Estate / Collection: Property from the Rotondaro Collection

ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY

Argument of John Quincy Adams, Before the Supreme Court of the United States, In the Case of United States, Appellants, vs. Cinque, and Others, Africans, Captured in the Schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney, Delivered on the 24th of February and 1st of March, 1841. With a Review of the Case of the Antelope. New York: S.W. Benedict, 1841. First edition. Modern half brown morocco gilt, raised bands, blue cloth sides. 8 3/3 x 5 3/8 inches (21 x 13.5 cm); 135 [1] pp.; boxed with BALDWIN, ROGER S. Argument of Roger S. Baldwin, of New Haven, Before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Case of the United States, Appellants, vs. Cinque and Others, Africans of the Amistad. New York: S.W. Benedict, 1841. First edition. Original self-wrappers, stitched as issued. 8 7/8 x 5 5/8 inches (22.5 x 14 cm); 32 pp. The two volumes housed in chemises in a brown half-morocco clamshell case. The Adams with very faint traces of a mailing fold, minor stain to the title, light scattered foxing; Baldwin's Argument with two small tears to corners of front wrapper.

First editions of Roger Baldwin’s and John Quincy Adams’ eloquent Arguments in the landmark Amistad Case presented before the Supreme Court in 1841, "an astounding saga for the case that truth is more powerful than anything the imagination could invent” (Blockson), these two seminal works are rarely found together.

In 1839 53 Africans were abducted (against treaty provisions) from Sierra Leone, and were shipped as slaves to Havana on board the Spanish slave ship Amistad. Led by Joseph Cinqué, they seized command of the vessel on the Cuban coast, and they directed that the vessel should be sailed back to Africa. However, without their knowledge, it was steered northwards into American waters. The Amistad grounded near Montauk Point in Long Island Sound, was boarded, and the ship's 39 Africans were classified as salvage property and jailed for murder, mutiny and piracy. The resulting legal case proceeded through the legal system for two years and was a national and international cause célèbre. In the final appeal before the Supreme Court, the case for the defense was led by the New Haven lawyer Roger S. Baldwin, assisted by the 74-year-old John Quincy Adams, the nation's sixth president and a noted opponent of slavery. Baldwin's Argument was "one of the most illustrious arguments ever offered" to the Supreme Court (Dutton, 12), and Adams' powerful Argument stands as "one of his most eloquent public statements" (Nagel, 380).

The case United States v. Schooner Amistad presented "living proof of the horrors of the African slave state... As a legal case it involved three levels of the federal courts, the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the attorney general, a former president, the governments of Spain and Great Britain... and a host of lawyers" (Finkelman, 228). When the district court judge in the U.S. District Court for Connecticut ruled that the Africans were not Spanish slaves, being captured as free men in Africa, ordering the U.S. to release them from prison and transport them back to Africa, the United States Government appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. Pleadings there began in February 1841 and after a brief hiatus caused by the death of Justice Philip Barbour, resumed March 1. In his Argument in United States v. The Amistad, Baldwin was the first attorney to speak before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Amistad Africans, and he outlined the legal reasoning in favor of the Amistad captives. He was succeeded by Adams, who in nine hours of powerful rhetorical argument, reinforced his colleague's case. The Supreme Court ruled for the Africans 7-1, accepting the argument that they were never citizens of Spain and were illegally taken from Africa. Ultimately the 35 who survived were returned there.