Return to Africa

The Supreme Court ruling upheld the Africans' freedom but revoked their tickets home, striking down the District Court's order to return them to Africa. The administration tartly refused any assistance, and so, elated at the affirmation of their freedom but supremely frustrated at still not being able to return home, the Africans relocated to Farmington, Connecticut. The Amistad Committee turned its efforts to raising funds to pay for the return voyage, organizing a series of appeals in local churches where the Africans told their stories and demonstrated the results of their education and Christian conversions.

Meanwhile, the Committee sent out inquiries to locate Mende country # Americans still did not know specifically where these people came from. Liberian President J.J. Roberts was no help. Finally, in October 1841, Lt. Governor Fergusson of Sierra Leone responded with information about Mendeland and an offer to receive the Africans. With the fund drive at $1,840, the Amistad Committee was able to charter the barque Gentleman to undertake the return voyage. By November, she was ready to sail.

The Gentleman carried more than just the African freemen. By this point, their story had become bound up with a larger American project; the Africans' abolitionist allies envisioned not just the abolition of U.S. slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, but also a missionary transformation of African society. Accordingly, several ministers and their families accompanied the Amistad Africans, including Mr. and Mrs. Raymond and Rev. James Steele (who were white) and Mr. Henry Wilson and Miss Tamor Clark (who were black). They planned to set up a "Mendi" mission near Cinque's town, establish themselves, and disseminate not only the gospel, but American habits of commerce, dress and morality.

The Gentleman arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone in mid-January 1842 # just about three years exactly after Sengbe had been kidnapped into slavery. The Africans' reception was festive and excited, and some of them found acquaintances in the crowd that greeted them. But they also found grim news: Sengbe learned that the interior had been ravaged by slaving wars, and that his village and most of his family had been wiped out. It must have been a heavy blow.

Once back on home ground, most of the Amistad Africans drifted away from the American missionaries, though ten adults and the four children remained. Reduced in numbers, the Mendi Mission was in no position to establish itself in the interior. After several years and protracted negotiation, they managed to secure permission from local African ruler Harry Tucker to set themselves up on Sherbro Island, on a grant of land near Komende.

Sengbe himself was one of the Africans who dispersed. Apparently he invested in a store of goods and took it into the Sherbro region to trade for produce to bring back to the Freetown market. After a few sporadic visits, he lost contact with the mission, disappearing into the African interior.

So thirty-five of the Amistad Africans managed to make their way back to Africa.

Thirty-five survivors, of the fifty-three originally loaded onto the Amistad. Thirty-five, of the hundreds off-loaded from the Teçora, most of them by now dead or toiling on sugar plantations in Cuba. Thirty-five, of the untold millions wrenched
from Africa and lost to the sea or forced into American slavery in the United States, the West Indies and Latin America.

KEY DOCUMENTS: The African Repository, the official organ of the American Colonization Society, includes a series of articles on the Mendi Mission from an "inside" point of view. To get a feel for the tone of the mission, see, for example, a notice of the Africans' impending departure, in which white abolitionists called for black missionaries to accompany the mission.

A letter from Cinque to the President of the Mendi Mission, written in October 1841, is also revealing about the forces that bound the Africans up with the mission: at this point, still very much dependent on the abolitionists to ferry him back home, Cinque predicts great things for the missionary project.

A Journal of Commerce report described the departure of the Gentleman.

A subsequent report from Africa came in several years after the mission arrived.