The Amistad Rebellion (38 page)

T
he origins of this book lay in the work I did on
The Slave Ship: A Human History
, published by Viking Penguin in 2007. That book, about a malevolent machine central to an entire phase of modern history, was hard to write. I studied how enslaved Africans made many a heroic revolt under extreme circumstances, only to fail repeatedly and to suffer, in the aftermath, almost unimaginable torture, terror, and death at the hands of the slaver’s captain. In such a grisly context, the
Amistad
Rebellion stood out as one of the very few successful uprisings ever to take place aboard a slaving vessel. I wanted to know how it happened, this hopeful counterpoint to a gruesome history.

Because this book is a companion to
The Slave Ship
, I wish to acknowledge once again the many people and institutions that helped me in the earlier work. To their names I gratefully add many others. I thank the staffs at the Stanley-Whitman House in Farmington, Connecticut (especially Lisa Johnson); the New London County Historical Society (Tricia Royston and Edward Baker); the New Haven Colony Historical Society (James Campbell); the Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University (George Miles); the Department of Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University; the G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut (Paul O’Pecko); the Canton Historical Museum, Collinsville, Connecticut (Gordon Harmon); the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Connecticut (Barbara Austen and Rich Malley); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (Margaret McAleer); National Archives at Boston, Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center, Waltham, Massachusetts; the Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts; the
Amistad
Research Center, New Orleans; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; the National Archives of the United Kingdom (Guy Grannum); the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland (Gerry Long); the British Library; and Rhodes House Library, Oxford. Special thanks to the staff at my own Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh, especially Pat Colbert and Philip Wilkin.

I thank Tim Murray and the Fellows of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where I spent a happy, productive term in the spring of 2009 and where I made the first presentation on this project. Conversations with Edward Baptist, Margaret Washington, Barry Maxwell, and Eric Cheyfitz were especially useful, as were meetings with Cornell graduate and undergraduate students who took a course I offered on the
Amistad
Rebellion.

Warm thanks to the following colleagues who gave me opportunities to discuss the ideas of this book through invited lectures: Tony Bogues and Tricia Rose at Brown University; Mary Lindemann and Michael Miller at the University of Miami; Vincent Brown at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University; Eric Roorda and Glenn Gordinier at Mystic Seaport; Graham Hodges at Colgate University; Paul Youngquist at the University of Colorado; Christina Heatherton and Heather Ashby at the University of Southern California; Jennifer Gaynor at the University at Buffalo; Alan Gallay at the Ohio State University; Antoinette Burton at the University of Illinois; Michael Zeuske at the University of Cologne; Leos Müller at the Vasa Museum and the University of Stockholm; Marco Sioli and Giovanni Venegoni at the University of Milan; and Raffaele Laudani at the University of Bologna.

It was my good fortune to deliver the Lawrence A. Brewster Lecture in the Department of History, East Carolina University (2009); the Gilbert Osofsky Lecture in the Department of History, University of Illinois-Chicago (2010), and the John Kemble Lecture, Huntington Library, San Marino, California (2010). Special thanks to John Tucker and Mona Russell, James F. Searing, and Robert C. Ritchie for these exceptional occasions. I also wish to thank the many people who
attended all of the events above and participated in the discussions, from which I learned much.

Four outstanding historians—Ira Berlin, Steven Hahn, Douglas Egerton, and Jeremy Brecher—read the entire manuscript and gave me the benefit of probing, tough-minded responses. All made signal contributions to these pages, to context, narrative, and conclusion. James Brewer Stewart and Stanley Harrold shared their enormous knowledge of the American abolitionist movement with me, and I am much the better for it.

A host of talented historians of West Africa have helped me with that crucial part of the story. My friend and colleague Patrick Manning has been stalwart in his support since the very beginning of the project. James F. Searing provided useful commentary early in the work and again late, for which I am most grateful. Joseph Opala, who knows the history of Sierra Leone like few others, gave friendly encouragement that I was on the right track. Philip Misevich and Konrad Tuchscherer have helped me tremendously, and in numerous ways, by sharing their research and expertise about Sierra Leone and the Mende people in particular, and by helping me to think through important interpretive issues. Thanks to both for reading the manuscript and offering many valuable suggestions.

Other helpful people have included the sailor-writer William Gilkerson, who offered his deep knowledge of early-nineteenth-century schooners, and Sean Bercaw, captain of the reconstructed
Amistad
based at Mystic Seaport, who gave me a fascinating tour of the vessel in 2010. Emma Christopher, Joseph L. Yannielli, and Michael Zeuske kindly shared their research on related topics, and many fine scholars answered questions of various kinds: thanks to Roquinaldo A. Ferreira, Manolo Florentino, Walter Hawthorne, Mary Karasch, Henry Lovejoy, Paul Lovejoy, Beatriz Mamagonian, Leonardo Marquez, Joseph C. Miller, Peter A. Reed, João José Reis, and Jaime Rodrigues. My friends Forrest Hylton, Peter Linebaugh, and Ken Morgan also helped out in various ways.

It was my great good fortune to work with a group of talented
research assistants. Isaac Curtis, Veronica Szabo, and Levi Raymond Pettler not only found important materials, they posed discerning questions about what they found, thereby shaping the nature of the research itself. Likewise did Melissah Pawlikowski, a superb researcher who did yeowomen’s work on the
Pennyslvania Freeman.

I have received much help, of many kinds, from friends and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh. Kirk Savage kindly invited me to speak on the images of the
Amistad
Rebellion in the History of Art and Architecture Department, then gave me valuable advice about their genesis and meaning. Other colleagues at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University provided valuable fora for presentation and discussion: Kathleen DeWalt and the members of the Perlman Roundtable; Jonathan Arac and the Humanities Center; Holger Hoock and the Eighteenth Century Studies Group; and Edda Fields-Black and the African Studies Research Consortium. Five different talks on the same project must have tried everyone’s patience, but good manners, critical engagement, and genuine encouragement prevailed, for which I am grateful. Bruce McConachie helped me to understand the play
The Long, Low Black Schooner
, treated in
chapter 3
. Jim Burke once again applied his photographer’s art to various materials that appear in the book. Thanks to an enthusiastic group of undergraduates who studied the
Amistad
case with me in the spring of 2010 and to a gang of lively Atlantic history graduate students who gave both the manuscript and its author a vigorous workout in the spring of 2012. I owe special gratitude to N. John Cooper, Bettye J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. His support of my work and, indeed, of my entire department, has been foundational.

Some people have workplaces that offer civility but little intellectual engagement; others have engagement but little civility; many, unfortunately, have neither. In the department of history at the University of Pittsburgh I have both, for which I feel lucky indeed. I thank the members of our “collective” for the things they do, large and small, that make ours a good place to study and to teach, to think and to act. Thanks to Alejandro de la Fuente for discussion of the Cuban dimensions
of the
Amistad
case and to the other members of the Atlantic group for stimulation and support: Reid Andrews, Seymour Drescher, Van Beck Hall, Holger Hoock, Patrick Manning, Lara Putnam, and Rebecca Shumway. I must add, Grace Tomcho, Molly Estes, Patty Landon, and Kathy Gibson have helped me a hundred different ways.

My dear friend and colleague Rob Ruck not only engaged the ideas of the book, he recognized my occasional need to escape them. He’d always say, “Time to get serious. What are the match-ups?” and off we went to a land of joy called Pitt basketball. Thanks too to Coach Jamie Dixon, my former student Assistant Coach Brandin Knight, the rest of the staff, and the players, who by their character, hard work, and achievement continue season after season to make the University of Pittsburgh a better place to live and work.

Thanks to the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency—Elise Capron, Andrea Cavallaro, Elisabeth James, and Sandy herself, who helped me to figure out that this was the book to write and then encouraged me at every step thereafter. It has been a pleasure to work again with the creative gang at Viking. Ted Gilley and Noirin Lucas did an expert job copyediting the manuscript; Carla Bolte brought a sensitive intelligence to bear on the design of the book; Paul Buckley and his staff in the art department designed an arresting cover; Maggie Riggs did all kinds of helpful things; and my editor, Wendy Wolf, proved once again that she is an unrivaled master of her craft. She gives lie to the adage that the relationship between editor and author is the relationship between knife and throat. Her wise judgment has shaped the project from idea to book.

Finally, thanks to my son, Zeke, and daughter, Eva, for their forbearance and good humor about a father who stays up late into the night reading strange documents and putting black marks on paper. My wife, Wendy Goldman, discussed every bit of this book with me over days, weeks, months, and years. Like no one else I know, she has an ability to go straight to the heart of the matter at hand. I dedicate the book to her, with love.