From Wiki:
The schooner La Amistad is transporting black slaves off the coast of the Spanish colony of Cuba in 1839. A captive, Cinqué, leads an uprising against the crew, most of whom are killed. Two navigators, Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz, are spared on condition they help sail the ship to Africa. The Spaniards betray them and instead sail into U.S. waters, where the ship is stopped by the U.S. revenue cutter Washington, and the mutineers are arrested.
A complicated legal battle ensues over the slaves. United States Attorney William S. Holabird brings charges of piracy and murder against them. Those charges are dismissed in a criminal case because the killings occurred outside United States territorial waters.
A civil case then follows, with the Amistad Africans being claimed as property by Montes and Ruiz, and as salvage by two officers from the Washington. The Spanish government of Queen Isabella II[a] intervenes in support of Montes and Ruiz, under the Treaty of 1795, also known as Pinckney's Treaty. To avoid a diplomatic incident, President Martin Van Buren directs his Secretary of State John Forsyth to support the Spanish claim. Meanwhile, abolitionist Lewis Tappan and his black associate Theodore Joadson (a former slave) resolve to help the captives. They approach the brilliant lawyer, former U.S. president and serving U.S. representative John Quincy Adams, but he is reluctant to get involved. They instead hire the young and eccentric attorney Roger Sherman Baldwin.
Baldwin, unable to converse directly with his clients due to the language barrier, suspects the slaves are not Cubans but Africans who have been kidnapped and transported illegally as part of the banned transatlantic slave trade. He and Joadson search La Amistad and find documents which prove the captives were kidnapped from Sierra Leone and transported across the Atlantic aboard the Portuguese slave ship Tecora before being transferred to La Amistad in Havana. The judge is impressed and signals his intention to dismiss the U.S. and Spanish governments' case and release the captives.
To preclude this possibility, Van Buren replaces the judge with a younger man, Coglin, who he believes will be easier to manipulate. Joadson seeks advice from Adams, who tells him that court cases are usually won by the side with the best 'story'. Baldwin and Joadson recruit freedman James Covey as a translator, enabling Cinqué to testify directly before the court. He describes how he was kidnapped from his home, and the horrors of the Middle Passage. Baldwin calls Captain Charles Fitzgerald of the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron to corroborate Cinqué's testimony. He speculates that the captives were taken aboard the Tecora at the notorious slave fort Lomboko. Under cross-examination, Fitzgerald admits there is no direct evidence of Lomboko's existence. As tension rises, Cinqué abruptly stands and demands, "Give us, us free!". Moved by Cinqué's emotion, Judge Coglin rules that the Africans are to be released, and that Montes and Ruiz are to be arrested and charged with illegal slave-trading.
Under pressure from Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who represents the slave-holding interests of the American South, Van Buren appeals the case to the Supreme Court. Baldwin and Joadson visit Adams again, and after meeting Cinqué he agrees to represent the Africans before the Supreme Court. Adams' impassioned and eloquent speech convinces the court to confirm the judgement and release the Africans.
Lomboko is stormed by Royal Marines led by Fitzgerald, and the slaves held there are freed. Fitzgerald orders the ship's cannon to destroy the fortress, and dictates a sardonic letter to Forsyth saying that he was correct — the infamous slave fort does not (now) exist.
Van Buren is discredited by his failure to prevent the release of the Africans, and loses the 1840 election to William Henry Harrison. The Spanish government continues to press its claim for compensation up until the American Civil War.
The captions say that Cinqué returns to Africa, but is unable to reunite with his family due to civil war in Sierra Leone.
Instead of trying to teach those among us about human rights, hearing them in even court, we should treat them with more violance. Mankind will further evolve and based on what these human among us did in the Holocaust having managed to avoid prosecution, we need more force to ensure our order over theirs.
We have to be clear in wording and end all bullshit conversations about history and what happend to whom by whom.
Enslaving needs to end by death. Supporting it by rethoricals and lies... Becoming more humaine does not mean to have a trial over hanging the Enslavers at the harbour pear. They will consider us weak and nothing else.
#noblessoblige
