Question #d30da
1 Answer
The awesome part about history is that it can be argued with evidence, but with this court case specifically, we can say that the Supreme Court made the correct decision in 1839.
Explanation:
The Amistad was a slave ship owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba. Ships like the Amistad would go down to the western coast of Africa and take the natives to use as slaves.
In this certain case, Africans were taken from the Mende tribe. The Spaniards' plan was to take the Mende to Cuba to the owner's plantation. That didn't happen, as the Mende revolted and killed a lot of them. They forced the survivors to take them back to Sierra Leone, but the Spaniards secretly directed the ship north, where it was captured off the coast of the Long Island by the USS Washington.
The Mende and Spaniards were interned in Connecticut while court proceedings were taken. The owner of the Amistad and the Spanish government claimed that the Mende were their property, but the US Supreme Court decided that the Mende were free because the slave trade had been banned some 30 years earlier.
This case grew popular around the world because of ownership and federal decisions, and because we can all agree slavery is pretty bad, we can say that the Supreme Court made the right decision in this case.
