The Amistad Rebellion (22 page)

People Will Talk

Even though the first steps had been taken to get the African story of the rebellion into the courts and the public sphere, the search for better means of communication continued. Next to try his hand, or rather hands, in late September 1839, was the pioneer in education for the deaf, the Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. He had heard of the difficulties of communication and wanted to apply his own theories and methods. He spent hours each day for several days in the Hartford jail “conversing with the Africans by signs, and endeavoring to make up a vocabulary of their own language.” Like many other Christian visitors, Gallaudet was deeply interested in the religious ideas of the
Amistad
Africans, so he tried to discover “whether they had any distinct idea of a Supreme Being.” He asked, by signs, “whether they knew of anything higher than the sun, moon, stars &c.; and several of them answered in succession that they did—that Gooly [their name for God] was above all these things.” He wanted to know if they believed that Gooly would punish people for wrongdoing, such as murder, the idea of which he conveyed by the motion of cutting the throat. As soon as the
Amistad
Africans read the sign language, “they cast down their eyes and were silent,” refusing to carry on the conversation. Gallaudet soon realized that he had signed his way into their fear of execution in the aftermath of the rebellion. Fortunately, James Ferry came into the jail at that very moment and was able to clear up the misunderstanding.
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Professor Josiah Gibbs took an avid interest in the case and worked “day and night” to facilitate mutual understanding. He talked with the
Amistad
Africans in jail, noting the meanings of their words, constructing vocabularies, and trying to understand the nature of their languages. Among the many things he learned was how to count from one to ten in Mende, “1, eta; 2, fili; 3, kiau-wa; 4, naeni.” How did he learn it and from whom?
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A clue may lie in an encounter that took place in jail on September 6, 1839. A correspondent to the
New York Commercial Advertiser
observed that “several young gentlemen” visiting the jail were “under the tuition
of the little girls, studying the Mandingoe tongue.” Margru, Kagne, and Teme, he noted, were “familiar with mathematics” and were able to “count ten—and to give the name of each numeral.” They taught the gentlemen how to count, not in Mandingo but Mende. They also taught them other words, “the names in their language of such things as they are acquainted with, such as ear [
gu-li
], mouth [
nda
], &c.” The correspondent was sure that the agency of the little girls would be long lasting and that the jail would remain a place of learning: “Should these people stay here long some of the Yankees will become adept scholars in the Mandingoe tongue, I have no doubt.”
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What the little girls taught, Gibbs took to the waterfront of New York. He walked up and down amid the hustle and bustle of the docks, counting loudly from one to ten in Mende until two curious sailors, Charles Pratt and James Covey, approached him and spoke to him in the language he was hoping to hear. One or both may have said, “
gna gi-hi-ya Men-di
” (I come from Mende). The professor probably did not understand what they said, but since they both also spoke English, he knew immediately that he had found his interpreters. The mostly Mende-speaking
Amistad
Africans would now be able to deliver a full, detailed version of what happened aboard the “long, low black schooner.”

Gibbs used the methods of the little girls to link the struggle against slavery inside the New Haven jail to the struggle against slavery on the Atlantic waterfront. Pratt and Covey were both working sailors aboard the British brig of war
Buzzard
, a vessel in the West African antislavery patrol. Pratt, who was about twenty-five years old and illiterate, was the cook for Captain James Fitzgerald. Born in Sierra Leone, he knew both the Mende and Gbandi languages, having traveled as a child with his father, a merchant, to both lands. He testified that “he knew at Lonboko [
sic
] on the coast of Africa a man called Petro Blanco who was a Spanish slave trader.” He did not say whether he knew him because his father traded with him or because he, like the
Amistad
Africans, had passed through the factory as a slave on the way to the New World.
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James Covey was even better equipped to play a central role in the case. Born of a Kono father and Kissi mother, the twenty-year-old young man grew up in Mende country and could therefore speak several languages. Covey explained, “I was stolen by a black man who stole 10 of us.” He was twelve years old at the time. He was sold, first, to a Bullom merchant, for whom he worked as a slave for three years cultivating rice, then to Pedro Blanco at Gallinas, who placed him on board a Portuguese slave ship bound for Havana, which was soon captured by the British anti-slave-trade patrol. Covey and his shipmates were taken to Freetown, where he was educated by representatives of the Church Missionary Society. He could therefore speak and write English. He had enlisted aboard the
Buzzard
in November 1838. Captain Fitzgerald apparently held strong antislavery beliefs himself and was happy to lend the young sailor to the abolitionist cause when asked to do so by Lewis Tappan. Covey thus possessed not only a personal background of Kono and Mende language and culture, he had experienced enslavement, Lomboko, the slave ship, and liberation, and he had practical antislavery experience aboard the
Buzzard
, which was in New York in October 1839 because it had captured a slaver and brought it to the American port for adjudication.
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The moment Pratt and Covey walked into the jail and began to address the
Amistad
Africans in Mende, everyone knew that a breakthrough had been made. A gentleman who was present at the time described the entry of Covey during breakfast, which caused Marshal Wilcox to object. One of the prisoners, “finding a countryman who could talk in their own language, took hold of him, and literally dragged him in. Such a scene ensued as you may better conceive than I describe. Breakfast was forgotten; all crowded around the two men, and all talking as fast as possible. The children hugged one another with transport.” Another eyewitness added, “As soon as one of the new comers addressed them in their native tongue, there was an instant explosion of feeling—they leaped and shouted and clapped their hands, and their joy seemed absolutely uncontrollable.” At last the words they would say for themselves could be understood by all.
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The Story Continued

The Mende-speaking sailors Pratt and Covey were the strategic link between the African insurrectionists and the American abolitionists. Their translations made possible an immediate escalation of the struggle on two fronts. First, the full, detailed life-and-death histories of the
Amistad
rebellion and of those who made it could now be told fully. Tappan and his colleagues immediately interviewed all of the Africans, highlighting and publishing the vivid first-person accounts of Grabeau and Kimbo, two dynamic leaders of the group. With each life story collected and published, the
Amistad
case grew in human stature. The
New York
Journal of Commerce
announced the arrival of the “Narrative of the Africans” on October 10, 1839.
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A second escalation was more confrontational. Lewis Tappan and attorney Theodore Sedgwick used the translations of Pratt and Covey to bring lawsuits, on behalf of Cinqué and Fuli, then Foone and Kimbo, against José Ruiz and Pedro Montes for “assault and battery, and false imprisonment” during their time aboard the
Amistad
. On October 17, Tappan accompanied a police officer to 65 Fulton Street in New York to have Ruiz and Montes arrested. The outraged
New York Morning Herald
reported that Tappan, wearing a “half-benevolent, half-malignant smile,” asked, “How do you do, Mr. Ruiz?” He then turned to the officer and said, “This is your man—take him.” The officer took both men before Judge Inglis of the Court of Common Pleas and Judge Samuel Jones of the Superior Court. The plaintiffs sought damages of $2,000 (almost $50,000 in 2012 dollars) for “the brutal scourging, &c., they received on board the Amistad, by order of Ruiz.”
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Judge Inglis imposed a hefty bail of $1,000 each on Ruiz and Montes. The wealthy Ruiz claimed that he could not pay it and went to jail—in a bid for public sympathy, the abolitionists thought. Inglis eventually ruled that Montes was not liable in the suit and released him. Rattled by the aggressive tactics of the Africans and the abolitionists, Montes immediately left the city, taking passage on the brig
Texas
to Neuvitas, Cuba. Inglis eventually reduced Ruiz’s bail to $250, which the young gentleman paid, and left the jail.
³⁵

In affidavits dated October 7, 1839, each of the Africans told a similar story, like those Cinqué and Bau had told Tappan and others in the first interviews a month earlier. The narrative began at home, in freedom in Africa, then progressed through enslavement, the Middle Passage on the
Teçora
, the barracoons of Havana, and violent mistreatment aboard the
Amistad
. They all emphasized the grim realities of the slave ship: the use of irons, the short allowance of food and water, the beatings and floggings. Foone and Kimbo alleged that they had been tortured: “powder salt and rum were applied to the wounds” left by the whip and “the marks are still visible.”
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The lawsuits against Ruiz and Montes provoked a howl of protest from the
Richmond Enquirer
and the
Southern Patriot
, published in Charleston, South Carolina. The former condemned this “worse than savage conduct towards the unfortunate strangers who were brought upon our shores by the mischances of the sea.” The latter decried the fact that Ruiz was cruelly imprisoned in “Egyptian catacombs.” Both expressed the worry of every southern master who traveled northward: “Before long, a citizen from the South will be arrested here and thrown into prison, on the oath of his servant, procured by the abolitionist.” Might his case then be “sent before a prejudiced and fanatical Jury? Is this the point to which these Abolitionists are aiming?” Indeed it was. Tappan wrote of the provocative arrest, “I doubt not it will exasperate the tyrants & their abettors throughout the country.” The abolitionist newspaper, the
Pennsylvania Freeman
, crowed: the arrest and imprisonment of slaveholders represented a “Great Point Gained.” Tappan had wanted “to test the civil rights of the free born and illegally enslaved Africans in this free community” and to bring more of the African story before the public. He succeeded, but at the cost of great personal vilification. He was accustomed to it, and in any case was sure that God would protect him.
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Education and Self-Defense

Pratt and Covey also made possible a new approach to teaching and learning, which was announced in the
New York Journal of Commerce
on October 9, 1839. Because the interpreters “can communicate very freely with all of them and have acquitted themselves to perfect satisfaction,” giving their labors to the cause “with great cheerfulness,” the abolitionists developed “Plans to Educate the Amistad Africans in English.” Professor George Day, a theologian at Yale, stepped forward to take charge. He planned to use a blackboard and slates, “Gallaudet’s Elementary work for Deaf and Dumb, which seem well adapted to the first lessons,” and several Yale students to assist him. Cinqué assured Day and the other abolitionists that he and his comrades were eager to learn and would apply themselves. They were ready for the book palaver with the white men.
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Meantime, life in the dangerous place called jail continued for Cinqué and his comrades. Incarcerated alongside the
Amistad
Africans were other prisoners, some of them desperate and no doubt eager to escape, perhaps by any means necessary. The Africans were still deeply uncertain about who to trust and what their fate might be. They therefore took steps to arm themselves, which was of course against the law, but nonetheless crucial to their sense of self-organization, safety, and survival. Since many if not most had been Mende warriors, their preferred weapon was what they had used in combat in their native land, and what they had used to procure their freedom aboard the
Amistad
: they wanted knives, and they got them.

A correspondent for the
New York Morning Herald
was the first to break the story about their illegal possession of knives, on October 23, 1839, a mere seven weeks after the
Amistad
Africans entered the jail. He wrote:

To the defenders of slavery, the presence of the knives proved that the
Amistad
Africans were murderers, making fresh plans for “blood and massacre.” In the eyes of the
Morning Herald
reporter, they were already clearly guilty of “the cold blooded murder of the captain and cook of the Amistad, and the aggravated cruelties practiced on Messrs. Ruiz and Montez.” The knives also proved that their abolitionist allies were dangerous fanatics who aided and abetted horrific new crimes to come. The
Morning Herald
correspondent shrieked in outrage: “Humanity must shudder at such doings! religion hang her head! and justice cry aloud for vengeance!” He concluded that the
Amistad
“savages” did not deserve the protection of the American legal system.
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