
JOSEPH CINQUE
African Mutineer (1815-1852)
Sengbe Pieh, the son of a local chief,
was born in Mani,
Sierra Leone, around 1815. He became a rice farmer and was married with three
children when Spanish
slave-traders captured him in 1839. The Spanish, who gave him the name Joseph
Cinque, took him to Cuba where he was sold
to Jose Ruiz. Ruiz purchased 48 other slaves in Havana and hired Ramon Ferrer to
take him to his schooner Amistad, to
Puerto Principe a settlement further down the coast of Cuba.
On July 2, 1839, the slaves led by Cinque
killed Ramon Ferrer, and took possession of his ship. Cinque ordered the navigator
to take them back to Africa, but after
63 days at sea the ship was intercepted by Lieutenant Gedney, of the United States brig
Washington on half a mile from the shore of Long Island. The ship was towed
into New London, Connecticut and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven. The
Spanish government insisted that the mutineers be returned to Cuba.
President Martin van Buren was
sympathetic to these demands, but insisted that the men would be first tried for
murder. Lewis Tappan and James Pennington took up the African's case and argued that
while slavery was legal in Cuba, importation of slaves from Africa was not. The
judge agreed and ruled that the Africans had been kidnapped and had the right to use
violence to escape from captivity. The United states government appealed against
this decision and the case appeared before the Supreme Court.
The former president, John Quincy Adams, was so moved
by the plight of Joseph Cinque and his fellow Africans, that he volunteered to represent
them. Although now seventy-three, his passionate eight-hour speech won the argument
and the mutineers were released. Lewis Tappan and the anti-slavery movement helped
fund the return of the 35 surviving Africans to Sierra Leone. They arrived in
January 1842, along with five missionaries and teachers who formed a Christian
anti-slavery mission in the country. Cinque discovered that his wife and three
children had been killed while he had been away. He left the mission to do some
trading further down the coast, but he never returned. It is not known how he
died.
Revised: July 18, 2013.