The Amistad and the Antelope: The Dramatic History of the Captured Slave Ships and the Court Cases that Challenged the International Slave Trade

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself. As a result, there was still a strong financial motive for merchants and slave traders to attempt to bring slaves to the Western hemisphere, and a lot of profits to be gained from successfully sneaking slaves into the American South and the Caribbean by way of locations like Havana, Cuba.

At the same time, the cruelties of the slave trade often led to desperate attempts by slaves or would-be slaves to avoid the horrific fate that they were either experiencing or about to face. In 1831, Nat Turner’s revolt shocked the South and scared plantation owners across the country, while also bringing the issue of slavery to the forefront of the national debate, and the mutiny on the Amistad is still taught in American schools today.

Less than 20 years before the mutiny on the Amistad, another Spanish slave ship was at the center of a dramatic legal case in the United States, this time involving privateers. The Antelope was a slave ship that plied the waters in the Western hemisphere after the international slave trade had been banned, making it a potential prize not just for crews looking to trade illicit human cargo, but also for those who hunted slave ships themselves. The name of the ship that captured the Antelope changed at least four times in less than two years, (as well as the flag under which it flew), and the Antelope’s name also changed after pirates captured it.

The legal cases for both ships proceeded all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which eventually ruled that most of the Africans be returned home as free men, but not before the British and Spanish used diplomatic and political leverage to try to influence the outcome. Ultimately, the rebellion on the Amistad became a watershed moment in the debate over slavery and abolition in America.