Amistad Revolt

This book is the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history in which African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. In 1839, Joseph Cinque led other blacks in a revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean. They steered the ship northward to Montauk, Long Island, where it was seized by an American naval vessel. With the Africans jailed in Connecticut and the Spaniards claiming violoation of their porperty rights, an international controversy erupted. The Amistad affair united abolotionists in the U.S. and England, drove the White house into almost any means to quiet the issue, and placed the U.S. and Spain in a confrontation that threatened to involve England and Cuba. The abolitionists, led by Lewis Tappan, Joshua Leavitt and others argued that equal justice was the central issue in the case. Appealing to natural law, evangelical arguments, and "moral suasion" in proclaiming slavery a sin, they sought to establish that all persons, black and white, has an inherent right of liberty and thereby hoped to erase the color line that formed the racial foundation of slavery. In their eyes, the mutiny on the &IAmistad offered an ideal opportunity to awaken Americans to the injustice of slavery. In this book, Howard Jones shows how the abolotionist argument put the "laws of nature" on trial in the U.S., as Tappan and the others refused to accept a legal system claiming to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or color. Jones vividly captures the compelling drama that climaxed in a U.S. Supreme court ruling that freed the captivces and allowed them to return to Africa. He notes that many of the abolitionists were nonetheless dissatisfied with the decision because it had not rested on the law of nature; yet, he obseves, even they failed to grasp the central importance of the affair: that America's legal system had fulfilled its function of securing justice. About the Author: Howard Jones, is Professor of History at the University of Alabama and author of The Course of American Diplomacy and To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

THE SLUMBERING VOLCANO investigates the influence of 19th-century slave ship revolts on a free-society's sense of identity. This challenging study shows how the United States has been uniquely shaped by its dual status as both an imperial and a postcolonial power. Sure to interest students and scholars of American studies, African American studies, gender studies, and of American history and literature.

Drawing on a gold mine of primary documents--including letters, diary entries, personal narratives, political speeches, broadsides, trial transcripts, and contemporary newspaper articles--The Boisterous Sea of Liberty brings the past to life in a way few histories ever do. Here is a panoramic look at American history from the voyages of Columbus through the bloody Civil War, as captured in the words of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and many other historical figures, both famous and obscure. In these pieces, the living voices of the past speak to us from opposing viewpoints--from the vantage point of loyalists as well as patriots, slaves as well as masters--providing a more sophisticated understanding of the forces that have shaped our society, from the power of public opinion to the nearly absolute power of the slaveholder. For instance, on the issue of race, we find first-hand accounts of oppression suffered by Indians and slaves; the antislavery argument made before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams; the writings of Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists; and the bitter response of Southern politicians--all to give a richer portrait of this complex issue. Likewise, documents collected here provide a fuller understanding of such historical issues as Columbus's dealings with Native Americans, the Stamp Act Crisis, the Declaration of Independence, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Missouri Crisis, the Mexican War, and Harpers Ferry, to name but a few. Compiled by Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz, and accompanied by extensive illustrations of original documents, The Boisterous Sea of Liberty brings the reader back in time, to meet the men and women who lived through the momentous events that shaped our nation.