“Amistad” Essay, Research Paper
Amistad
The summery of the movie Amistad
The story of the Amistad is quite a tale of Freedom. The movie depicts how the situation in American and Europe was at the time. The movie opens on the ship the Amistad in a great storm at sea with an African who breaks lose of his shekels with a nail. He begins to free most of the slaves around him from their shekels. They break into boxes gathering weapons and freeing others. Then the Africans kill all of the crew except for two which they did not kill in believing that the two men would take them back to Africa.
The two men began sailing to America where the Africans went ashore and began to get water out of a near by lake. They went back to the ship and an American ship was just passing when they got back. The American ship had taken them captive and proceeded to take the ship Amistad to port.
Once at the port the Africans that were aboard the Amistad where shekels and take prisoner by the United States Government. A great court battle would come of this. It would be of who owned them and if they were truly free. At the time you could not take any slaves from Africa instead they had to have been born on a plantation. The two men from earlier in the story said that the slaves were from Cuba, and in that case they would have gotten to sell the slaves because you can not take slaves from African but you can from Cuba. Along with the two men the Queen of Spain said that the slaves where hers, the captain of the ship that found the Amistad said that they were his.
The court battle had began. The whole world was watching and the southern states were protesting that if the slaves went free that they would succeed from the Union. And so the battle went on and on. They had just about one the battle when the president realized that if the Africans did win he would not be re-elected into office, so in knowing that he appointed a new Jude and dismissed the jury. He found a new judge that he thought would certainly vote in the governments favor.
The new Jude listened to every thing, as did every one else in the court. Then in that court room one of the African from the ship told his story of how he was brought to America and how escaped the grip of his masters to be once again a free man. He told of how they were beaten and of his family and how he was torn apart form them. He told of how they had changes ships. And how there masters threw fifty men, women and children overboard.
The attorney for the Africans had been approve a court order to search the Amistad and he did so, upon his search he found a book that was the inventory for the other ship that they were taken from. But what was it doing on the Amistad with the names of all of the Africans that were on board the Amistad. This backed up the story of the African. And so the Judg ruled that the Africans were free to be released at once and to jail the two white men who claimed that they were theirs, for illegal transport of slaves.
But the president when on to over rule the courts decision and moved the case to the Supreme Court. There they would wage another battle where they would ultimately become free and with there choosing of wether to stay in America or go back to Africa. They chose to go back to Africa where they found a civil war and there village destroyed.