Amistad

The story of the Amistad has become part of the less glamorous history in the United States and the wider Western world in terms of the human rights violation that was slavery. The story began in February 1839, when Portuguese slave traders violated all the treaties in existence at the time and abducted Africans from Sierra Leone in order to ship them to Cuba to be sold as slaves. In Cuba, 53 African men and women were sold to Spanish planters. The Cuban schooner Amistad would ship them to a plantation in the Caribbean. However, the simplicity of this plan was ruined by revolting Africans, who seized the ship in on 1 July 1839. The captain and the cook were killed, and the remaining crew members were told to sail to Africa. This plan, however, also did not work, as the U.S. brig Washington seized the Amistad off Long...
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