The Amistad Rebellion (32 page)

The content of the program on the tour reflected the nature of the alliance between the Africans and the American reformers as it had developed in jail prior to the Supreme Court ruling. The abolitionists wanted the freedmen to show the American public that they had become “civilized” Christians, which the hardworking students were willing to do as long as they could simultaneously enact and explain their own independent African identity. They sang their own songs and recited their own history in their own language, even if the audience could not always understand precisely what was being sung or said to them. Those attending the events would, in fact, understand something more important than specific words: they would see a sovereign political entity called the “Mendi People” in action.

Booth emphasized to the audience that the Africans came from an inland area of the continent where “a higher degree of civilization prevails…than was generally supposed.” The condescension contained within it important facts. The Africans lived in towns and cities and engaged in manufacture, weaving in particular, examples of which he displayed, holding up a “number of specimens of cloth, in the shape of napkins…which the Africans had cut out and fringed after the African style.” Members of the audience purchased these after the performance “at liberal prices.” Booth added that the
Amistad
Africans were multiethnic and multilingual: they consisted of six different
culture groups; one individual (probably Burna the younger) spoke Temne, Kono, Bullom, and Mende. Booth also commented on the moral characteristics of his students, who had worked hard and distinguished themselves by a “remarkable honesty.” Booth then introduced the
Amistad
Africans, a few of whom spoke about their personal histories—where they were from, how they were enslaved, how they reached Lomboko—reciting the narratives they had told in court, in the newspapers, and through popular publications for many months now. Their individual life stories dramatized the human ordeal of slavery. Woven into these accounts were comments by the “Mendi People” that they wanted, more than anything else, to go home.
³³

Booth assigned individuals passages to read from the Bible, usually from the books of Matthew and John, and words to spell. Some of the performers were nervous and had mixed success. The engaged audience offered encouragement, cheering the readers and spellers no matter how they performed. Young Kale, already known as the correspondent of John Quincy Adams, was the star of this portion of the program, reading the longest passages and spelling the most difficult words and sentences. The people who had come ashore in the United States unable to “say a word for themselves,” now read, spelled, spoke, and conversed in what they called the “Merika language.”
³⁴

Booth then invited members of the audience to ask questions. Many concerned Christianity: How will you explain God to your countrymen in Africa? How do you know the Bible is God’s truth? The Africans gave thoughtful, dutiful answers. Someone asked Kinna if he could “love his enemies” as a good Christian should. Kinna replied that he would pray to God to forgive his enemies their transgressions. Asked if the slaveholder José Ruiz “should come to Mendi, and should you meet him alone in the bushes, what would you do?” Kinna replied, “I let him
go
, I no touch
him
.” But knowing the ways of slavers, he added, quickly and spontaneously, “But if him catch our children—him see what he catch!” This answer brought a “loud shout of laughter and applause from the crowded audience,” who shared his perhaps unchristian “instinct of retaliation.”
³⁵

The
Amistad
Africans then sang “If I Could Read My Title Clear,” an
old hymn that was a staple in the abolitionist musical pantheon. Based on lines of a poem by the antislavery poet William Cowper, the song combined the ideal of self-improvement by learning to read with the promise of a homestead in heaven, hinting that God’s poor might eventually find justice and even the land they had lost to expropriation and enslavement—which is one reason why the song passed into the African American musical tradition. The
Amistad
Africans sang it well, “in perfect time,” with their “sweet voices.”
³⁶

If the singing of a Christian hymn brought forth universal approbation from the audience, the singing of African songs earned a mixed reaction. Led by Sessi, who sang in a “high pitch,” the others joined in as a chorus, modulating their voices “from loud to soft expression” and from “rapid to slow movement,” growing quiet at the end of one verse, then bursting forth in sound with the next. It was done “in wild and peculiar measure,” said one listener. “It was wild and irregular, but not unpleasant,” added another. Booth had advised Tappan not to list the native song on the program. In the actual performance he translated the first verse of the African song, an appeal to a deity, as “Help me today, and I will serve you to-morrow.” This seemed to illustrate Kinna’s claim that the Mende acknowledge a “Great Spirit,” but they do not worship him. A second song was “an African welcome to newly arrived guests.” It asked, in a soft, friendly, and melodious way, “Will you stay? Will you stay?” The chorus answered, “I love you, and will stay with you.”
³⁷

The next part of the program featured the eighteen-year-old Kinna, an excellent student. The feminist abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, who attended the final meeting at the Broadway Tabernacle, thought Kinna “the most intelligent and interesting” of the entire group. He sometimes explained how education worked among his comrades, but more commonly he concentrated on the history of the “Mendi People” as he had done in the abolitionist meeting—“their condition in their own country, their being kidnapped, the sufferings of the middle passage, their stay at Havana, the transactions on board the Amistad, &c.” This was a prelude to the event’s dramatic climax.
³⁸

Cinqué was the “great man of the evening.” When his comrades
whispered to him, “he replied with a dignified bend of the head, not even turning his eyes.” When he rose to speak, the crowd greeted him with stormy applause. He was the undoubted leader of the
Amistad
Africans, the symbol of their cause. He had played the leading role in the revolt, and he was the keeper of the common story about it, around which the
Amistad
Africans had built a new collective identity as the “Mendi People.” Like Kinna, he recounted “a history of their capture” and the “various stages of their history” up to the present, but, as Lewis Tappan noted, he “related more minutely and graphically the occurrences on board the Amistad.” The battle was the centerpiece of the warrior’s story, as it would have been back in Mende country. He always addressed the audience in his native tongue.
³⁹

Knowing that Cinqué would give an active and energetic performance at one of the churches in Philadelphia, the organizers “thought prudent to remove the pitchers and tumblers that were on a table before him, lest he should sweep them off.” He began his speech slowly, speaking with a “deep and powerful voice” and using “a restrained action of the right arm, which moved from his elbow downwards, and increased in frequency and rapidly as he progressed, till at length his whole frame was excited; he moved quickly from side to side—now addressing the audience, and now appealing to his countrymen, who would answer his appeals with a low guttural exclamation.” Child wrote that his eloquence was “perfectly electrifying.” He moved rapidly around the pulpit, “his eyes flashed, his tones were vehement, his motions graceful, and his gestures, though taught by nature, were in the highest style of dramatic art. He seemed to hold the hearts of his companions chained to the magic of his voice. During his narrative they ever and anon broke forth into spontaneous responses, with the greatest animation.” He recalled the fateful moonless night aboard the
Amistad
.
⁴⁰

Precisely what Cinqué said about the rebellion is unknown, for no one in the numerous audiences translated his words for publication. Perhaps no one but James Covey could have done so. Yet Lewis Tappan, who saw and heard him deliver his speech numerous times and knew the story he told, provided a detailed summary. Cinqué
described his origins in Mende country, how he was enslaved and sent to Fort Lomboko. He narrated the horrors of the Middle Passage aboard the
Teçora
and the dismal time he and his comrades spent in the barracoons of Havana. He recounted the harsh conditions of life on the
Amistad
, especially the struggle over water. He gave special emphasis to Celestino’s threat and the collective decision to rise up in revolt.
⁴¹

In one of the most dramatic moments of his speech, Cinqué reenacted how, with the help of Grabeau, “he freed himself from the irons on his wrists and ancles [
sic
], and from the chain on his neck. He then, with his own hands, wrested the irons from the limbs and necks of his countrymen.” Like Child and everyone else who saw and heard Cinqué’s account, Tappan was tremendously moved by the drama that unfolded before him: “It is not in my power to give an adequate description of Cinque when he showed how he did this and led his comrades to the conflict and achieved their freedom. In my younger years I saw [the great British actresses] Kemble and Siddons, and the representation of Othello, at Covent Garden, but no acting that I ever witnessed came near that to which I allude.” What Cinqué had learned in the
bari
and its palavers outshone the brightest lights of the English stage.
⁴²

Other reviews of Cinqué’s performance were equally glowing. One observer noted, no one “can hear him, and resist the conclusion that he is a master-spirit, and a great natural pastor.” Another added, “so far as we could judge, without understanding his language, we should think him a natural and powerful orator. Indeed we could not resist the impression, that no ordinary mind was addressing us, though we were unable to sympathize fully with the sentiments expressed.” Even the correspondent for the hostile
New York Morning Herald
was forced to admit that the speech represented “a high order of oratorical display.” When Cinqué expressed gratitude for the solidarity of the abolitionists, he “shewed himself able also, to touch with a master’s hand the finer chords of the human heart.” He moved many to tears.
⁴³

After Cinqué finished his stirring speech, the organizers seized the moment to appeal to the audience for additional donations. They
resumed, and concluded, the program with a singing of “Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” known as the “Missionary Hymn,” written in 1819 by Reginald Heber, who would soon become the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta. The song reflected the missionary desire to spread the Gospel to the “earth’s remotest nation,” to India, Ceylon, and Africa, where “the heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone” rather than to the Christian “Redeemer, King, Creator.” The
Amistad
Africans sang the hymn with “great propriety” and were joined in the final verse by the congregation. The song pointed the way to a Mende Mission in Africa. Once again “weeping eyes” looked on from the audience.
⁴⁴

Amid its many successes, the tour aroused controversy. Joseph Tracy, a Congregational minister from Vermont, complained that the tour events looked too much like a “show”—that is to say, a cheap popular entertainment unbecoming the lofty ideals of the Christian-based abolition movement. This may have been the issue in Springfield, Massachusetts, where an event was held in Town Hall rather than a local church as “as some of the Parish committee objected…fearing it would desecrate the place.” The
New York Morning Herald
had snorted early on: “if the performances had been diversified with a few summersets, in which the negroes are very skillful, the entertainments would have been more complete, and more agreeable to the audience.” A writer from Boston added, “if these men are carried about the country as
shows
, as they have been in one or two instances, they will be thoroughly spoiled for all missionary purposes, so that the necessity of being encumbered with them will be reason enough for not attempting a mission in Mendi.” Even abolitionists complained that after the first tour Kinna was “puffed up,” as “proud as Lucifer,” Cinqué was demanding and difficult, and three people refused to work.
⁴⁵

Someone at the
Emancipator
, probably editor Joshua Leavitt, a member of the Amistad Committee, insisted that these critics had given an incorrect impression of the meetings, which “were calculated to remove prejudice—awaken sympathy—excite prayer, and stimulate Christian enterprise.” He explained, “It was no part of the design to
show off
these Mendians for the purpose of indulging mere curiosity.
Those who attended the examinations or exhibitions did not have such an impression, and it is
carping
to insinuate to the contrary.” No matter what their intentions, the organizers continued to attract criticism.
⁴⁶

Around the same time, an unnamed “Native African” joined the fray and took it to a higher level. He published a scathing critique of the “Mendian Exhibitions” in the Hartford
Observer.
He maintained that the
Amistad
Africans “enter very reluctantly into the exercises of the meetings at which they are exhibited, and are evidently disgusted at the idea of being made puppet shows.” Again, the point of reference was the “low” entertainment of popular culture. It is not clear whether the writer had actually talked to the
Amistad
Africans about the shows, but he had, he claimed, heard Cinqué say, in Hartford, “that he did not like to be carried to and from New York.” The critic added that the rehearsal of the traumatic events aboard the
Amistad
“must have an unhappy effect upon the minds of these his brethren, &c.” His harshest criticism was that the
Amistad
Africans did not appreciate being carried about “as a giraffe of their native plains.” Clearly the writer thought the exhibitions were in poor taste. They had crossed the line from humanitarian event to a crass commercial effort to make money, degrading the
Amistad
Africans in the process.
⁴⁷