Media Coverage and Public Debates
The Amistad court proceedings aroused greater public interest than any previous federal trial. Newspapers and popular entertainments responded to the demand for information about the Mende and their fate in the courts. Just a few days after the district judge held the court of inquiry, New York’s Bowery Theater advertised performances of “The Black Schooner,” a “nautical melodrama” that at least in the names of the cast reflected knowledge of the court proceedings. In the following months, a New Haven artist created life-size wax models of 29 of the Mende, placed them on a reconstructed deck of the Amistad, and exhibited the display in major cities of the northeastern United States. Another exhibit toured New England with a 135-foot mural depicting the revolt. Popular, inexpensive prints offered the public images of the Mende. William H. Townsend, a Connecticut artist, drew pencil sketches of 22 of the Mende, and newspapers carried silhouette portraits of the captives. The greatest public interest always focused on Cinque, and the earliest prints recognized him as the leader of the Mende from the Amistad. By the time of the district court trial in January 1840, the public had a strong visual image of the Mende and the revolt on the Amistad.
At the same time that hundreds of visitors were paying to view the Mende held in the New Haven jail, publishers were providing a broader audience with biographical sketches of the West African captives, including details about their families and their abduction in Africa. Many of these accounts were compiled in collaboration with the abolitionist committee defending the Mende, and the intended effect was to humanize the people held in custody and to personalize the stories of enslavement.
Abolitionists were skilled publicists, and none more so than Lewis Tappan, who provided first hand accounts of the court proceedings and interviews with the Mende for the newspaper that his family owned. New York’s African American newspaper sent a reporter to cover proceedings in Connecticut and Washington. Not all of the press coverage was positive. Certain newspapers published ceaseless attacks on the abolitionists and the Mende themselves, claiming that the captives were being coddled in jail.
The Amistad case took place at a time of a new willingness in the North to discuss publicly the institution of slavery. In the 1830s, the abolitionists’ massive petition campaign, which inundated the Congress with appeals to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, had involved large groups of citizens in debates on the federal government’s support of slavery. At the same time, many white southerners responded to the abolitionists and events such as the slave revolt of Nat Turner with a more assertive defense of slavery. It was in the context of these new debates over slavery that the public, both North and South, turned its attention to the Amistad case.
The media coverage and public familiarity with the case created an unusual background for judicial proceedings at a time when the business of the federal courts normally received little attention. In each of the courts that heard a part of the proceedings, the judges took the unusual step of acknowledging the need to explain their decisions to an interested public.
Prints and images
First images of Cinque and the Mende
Portrait of Cinque, by Nathaniel Jocelyn
Anti-slavery images
Newspaper articles
Tappan’s “Letter to the Committee on behalf of the African Prisoners.” New York Journal of Commerce, September 10, 1839.
“On Cinques,” The Colored American, October 19, 1839.
“The Captured Africans,” New York Morning Herald, September 17, 1839.
Coverage of the Amistad case, The Colored American, November 2, 1839.
Amistad: The Federal Courts and the Challenge to Slavery — Historical Background and Documents