Cinque amistad biography history

Sengbe Pieh, the son of a local chief, was born in Mendi, Sierra Leone , in about He became a rice farmer and was married with three children when he was captured by Spanish slave-traders in Ruiz purchased 48 other slaves in Havana and hired Ramon Ferrer to take him in his schooner Amistad , to Puerto Principe, a settlement further down the coast of Cuba.

Was the amistad a true story

On 2nd July, , the slaves, led by Cinque, killed Ramon Ferrer, and took possession of his ship. Cinque ordered the navigator to take them back to Africa but after 63 days at sea the ship was intercepted by Lieutenant Gedney, of the United States brig Washington , half a mile from the shore of Long Island. The Spanish government insisted that the mutineers be returned to Cuba.

President Martin van Buren was sympathetic to these demands but insisted that the men would be first tried for murder. Lewis Tappan and James Pennington took up the African's case and argued that while slavery was legal in Cuba, importation of slaves from Africa was not.

Joseph cinque death

The judge agreed, and ruled that the Africans had been kidnapped and had the right to use violence to escape from captivity. The New York Morning Tribune reported: "Instead of a chivalrous leader with the dignified and graceful bearing of Othello, imparting energy and confidence to his intelligent and devoted followers, he saw a sullen, dumpish looking negro, with a flat nose, thick lips, and all the other characteristics of his debased countrymen, without a single redeeming or striking trait, except the mere brute qualities of strength and activity, who had inspired terror among his companions by the indiscriminate and unsparing use of the lash.

And instead of intelligent and comparatively civilized men, languishing in captivity and suffering under the restraints of the prison, he found them the veriest animals in existence, perfectly contented in confinement, without a ray of intelligence, and sensible only to the wants of the brute. The United States government appealed against this decision and the case appeared before the Supreme Court.

The former president, John Quincy Adams , was so moved by the plight of Joseph Cinque and his fellow Africans, that he volunteered to represent them. Although now seventy-three, his passionate eight-hour speech won the argument and the mutineers were released. Lewis Tappan and the anti-slavery movement helped fund the return of the 35 surviving Africans to Sierra Leone.

They arrived in January, , along with five missionaries and teachers who formed a Christian anti-slavery mission in the country. Cinque discovered that his wife and three children had been killed while he had been away.