Weeks after Sengbe Pieh led a revolt aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad, the vessel was intercepted off Long Island by a U.S. Navy brig. The Africans' subsequent legal fight for freedom drew former president John Quincy Adams to argue before the Supreme Court, which in 1841 ruled they had been illegally enslaved and were free.
In late 1839, 53 Africans who had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone rose up against the crew of the Amistad, killing the captain and demanding to be sailed home. Deceived by the surviving navigator, the ship instead zigzagged up the American coast until it was seized near Long Island, New York, and towed into custody amid a swirl of legal claims over property, piracy, and human freedom.
The case became a sensation, testing whether men kidnapped in violation of international slave-trade treaties could be treated as property under American law. Abolitionists rallied around Sengbe Pieh, known to Americans as Joseph Cinqué, turning the trial into a national referendum on slavery's legitimacy.
John Quincy Adams, then 73, argued their case before the Supreme Court in 1841, and the Africans were declared free. Most eventually returned to Sierra Leone. The case remains one of the earliest and most consequential civil rights victories in American legal history.
Key people: Sengbe Pieh, John Quincy Adams