ARGUMENTOF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, BEFORE THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, IN THE CASE OF THE
UNITED STATES, APPELLANTS,
vs.
CINQUE, AND OTHERS, AFRICANS,
CAPTURED IN THE SCHOONER AMISTAD, BY LIEUT. GEDNEY,
DELIVERED ON THE 24th OF FEBRUARY AND 1st OF MARCH,
1841.
[Excerpts]
. . . The inquiry of the Marshal was barefaced enough;
whether, if the Executive warrant and the judicial
decree should come in direct conflict with each other, it was expected that he
should obey the President, or the Judge? No! says the
Secretary of State. If the decree of the Judge should be in our favor, and you
can steal a march upon the negroes by foreclosing their right of appeal, ship
them off without mercy and without delay: and if the decree should be in their
favor, fail not to enter an instantaneous appeal to the Supreme Court where the
chances may be more hostile to self-emancipated slaves.
Was ever such a scene of Lilliputian trickery
enacted by the rulers of a great, magnanimous, and Christian nation? Contrast
it with that act of self-emancipation by which the savage, heathen barbarians
Cinque and Grabeau liberated themselves and their
fellow suffering countrymen from Spanish slave-traders, and which the Secretary
of State, by communion of sympathy with Ruiz and Montes, denominates lawless
violence. Cinque and Grabeau are uncouth and
barbarous names. Call them Harmodius and Aristogiton, and go back for moral principle three thousand
years to the fierce and glorious democracy of Athens. They too resorted to
lawless violence, and slew the tyrant to redeem the freedom of their country.
For this heroic action they paid the forfeit of their lives: but within three
years the Athenians expelled their tyrants themselves, and in gratitude to
their self-devoted deliverers decreed, that thenceforth no slave should ever
bear either of their names. Cinque and Grabeau are
not slaves. Let them bear in future history the names of Harmodius
and Aristogiton.
This review of all the proceedings of the
Executive I have made with the utmost, pain, because it was necessary to bring
it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had
been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy--and a sympathy the most partial and unjust. And this sympathy
prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business,
as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles
of law and right, on which the liberties of the people of the United States are
founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not
only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but
hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.
I am now, may it please your Honors, obliged
to call the attention of the Court to a very improper paper, in relation to
this case, which was published in the Official Journal of the Executive
Administration, on the very day of the meeting of this Court, and introduced
with a commendatory notice by the editor, as the production of one of the
brightest intellects of the South. I know not who is the author, but it appeared
with that almost official sanction, on the day of meeting of this Court. It
purports to be a review of the present case. The writer begins by referring to
the decision of the District Court, and says the case is "one of the
deepest importance to the southern states." I ask, may it please your Honors, is that an appeal to JUSTICE? What have the southern
states to do with the case, or what has the case to do with the southern
states? The case, as far as it is known to the courts of this country, or cognizable
by them, presents points with which the southern states have nothing to do. It
is a question of slavery and freedom between foreigners; of the lawfulness or unlawness of the African slave trade; and has not, when
properly considered, the remotest connection with the interests of the southern
states.
What was the purpose or intent of that
article, I am not prepared to say, but it was evidently calculated to excite
prejudice, to arouse all the acerbities of feeling between different sections
of this country, and to connect them with this case, in such a manner as to
induce this Court to decide it in favor of the alleged interests of the
southern states, and against the suppression of the African slave trade. It is
not my intention to review the piece at this time. It has been done, and ably
done, by more than one person. And after infinite difficulty, one of these
answers has been inserted in the same official journal in which the piece
appeared. I now wish simply, to refer your Honors to the original principle of
slavery, as laid down by this champion of the
institution. It is given by this writer as a great principle of national law
and stands as the foundation of his argument. I wish, if your Honors deem a
paper of this kind, published under such circumstances, worthy of consideration
in the decision of a case, that your Honors would advert to that principle, and
say whether it is a principle recognized by this Court, as the ground on which
it will decide cases.
"The truth is, that property in man has
existed in all ages of the world, and results from the natural state of man,
which is war. When God created the first family and gave them the fields of the
earth as an inheritance, one of the number, in
obedience to the impulses and passions that had been implanted in the human
heart, rose and slew his brother. This universal nature of man is alone
modified by civilization and law. War, conquest, and force, have produced
slavery, and it is state necessity and the internal law of self preservation,
that will ever perpetuate and defend it."
There is the principle, on which a particular decision is demanded from this Court, by the Official
Journal of the Executive, on behalf of the southern states? Is that a principle recognized by this Court? Is it the
principle of that DECLARATION? [Here Mr. A. pointed to the Declaration of
Independence, two copies of which hang before the eyes of the Judges on the
bench.] It is alleged in the Official Journal, that war gives the right to take
the life of our enemy, and that this confers a right to make him a slave, on
account of having spared his life. Is that the principle on which these United
States stand before the world? That DECLARATION says that every man is
"endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that
"among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If
these rights are inalienable, they are incompatible with the rights of the
victor to take the life of his enemy in war, or to spare his life and make him
a slave. If this principle is sound, it reduces to brute force all the rights
of man. It places all the sacred relations of life at the power of the
strongest. No man has a right to life or liberty, if he has an enemy able to
take them from him. There is the principle. There is the whole argument of this
paper. Now I do not deny that the only principle upon which a color of right
can be attributed to the condition of slavery is by assuming that the natural
state of man is War The bright intellect of the South, clearly saw, that
without this principle for a corner stone, he had no foundation for his
argument. He assumes it therefore without a blush, as Hobbes assumed it to
prove that government and despotism are synonymous words. I will not here
discuss the right or the rights of slavery, but I say that the doctrine of
Hobbes, that War is the natural state of man, has for ages been exploded, as
equally disclaimed and rejected by the philosopher and the Christian. That it
is utterly incompatible with any theory of human rights, and especially with
the rights which the Declaration of Independence
proclaims as self-evident truths. The moment you come, to the Declaration of
Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable
right, this case is decided. I ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate
men, than this Declaration. The opposite principle is laid down, not by an
unintelligent or unthinking man, but is given to the public and to this Court,
as coming from one of the brightest intellects of the South. Your Honors see
what it comes to, when carried out.
[Source. Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/amistad_002.asp]