The schooner Amistad’s unconvincing journey from the Spanish port of Havana, Cuba, with its cargo of 53 Africans destined for slavery in the sugar plantation of the Caribbean, form one of the most significant stories of the nineteenth century. When a violent mutiny of the slaves happened, the Africans ordered two Spanish sailors to navigate the ship toward Africa, but they, on the contrary, subverted the route and turned Amistad toward North America. The Federal Historical Records of the Amistad Case illuminate the complex position of the U.S. government regarding slavery and the international slave trade. Abolitionists recognized that the Amistad affair had the power to cause an emotional debate about slavery in the United States. It sparked a series of diplomatic manoeuvres by the Van Buren Administration, prompting the former President John Quincy Adams to go before the Supreme Court and souring diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain.
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