dungeons.
With the fortress evacuated, Captain Fitzgerald, who has finally located the fortress,
orders his warship of the Royal Navy's West Africa Anti-Slavery Squadron to open fire
on the facility, destroying Lomboko. Interspersed with this are scenes of Martin Van
Buren losing his election campaign. The final, much more sorrowful scenes, depict
Cinqué and the freed Africans returning to Africa, dressed in white, the West African
colour of victory and accompanied by James Covey, who has shed his British uniform in
exchange for African attire. Scenes depict Queen Isabella's attempts to gain compensation
for La Amistad, and the end of slavery in the United States prompted by the Confederate
Army's defeat at Atlanta. In the final, emotional scene, it is revealed that Cinqué returned
to his village in Africa to find his people fighting a civil war, his home destroyed and his
family sold into slavery.
Historical accuracy
Many academics, like Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia
University, have criticized the film Amistad for historical inaccuracy and the misleading
characterizations of the Amistad case as a "turning point" in American perspective on
slavery. In his essay "The Amistad Case in Fact and Film"
(http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/74/) Foner wrote "In fact, the Amistad case revolved
around the Atlantic slave trade — by 1840 outlawed by international treaty — and had
nothing whatsoever to do with slavery as a domestic institution. Incongruous as it may
seem, it was perfectly possible in the nineteenth century to condemn the importation of
slaves from Africa while simultaneously defending slavery and the flourishing slave trade
within the United States." Furthermore Professor Foner states, "Amistad‘s problems go
far deeper than such anachronisms as President Martin Van Buren campaigning for reelection on a whistle-stop train tour (in 1840, candidates did not campaign), or people
constantly talking about the coming Civil War, which lay twenty years in the future."
An anachronism occurs in the film during the trial section concerning the Bible whose
illustrations provide some insights into Christianity to at least one of the imprisoned
Africans. The pictures shown were created by Gustave Doré, who was about 9 years old
at the time of the Amistad events. His Bible was not published for almost three more
decades.
Teaching With Documents:The Amistad Case
". . . each of them are natives of Africa and were born free, and ever since have been and
still of right are and ought to be free and not slaves . . ."
S. Staples, R. Baldwin, and T. Sedgewick, Proctors for the Amistad Africans,
January 7, 1840
Background
In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from
Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This
abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were
purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for
shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, killed
the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839,
the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters
were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder.
Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in
confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights.
President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However,
abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans.
Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the
brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The court ruled that
the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property
were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The case went to the
Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the
defendants' case. Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their
freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were
returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial.
Teaching With Documents:The Amistad Case
Opinion of the Supreme Court in United States v. The Amistad,
March 9, 1841
Senior Justice Joseph Story wrote and read the decision of the Supreme Court. The Court
ruled that the Africans on board the Amistad were free individuals. Kidnapped and
transported illegally, they had never been slaves.
Although Justice Story had written earlier that ". . . it was the ultimate right of all human
beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice,"
the opinion in this case more narrowly asserted the Africans right to resist "unlawful"
slavery.
The Court ordered the immediate release of the Amistad Africans.
Teaching With Documents:The Amistad Case
Libel of Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, on behalf of himself and the
officers and crew of the U.S. Brig Washington, August 29, 1839
The Washington was the brig that seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island. Its
commander was Lt. Thomas R. Gedney. In his libel, or written statement, to Judge
Andrew T. Judson of the district court, he described the encounter with the Amistad.
Because he sought salvage of the schooner and its cargo, he was very detailed in his
account and itemized all of its cargo, estimating its value at $40,000 and the value of the
Africans as slaves at $25,000. In maritime law, compensation is allowed to persons
whose assistance saves a ship or its cargo from impending loss. The libelants claimed that
with great difficulty and danger to themselves they recaptured the Amistad from the
Africans. They claimed that had they not seized the vessel, it would have been a total loss
to its "rightful" owners. Therefore, Gedney and his crew believed they were entitled to
salvage rights. At that time in U.S. history, even individuals acting in their official
capacity as officials of the government were entitled to salvage rights.
In addition, Gedney relayed that the Africans could speak only native African tongues
and that one of the two Spaniards, Jose Ruiz, spoke English. Gedney included in his libel
the account of the mutiny as told by Ruiz.
Teaching With Documents:The Amistad Case
Answer of S. Staples, R. Baldwin, and T. Sedgewick, Proctors for the
Amistad Africans, to the several libels of Lt. Gedney, et. al. and Pedro
Montes and Jose Ruiz, January 7, 1840
After the Amistad was seized, the schooner, its cargo, and all on board were taken to New
London, CT. Had it not been for the actions of abolitionists in the United States, the
issues related to the Amistad might have ended quietly in an admiralty court. But they
used the incident as a way to expose the evils of slavery and generate significant
opposition to the practice. Abolitionists asked Roger S. Baldwin, a lawyer from New
Haven, and two New York attorneys, Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgewick, to serve as
proctors for, or represent, the Africans. The answer to the libels of Lt. Gedney, et. al. and
Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz that the proctors submitted to the district court conveyed the
position of the Africans.