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"The Africans."New York Journal of Commerce 6 Nov., 1839: 2.
From the New Haven Record.
THE AFRICANS
We have witnessed with regret the eagerness with which reports have been caught up
and published, unfavorable to the Africans confined in this city, and the disposition
manifested to alienate from them the sympathy of the public, and even to enlist it
in favor of Ruiz and Montez. We refer not to the marvellous [sic] fabrications which
have filled the columns of Bennett’s Herald, but to papers which are accounted respectable.
A paragraph indited by the editor of the Hartford Courier has had considerable circulation,
in which it is stated that the business of Cinquez was to conduct slaves from the
interior to the coast, to supply the slave ships; and the authorities given are the
boy Antonio, who understands no African language, and the editor of the New Haven
Herald, who, the day after the interpreters Pratt and Covey arrived, was “informed
that Cinquez acknowledged that he had sold slaves.”
We are now able to state, on good authority, that the three interpreters, Ferry,
Pratt and Covey, each of them, affirm positively, that Cinquez has told them no such
thing, nor anything like it; nor do the gentlemen who conducted the examinations
with the two latter, and took minutes of all the answers, remember any such statement.
Cinquez then said, as he says now, that he was the son of a chief, or headman, and
that he sometimes trafficked in merchandize [sic]. Pains have been taken again to
examine Cinquez and several of the other prisoners in reference to this particular
point. Cinquez denies ever having been engaged in the slave traffic, and the others
deny any knowledge of his having been so engaged.
The “dangerous weapons” which it was said, in a way to excite alarm and suspicion,
the prisoners had obtained, were nothing but common jack-knives, some of which were
brought them by the interpreters, inconsiderately, and without the knowledge of any
one else, and others by boys who went in as visitors. It was very proper that the
knives should be taken from them, but no one acquainted with the circumstances can
suppose for a moment that they wanted them for any other purpose than their own amusement
and convenience.
