Joseph Cinque

Slave revolt leader

• Born: c. 1811
• Birthplace: Mani, Africa
• Died: c. 1879
• Place of death: Sierra Leone, Africa

By leading a rebellion on the Amistad, Cinque resisted enslavement and challenged the illegal slave trade. He brought the issue of international slave trading into the American courts.

Early Life

Joseph Cinque (SIHN-kay) was born in a Mendi village in Africa circa 1811. He was the son of a village chief. Little is known of his early life. He was married with three children and worked as a rice farmer and trader. At the time that Cinque was living in Sierra Leone, despite several treaties prohibiting international trade in slaves, the slave trade was extremely active and both Africans and Europeans participated in it. It was not uncommon for individuals to be kidnapped and taken to the coast, where they were sold to slave traders. The captives were shipped to the Caribbean Islands and resold as plantation slaves.

In 1839, Cinque was captured by African slave traders as he was on the way to his rice fields. He was taken to Havana, Cuba, on the Portuguese ship Tecora, which illegally transported slaves across the Atlantic. In Havana, he was sold as a slave. Along with about fifty other slaves, some also Mendi, he was placed aboard the schooner Amistad for transport to Puerto Principe, where they would be put to work on sugar plantations. Ramón Ferrer was captain of the ship, and the slaves were under the control of merchants José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, in whose charge they had been placed by the governor general of Cuba.

Life’s Work

On June 30, 1839, Cinque led the slaves in a revolt that resulted in the death of the ship’s captain. The ship’s cook and two of the slaves also were killed in the melee. Ruiz and Montez were taken prisoner and ordered to sail the ship back to Africa. Ruiz and Montez, who had no intention of going to Africa, managed with the help of the crew to reverse the ship’s course at night and, instead of crossing the Atlantic, sailed up the coast of North America, reaching waters near Long Island. The ship had been at sea for slightly longer than two months when it was stopped by an American ship, the Washington, under the command of Lieutenant Gedney. Persuaded that the Africans were guilty of mutiny and murder, Gedney had the ship taken in tow to New London. The rebel slaves were subsequently taken to New Haven, where they were jailed to await trial. Ruiz and Montez, the Spanish government, Gedney, and several other individuals filed claims for rights to the ship, its cargo, and the slaves. Although Gedney claimed salvage rights on the ship, the cargo, and the slaves, he relinquished the slaves into the custody of the United States District Court. The Spanish government insisted that the ship and the slaves be returned to Spain; President Martin Van Buren was willing to do so to maintain good relations with Spain, but the Connecticut court refused to release its prisoners.

In September of 1839, the slaves were charged with mutiny and murder. Members of the abolitionist movement, who had formed the Amistad Committee under the leadership of Lewis Tappan, a New York businessman, countered with charges of assault, kidnapping, and illegal confinement against Ruiz and Montez, who were arrested but later released on bail. They returned to Cuba. In order for the slaves, who spoke no English, to be brought to trial, it was necessary to find a speaker of Mendi to act as an interpreter. James Covey, a Mendi who had also been kidnapped by slavers and set free when a British warship intercepted the slave ship some twelve years earlier, was in New York Harbor as a crewman on HMS Buzzard. He was enlisted to interpret in the case, and Cinque assumed the role of spokesman for the slaves.

At the trial, the abolitionists based their argument for acquitting the Africans on the fact that they were illegally taken and transported internationally for the purpose of selling them as slaves at a time when the international slave trade had been declared illegal. According to the abolitionists’ argument, their illegal confinement gave them the right to use all means—including violent ones—to regain their freedom. The court found in favor of the Africans and their abolitionist defenders, awarded the Amistad and its cargo to Gedney, and ordered that the Africans be returned to their native land.

The United States appealed the decision before the Supreme Court. Former president John Quincy Adams presented the defense argument. He attacked the federal government as interfering with the court system by virtue of prejudice against African Americans and favoritism to slaveholders. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court found in favor of the abolitionists. The slaves were freed and arrangements made for them to return to Africa with a group of missionaries among the abolitionists who wanted to establish a mission in the Mendi country. In November, 1841, the Africans and the missionaries sailed for Africa on the Gentleman.

The missionaries were far more dedicated to the project of establishing a mission than were the Africans themselves. The majority wished to return to their families and to their former cultures and religions. Upon his return to Africa, Cinque discovered that his wife and children had been killed. Thus, he stayed at the mission for a period of time and later remarried; however, he soon left to engage in trade in rum, tobacco, and other goods along the coast. According to mission documents, the strong-willed and independent Cinque opposed many of the missionaries’ attempts to Christianize the Africans and change their way of life. They did, however, credit him with helping them obtain land upon which to build the mission.

There is little well-corroborated information about Cinque’s later life in Africa. Despite rumors that he became a slave trader, no substantial evidence of this has been found. There is some evidence that Cinque left Africa and went to Jamaica in 1845. Finally, some reports maintain that Cinque, ill and dying, returned to the mission at Kew-Mendi and requested a Christian burial. The exact date and place of his death are unknown.

Significance

Cinque is a significant example of resistance to oppression. In leading the rebellion on the Amistad, he refused to accept a life of slavery. His later refusal to conform to the beliefs and tactics of the missionaries on his return to Africa completes his portrait as a fiercely independent individual. The trial of Cinque and the other Africans, the appeals, and the final judgment recognizing the Africans as free and innocent of wrongdoing in their rebellion on the Amistad was widely publicized and served to help the abolitionist movement in the United States.

Bibliography

Howard, Allen M. “Nineteenth Century Coastal Slave Trading and the British Abolition Campaign in Sierra Leone.” Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 1 (April, 2006): 23-49. Provides good for information on the economics of the slave trade, its commercial importance in Africa, and who participated in it.

Jones, Howard. “Cinqué of the Amistad a Slave Trader? Perpetuating a Myth.” Journal of American History 87, no. 3 (December, 2000): 923-956. Defends Cinque and asserts there is no evidence to verify that he practiced slave trading upon his return to Africa.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. The definitive modern account of the revolt on the Amistad and resulting trial.

Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan. The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Concentrates on what transpired in Africa after the return of the Africans with the missionaries.