The Amistad Judge:

The Life and Trials of Andrew T. Judson,

1784-1853

Douglas L. Stein

On a January morning in 1840, Connecticut District Court Judge Andrew T. Judson was nearly finished reading his verdict. Speaking for almost an hour before a packed courtroom in New Haven, he had now reached the point everyone in that room was waiting to hear. The Judge spoke with conviction, each word measured for effect. “Cinquez and Grabeau shall not sigh for Africa in vain,” he announced, “Bloody as may be their hands, they shall yet embrace their kindred.”1

With this statement Judson freed the Amistad captives, surprised the abolitionists, shocked the president of the United States, angered the Southern slave states, and risked an international incident with Spain. His name was familiar to all as the presiding judge in this historic case, yet today he has slipped from the nation's memory. Although his verdict is remembered, the man has been forgotten.

During the recently renewed interest in the Amistad case, Mystic Seaport acquired a small collection of Judson's papers.2 They provide some interesting and heretofore unrecorded details in the life of this important figure.

Judson was born in Ashford, Connecticut, on 29 November 1784, the youngest son of Andrew and Elizabeth Judson. His father was a 1775 graduate of Dartmouth College and pastor of the Eastford, Connecticut, Congregational Church.

Young Andrew received a public education, and was chiefly tutored by his father, at least until the age of eighteen. Then he was recommended to one of his father's college acquaintances, Sylvester Gilbert, a lawyer of some distinction, with whom he commenced the study of law. Referring to his early education, Judson acknowledged that, “The limited means of my father would not allow anything more to be done for me than the benefits of the common school,” and he was aware that such limited preparation “would render my task arduous from the beginning, and perhaps limit in a great degree my prospects and hopes for the future.”3

He did, however, overcome all obstacles, and in January 1806 the 22-year-old Andrew T. Judson was admitted to the Windham County bar. He immediately moved to Vermont and opened a practice near Montpelier, but soon became “homesick and discontented.” “Giving up my prospects there,” he wrote, “I found my way back, and determined to try what I could do in my native County. Here were familiar faces and kind hearts, ready to help one onward, and so onward I went, as well as possible.” His profession “began to be more and more congenial, and its mysteries, one by one, seemed to dissipate.” By 1809 he was establishing a successful law practice in his new and permanent home of Canterbury, Connecticut.

In the spring of 1813 he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly, launching a political career that would continue for the next 40 years. As a freshman representative, Judson was cautious. “This was a new field, and with its duties and labors, I had no acquaintance.” During this session he took no part in the business of the House, “contented with being an observer.”

A year earlier, in 1812, Judson had applied for a commission as a militia officer, intending to “put my person and my life to the test” for his country in its war with Great Britain. His appointment was rejected, an event that “haunted me by night and by day,” and he attributed it to a political rebuke by the county administration, angry over his opposition to some of their programs. Even late in his career, Judson felt that he had never experienced a greater disappointment. “It may have been all for the better,” he wrote, “but I will never see it to be so.”

The incident caused him to reconsider his course in public service. He began to harmonize his ambition and his political instincts. “I had been educated and brought up in the Federal school, had seen but little of the world–and knew but little in regard to the great doctrine of either party. There had been neither time or opportunity for me to incorporate these subjects, and decide upon my own course, with such ample light as was needful.”

So in 1816 Judson, now 32 years old, left the Federalists and joined the Toleration Party. “Those with whom I had been associated could very well spare me, for the reason that my help was but feeble,” he said, “and they were sufficiently strong without me.” The Tolerationists represented a new reform coalition with the state's Republican Party, unified in great measure by their opposition to Congregationalism as Connecticut's established church. By 1817 the party had elected a governor and gained control of the General Assembly.

The next year they created a new State Constitution. Judson soldiered for his new party by writing political essays in various newspapers, helping to topple the Federalist establishment in Hartford. He was back in the assembly and played an active role in the session. “All my energies were engaged and devoted,” he recalled, believing that the new Constitution “was a praiseworthy object.”

In 1819 he was appointed state attorney for Windham County. The office was at that time an important one, he wrote, “and gave to its possessor much professional influence in the County.” He entered office “with full determination to become qualified, and then to discharge those duties with impartiality,” which he did for the next 14 years. He would later reflect that, “There is perhaps no point in my life to which I can turn with more property, and say this is the most important. During this unusually long period, my elections (every two years) had been repeated by both political parties. This was gratifying to my feelings and pride.”

During the 1820s Andrew Judson continued to advance his political career and develop business interests in Canterbury. He married Rebecca W. Warren in 1816, and in 1820 they built a new home on Canterbury Green. They entertained frequently, and while Rebecca may have been viewed as assuming “superiority over her neighbors,” Andrew's “own tact and courtesy made ample amends for his wife's reputed deficiencies.”4

We find Judson's name on the list of founding directors for the Windham County Bank, and for the Windham County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, both incorporated in the 1820s. Besides his law practice he was also the Canterbury town attorney, and justice of the peace.5 He was an early member of the temperance movement, and he joined the American Colonization Society, becoming active in promoting the organization's objectives. In fact, nobody believed more deeply in the principles of colonization than did Andrew Judson.

Like the abolitionists, colonizationists sought an end to slavery in America. However, their opposition to that abhorrent institution did not necessarily extend to embracing freed slaves as equal citizens of the U.S. Like most Americans of that time, they believed in the separation of the races. Instead of immediate freedom and an indeterminate future in the U.S. for slaves, colonizationists proposed a concept of gradual emancipation and ultimate relocation of free blacks to Africa. Founded by religious leaders in 1816, and supported by some prominent African Americans such as Paul Cuffe, their society and philosophy appealed to a large part of the population, especially in the North; people who wished to see slavery ended, but who feared the potential social trauma inherent in abolitionist doctrine. Churches throughout the country cooperated with the movement by raising donations. By 1822, the American Colonization Society had purchased land on the coast of West Africa and established a settlement for relocated blacks in what would become the colony of Liberia.

The principles of colonization were popular in Canterbury as well.6 This quiet town of farms and small mills located in northeastern Connecticut, was a prosperous community which boasted a reputation for public spirit and the high character of its leading men. A generation earlier, Moses Cleveland had led a group of Connecticut settlers to the “ Western Reserve” in Ohio and laid the foundation for the city of Cleveland. Canterbury was active in temperance reform and promoted knowledge of the arts, history, and public affairs through the American Lyceum Committee. Canterbury residents also sought to extend education among their children beyond the district schools, which were in session for only a few months each year.7 In fact, Judson became embroiled in a dispute with his neighbor over a question of educational opportunity.

The neighbor was Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress who in the summer of 1831 purchased a house across the green from Judson's home. Encouraged by several substantial citizens of the town, including Judson, she opened an “academy for young ladies.” Early the next year she admitted Sarah Harris, the 17-year-old daughter of a local farmer and respectable member of the town's black community.8

The Harrises had moved from Norwich, Connecticut, where Sarah received her education. She was well known to the other students, yet Crandall was soon asked by town leaders to dismiss her or they would remove their daughters from the school. She refused, and sometime later contacted influential abolitionists in Boston, seeking advice regarding her intention to “change white scholars for colored ones.” Encouraged by what she heard, she announced on 2 March 1833 her intention to reopen the school, this time to “young ladies and little misses of color.”9

Canterbury leaders now sought legal measures to get the school closed. In this respect none was more instrumental than Andrew T. Judson. By this time recognized as “the great man of the town,” Judson found himself the leader of a majority in his community who opposed the school.

At a town meeting on 9 March 1833, described by Reverend Samuel J. May, an abolitionist who was present, Judge Judson presided over a group of angry citizens concerned about the impact of Crandall's school on the community, and inflamed by abolitionist rhetoric and outside interference. In an emotional verbal exchange Judson admonished Reverend May regarding his intention to speak at this meeting in a town where he did not reside, and later reportedly told him the school would undoubtedly have an undesirable effect on real estate values.10

According to Reverend May, Judson continued, “The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country; and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. I am in favor of colonization.” Judson warned that abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison had “undertaken what you cannot accomplish. You are violating the Constitution of our Republic which settled forever the status of the black man in this land. They belong to Africa. Let them be sent there or kept as they are.”

May responded that there would never be fewer blacks in America than there were then, “and for a vast majority of them this is their native land as well as ours. I trust” he continued, “you will ere long come to see that we must accord to these men their rights or incur justly the loss of our own. Education is one of the fundamental rights of all children. Connecticut is the last place where this should be denied.” But an angry Judson told him that such a school would never be permitted in Canterbury or any other Connecticut town. When Reverend May asked just how he intended to prevent it, he answered “we will get a law passed by the present legislature, forbidding the institution of such a school.”

Judson was as good as his word. Within ten weeks, even though out of office, he was able to influence legislation that became known as the infamous “Black Law” prohibiting the establishment of any school for colored persons who were not inhabitants of the state, without local permission.11

A month later Prudence Crandall was arrested for violation of this new law. At the trial, Andrew Judson, one of three prosecuting attorneys, spoke to the purpose of the act, which according to him was simply to “regulate schools for colored persons coming from other governments.” He pointed out that it was always Connecticut's policy to regulate its schools, academies, and colleges, for “the seeds of morality and virtue are first sown in our schools, and if neglected, the seeds of vice and immorality would undermine all that we hold dear.”12

The constitutional implications raised by the Black Law were key issues. If the law was shown to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution, Prudence Crandall committed no crime. Here Judson told the jury that, “It shall be my humble effort to maintain that the law is constitutional,” and suggested that should this legislation be overturned, “the consequences will inevitably destroy the government itself, and this American nation–this nation of white men, may be taken from us and given to the African race!”13

Judson was certain this could not happen, since the alleged Constitutional violations involved the rights and privileges of American citizens. The term “citizens,” according to Andrew Judson, did not include persons of color. The U.S. Constitution–specifically Article 1, Section 2–implied a lesser status for black people, preventing them from ever achieving social equality with whites. He declared to the jury that, “The privilege of being a free man is a higher privilege than the right to be educated. Why should a person be educated who could not be free?” He closed his remarks by saying that he had no wish “to oppress anyone and heartily wished that all slaves might be emancipated immediately if this could be done without destroying our constitution and desolating our land.”14

Prudence Crandall was eventually found guilty. Her legal counsel, supported with abolitionist funds from Arthur Tappan in New York, immediately appealed. On 22 July 1834 the Court of Errors dismissed the verdict on a defect in the information prepared by the state attorney, thereby clearing Crandall from any crime and avoiding the larger constitutional and civil rights issues implicit in the entire affair.

Even though she was now free to run her school, local harassment continued. Finally, on the night of 9 September 1834, the house was assaulted by ruffians throwing clubs and iron bars through the windows as Prudence Crandall and her students huddled in the shelter of upstairs rooms. It was now obvious that she would not receive community support, and the safety of her students was increasingly at risk. She sold the house a few months later and the whole affair ended.

An abolitionist newspaper announced that “it was deemed advisable to abandon the school in that heathenish village and to let Andrew T. Judson and his associates with the whole State of Connecticut have all the infamy and guilt which attach to the suppression of so praiseworthy an institution.” Judson's name was forever linked with that of Prudence Crandall and her school. His political influence and stature in the community doubtless played a major role in getting the school closed. It is not surprising then that Judson recalled: “In 1833 my townsmen started me again for the House, and the election was successful. I did not fail to carry every measure desired by me, and am grateful to this day for the kindness with which I was treated during that session.”15

In the spring of 1835, Andrew Judson, now a Jacksonian Democrat, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The following year he resigned to accept a presidential appointment as United States District Judge for the State of Connecticut. Not much is known about Judson's career as District Court judge; at least not until the summer of 1839, when rumors of a mysterious schooner manned by black pirates began to spread through towns and cities along the coast.

On 26 August a vessel fitting that description was captured near Montauk Point, Long Island, by the U.S. brig Washington and brought the short distance to New London, Connecticut. Aboard were 39 black Africans and two Cuban slave owners.

District Court Judge Andrew Judson was notified of these events and arrived from New Haven for a hearing aboard the Washington. Through an interpreter he listened to accounts from Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who claimed the Africans as their property. From them, and from the schooner's papers, he learned that this Spanish-registered vessel, La Amistad had departed Havana, Cuba, in June with five white men, a slave cook and cabin boy, and 53 Africans. They were bound for Puerto Principe, 300 miles east on the north coast of Cuba.

On the third night at sea the Africans broke free of their chains and revolted. The captain and cook were killed, and the two crew members set adrift in a long boat. The slave owners–Ruiz and Montes–were spared because the blacks believed they could navigate the schooner back to Africa. For nearly eight weeks they sailed east by day, secretly changing course at night to the northwest, hoping to reach one of the U.S. slave states. By the time they reached Long Island, several of the Africans had died, the two Cubans were suffering from injuries received during the revolt, and the Amistad was barely seaworthy.16

The apparent leader of the Africans, Sengbe Pieh, whom the Cubans called Joseph Cinque, was also present at the hearing, but he spoke only his native Mende language so no one could communicate with him. Having heard the Cubans' testimony, Judson ordered the Africans to be held on charges of murder, mutiny, and piracy. They were sent to the jail in New Haven, to await a hearing.

In mid-September the Africans were taken to Hartford and appeared before the U.S. Circuit Court, presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thompson Smith and District Court Judge Andrew Judson. Thompson ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to try the Africans for murder and mutiny, since whatever happened aboard the Amistad occurred in international waters on a Spanish ship. No murder charges would be brought against the captives. However, their status had yet to be determined, and for this he sent the entire matter to the District Court. The name of Andrew T. Judson once again became prominent in the news.

The District Court convened immediately after the Circuit Court was adjourned. Judson declared that slavery did not exist in Connecticut, so there would be no salvage allowed for, or a value placed upon, the Amistad's Africans.17 In addition, since they were no longer considered criminals, he ordered them removed from jail to a more appropriate place of confinement. He also directed that they be adequately clothed and fed and be given medical attention. A trial date was set for November.

It was now Judge Judson's task to untangle the conflicting claims on the Amistad and its cargo, particularly determining whether or not the Africans should be considered part of that cargo. Over the next four months the primary issue became clear: were these Africans property, or were they people with rights?

Once again Judson faced his old antagonists from the Prudence Crandall affair. Immediately after the Amistad was seized, abolitionists began to organize a committee to defend the Africans. Lewis Tappan, a New York merchant and philanthropist, organized groups to oversee fundraising, education, religious instruction, and other aspects of the forthcoming struggle to free the “Amistads.” Roger S. Baldwin, a New Haven lawyer, was retained to head a defense team that included New York attorneys Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick.

The abolitionists did not relish the prospect of arguing their case before a judge who seven years earlier had inspired legislation restricting education for black children in Connecticut. To them Judson had earned a reputation for racial prejudice, even while professing to oppose slavery, and they were concerned that justice for the Africans aboard the Amistad would ultimately depend on his ruling.

The district court trial opened in November of 1839, but circumstances soon necessitated a postponement until January.18 By this time the case had become a issue of national interest. The Spanish government was demanding the return of the Africans so they could be tried for murder in Cuba. Most citizens in the Northern states, including many who often opposed the anti-slavery movement, supported the right of captives to return home.

Seeking crucial support for his forthcoming reelection, Democratic President Martin Van Buren wanted to get rid of the ship, its passengers, and the potential this case posed for alienating Southern Democrats. Andrew Jackson's democracy had left the nation's economy in recession and now his successor was getting the blame for the ongoing effects of the Panic of 1837. Van Buren would need the continued support of southern voters if he was to continue in office. Surely he could count on a fellow Democrat with Judson's political instincts to help rally the party to victory in 1840. In fact, so certain was the administration that Judson would rule in favor of the Spanish claim, a U.S. Navy schooner was waiting at New Haven to transport the Africans back to Havana.19

The Amistad captives, through their abolitionist counsel, were suing for their freedom. In addition the court would consider the salvage claims on the vessel by Lieutenant Gedney, commander of the U.S. brig Washington, for bringing the Amistad to New London, another by Montes and Ruiz who wanted their property back, and yet another salvage claim by Long Island mariners Peletiah Fordham and Henry Green, who first made contact with the captives on the beach near Montauk.

The Amistad trial reconvened in the statehouse on the New Haven Green on 7 January 1840. Through the efforts of the abolitionists and Yale College faculty and students, a translator had been found for the Africans in the person of James Covey, a seaman aboard a British man-of-war then in New York, a young Mende man who had been rescued from a slave ship. With Covey as their interpreter the captives could finally tell their story. On the second day Cinque gave his evidence with spectators listening with “breathless attention.”20

They had all been taken from their villages in Africa. Some were kidnapped, others captured in tribal wars and sold by other Africans to slavers. At the slave port of Lomboko they were chained and crammed aboard a Portuguese slave ship for the long voyage to Cuba, where they were landed illegally and taken to the Havana slave market. Here they were sold to Montes and Ruiz. Aboard the Amistad, the mulatto cook, evidently as a cruel joke, told Cinque that their owners planned to use them for food. This, said one of the captives, “made our hearts burn.” Later Cinque found a loose nail in the deck and used it to unlock his chains and secure their freedom.

Just how much Judson was affected by the cruelty and tragedy of Cinque's story is not clear; while it moved many who listened, it probably had little influence on the judge's verdict. By this time he had heard testimony from Dr. Richard Madden, an abolitionist who had been a British anti-slavery commissioner in Cuba.

Testifying in Judson's chambers several weeks earlier, Madden explained that in Cuba there were three classes of blacks: creoles, who had been born within the Spanish dominions; Spanish-speaking ladinos, who had been brought to Cuba before 1820, when a treaty between Spain and Great Britain ended the legal slave trade to Cuba; and African-speaking bozales, who had been brought from Africa since the end of the legal slave trade and had not yet learned Spanish. Since the Amistad captives could only speak their native Mende language, they were obviously bozales, imported into Cuba in violation of Spanish law and therefore not legal slaves.21

The Cubans, Madden said, circumvented the Spanish ban on the slave trade with fraudulent documentation, for which officials collected a bonus. In this case the Amistad blacks had been deliberately misclassified as “ladinos” to deceive any inspectors who might stop the vessel and check her manifest. He estimated that approximately 25,000 Africans had been illegally brought to Cuba and sold as slaves during the previous three years.22

The court heard six days of testimony from all interested parties. Finally on Monday morning, 13 January, Andrew Judson was ready to present his decision to a packed courtroom.23

For more than an hour he addressed the principal contentions in the case. First he confirmed the Connecticut District Court's jurisdiction by explaining the Amistad was captured in Long Island Sound. “For all purposes of Admiralty” he wrote, “Long Island Sound has ever been considered high seas. [It] does not belong to either Connecticut or New York. Having found the fact that the seizure of the Schooner Amistad was made upon the high seas, and not in a port or harbor, the seizor had good right and lawful authority to bring the vessel into the Port of New London, and when first brought here, the jurisdiction of this District Court attaches to the vessel and her cargo.”24 Thus, Lieutenant Gedney was not obligated to take his prize into a New York port.

Judson then turned his remarks to the salvage question, awarding Lieutenant Gedney one-third of the appraised value of the vessel and cargo (captives excepted) as salvage. The Amistad was “at the mercy of the winds and waves” he said and the blacks on board were certainly not capable of sailing her back to Africa. Consequently, Gedney's actions saved the schooner from certain destruction. He also awarded the two Spaniards, Montes and Ruiz, salvage at the same rate, but dismissed the claim by Fordham and Green, pointing out that they were never on the Amistad and did not render substantial assistance in the recovery of the vessel.

Judson now proceeded to his ruling on the blacks. “They were born free,” he said, “and ever since have been and still of right are free and not slaves.”25 Evidence showed that they had been kidnapped in violation of Spanish law and unlawfully sold as slaves in Cuba.

“The government of Spain demand of us under their treaty, a restoration of these Negroes, and we ask them for their title,” Judson said. “It is a very well settled principle, here and elsewhere, that the party demanding restoration must show his title. Aware of this rule, of law, the Spanish claimants send to me their evidence of title. And what is that document. A deed, a bill of sale, a transfer? No. It is a permit, a license, a pass signed by the Governor General of Cuba for Don Pedro Montez & Don Jose Ruiz to transport 54 Ladinos to Guanaja, and this is all! In point of fact, these are not Ladinos. They might be lawfully sold and carried to Guanaja. These blacks are Bozals and not Ladinos. Here then is the point–the pivot upon which this great controversy must turn! They were Bozals, and not slaves.”

Judson continued by saying that this distinction is established by Spanish law, “Why then should the law be doubted by me? I do not doubt it. I do expressly find it to be such. . . possession is only one indication of property, and that has been rebutted by the proof that these are Bozal blacks and cannot be made property by any machinery of sale or transportation. . . . It is the naked possession when they bring these blacks upon the decks of the Amistad, on which they rely. When the right is disputed this is not enough.”

According to Judson, the Cuban pass issued to the Amistad was intended “to serve the double purpose of proving property and title, and yet when we look on it again, and apply to it our judicial test, if the expression may be allowed, we find that instrument still is for Ladinos and not Bozals. It contains on its face, an untruth. The Governor General has not given a Pass for these blacks consequently these Bozals stand on the decks of the Amistad without any pass whatever.”

Montes and Ruiz had no legal claim before the court, and Judson believed “The purchaser must be vigilant in the investigation of the property he buys. If there had been vigilance in this case Ruiz and Montes might have saved all their property. . . and the Court might have been relieved from this heavy responsibility, which has been pressing it down for these four months.”

“When these facts are known by the Spanish Minister, he cannot but discover that the subjects of his Queen have acquired no rights in these men–they are not the property of Spain. That being removed, by his own law, there can no longer be cause of complaint. At all events, this cannot be expected at my hands, because the Supreme Court have always refused to surrender property, unless there was proof of title in the claimants.”26 In his final decree that morning, Judson ordered that all the Africans “be delivered to the president of the United States to be transported to Africa, there to be delivered to the agent, appointed to receive and conduct them home.”27

Judson's decision astounded the defense attorneys. He had accepted their argument that the captives were free, albeit with a stipulation that they be returned to Africa. The abolitionists had hoped for a ruling of unconditional freedom; that the blacks wished to return home, they believed, only masked the fact that they were not allowed to choose their fate. However, they did not wish to continue the case and risk a possible reversal by a higher court.28

The Van Buren administration, on the other hand, was not pleased. Judson's gavel had hardly fallen before the United States, on behalf of the Spanish government, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Scheduled for February 1841, the oral arguments lasted eight days, with defense attorney Roger S. Baldwin and the elderly former president John Quincy Adams eloquently defending the principles of Andrew Judson's ruling. On 9 March 1841 the court upheld his decision with but a single revision; that the captives be “dismissed from the custody of the court” rather than be delivered to the custody of the president.29

Most historians agree that the Amistad captives' journey through the American legal system was chaotic, but in the end they did receive a fair measure of justice. Judge Judson had navigated dangerous waters between slavery and freedom. He had allowed the abolitionists to claim a conditional victory, while presenting the Van Buren administration with an opportunity to be associated with the humanitarian effort of returning the captives to Africa. The New York Evening Post wrote that Judson's opinion had demonstrated the absence of conflict between America's laws and the “great principles of justice,” while another stated that the decision did honor to Judson by exhibiting “a judgment of mercy to the unfortunate and oppressed.”30

The Amistad case also provided a forum for Judson to communicate his colonizationist philosophy and to show the world how relocation of the Africans to their “native home” could, in his view, be part of a just and merciful decision. His ruling, like that in the Prudence Crandall case, avoided any redefinition of equality and civil rights in America. Remaining true to his interpretation of Constitutional law and his ambivalence about the status of blacks in America, Judson had ruled in the narrowest terms on matters of property. The principles of slavery as it then existed remained undisturbed, although the public exposure to the case did provide support for the ongoing efforts of the abolitionists. Only when the dispute over slavery divided the unity of the nation, twenty years after the Amistad case, were the status and rights of black Americans settled by war.31

Some people might see a change of sentiment from the Prudence Crandall incident to the Amistad case. One was a civil-rights issue while the other was reduced to a property case that involved slavery. However, Judson's actions in both instances were consistent with his worldview. While he recognized the justice of freedom over slavery, freedom for blacks could always be limited by the laws of the land. His ruling in the Amistad case stated specifically that these captives “were born free” and that they had been taken in violation of the laws of Spain. It remained purely a matter of interpreting the law.

Andrew Judson measured his success by the recognition and support he received through his work in public office. Politics was a profession that allowed him to hone his legal skills and advance his influence within the state. His enemies, of which there were many, saw him to be an opportunist who spoke for those who might do him the most good. Regarding his politics, a critical notice in the Norwich Courier stated that “Mr. Judson has been either in or a candidate for office ever since he was of age and joins any party that will gratify his ambition.”32

He was also unfettered in his approach to the law, sometimes constructing extreme interpretations of statutes to support his arguments. He was popular with his constituents, but disliked by others. He could be an articulate and often emotional adversary. He was certainly not a visionary, but rather an effective voice for many of the popular ideals, prejudices, and concerns of his era.33

In his personal life, he and Rebecca lived quietly and respectably in Canterbury, where according to Judson, “we have trudged along together, harmonizing in our views and mode of life, as well, and perhaps better than most others.”34 He would continue as District Court Judge until his death on 17 March 1853, but he was never associated again with any case as compelling as that of the schooner Amistad.

The Andrew T. Judson papers represents an important new resource in the archives of the Amistad affair. Most importantly it provides a look at Judson's life from his own perspective. We may now learn more about him, and use his own words as part of that process. This I believe, is crucial for any interpretation of his conduct in public office. Ultimately, I would hope these items may be just a small portion of Judson's personal papers which if they do still exist, might one day reach our collections here at Mystic Seaport, to be reunited and cataloged into a collection of even greater significance.

Chronology of Andrew Judson's Career in Public Office

1784, 29 November, Born in Ashford, Connecticut.

1806, Admitted to the Bar; moves to Vermont but soon returns.

1813, Elected to the Connecticut General Assembly, probably as a Federalist.

1816, Married Rebecca W. Warren, they had no children.

1818, Member of the Connecticut General Assembly, Toleration Party.

1819, Becomes State Attorney for Windham County, serves until 1834.

1822, Reelected to Connecticut House of Representatives, probably as a Republican, returned again 1825 to 1829.

1830, Elected to State Senate, now as a Jacksonian Democrat; out of office two years later.

1833, Returned to the Connecticut House of Representatives.

1835, Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for slavery in the District of Columbia.

1836, Appointed by President Andrew Jackson, U.S. District Judge for the State of Connecticut. Serves until 1853.

1839-40, Presides over Amistad case in District Court.

1853, 17 March, Death of Andrew T. Judson in Canterbury, Connecticut.

Notes

1. Quoted from Connecticut District Court records found in Paul Finkelman, Slavery In The Courtroom, An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases (Washington, D.C., 1985), 228. “Cinque” as the Spanish called him, was in his twenties and the acknowledged leader of the Amistad captives. Grabeau, another captive, also testified before Judson's court.

2. The Andrew T. Judson Papers were donated by Mr. Douglass Bjorn. We are pleased to acknowledge his interest in Mystic Seaport's programs and his support of our collections.

3. Andrew T. Judson, “A Short Sketch of My Own Life,” a manuscript autobiography, possibly unfinished, Andrew T. Judson Papers, Coll 247, box 1/9, G.W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport. All quoted material in the text prior to note 4 is taken from this particular source.

4. Ellen D. Learned, History of Windham County, Connecticut , 2 vols. (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1880), 2: 490. This is the inference that Rebecca Warren, being from Windham, may have been less active in Canterbury's social life than one might expect from the wife of so important a community leader as Andrew Judson.

5. This information is included in a Judson chronology compiled by Arthur J. Marinelli, museum assistant at the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury, n.d. My special thanks go to Curator Kaz Kozlowski, and to Arthur Marinelli, for their valued support and assistance with this article.

6. Marvis Olive Welch, Prudence Crandall, A Biography (Manchester, Connecticut, 1983), 14.

7. Ibid., 11-15.

8. Information from the Prudence Crandall Museum indicates that there were approximately 75 free blacks living in Canterbury at this time.

9. Welch, Prudence Crandall, 24-28.

10. Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of the Anti Slavery Conflict ( Boston, 1869), as quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 0-35. Quoted portions of the following conversation prior to note 11 are from this source.

11. Enacted on 24 May 1833, the Black Law stated specifically that “no person shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or literary institutions for the instruction or education of colored persons who are not inhabitants of this State, nor instruct or teach in any school, or other literary institution whatever in this State; nor harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or literary institution, any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this State, without the consent in writing, first obtained, or a majority of the civil authorities.” Andrew Judson was not in the legislature at this time, but his influence was such that he was able to expedite action on the bill from his colleagues in office. The Black Law would be repealed in 1838, the result of charges that it was unjust and unconstitutional.

12. As quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 228.

13. Ibid., 228.

14. Ibid., 81.

15. The Liberator, ca. September 1834; as quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 108; Judson, “A Short Sketch of My Own Life,” Coll. 247, box 1/9.

16. Judson, notes on the testimony of Montes and Ruiz on board the Washington, 29 August 1839, Coll. 247, box 1/4.

17. According to the federal census, there were 23 slaves in Connecticut in 1830. Slavery in Connecticut had been limited since 1774 by several acts that included gradual emancipation beginning in 1784, so any blacks still qualifying as slaves in 1839 would have been born before 1784. Nevertheless, slavery was not specifically prohibited by Connecticut State Law until 1848. See Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), appendix 3; Harold J. Bingham, History of Connecticut, Vol I (New York: Lewis Historical Publications, 1962), 520.

18. Judson, rough notes of the first day's testimony in Hartford, 19 November 1839, providing interesting details of the first contact with the Amistad captives by Fordham, Green and others on the beach near Montauk, Coll. 247, box 1/5.

19. Howard Jones, Mutiny On The Amistad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1997), is the most comprehensive recent book about the Amistad affair. The social, legal, and political implications which were so much a part of this incident, and which Andrew Judson had to consider, are thoroughly discussed. See also, Donald Dale Jackson, “Mutiny On the Amistad,” Smithsonian (December, 1997): 115-24, a concise, well-organized account of the Amistad incident.

20. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 104.

21. John W. Barber, A History of the Amistad Captives (New Haven, Connecticut, 1840), 55.

22. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 123.

23. Judson, rough drafts of final ruling, read at New Haven on 13 January 1840, Coll. 247, box 1/6, 1/7. Although incomplete, the drafts reveal how Judson prepared his decisions regarding the Amistad's location off Montauk Point and the ultimate freedom of the Africans.

24. Coll. 247, box 1/6.

25. Quoted in Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 130.

26. Judson, rough drafts of final ruling, Coll. 247, box 1/7. It might be said that the “Amistads” regained their freedom, for the most part, simply because of what Andrew Judson determined to be fraudulent paperwork by the Cuban authorities. The murdered captain's slave cabin boy Antonio–considered a legal slave under Spanish law–was to be returned to Cuba.

27. As quoted in The African Slave Trade, 228.

28. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 134-35.

29. This meant that the Africans' passage home must come from private funds. Their fundraising included personal appearances by several of the Africans at anti-slavery meetings throughout the northeast. Those who were learning English read from the Bible, and Cinque would describe the sufferings they had endured as pawns of the slave trade, telling again the riveting story of their takeover of the Amistad. Some considered these lectures demeaning, contending that the Africans were being made to perform like sideshow attractions. The reader is referred to Dianna R. McCain, Free Men: The Amistad Revolt and the American Anti-Slavery Movement, (Middletown: Connecticut Humanities Council, 1990).

30.The African Slave Trade, 229; quoted in Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 134.

31. However, it would be the abolitionists who were largely responsible for raising funds to transport the “Amistads” home, not the colonizationists. The 35 surviving captives returned to Africa in January 1842. “The definition of citizenship during the antebellum period was unclear. The problem was that no one had clarified how one secured citizenship, nor had anyone defined a citizen,” Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 98. This is what was avoided in both the Prudence Crandall and Amistad cases. The nation continued to struggle with the issue until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865).

32. As quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 120. After Judson left the Federalist Party in 1816, he traveled a road of change and reform, from Tolerationists to Republican to Jacksonian Democrat. In matters of law his deliberations were often made with due consideration to the practical implications his verdict might produce. This was certainly the case with the Amistad captives, as he sought, I believe, to reach a just ruling that would please the greatest number of people, while remaining consistent with his own principles and enhancing his professional image.

33. In his Amistad ruling Judson stretched a law of 1819 “nearly beyond recognition” as precedent for returning the blacks to Africa. He pointed out that this law made it illegal “to import or bring in any manner whatsoever, into the U.S. from any foreign country any Negro, with intent to hold him as a slave.” According to Judson, the “broad language” thus made it unlawful to bring a Negro into this country to “hold to service, any where, and in any place.” Of course Montes and Ruiz never intended to import their slaves to America, and furthermore when the Amistad arrived off Long Island it was in command of the blacks. See Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 132. Andrew Judson's Connecticut tended to view slavery as a condition characteristic of another region of the country, whose principles did not have to be directly applied to the realities in the state. Overall it held a moderate course on the issue, endorsing colonization as the method to which the Negro was to be ultimately freed. There was a general antipathy for extremists. Bingham, History of Connecticut, 520-25.

With this statement Judson freed the Amistad captives, surprised the abolitionists, shocked the president of the United States, angered the Southern slave states, and risked an international incident with Spain. His name was familiar to all as the presiding judge in this historic case, yet today he has slipped from the nation's memory. Although his verdict is remembered, the man has been forgotten.

During the recently renewed interest in the Amistad case, Mystic Seaport acquired a small collection of Judson's papers.2 They provide some interesting and heretofore unrecorded details in the life of this important figure.

Judson was born in Ashford, Connecticut, on 29 November 1784, the youngest son of Andrew and Elizabeth Judson. His father was a 1775 graduate of Dartmouth College and pastor of the Eastford, Connecticut, Congregational Church.

Young Andrew received a public education, and was chiefly tutored by his father, at least until the age of eighteen. Then he was recommended to one of his father's college acquaintances, Sylvester Gilbert, a lawyer of some distinction, with whom he commenced the study of law. Referring to his early education, Judson acknowledged that, “The limited means of my father would not allow anything more to be done for me than the benefits of the common school,” and he was aware that such limited preparation “would render my task arduous from the beginning, and perhaps limit in a great degree my prospects and hopes for the future.”3

He did, however, overcome all obstacles, and in January 1806 the 22-year-old Andrew T. Judson was admitted to the Windham County bar. He immediately moved to Vermont and opened a practice near Montpelier, but soon became “homesick and discontented.” “Giving up my prospects there,” he wrote, “I found my way back, and determined to try what I could do in my native County. Here were familiar faces and kind hearts, ready to help one onward, and so onward I went, as well as possible.” His profession “began to be more and more congenial, and its mysteries, one by one, seemed to dissipate.” By 1809 he was establishing a successful law practice in his new and permanent home of Canterbury, Connecticut.

In the spring of 1813 he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly, launching a political career that would continue for the next 40 years. As a freshman representative, Judson was cautious. “This was a new field, and with its duties and labors, I had no acquaintance.” During this session he took no part in the business of the House, “contented with being an observer.”

A year earlier, in 1812, Judson had applied for a commission as a militia officer, intending to “put my person and my life to the test” for his country in its war with Great Britain. His appointment was rejected, an event that “haunted me by night and by day,” and he attributed it to a political rebuke by the county administration, angry over his opposition to some of their programs. Even late in his career, Judson felt that he had never experienced a greater disappointment. “It may have been all for the better,” he wrote, “but I will never see it to be so.”

The incident caused him to reconsider his course in public service. He began to harmonize his ambition and his political instincts. “I had been educated and brought up in the Federal school, had seen but little of the world–and knew but little in regard to the great doctrine of either party. There had been neither time or opportunity for me to incorporate these subjects, and decide upon my own course, with such ample light as was needful.”

So in 1816 Judson, now 32 years old, left the Federalists and joined the Toleration Party. “Those with whom I had been associated could very well spare me, for the reason that my help was but feeble,” he said, “and they were sufficiently strong without me.” The Tolerationists represented a new reform coalition with the state's Republican Party, unified in great measure by their opposition to Congregationalism as Connecticut's established church. By 1817 the party had elected a governor and gained control of the General Assembly.

The next year they created a new State Constitution. Judson soldiered for his new party by writing political essays in various newspapers, helping to topple the Federalist establishment in Hartford. He was back in the assembly and played an active role in the session. “All my energies were engaged and devoted,” he recalled, believing that the new Constitution “was a praiseworthy object.”

In 1819 he was appointed state attorney for Windham County. The office was at that time an important one, he wrote, “and gave to its possessor much professional influence in the County.” He entered office “with full determination to become qualified, and then to discharge those duties with impartiality,” which he did for the next 14 years. He would later reflect that, “There is perhaps no point in my life to which I can turn with more property, and say this is the most important. During this unusually long period, my elections (every two years) had been repeated by both political parties. This was gratifying to my feelings and pride.”

During the 1820s Andrew Judson continued to advance his political career and develop business interests in Canterbury. He married Rebecca W. Warren in 1816, and in 1820 they built a new home on Canterbury Green. They entertained frequently, and while Rebecca may have been viewed as assuming “superiority over her neighbors,” Andrew's “own tact and courtesy made ample amends for his wife's reputed deficiencies.”4

We find Judson's name on the list of founding directors for the Windham County Bank, and for the Windham County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, both incorporated in the 1820s. Besides his law practice he was also the Canterbury town attorney, and justice of the peace.5 He was an early member of the temperance movement, and he joined the American Colonization Society, becoming active in promoting the organization's objectives. In fact, nobody believed more deeply in the principles of colonization than did Andrew Judson.

Like the abolitionists, colonizationists sought an end to slavery in America. However, their opposition to that abhorrent institution did not necessarily extend to embracing freed slaves as equal citizens of the U.S. Like most Americans of that time, they believed in the separation of the races. Instead of immediate freedom and an indeterminate future in the U.S. for slaves, colonizationists proposed a concept of gradual emancipation and ultimate relocation of free blacks to Africa. Founded by religious leaders in 1816, and supported by some prominent African Americans such as Paul Cuffe, their society and philosophy appealed to a large part of the population, especially in the North; people who wished to see slavery ended, but who feared the potential social trauma inherent in abolitionist doctrine. Churches throughout the country cooperated with the movement by raising donations. By 1822, the American Colonization Society had purchased land on the coast of West Africa and established a settlement for relocated blacks in what would become the colony of Liberia.

The principles of colonization were popular in Canterbury as well.6 This quiet town of farms and small mills located in northeastern Connecticut, was a prosperous community which boasted a reputation for public spirit and the high character of its leading men. A generation earlier, Moses Cleveland had led a group of Connecticut settlers to the “ Western Reserve” in Ohio and laid the foundation for the city of Cleveland. Canterbury was active in temperance reform and promoted knowledge of the arts, history, and public affairs through the American Lyceum Committee. Canterbury residents also sought to extend education among their children beyond the district schools, which were in session for only a few months each year.7 In fact, Judson became embroiled in a dispute with his neighbor over a question of educational opportunity.

The neighbor was Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress who in the summer of 1831 purchased a house across the green from Judson's home. Encouraged by several substantial citizens of the town, including Judson, she opened an “academy for young ladies.” Early the next year she admitted Sarah Harris, the 17-year-old daughter of a local farmer and respectable member of the town's black community.8

The Harrises had moved from Norwich, Connecticut, where Sarah received her education. She was well known to the other students, yet Crandall was soon asked by town leaders to dismiss her or they would remove their daughters from the school. She refused, and sometime later contacted influential abolitionists in Boston, seeking advice regarding her intention to “change white scholars for colored ones.” Encouraged by what she heard, she announced on 2 March 1833 her intention to reopen the school, this time to “young ladies and little misses of color.”9

Canterbury leaders now sought legal measures to get the school closed. In this respect none was more instrumental than Andrew T. Judson. By this time recognized as “the great man of the town,” Judson found himself the leader of a majority in his community who opposed the school.

At a town meeting on 9 March 1833, described by Reverend Samuel J. May, an abolitionist who was present, Judge Judson presided over a group of angry citizens concerned about the impact of Crandall's school on the community, and inflamed by abolitionist rhetoric and outside interference. In an emotional verbal exchange Judson admonished Reverend May regarding his intention to speak at this meeting in a town where he did not reside, and later reportedly told him the school would undoubtedly have an undesirable effect on real estate values.10

According to Reverend May, Judson continued, “The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country; and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. I am in favor of colonization.” Judson warned that abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison had “undertaken what you cannot accomplish. You are violating the Constitution of our Republic which settled forever the status of the black man in this land. They belong to Africa. Let them be sent there or kept as they are.”

May responded that there would never be fewer blacks in America than there were then, “and for a vast majority of them this is their native land as well as ours. I trust” he continued, “you will ere long come to see that we must accord to these men their rights or incur justly the loss of our own. Education is one of the fundamental rights of all children. Connecticut is the last place where this should be denied.” But an angry Judson told him that such a school would never be permitted in Canterbury or any other Connecticut town. When Reverend May asked just how he intended to prevent it, he answered “we will get a law passed by the present legislature, forbidding the institution of such a school.”

Judson was as good as his word. Within ten weeks, even though out of office, he was able to influence legislation that became known as the infamous “Black Law” prohibiting the establishment of any school for colored persons who were not inhabitants of the state, without local permission.11

A month later Prudence Crandall was arrested for violation of this new law. At the trial, Andrew Judson, one of three prosecuting attorneys, spoke to the purpose of the act, which according to him was simply to “regulate schools for colored persons coming from other governments.” He pointed out that it was always Connecticut's policy to regulate its schools, academies, and colleges, for “the seeds of morality and virtue are first sown in our schools, and if neglected, the seeds of vice and immorality would undermine all that we hold dear.”12

The constitutional implications raised by the Black Law were key issues. If the law was shown to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution, Prudence Crandall committed no crime. Here Judson told the jury that, “It shall be my humble effort to maintain that the law is constitutional,” and suggested that should this legislation be overturned, “the consequences will inevitably destroy the government itself, and this American nation–this nation of white men, may be taken from us and given to the African race!”13

Judson was certain this could not happen, since the alleged Constitutional violations involved the rights and privileges of American citizens. The term “citizens,” according to Andrew Judson, did not include persons of color. The U.S. Constitution–specifically Article 1, Section 2–implied a lesser status for black people, preventing them from ever achieving social equality with whites. He declared to the jury that, “The privilege of being a free man is a higher privilege than the right to be educated. Why should a person be educated who could not be free?” He closed his remarks by saying that he had no wish “to oppress anyone and heartily wished that all slaves might be emancipated immediately if this could be done without destroying our constitution and desolating our land.”14

Prudence Crandall was eventually found guilty. Her legal counsel, supported with abolitionist funds from Arthur Tappan in New York, immediately appealed. On 22 July 1834 the Court of Errors dismissed the verdict on a defect in the information prepared by the state attorney, thereby clearing Crandall from any crime and avoiding the larger constitutional and civil rights issues implicit in the entire affair.

Even though she was now free to run her school, local harassment continued. Finally, on the night of 9 September 1834, the house was assaulted by ruffians throwing clubs and iron bars through the windows as Prudence Crandall and her students huddled in the shelter of upstairs rooms. It was now obvious that she would not receive community support, and the safety of her students was increasingly at risk. She sold the house a few months later and the whole affair ended.

An abolitionist newspaper announced that “it was deemed advisable to abandon the school in that heathenish village and to let Andrew T. Judson and his associates with the whole State of Connecticut have all the infamy and guilt which attach to the suppression of so praiseworthy an institution.” Judson's name was forever linked with that of Prudence Crandall and her school. His political influence and stature in the community doubtless played a major role in getting the school closed. It is not surprising then that Judson recalled: “In 1833 my townsmen started me again for the House, and the election was successful. I did not fail to carry every measure desired by me, and am grateful to this day for the kindness with which I was treated during that session.”15

In the spring of 1835, Andrew Judson, now a Jacksonian Democrat, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The following year he resigned to accept a presidential appointment as United States District Judge for the State of Connecticut. Not much is known about Judson's career as District Court judge; at least not until the summer of 1839, when rumors of a mysterious schooner manned by black pirates began to spread through towns and cities along the coast.

On 26 August a vessel fitting that description was captured near Montauk Point, Long Island, by the U.S. brig Washington and brought the short distance to New London, Connecticut. Aboard were 39 black Africans and two Cuban slave owners.

District Court Judge Andrew Judson was notified of these events and arrived from New Haven for a hearing aboard the Washington. Through an interpreter he listened to accounts from Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who claimed the Africans as their property. From them, and from the schooner's papers, he learned that this Spanish-registered vessel, La Amistad had departed Havana, Cuba, in June with five white men, a slave cook and cabin boy, and 53 Africans. They were bound for Puerto Principe, 300 miles east on the north coast of Cuba.

On the third night at sea the Africans broke free of their chains and revolted. The captain and cook were killed, and the two crew members set adrift in a long boat. The slave owners–Ruiz and Montes–were spared because the blacks believed they could navigate the schooner back to Africa. For nearly eight weeks they sailed east by day, secretly changing course at night to the northwest, hoping to reach one of the U.S. slave states. By the time they reached Long Island, several of the Africans had died, the two Cubans were suffering from injuries received during the revolt, and the Amistad was barely seaworthy.16

The apparent leader of the Africans, Sengbe Pieh, whom the Cubans called Joseph Cinque, was also present at the hearing, but he spoke only his native Mende language so no one could communicate with him. Having heard the Cubans' testimony, Judson ordered the Africans to be held on charges of murder, mutiny, and piracy. They were sent to the jail in New Haven, to await a hearing.

In mid-September the Africans were taken to Hartford and appeared before the U.S. Circuit Court, presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thompson Smith and District Court Judge Andrew Judson. Thompson ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to try the Africans for murder and mutiny, since whatever happened aboard the Amistad occurred in international waters on a Spanish ship. No murder charges would be brought against the captives. However, their status had yet to be determined, and for this he sent the entire matter to the District Court. The name of Andrew T. Judson once again became prominent in the news.

The District Court convened immediately after the Circuit Court was adjourned. Judson declared that slavery did not exist in Connecticut, so there would be no salvage allowed for, or a value placed upon, the Amistad's Africans.17 In addition, since they were no longer considered criminals, he ordered them removed from jail to a more appropriate place of confinement. He also directed that they be adequately clothed and fed and be given medical attention. A trial date was set for November.

It was now Judge Judson's task to untangle the conflicting claims on the Amistad and its cargo, particularly determining whether or not the Africans should be considered part of that cargo. Over the next four months the primary issue became clear: were these Africans property, or were they people with rights?

Once again Judson faced his old antagonists from the Prudence Crandall affair. Immediately after the Amistad was seized, abolitionists began to organize a committee to defend the Africans. Lewis Tappan, a New York merchant and philanthropist, organized groups to oversee fundraising, education, religious instruction, and other aspects of the forthcoming struggle to free the “Amistads.” Roger S. Baldwin, a New Haven lawyer, was retained to head a defense team that included New York attorneys Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick.

The abolitionists did not relish the prospect of arguing their case before a judge who seven years earlier had inspired legislation restricting education for black children in Connecticut. To them Judson had earned a reputation for racial prejudice, even while professing to oppose slavery, and they were concerned that justice for the Africans aboard the Amistad would ultimately depend on his ruling.

The district court trial opened in November of 1839, but circumstances soon necessitated a postponement until January.18 By this time the case had become a issue of national interest. The Spanish government was demanding the return of the Africans so they could be tried for murder in Cuba. Most citizens in the Northern states, including many who often opposed the anti-slavery movement, supported the right of captives to return home.

Seeking crucial support for his forthcoming reelection, Democratic President Martin Van Buren wanted to get rid of the ship, its passengers, and the potential this case posed for alienating Southern Democrats. Andrew Jackson's democracy had left the nation's economy in recession and now his successor was getting the blame for the ongoing effects of the Panic of 1837. Van Buren would need the continued support of southern voters if he was to continue in office. Surely he could count on a fellow Democrat with Judson's political instincts to help rally the party to victory in 1840. In fact, so certain was the administration that Judson would rule in favor of the Spanish claim, a U.S. Navy schooner was waiting at New Haven to transport the Africans back to Havana.19

The Amistad captives, through their abolitionist counsel, were suing for their freedom. In addition the court would consider the salvage claims on the vessel by Lieutenant Gedney, commander of the U.S. brig Washington, for bringing the Amistad to New London, another by Montes and Ruiz who wanted their property back, and yet another salvage claim by Long Island mariners Peletiah Fordham and Henry Green, who first made contact with the captives on the beach near Montauk.

The Amistad trial reconvened in the statehouse on the New Haven Green on 7 January 1840. Through the efforts of the abolitionists and Yale College faculty and students, a translator had been found for the Africans in the person of James Covey, a seaman aboard a British man-of-war then in New York, a young Mende man who had been rescued from a slave ship. With Covey as their interpreter the captives could finally tell their story. On the second day Cinque gave his evidence with spectators listening with “breathless attention.”20

They had all been taken from their villages in Africa. Some were kidnapped, others captured in tribal wars and sold by other Africans to slavers. At the slave port of Lomboko they were chained and crammed aboard a Portuguese slave ship for the long voyage to Cuba, where they were landed illegally and taken to the Havana slave market. Here they were sold to Montes and Ruiz. Aboard the Amistad, the mulatto cook, evidently as a cruel joke, told Cinque that their owners planned to use them for food. This, said one of the captives, “made our hearts burn.” Later Cinque found a loose nail in the deck and used it to unlock his chains and secure their freedom.

Just how much Judson was affected by the cruelty and tragedy of Cinque's story is not clear; while it moved many who listened, it probably had little influence on the judge's verdict. By this time he had heard testimony from Dr. Richard Madden, an abolitionist who had been a British anti-slavery commissioner in Cuba.

Testifying in Judson's chambers several weeks earlier, Madden explained that in Cuba there were three classes of blacks: creoles, who had been born within the Spanish dominions; Spanish-speaking ladinos, who had been brought to Cuba before 1820, when a treaty between Spain and Great Britain ended the legal slave trade to Cuba; and African-speaking bozales, who had been brought from Africa since the end of the legal slave trade and had not yet learned Spanish. Since the Amistad captives could only speak their native Mende language, they were obviously bozales, imported into Cuba in violation of Spanish law and therefore not legal slaves.21

The Cubans, Madden said, circumvented the Spanish ban on the slave trade with fraudulent documentation, for which officials collected a bonus. In this case the Amistad blacks had been deliberately misclassified as “ladinos” to deceive any inspectors who might stop the vessel and check her manifest. He estimated that approximately 25,000 Africans had been illegally brought to Cuba and sold as slaves during the previous three years.22

The court heard six days of testimony from all interested parties. Finally on Monday morning, 13 January, Andrew Judson was ready to present his decision to a packed courtroom.23

For more than an hour he addressed the principal contentions in the case. First he confirmed the Connecticut District Court's jurisdiction by explaining the Amistad was captured in Long Island Sound. “For all purposes of Admiralty” he wrote, “Long Island Sound has ever been considered high seas. [It] does not belong to either Connecticut or New York. Having found the fact that the seizure of the Schooner Amistad was made upon the high seas, and not in a port or harbor, the seizor had good right and lawful authority to bring the vessel into the Port of New London, and when first brought here, the jurisdiction of this District Court attaches to the vessel and her cargo.”24 Thus, Lieutenant Gedney was not obligated to take his prize into a New York port.

Judson then turned his remarks to the salvage question, awarding Lieutenant Gedney one-third of the appraised value of the vessel and cargo (captives excepted) as salvage. The Amistad was “at the mercy of the winds and waves” he said and the blacks on board were certainly not capable of sailing her back to Africa. Consequently, Gedney's actions saved the schooner from certain destruction. He also awarded the two Spaniards, Montes and Ruiz, salvage at the same rate, but dismissed the claim by Fordham and Green, pointing out that they were never on the Amistad and did not render substantial assistance in the recovery of the vessel.

Judson now proceeded to his ruling on the blacks. “They were born free,” he said, “and ever since have been and still of right are free and not slaves.”25 Evidence showed that they had been kidnapped in violation of Spanish law and unlawfully sold as slaves in Cuba.

“The government of Spain demand of us under their treaty, a restoration of these Negroes, and we ask them for their title,” Judson said. “It is a very well settled principle, here and elsewhere, that the party demanding restoration must show his title. Aware of this rule, of law, the Spanish claimants send to me their evidence of title. And what is that document. A deed, a bill of sale, a transfer? No. It is a permit, a license, a pass signed by the Governor General of Cuba for Don Pedro Montez & Don Jose Ruiz to transport 54 Ladinos to Guanaja, and this is all! In point of fact, these are not Ladinos. They might be lawfully sold and carried to Guanaja. These blacks are Bozals and not Ladinos. Here then is the point–the pivot upon which this great controversy must turn! They were Bozals, and not slaves.”

Judson continued by saying that this distinction is established by Spanish law, “Why then should the law be doubted by me? I do not doubt it. I do expressly find it to be such. . . possession is only one indication of property, and that has been rebutted by the proof that these are Bozal blacks and cannot be made property by any machinery of sale or transportation. . . . It is the naked possession when they bring these blacks upon the decks of the Amistad, on which they rely. When the right is disputed this is not enough.”

According to Judson, the Cuban pass issued to the Amistad was intended “to serve the double purpose of proving property and title, and yet when we look on it again, and apply to it our judicial test, if the expression may be allowed, we find that instrument still is for Ladinos and not Bozals. It contains on its face, an untruth. The Governor General has not given a Pass for these blacks consequently these Bozals stand on the decks of the Amistad without any pass whatever.”

Montes and Ruiz had no legal claim before the court, and Judson believed “The purchaser must be vigilant in the investigation of the property he buys. If there had been vigilance in this case Ruiz and Montes might have saved all their property. . . and the Court might have been relieved from this heavy responsibility, which has been pressing it down for these four months.”

“When these facts are known by the Spanish Minister, he cannot but discover that the subjects of his Queen have acquired no rights in these men–they are not the property of Spain. That being removed, by his own law, there can no longer be cause of complaint. At all events, this cannot be expected at my hands, because the Supreme Court have always refused to surrender property, unless there was proof of title in the claimants.”26 In his final decree that morning, Judson ordered that all the Africans “be delivered to the president of the United States to be transported to Africa, there to be delivered to the agent, appointed to receive and conduct them home.”27

Judson's decision astounded the defense attorneys. He had accepted their argument that the captives were free, albeit with a stipulation that they be returned to Africa. The abolitionists had hoped for a ruling of unconditional freedom; that the blacks wished to return home, they believed, only masked the fact that they were not allowed to choose their fate. However, they did not wish to continue the case and risk a possible reversal by a higher court.28

The Van Buren administration, on the other hand, was not pleased. Judson's gavel had hardly fallen before the United States, on behalf of the Spanish government, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Scheduled for February 1841, the oral arguments lasted eight days, with defense attorney Roger S. Baldwin and the elderly former president John Quincy Adams eloquently defending the principles of Andrew Judson's ruling. On 9 March 1841 the court upheld his decision with but a single revision; that the captives be “dismissed from the custody of the court” rather than be delivered to the custody of the president.29

Most historians agree that the Amistad captives' journey through the American legal system was chaotic, but in the end they did receive a fair measure of justice. Judge Judson had navigated dangerous waters between slavery and freedom. He had allowed the abolitionists to claim a conditional victory, while presenting the Van Buren administration with an opportunity to be associated with the humanitarian effort of returning the captives to Africa. The New York Evening Post wrote that Judson's opinion had demonstrated the absence of conflict between America's laws and the “great principles of justice,” while another stated that the decision did honor to Judson by exhibiting “a judgment of mercy to the unfortunate and oppressed.”30

The Amistad case also provided a forum for Judson to communicate his colonizationist philosophy and to show the world how relocation of the Africans to their “native home” could, in his view, be part of a just and merciful decision. His ruling, like that in the Prudence Crandall case, avoided any redefinition of equality and civil rights in America. Remaining true to his interpretation of Constitutional law and his ambivalence about the status of blacks in America, Judson had ruled in the narrowest terms on matters of property. The principles of slavery as it then existed remained undisturbed, although the public exposure to the case did provide support for the ongoing efforts of the abolitionists. Only when the dispute over slavery divided the unity of the nation, twenty years after the Amistad case, were the status and rights of black Americans settled by war.31

Some people might see a change of sentiment from the Prudence Crandall incident to the Amistad case. One was a civil-rights issue while the other was reduced to a property case that involved slavery. However, Judson's actions in both instances were consistent with his worldview. While he recognized the justice of freedom over slavery, freedom for blacks could always be limited by the laws of the land. His ruling in the Amistad case stated specifically that these captives “were born free” and that they had been taken in violation of the laws of Spain. It remained purely a matter of interpreting the law.

Andrew Judson measured his success by the recognition and support he received through his work in public office. Politics was a profession that allowed him to hone his legal skills and advance his influence within the state. His enemies, of which there were many, saw him to be an opportunist who spoke for those who might do him the most good. Regarding his politics, a critical notice in the Norwich Courier stated that “Mr. Judson has been either in or a candidate for office ever since he was of age and joins any party that will gratify his ambition.”32

He was also unfettered in his approach to the law, sometimes constructing extreme interpretations of statutes to support his arguments. He was popular with his constituents, but disliked by others. He could be an articulate and often emotional adversary. He was certainly not a visionary, but rather an effective voice for many of the popular ideals, prejudices, and concerns of his era.33

In his personal life, he and Rebecca lived quietly and respectably in Canterbury, where according to Judson, “we have trudged along together, harmonizing in our views and mode of life, as well, and perhaps better than most others.”34 He would continue as District Court Judge until his death on 17 March 1853, but he was never associated again with any case as compelling as that of the schooner Amistad.

The Andrew T. Judson papers represents an important new resource in the archives of the Amistad affair. Most importantly it provides a look at Judson's life from his own perspective. We may now learn more about him, and use his own words as part of that process. This I believe, is crucial for any interpretation of his conduct in public office. Ultimately, I would hope these items may be just a small portion of Judson's personal papers which if they do still exist, might one day reach our collections here at Mystic Seaport, to be reunited and cataloged into a collection of even greater significance.

Chronology of Andrew Judson's Career in Public Office

1784, 29 November, Born in Ashford, Connecticut.

1806, Admitted to the Bar; moves to Vermont but soon returns.

1813, Elected to the Connecticut General Assembly, probably as a Federalist.

1816, Married Rebecca W. Warren, they had no children.

1818, Member of the Connecticut General Assembly, Toleration Party.

1819, Becomes State Attorney for Windham County, serves until 1834.

1822, Reelected to Connecticut House of Representatives, probably as a Republican, returned again 1825 to 1829.

1830, Elected to State Senate, now as a Jacksonian Democrat; out of office two years later.

1833, Returned to the Connecticut House of Representatives.

1835, Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for slavery in the District of Columbia.

1836, Appointed by President Andrew Jackson, U.S. District Judge for the State of Connecticut. Serves until 1853.

1839-40, Presides over Amistad case in District Court.

1853, 17 March, Death of Andrew T. Judson in Canterbury, Connecticut.

Notes

1. Quoted from Connecticut District Court records found in Paul Finkelman, Slavery In The Courtroom, An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases (Washington, D.C., 1985), 228. “Cinque” as the Spanish called him, was in his twenties and the acknowledged leader of the Amistad captives. Grabeau, another captive, also testified before Judson's court.

2. The Andrew T. Judson Papers were donated by Mr. Douglass Bjorn. We are pleased to acknowledge his interest in Mystic Seaport's programs and his support of our collections.

3. Andrew T. Judson, “A Short Sketch of My Own Life,” a manuscript autobiography, possibly unfinished, Andrew T. Judson Papers, Coll 247, box 1/9, G.W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport. All quoted material in the text prior to note 4 is taken from this particular source.

4. Ellen D. Learned, History of Windham County, Connecticut , 2 vols. (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1880), 2: 490. This is the inference that Rebecca Warren, being from Windham, may have been less active in Canterbury's social life than one might expect from the wife of so important a community leader as Andrew Judson.

5. This information is included in a Judson chronology compiled by Arthur J. Marinelli, museum assistant at the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury, n.d. My special thanks go to Curator Kaz Kozlowski, and to Arthur Marinelli, for their valued support and assistance with this article.

6. Marvis Olive Welch, Prudence Crandall, A Biography (Manchester, Connecticut, 1983), 14.

7. Ibid., 11-15.

8. Information from the Prudence Crandall Museum indicates that there were approximately 75 free blacks living in Canterbury at this time.

9. Welch, Prudence Crandall, 24-28.

10. Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of the Anti Slavery Conflict ( Boston, 1869), as quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 0-35. Quoted portions of the following conversation prior to note 11 are from this source.

11. Enacted on 24 May 1833, the Black Law stated specifically that “no person shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or literary institutions for the instruction or education of colored persons who are not inhabitants of this State, nor instruct or teach in any school, or other literary institution whatever in this State; nor harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or literary institution, any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this State, without the consent in writing, first obtained, or a majority of the civil authorities.” Andrew Judson was not in the legislature at this time, but his influence was such that he was able to expedite action on the bill from his colleagues in office. The Black Law would be repealed in 1838, the result of charges that it was unjust and unconstitutional.

12. As quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 228.

13. Ibid., 228.

14. Ibid., 81.

15. The Liberator, ca. September 1834; as quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 108; Judson, “A Short Sketch of My Own Life,” Coll. 247, box 1/9.

16. Judson, notes on the testimony of Montes and Ruiz on board the Washington, 29 August 1839, Coll. 247, box 1/4.

17. According to the federal census, there were 23 slaves in Connecticut in 1830. Slavery in Connecticut had been limited since 1774 by several acts that included gradual emancipation beginning in 1784, so any blacks still qualifying as slaves in 1839 would have been born before 1784. Nevertheless, slavery was not specifically prohibited by Connecticut State Law until 1848. See Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), appendix 3; Harold J. Bingham, History of Connecticut, Vol I (New York: Lewis Historical Publications, 1962), 520.

18. Judson, rough notes of the first day's testimony in Hartford, 19 November 1839, providing interesting details of the first contact with the Amistad captives by Fordham, Green and others on the beach near Montauk, Coll. 247, box 1/5.

19. Howard Jones, Mutiny On The Amistad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1997), is the most comprehensive recent book about the Amistad affair. The social, legal, and political implications which were so much a part of this incident, and which Andrew Judson had to consider, are thoroughly discussed. See also, Donald Dale Jackson, “Mutiny On the Amistad,” Smithsonian (December, 1997): 115-24, a concise, well-organized account of the Amistad incident.

20. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 104.

21. John W. Barber, A History of the Amistad Captives (New Haven, Connecticut, 1840), 55.

22. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 123.

23. Judson, rough drafts of final ruling, read at New Haven on 13 January 1840, Coll. 247, box 1/6, 1/7. Although incomplete, the drafts reveal how Judson prepared his decisions regarding the Amistad's location off Montauk Point and the ultimate freedom of the Africans.

24. Coll. 247, box 1/6.

25. Quoted in Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 130.

26. Judson, rough drafts of final ruling, Coll. 247, box 1/7. It might be said that the “Amistads” regained their freedom, for the most part, simply because of what Andrew Judson determined to be fraudulent paperwork by the Cuban authorities. The murdered captain's slave cabin boy Antonio–considered a legal slave under Spanish law–was to be returned to Cuba.

27. As quoted in The African Slave Trade, 228.

28. Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 134-35.

29. This meant that the Africans' passage home must come from private funds. Their fundraising included personal appearances by several of the Africans at anti-slavery meetings throughout the northeast. Those who were learning English read from the Bible, and Cinque would describe the sufferings they had endured as pawns of the slave trade, telling again the riveting story of their takeover of the Amistad. Some considered these lectures demeaning, contending that the Africans were being made to perform like sideshow attractions. The reader is referred to Dianna R. McCain, Free Men: The Amistad Revolt and the American Anti-Slavery Movement, (Middletown: Connecticut Humanities Council, 1990).

30.The African Slave Trade, 229; quoted in Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 134.

31. However, it would be the abolitionists who were largely responsible for raising funds to transport the “Amistads” home, not the colonizationists. The 35 surviving captives returned to Africa in January 1842. “The definition of citizenship during the antebellum period was unclear. The problem was that no one had clarified how one secured citizenship, nor had anyone defined a citizen,” Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad, 98. This is what was avoided in both the Prudence Crandall and Amistad cases. The nation continued to struggle with the issue until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865).

32. As quoted in Welch, Prudence Crandall, 120. After Judson left the Federalist Party in 1816, he traveled a road of change and reform, from Tolerationists to Republican to Jacksonian Democrat. In matters of law his deliberations were often made with due consideration to the practical implications his verdict might produce. This was certainly the case with the Amistad captives, as he sought, I believe, to reach a just ruling that would please the greatest number of people, while remaining consistent with his own principles and enhancing his professional image.

33. In his Amistad ruling Judson stretched a law of 1819 “nearly beyond recognition” as precedent for returning the blacks to Africa. He pointed out that this law made it illegal “to import or bring in any manner whatsoever, into the U.S. from any foreign country any Negro, with intent to hold him as a slave.” According to Judson, the “broad language” thus made it unlawful to bring a Negro into this country to “hold to service, any where, and in any place.” Of course Montes and Ruiz never intended to import their slaves to America, and furthermore when the Amistad arrived off Long Island i