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lucy2luke 发表于 2013-10-6 21:16 ![]()
尤其黑人奴隶和西班牙人的那两篇的英文原文，拜托
奴隶船背景
The Amistad, also known as United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839.[1] It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison in 1965 described it as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott.
On February 23, 1841, Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin began the oral argument phase before the Supreme Court. Gilpin first entered into evidence the papers of La Amistad, which stated that the Africans were Spanish property. Gilpin argued that the Court had no authority to rule against the validity of the documents. Gilpin contended that if the Africans were slaves (as evidenced by the documents), then they must be returned to their rightful owner, in this case, the Spanish government. Gilpin's argument lasted two hours.[19]
John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and at that time a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, had agreed to argue for the Africans. When it was time for him to argue, he said he felt ill-prepared. Roger Sherman Baldwin, who had already represented the captives in the lower cases, opened in his place.[19]
Baldwin, a prominent attorney contended that the Spanish government was trying to manipulate the Court to return "fugitives". He argued that the Spanish government sought the return of slaves who had been freed by the District Court; but the Spanish government was not appealing the fact of their having been freed. Covering all the facts of the case, Baldwin spoke for four hours over the course of February 22 and 23.[19] (He was no relation to Justice Baldwin of the Court.)
John Quincy Adams rose to speak on February 24. He reminded the court that it was a part of the judicial branch and not part of the executive. Introducing copies of correspondence between the Spanish government and the Secretary of State, he criticized President Martin van Buren for his assumption of unconstitutional powers in the case.[19]
This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with utmost pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy – and a sympathy the most partial and injust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.[19]
Adams argued that neither Pinckney's Treaty nor the Adams-Onís Treaty were applicable to the case. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty referred only to property, and did not apply to people. As to The Antelope decision (10 Wheat. 124), which recognized "that possession on board of a vessel was evidence of property",[20] Adams said that did not apply either, since the precedent was established prior to the prohibition of the foreign slave trade by the United States. Adams concluded on March 1 after eight and one-half hours of speaking. (The Court had taken a recess following the death of Associate Justice Barbour).[19]
Attorney General Gilpin concluded oral argument with a three-hour rebuttal on March 2.[19] The Court retired to consider the case.
Decision of the Supreme Court[edit]On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty was ruled off topic since the Africans in question were never legal property. They were not criminals, as the U.S. Attorney's Office argued, but rather "unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel".[21] The documents submitted by Attorney General Gilpin were not evidence of property, but rather of fraud on the part of the Spanish government. Lt. Gedney and the USS Washington were to be awarded salvage from the vessel for having performed "a highly meritorious and useful service to the proprietors of the ship and cargo".[22]
When La Amistad came into Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had never intended to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onís Treaty did not apply, and the President was not required to return the slaves to Africa.[19]
Upon the whole, our opinion is, that the decree of the circuit court, affirming that of the district court, ought to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to be delivered to the president, to be transported to Africa, in pursuance of the act of the 3rd of March 1819; and as to this, it ought to be reversed: and that the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay.[22]
After the trial[edit]
Portrait of Kimbo, one of 36 men aboard La Amistad, c. 1839–1840.The Africans greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy. Abolitionist supporters took the survivors – 36 men and boys and three girls – to Farmington, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Their residents had agreed to have the Africans stay there until they could return to their homeland. Some households took them in; supporters also provided barracks for them.[23][24][25]
The Amistad Committee instructed the Africans in English and Christianity, and raised funds to pay for their return home. Along with several missionaries, in 1842 the surviving 36 Africans sailed to Sierra Leone. The Americans constructed a mission in Mendiland. Numerous members of the Amistad Committee later founded the American Missionary Association, an evangelical organization which continued to support the Mendi mission. With leadership of black and white ministers from mostly Presbyterian and Congregational denominations, it was active in working for abolitionism in the United States and for education of Blacks, sponsoring the founding of Howard University, among other institutions. After the American Civil War, it founded numerous schools and colleges for freedmen in the South.[citation needed]
In the following years, the Spanish government continued to press the US for compensation for the ship, cargo and slaves. Several southern lawmakers introduced resolutions into the United States Congress to appropriate money for such payment but failed to gain passage, although supported by Democratic presidents James K. Polk and James Buchanan.
Joseph Cinqué returned to Africa. In his final years, he was reported to have returned to the mission and re-embraced Christianity.[26] Recent historical research suggests that the allegations of Cinqué's later involvement in the slave trade are false.[27]
In the Creole case of 1841, the United States dealt with another ship rebellion similar to that of the Amistad.
On June 27, 1839, La Amistad ("Friendship"), a Spanish vessel, departed from the port of Havana, Cuba (then a Spanish colony), for the Province of Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were the ship's captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montez, all Spanish nationals. With Ferrer was his personal slave Antonio. Ruiz was transporting 49 Africans, entrusted to him by the governor-general of Cuba. Montez held four additional Africans, also entrusted to him by the governor-general.[4] As the voyage normally took only four days, the crew had brought four days’ worth of rations, not anticipating the strong headwind that slowed the schooner. On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Cinqué, freed himself and the other captives using a file that had been found and kept by a woman who like them had been on the Tecora (the ship that had transported them illegally as slaves from Africa to Cuba).[citation needed]
The Mende Africans killed the ship's cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The slaves also killed Captain Ferrer; the struggle resulted also in the deaths of two Africans. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The Africans spared the lives of the two masters who could navigate the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, upon the condition that they would return the ship to Africa. They also spared the captain's personal slave, Antonio, a creole,[5] and used him as an interpreter with Ruiz and Montez.[6]
The crew deceived the Africans and steered La Amistad north along the coast of the United States, where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor half a mile off eastern Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went ashore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk. The vessel was discovered by the United States revenue cutter USS Washington. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, commanding the cutter, saw some of the Africans on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of La Amistad and the Africans.[7]
Taking them to the port of New London, Connecticut, he presented officials with a written claim for his property rights under admiralty law for salvage of the vessel, the cargo, and the Africans. Gedney allegedly chose to land in Connecticut because slavery was still technically legal there, unlike in New York. He hoped to profit from sale of the Africans.[8] Gedney transferred the captured Africans into the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, at which time legal proceedings began.[4]
The schooner was traveling along the coast of Cuba on its way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The African captives, who had been kidnapped in Sierra Leone and illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. They killed many of the crew and directed the survivors to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them, sailing north at night. The Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. The widely publicized court cases in the United States federal district and Supreme Court, which addressed international issues, helped the abolitionist movement.
In 1840, a federal district court found that the transport of the kidnapped Africans across the Atlantic on the slave ship Tecora was in violation of laws and treaties against the international slave trade by Great Britain, Spain and the United States. The captives were ruled to have acted as free men when they fought to escape their illegal confinement. The Court ruled the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. Under international and sectional pressure, the President Martin Van Buren ordered the case appealed to the US Supreme Court. It affirmed the lower court ruling on March 9, 1841, and authorized the return of the Africans to their homeland.
Supporters arranged for temporary housing of the Africans in Farmington, Connecticut as well as funds for travel. In 1842 they transported by ship those who wanted to return to Africa, together with American missionaries.
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发表于 2013-10-6 23:05:08
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