Hartford’s Old State House
Old State House
800 Main Street
Hartford, CT 06103
(860) 522-6766
• The Black Law and the Amistad Trial
A program for elementary and secondary teachers and their students.
In the House of Representatives, students become legislators and must decide how
they will vote on the Black Law that will close Prudence Crandall’s school
for “young misses of color” in Canterbury; then students cross the hall to the Senate
Chamber for a dramatic reenactment of the Amistad trial. Appropriate for middle
and high school students.
“Setting the Story Straight,” a reenactment of the Amistad trial performed
by the Old State House Historic Interpreters in the Great Senate Chamber where the
trial began Tuesday, September 17, 1839
Cost: free Call (860) 522-6766 for dates and times
The Amistad is many stories. The story we are retelling at the Old State House is the one that actually started in the Great Senate Chamber in this building on September 17, 1839. It is about how the Abolitionists used the United States’ courts to dismiss the charges of mutiny and murder against the Amistad Africans and the legal strategies they used to gain the captives’ freedom.
When the Abolitionists formed the Amistad Committee in support of the captured Africans, they knew they were up against powerful opponents in both the federal executive and the federal courts. President Martin Van Buren of New York was no friend of slavery, but he needed the southern democrats to win his reelection that year. To make matters worse, the judge of the District Court of Connecticut was none other than Andrew Judson! As a state representative, Judson had sponsored the 1833 Black Law in Connecticut which outlawed Prudence Crandall’s school for “young misses of color” in Canterbury.
The Amistad Committee asked one of Connecticut’s most capable attorneys to represent the Africans, Roger Sherman Baldwin. At first reluctant, Baldwin finally agreed to represent the Amistad Africans. His prestigious law practice might well be harmed by his involvement with radical Abolitionists.
Baldwin realized that he could not win the African’s freedom with a head-on assault against slavery. Tensions were too high between the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery states. No one was willing to risk civil war for a band of murderous Africans. When the Amistad trial opened in the Old State House, Baldwin had devised two strategies.
By the time the Amistad case concluded in New Haven the following January, political intrigue challenged the very foundations of our Constitutional government. Today, for his deeds, Van Buren would face impeachment for gross abuse of power and obstruction of justice. The ingenuity and inexhaustible will of the Abolitionists have set a standard for every activist group since. Baldwin’s brilliant defense won over even the tainted Andrew Judson who ruled that the Africans should be freed and returned to their homeland.
The U. S. Government appealed Judson’s decision to the Supreme Court. It was John Quincy Adams who successfully pleaded the African’s case, but it was Baldwin's argument that persuaded the Justices.
Roger Sherman Baldwin set a critical precedent in the nation’s long journey towards full civil rights for all of its peoples: use the United States’ own legal system to defeat injustice. It is a precedent that has stood through Martin Luther King, James Farmer and Thurgood Marshall.
See Baldwin in action at the Old State House!
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