In July of 1839, schooner La Amistad, sailing under the Spanish flag, left the port of Havana, en route to another Cuban port. The ship was carrying 53 black African slaves, far less than the typical slave ship, which could carry upwards of 300 slaves in cramped spaces below deck. La Amistad was a smaller ship designed to carry cargo. As such, half of the slaves were kept below deck, while the other half remained above deck.
Sengbe Pieh, renamed Cinque by the slave traders, led the 53 slaves in a mutiny in which the captain and the ship's cook were killed. All but two crew members, who were kept to sail the boat to Africa, were put over the side in smaller boats. Unbeknownst to the mutineers, the two navigators steered the ship northwards. About 50 days after the mutiny, the ship was captured by a US warship.
The mutineers were charged with piracy and murder. Their case was appealed by abolitionists and was brought to the US Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams argued their case. Then president at the time, Martin Van Buren, wanted to return the Africans to their enslavers. In 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that Cinque and the other mutineers to be set free on the grounds that the transatlantic slave trade was illegal. They were returned to West Africa.
Away at sea, the slaves aboard La Amistad took advantage of their situation and sought their freedom. Their story represents agency found both by slaves in situ and abolitionists in the courts, finding freedom through strength and the law.