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"The Amistad," New York Journal of Commerce, 4 September, 1839, p.2.
THE AMISTAD.--We are informed by “counsel learned in the law,” that if the crew of
the above vessel are tried at all in the United States, they must be tried in this
city. The schooner, when captured, was close to the shore of Long Island, in Suffolk
county, and some of the crew were captured in the county. The Act of Congress, we
are told, provides that prisoners, under such circumstances, must be tried in the
district where they were at first apprehended. Suffolk county is within the southern
district of New York, the Court of which is held in this city; and therefore the
men must be brought here to be tried, if at all.
But according to the opinion of several legal gentlemen, some of them persons of
no inconsiderable eminence in their profession, the crew of the schooner cannot be
tried at all in the United States, as the circumstances under which they acted divest
their conduct of any legal criminality of which the United States could take cognizance.
The legal gentlemen to whom we allude, say, that as these men were foreign slaves,
(only a few weeks from their native country) and on board a foreign vessel, their
rising on their masters, in order to free themselves, and taking possession of the
vessel, which was the only means they had to consummate their liberty, cannot be
construed into an act of piracy against the law of nations, such as would authorize
the United States to prosecute or punish them. That whatever crime they have committed,
it was only against the laws of Spain and on board a Spanish vessel, and that therefore
the United States has no right to try them for it.
Whether the above doctrine be sound in a legal sense, we pretend not to decide. We
should be greatly obliged if some one or more of our clear-headed legal friends would
communicate to us, for publication, their views on the subject.
