by David Pesci
Just before dawn they saw the great hills. On the other side was Mende. They found a sandy landing and got out and beached the canoe. Grabeau took out his knife and cut great holes in the bottom of the hull while Singbe stood watch. Satisfied with his work, Grabeau pushed the boat back into the river. They watched the current carry it for a few yards until it filled up and disappeared beneath the dark waters. The men turned and disappeared into the bush.
They reached the top of the great hills just after noon. They had seen no one. Exhausted, they found a small rocky overhang, covered it with brush, and fell asleep.
The next day, before the sun had begun to light the sky, they were on the road to Kawamende. It was not much more than a well-tramped path framed on either side by thick brush. They reached the first crossroad about an hour after dawn. Grabeau’s village was ten miles to the east, Singbe’s almost the same distance to the north.
“This is the road where both of us were taken slaves,” Grabeau said. “It does not seem possible that we are back here again after all this time.”
“I know, my good friend. I barely believe it myself.”
“Singbe. Do not lie to me. You never doubted it. You, me, all of the tribesmen are alive because you never stopped believing that you would be back here in Mende one day. You were our strength, our courage, our hope. If you ever doubted, do not tell me now. I will not believe it.”
Singbe smiled. He could feel a tightness in his throat. He took a quick breath and let out a great laugh to mask his tears.
“Grabeau, my conscience, my very good friend. We are brothers forever.”
“Yes. Forever. Now, it is by your will and strength that I have come this far. Let me accompany you to your village.”
Singbe nodded. They turned up the road to the north.
The sun rose and quickly grew warm and bright. They took off their fine American shirts and boots and wrapped them in their blankets, which they strung along their backs like packs. Neither man said anything but both men wore great smiles and more than once they burst into laughter. After a while, though, Singbe grew quiet and serious. Grabeau sensed the change and talked quickly and happily about the beauty of Mende. He ached to tell Singbe that everything would be all right, but he did not want to risk lying to his friend.
As they walked out of a broad curve, the thick bush alongside the narrow road gave way, revealing a long green valley with a line of trees following the banks of a shallow river. Singbe stopped. His lips quivered and tears began to fall from his eyes. Grabeau went to put his hand to his friend’s shoulder, but Singbe leapt forward and began to run. He threw off the blanket, sending the shirt and boots in different directions. Grabeau tried to follow but he could not keep up.
Singbe ran through the fields, falling twice. He ran past a small thatched hut that stood near the treeline without slowing down or looking inside. His eyes were fixed straight ahead. Grabeau, still chasing, saw him disappear into the trees by the river.
By the time Grabeau reached the trees his chest was burning badly and his head spinning. He fell down exhausted at the muddy waterside, exhausted and gasping wildly for air. He leaned forward, his shaking hands reaching out to the river, and splashed the cool water into his face. As he looked up he saw Singbe in the middle of the river hugging a sobbing woman. Three children, a boy and two girls, clung to their legs. Laundry and an old brown basket floated down on the slow, steady current.
Epilogue
The Amistad was refitted, renamed, and sold to pay off the salvage claims of Lieutenants Gedney and Meade. No one knows what became of it. A full-sized replica is being built at the Mystic Seaport Museum and supported by Amistad America. When completed the ship will serve as both a tourist attraction and a sea-worthy mobile classroom about slavery. For more information, contact the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.
The Legacy of the Amistad Trial can be seen at the New Haven Colony Historical Society in New Haven, Connecticut. The society has actual documents, articles, and the famous painting of Singbe-Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinqué) done at the time of the trial by Nathaniel Jocelyn. Contact the New Haven Colony Historical Society for more information.
The Spanish government continued diplomatic pressure regarding the Amistad incident until the 1860s. The United States never paid the damages demanded by the Spanish government.
Pedro Blanco’s Slave Factory was raided by the British a few months after Singbe was sold in 1839. The slaves held captive there were liberated and the factory was burned to the ground. Blanco escaped prosecution, however, and retired a millionaire.
The Mende Mission was established in 1842 by William Raymond after James Steele and Henry Wilson decided to return to America. After a rocky start on a damp, disease-ridden site, the mission was relocated to the drier highlands of Mende and christened the Mo Tappan Mission. A saw mill was created on the mission grounds to provide revenue and a school was built. The curriculum included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, scripture reading, and catechism. Instruction was made available to children and any of the local tribesmen. By 1846, the mission reported having more than sixty-five regular students. Some of the original tribesmen from the Amistad returned to perform missionary work or act as translators, including Kinna, who took the name Lewis Johnson, and Fabanna, who called himself Alexander Posey.
The American Missionary Association (formerly the Amistad Committee) not only established the Mo Tappan Mission and others in Sierra Leone, it also went on to found a number of colleges for black Americans in the United States. These included Dillard University, Fisk University, Hampton University, Howard University, Huston-Tillotson College, Talladega College, and Tougaloo College.
Andrew T. Judson remained the judge of the First Federal District until his death in 1853.
Seth Staples continued with his successful law practice and cofounded the Yale University School of Law.
Theodore Sedgwick returned to Philadelphia and continued his successful law practice.
John Quincy Adams continued to be reelected to the House of Representatives by the voters of his district. In 1844 he succeeded in getting the House to repeal the gag rule. In 1848, while debating a colleague on the House floor, Adams suffered a stroke and died a few days later.
Roger Baldwin continued with his successful law practice. He was twice elected governor of Connecticut and later became a U.S. Senator from the state. In 1861 he led a National Peace Convention in Washington, which sought to revise the U.S. Constitution to avoid the American Civil War. He died in 1863.
Lewis Tappan continued pursuing his cause of abolitionism and after the U.S. Civil War worked to establish civil rights for blacks. He also established New York’s first mercantile agency and presided over it until just before his death at the age of eighty-five in 1873.
Margru, the oldest girl from the Amistads, took the name Sarah Kinson, returned to the United States, and attended Oberlin College at the expense of the American Missionary Association. She returned to the Mo Tappan Mission and worked as a missionary until she was nearly eighty. One of her sons went on to graduate from Fisk College and the Yale Divinity School.
Burnah divided his time between serving as an interpreter and teacher for the mission and working as a blacksmith in his native village in Mende. He did not return to the mission after 1847. It was rumored that he married a Mende woman from a prosperous clan and had eleven children.
Grabeau returned to his farm, married, and never set foot outside his village again.
Singbe-Pieh remained in Mende after being reunited with his wife, children, and father. Together they worked the small family rice farm. A few times after his first four years back in Mende, Singbe traveled to the Mo Tappan Mission and provided his services as a translator and tutor. However, after 1846, no one at the mission saw him again until 1879 when he appeared at the gates one morning, withered, frail, and extremely ill. He lived a week longer in the missionaries’ care and then died. His last wish was to b
e buried at the mission. The funeral service was performed by a black American missionary, who had been born a slave in the United States.
Sources and Resources
This book is a work of historical fiction; that is, the majority of the facts surrounding the Amistad case are true as presented here, although I have created some fictional and composite characters, compressed and abridged certain events, and constructed fictional dialogue. For those who want to read nonfiction accounts of the events surrounding the Amistad Case, two excellent books have been written, both of which served as invaluable background for this novel. They are Mutiny on the Amistad – The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy by Howard Jones, published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, and Black Odyssey – The Case of the Slave Ship Amistad by Mary Cable published by Viking Press, New York, 1971.
Though the newspaper quotes in this book are fictional, they accurately depict the journalistic language, sentiment, and content of the time. The actual newspaper accounts and excerpts, especially those in the Hartford Daily Courant and the New Haven Register, made for fascinating reading and background. Microfilms of the Courant and other newspapers covering the Amistad case can be found at the University of Connecticut Library and the Yale University Library. Arthur Schiesinger’s The Age of Jackson also provided excellent background about life in the 1830s.
For background information about slavery conditions, the middle passage, and treatment of African slaves, two books are especially helpful: The Transatlantic Slave Trade by James A. Rawley, published by W. W. Norton & Co., 1981, and Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery by Robert W. Fogel, also by W. W. Norton & Co., 1989.
The Amistad Case/ The Basic Afro-American Reprint Library, Johnson Reprint Corp, 1968, includes the complete text of John Quincy Adams’s masterful Supreme Court argument on behalf of the Amistads and all of the papers in Congressional Document 185. Adams’s opening and closing in his argument before the Supreme Court as it appears in this novel have been partially quoted and paraphrased from the actual court transcripts.
Also fascinating are the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1876. In Volume X, Adams ruminates on the Amistad affair, from his first notice of the slave ship reaching American shores to his wondering on the eve of his Supreme Court argument whether he can provide an adequate defense for the Amistads.
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Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 1999.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2014.
Copyright © 1997 by DAVID PESCI
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction, although based on actual events.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1593–0