Amistad

by David Pesci

  Tappan listened and smiled and made the appropriate comments, but he was no one’s fool. He knew that despite their claims to occupying the moral high ground, much of the British government’s concern with U.S. slavery was economic. They had eliminated slavery, yes, but at the same time they had escalated their own colonization efforts, apparently preferring to exploit whole countries and their resources rather than simply slapping chains on the unfortunate few. For the most part this had reduced the costs of exports and opened up foreign markets. However, countries that embraced slavery and maintained large agricultural concerns could still undercut the Crown and her possessions in several areas. Nowhere was this more true than with American cotton.

  Cheap, high quality, and seemingly endless in its supply, American cotton was king; it was also the fuel that drove the British textile industry. However, the cut taken by the U.S. government through duties and tariffs drove up prices to what many British manufacturers claimed were outrageous levels. Despite this, U.S. cotton still came in well below the prices demanded by plantation owners in British colonies. Many British businessmen and legislators believed, though, that a negative alteration of the American production system, such as an increase in labor costs brought about by the elimination of slavery, could make the British-controlled colonial growers more competitive and increase their market share worldwide.

  But others in the British government foresaw a different scenario, one where America’s slavery problem would eventually cause a fissure that would split the United States into two countries. These men were looking, ever so delicately, for an opportunity to drive a wedge into that fissure. They believed a second country hewn out of the U.S., one perhaps made up of America’s southern states and relying heavily on cotton and agriculture, would be eager to secure a reliable cash influx. This situation would make the new country willing to negotiate more acceptable import arrangement terms. It would also be a country less likely bent on expansion to the south and west, leaving Cuba, Mexico, and even Texas more accessible to annexation by the British Empire.

  Tappan was not a trader. He believed in America and the country’s ability to change and grow. He constantly heard talk that pressing abolition could cause civil war, but he didn’t believe it would ever happen. He had more faith in the American people than that. He was sure that if slavery could be exposed for what it truly was, and if its proponents who were so deeply burrowed into the federal government could be rooted out, then a grand bloodless policy shift could occur in America as it had in England. So he listened at these meetings and remembered; and when he got to his lodgings he penned out notes and then slipped them through an intermediary to the American ambassador. The ambassador, who did not even know the source of the notes, would place them on a ship in a diplomatic pouch to Washington.

  Because mail was carried over the sea, Arthur had just begun receiving letters from his brother, Lewis, regarding the Amistads. He wished he could go back home and take part, for he was sure this was the catalyst they had been seeking to detonate an open, nationwide polemic on slavery. But the future of the brothers’ company depended on him staying in London for several more months and finishing what he had started. And he knew in his heart that Lewis was more than up to the task of keeping the case in the public eye.

  Still, there was one element that he was sure Lewis had not given enough thought to, and so he wrote out another note for the diplomatic pouch.

  Have heard talk about an incident involving blacks taken from a ship called Amistad. One of the men in a recent meeting postulated that it would be unfortunate, even dangerous, for the government, if the blacks fell into harm’s way before the court system was done with them and they could be returned to Spain. It might be useful to increase security for these men until they are out of the country.

  Later that night, Tappan passed on the note to his contact. He had little confidence in the prospect of leaving the blacks’ security in the hands of the government. But for now, it was the best he could do.

  In the great room of his Washington town house, Secretary of State Forsyth sat in a thickly padded wide-backed chair, the one with the polished mahogany frame that had handcarved claws on the ends of each leg and beautifully detailed swan’s necks for arms. His feet rested on an equally ornate footstool. He held his favorite pipe in his hand, drawing on it slowly while his eyes focused on the dull glowing embers in the wide white marble fireplace. A light knocking broke into his concentration. Forsyth grunted and a black servant walked in carrying a silver tray with a single snifter of brandy.

  “Thank you, Paul. Tend to the fire, please.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Forsyth.”

  The servant threw a thick cut of birch and a smaller one of cherrywood on the dying heap and stirred the coals until the flames licked the logs quick and bright.

  “Anything else, Mr. Forsyth?”

  “No, that will be fine for now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The servant closed the door quietly on his way out. It was nearly midnight and Forsyth’s body longed for sleep, but his mind raced, analysing events and recounting the day. There had been a small food riot in one of Philadelphia’s poorer neighborhoods yesterday. Nobody killed, but the police arrested over forty people who were protesting the rise in the cost of bread. During the morning cabinet meeting, Vice President Johnson said it was an aberration, the grousing of dirt Irish immigrants looking for free food, perhaps trying to scare a few honest men out of their jobs. Van Buren agreed, but Forsyth was not so confident in the assessment. If the economy did not pick up soon, he was sure there would be more such altercations.

  The thought of Van Buren as president was troubling him more as of late, too. He was an excellent manager, an intelligent politician, and a good strategist. His creation of an independent treasury system that eliminated the federal government from direct operation of the banking system was an inspired move and should have stimulated investment and spending. It didn’t, however. If anything, the domestic markets had weakened, and foreign trade was dismal. Forsyth was convinced that it was a confidence factor. The country’s financial barons simply didn’t see Van Buren as a forceful leader. He didn’t have any of Jackson’s public charm or private temper, mannerisms that seemed to singlehandedly carry the country through eight years of prosperity. No, Van Buren was more even, an administrator dedicated to consensus-building and compromise. Excellent traits in a civil servant, but they were proving to be suicidal for a president. Public perception, which was solid during the campaign, now appeared to be mixed and declining, as well. There was concern that the President was capricious, afraid to assert his will or remain committed to the issues he took up. Increasingly he was a man seen by the public as trying to please everyone and instead satisfying no one. It didn’t help that he had been in the White House for nearly three years and still had yet to cast a single veto. Meanwhile, the Whigs seemed to be gaining momentum, and the opposing press was becoming more and more vicious every day.

  At least the press was making less and less of this Amistad case. Where it had been front page news in September, it was now not even mentioned in most papers – even with the district court case coming up in just two weeks. Forsyth had met with Holabird last week to go over the details. Despite the points that Baldwin had made in circuit court, the case seemed fairly certain to go the government’s way. Judge Judson had agreed during a lunch meeting yesterday. Though he was not sure what new evidence the abolitionists would marshal, he assured Forsyth that a writ of habeas corpus would never be granted in his court. Further, despite the fact that there was some doubt as to the validity of the Spaniards’ claim regarding the blacks’ origins, the documentation was in order. “Of course, I have not seen everything,” Judson said. “But it appears the abolitionists will have to present something that was neither seen nor heard in the circuit court proceedings, something very different and indisputable in the eyes of the law, to change the course of this case.”

  However, d
espite his confidence in both Holabird and Judson, Forsyth still held a degree of uneasiness over the case. Some of this was the product of a recent addition to the mix: Pedro Alcántara Argaiz, the new Spanish minister. Unlike the more discreet Calderón, who had been recalled to her majesty’s court, Argaiz’s overtures were aggressive, relentless, and extraverted. He was eager to make an impression on his superiors and establish himself with the American government as someone who was not to he trifled with. He had begun filing very formal, and very public, diplomatic protests regarding the Amistad. The text of these protests had been supplied to a variety of newspapers. A few – mostly those sympathetic to the Whigs, slavery, and states’ rights – reprinted portions, including the demand to “immediately surrender the ship, cargo, and slaves to the Spanish government so that justice can be carried out under Spanish law.” Argaiz also pressed for meetings with Forsyth and the President at almost a daily rate. Forsyth assured him that all would be resolved within a few weeks. The minister expressed his doubts about this haughtily and continued to repeat his demands. Forsyth was sure that the press would quickly discover Señor Argaiz to be the bore he truly was and ignore him accordingly. Still, he was someone who needed monitoring.

  Of more concern was Lewis Tappan, who Forsyth heartily wished would drop dead this very moment. Tappan was a pompous, persistent snake, who no doubt sensed the lull in the press coverage of the Amistad case, as well. Forsyth was certain that the twisted abolitionist was at this very moment planning some contrived event to give fresh blood and juice to the journalistic hounds. Whatever it was, it probably would not change the outcome of the case. But it would renew the talk of the slaves, with whom the public seemed to have grown more sympathetic. It would also stir up more talk about slavery in general, talk which might fuel embers that could burn through the winter and into the spring when campaigning for the election would begin in earnest. That, more than any boatload of African slaves, was the most dangerous element in this whole affair for the Democrats and the Van Buren Administration.

  Forsyth drained his brandy glass and stood, tapping the pipe on the side of the fireplace until ashes of the spent tobacco fell into dying flames. He stared into the coals for a few seconds, turning over the fate of the Amistad in his mind.

  “I think this is something we shall have to take care of ourselves,” he mused half aloud.

  Singbe sat patiently in a small room at the New Haven jail as a man stretched brass calipers around his head. The instrument’s pointed tips touched lightly, one in the middle of his forehead, the other at the base of his skull. The man held the calipers up against a long brass stick with numbers and Latin words embossed on it and then scribbled on a piece of paper. He took one more such measurement around Singbe’s eye sockets and then put the calipers down.

  “It’s obvious this one is the leader,” the man, Dr. George Combe, declared.

  “You knew that before you began the examination,” Simeon Jocelyn sighed.

  “Precisely. The measurements bear this out. Phrenology is, after all, an exact science,” Combe said.

  “What does your examination show about Cinqué, Dr. Combe?” an excited journalist asked.

  “His behavior as leader of the mutineers was totally in character and in fact might have been predicted had he been examined previous to the voyage.”

  “Really? Remarkable! How so?”

  “His head measures twenty-two and three eighths inches in its circumference, sixteen inches from the meatus auditorias to the occipital protuberance, and six and one third inches through the head at the outermost from the point of nominal destructiveness. It’s all fairly obvious that these observations, when properly analyzed, show a man in the possession of abilities suited for spirited leadership.”

  “What else do you see, doctor?” another journalist asked.

  Combe let out a long breath, took up his notes, and began walking slowly around Singbe, who was sitting on a low wooden stool.

  “This is a man steeped in hope, determination, and resolve. He is relatively fearless, prone to taking action, and not troubled by committing destructive acts to reach his goals. He can be ruthless, although there is also a great capacity within him for justice and even mirth. He is an individual of strong motivation, will, and perseverance, qualities not often seen in members of his race. No doubt he is the tribal chief or prince that reports have postulated.”

  “All this can be determined by measuring his head?” a third journalist questioned.

  “I can determine this. But then again, I am a trained scientist, the personal phrenologist to Queen Victoria herself.”

  “Hogwash,” Jocelyn hissed. “I don’t believe a lick of it.”

  “Oh no, parson,” said yet another journalist. “It’s hard science. I’ve seen it done dozens of times. A good phrenologist can tell a criminal from a gentleman just by taking a few measurements.”

  “What if they are one and the same?” Jocelyn asked.

  “That, too, can be foretold by an expert,” Combe said smugly. “Although let me caution all in attendance that the science of phrenology simply gives indications of predispositions, of how it is natural for a person to act. We are all human, and hence subject to human inconsistencies or behavioral modifications that, in one way or another, may cause us to act against our nature. I can, however, tell what is natural to an individual’s character. And by leading the mutiny, this man followed his destiny.”

  “Well, you’ll never get me to believe that you can tell any of this by fiddling about with the bumps on a man’s head, sir,” Jocelyn persisted.

  “Pity, Reverend,” Combe said donning his hat. “But I’d venture to say that your reaction is totally predictable. In fact, you must let me examine your head some day. I believe I would be able to discern that the evidence of your skepticism is entrenched in the short line from the root of your nose to your central diameter. I’m sure it would reveal a crooked nubibus pathway indicative of lifelong reliance on dogma and aversion to change.”

  Combe left the cells with the journalists trailing him asking for more facts about Cinqué and the other blacks he had examined. They took no notice of Dr. Gibbs coming down the other hallway, or the thin black man walking next to him.

  Singbe stood up. This room where the examinations had taken place reminded him too much of the small solitary cell he had been kept in before the trial. He wanted to get back to the general cell with the others. Jocelyn smiled as if reading Singbe’s mind and took him by the arm in a friendly way and opened the door. Gibbs burst in, almost knocking both of them over, and began speaking excitedly. Singbe tried to listen, but he had still only learned a few of the white words, and this man was rambling on far too quickly to understand. Besides, from what Singbe had seen during his time among the whites, loud, quick talking seemed to be a habit common to many of their kind. He barely noticed Gibbs stopping, or the black man coming around from behind him. So when he heard a greeting in Mende, he assumed it was one of the other tribesmen. He stepped out into the hallway but saw no one.

  “I said, ‘It is a good day to be alive and a Mendeman.’”

  Singbe turned. His body began to tingle and sweat. His heart edged up through his chest into his throat.

  “It is a good day to be alive and a Mendeman,” he whispered.

  “What is your name, brother?” the man said, smiling.

  “You speak the words of The People? And the words of the whites?”

  “Yes. I speak their English. And I am a Mendeman, born in Kawamende and raised in the shadows of dark hills, among other places. I am here so that you may tell your story and seek justice from the Americans – the whites.”

  Singbe’s knees shook and then gave way. He reached out with both arms and grabbed the man’s hand, kissing it softly. He could feel his heart pounding as if it would break through his chest, but he could not breathe.

  The man that Gibbs had brought to the jail was James Covey, the same man he had bumped into at the doorw
ay of The Hold. Covey was a sailor on the British man-of-war, Buzzard, which had come into New York for supplies. When Gibbs had finally convinced him that he was not mad but rather a college professor on a quest for a translator, Covey consented to help if he could. Knowing well of the Amistad case, the commander of the Buzzard, Captain James Fitzgerald, granted Covey leave to serve as interpreter for the Amistad Committee and the blacks held in captive, saying it was the least the Crown could do in the situation.

  Covey, barely twenty years old, was a native of Mende. He was born Kaw-we-li and raised inland until three Genduma men kidnapped him from his parents when he was eight and brought him to Freetown. He was sold to an old Mandingo goat trader and worked in the bazaar for the man until two Vai tribesmen killed the trader, stole the goats and Kaw-we-li, and sold him to a Dutch slave trader. The Dutch man brought him to Pedro Blanco’s Lomboko slave factory and sold him to a Portuguese ship captain who was running a slaver to Brazil. The captain put to sea, but two days out of Lomboko a British cruiser on slave patrol overtook his ship and liberated all aboard. Kaw-we-li had learned English in the bazaar and immediately became favored by the British crew. By the time they returned him to Freetown, he decided to enlist in the British Navy and took the name James Covey in honor of the lieutenant who cut the slave chains from his feet and hands. He had been serving on the Buzzard for four and a half years, believed in Jesus Christ, and considered himself a good Christian.

  Jocelyn sent for Tappan and Baldwin immediately. He also asked one of the divinity students on hand to record what they would hear. Then he gathered all the tribesmen into the biggest cell and brought in Covey. Covey greeted them as he had greeted Singbe and told them quite modestly that he was here to help them as best he could. Many of the tribesmen stood in stunned silence. Others began shouting with joy or breaking down in tears. Grabeau had his body wedged in a corner. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t stand on his own.