The trial came on in this city and in the old court-room in this building on January 7, 1840, before Judge Judson.
Another name had by this time been added to those of the prisoners’ counsel—that of John Quincy Adams, still in vigorous old age, and a leading member of the House of Representatives. To most lawyers an admiralty case comes seldom, and when it comes, requires special study; but of all admiralty cases ever brought in America this probably presented points of the greatest intricacy and importance. Mr. Adams was first consulted in regard to it by Ellis Gray Loring, after the decision in the habeas corpus cases, on September 23, 1839, and on October 1st he writes in his diary that it “now absorbs a great part of my time, and all my good feelings.”
He did not appear at New Haven, nor was his presence needed to crowd the court-room. The public feeling had become more and more intense the longer the Africans were held in captivity. They had made friends for themselves by their intercourse with our citizens at the jail. Professor George E. Day, of our Theological Seminary, then an assistant instructor there, had been engaged to give them regular instruction, as well as some notions of the Christian religion, and he had found them apt scholars.
The trial lasted a week, and during the closing days of argument hundreds of spectators, in order to keep their seats, remained in the court-room during the entire noon recess, which lasted over two hours. The decision was that the officers of the Washington were entitled to salvage on the vessel and cargo, but not on the negroes, as, even if they were slaves, they had no value in Connecticut; that Green and the other ’long-shore-men had done nothing for which they could claim compensation; that Antonio was a born slave and must be returned to Cuba; that the other prisoners were freeborn and only kidnapped into slavery, and therefore free by the law of Spain itself; and that they should be delivered to the President of the United States, to be by him transported back to Africa, under a statute passed in 1819, applicable to slaves illegally imported into this country in violation of the Act of Congress of 1808, prohibiting slave-trade.
Rev. Mr. Ludlow, one of the local committee in charge of the interests of the Africans, hurried to the jail with the glad tidings that they were declared free, and were to be sent back to their own country. All but one rose with the utmost emotion and prostrated themselves at this feet in joy. One remained sitting, not understanding the Mendi language in which the decision had been made known, but as soon as a comrade, who knew a common language, told him the good news he was at once on the floor with the rest.
Judge Judson had been appointed to office by President Van Buren not long before the capture of the Amistad, and as a lawyer he had been best known as having brought the criminal proceedings against Prudence Crandall for setting up a boarding-school at Canterbury, his own town, for colored girls, at which she received pupils who did not reside in Connecticut. His decision was quite a disappointment to the Administration, which was not mitigated by the language in which it was expressed. “Cinquez and Grabeau,” read the opinion, “shall not sigh for Africa in vain. Bloody as may be their hands, they shall yet embrace their kindred.”
The ship-of-war which the Secretary of State had promised the Spanish minister had been dispatched to this port, under secret orders, the week before the court was to sit. It was the schooner Grampus, Lieut. Paine, and its commander was directed to report to the District Attorney immediately upon his arrival, “in order that he may receive the earliest information of the decision of the Court and advise with him as to the mode of carrying it into effect.” The memorandum from the State Department to the Navy Department, upon which the Grampus was sent out, read as follows: , January 2, 1840.
The vessel destined to convey the negroes of the Amistad to Cuba, to be ordered to anchor off the port of New Haven, Connecticut, as early as the 10th of January next, and be in readiness to receive said negroes from the Marshal of the United States, and proceed with them to Havana, under instructions to be hereafter transmitted.
Lieutenants Gedney and Mead to be ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed in the same vessel, for the purpose of affording their testimony in any proceedings that may be ordered by the authorities of Cuba in the matter.
These orders should be given with special instructions that they are not be communicated to any one.