United States v. Amistad

Audience

When the Supreme Court decided a case, the decision was announced by the reading of the opinion by the justice who authored it. Justice Story’s opinion was delivered to a mostly empty courtroom. However, the parties, and the entire country and much of Europe, were interested. The case was of particular interest to abolitionists, who heralded it as a great victory for the cause of abolition, although they were distressed that Antonio, who was in fact a slave, was not freed. The Amistad committee took the Africans to Farmington, Connecticut, where abolitionists taught them English, instructed them in Christianity, and raised funds to pay for their return to Africa. Meanwhile, newspapers reporting on the case reflected regional biases. Northern newspapers tended to report on the case from an antislavery perspective, while southern newspapers tended to regard northern reporting as slanted and designed to foment abolitionist sentiment.