Amistad:
The Federal Courts and the Challenge to Slavery
Roger Sherman Baldwin
(1793-1863), principal lawyer representing the Mende of the
Amistad
in all federal court proceedings.
The chief legal advocate for the Mende was the son of a prominent political family in Connecticut. Baldwin’s father, Simeon, served as the first clerk of the state’s federal courts, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a judge on Connecticut’s highest court. Baldwin’s namesake and grandfather was Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and framer of the Constitution. After attending college at Yale, Baldwin studied law at the prestigious Litchfield Law School and then practiced law in New Haven. At the same time, Baldwin embarked on a political career that in the years following the
Amistad
case would lead to service as Connecticut governor and U.S. senator. He also became involved in the anti-slavery movement, and in one of his early cases defended a runaway slave owned by Henry Clay.
The abolitionist committee approached Baldwin to represent the African captives held in the New Haven jail, and in early September Baldwin was among the first group to interview Cinque through an African translator. The legal team included Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick, but Baldwin was the lead attorney for the Mende at each stage of the proceedings in the federal courts. Baldwin pursued a dual strategy that emphasized natural rights while at the same time arguing that under the laws governing slavery in Spanish territories and the United States, the Mende could not be considered slaves.
As soon as the court dropped all criminal charges against the
Amistad
captives in September 1839, Baldwin sought under a writ of habeas corpus to have the Mende released from federal custody. The abolitionist lawyers insisted that no federal court had authority to confine individuals based on a claim that they were slaves. Unless and until the courts decided otherwise, they should treat all humans, regardless of race, as free individuals. But Justice Smith Thompson in the circuit court reminded Baldwin of what he already knew: that the Constitution implicitly protected slavery, and there were many precedents for detaining individuals claimed as slaves.
In the admiralty proceedings in the district court and during the subsequent appeals, Baldwin continued to claim that the Mende were entitled by natural rights to protect their freedom and return to their homes, but he also was careful to respond to the precedents that said the federal courts must respect slave property in those jurisdictions where it was protected by law. Baldwin repeatedly argued that the Mende had been carried into Cuba in violation of the Spanish treaty prohibiting the African slave trade after 1817. Since the captives were considered free rather than slaves under Spanish law, the United States was not obligated to return them to Cuba as property.
In the Supreme Court Baldwin urged the dismissal of the government’s appeal of the district court’s decision. He asserted that the executive branch of the U.S. government had no authority to represent the claims of a foreign government in an admiralty proceeding nor to return to slavery persons who arrived in the country as free individuals. Baldwin also repeated his arguments that there was no positive law of Spain by which these African natives could be deemed to be slaves. These arguments of Baldwin, rather than the more emotional appeals of Adams, largely supported the Supreme Court’s decision to declare the Mende to be free.