Luckily, it is a Northern court, or they would have little chance at all.
waters, and the Africans find themselves in an American court. The two men who bought them are spared, and promise to guide the ship back to Africa. They rise up against the Spanish crew of the ship, which is taking them from a Havana slave market to another destination in Cuba. The film opens on the ship Amistad, where Cinque ( Djimon Hounsou) is able to free himself from shackles and release his fellow prisoners. The moral hair-splitting underlying that distinction is truly depraved, but on it depends the defense of Cinque, the leader of the Africans, and his fellow mutineers. This legal distinction is not made as clear as it could have been the international slave trade had been outlawed by treaties by 1839, the year of the landmark Amistad incident, but those who were already slaves remained the property of their masters-as did their children.
