The Courage They Didn’t Teach: Joseph Cinqué — When Resistance Was the Only Road Home.

Each entry follows one life that faced danger, opposition, or erasure and stood firm without promise of reward. Some endured violence in the open. Others absorbed pressure in silence. Together, these stories show courage as a skill shaped by striving and refined long before applause, if applause came at all.

Like a man walking inside a burning house, Joseph Cinqué faced a choice with no safe answers. Staying meant destruction, while fighting offered no promises except the chance to remain his own man.

For Cinqué, freedom was worth the risk.

Joseph Cinqué, 1814-1879

He was born Sengbe Pieh in what is now Sierra Leone. He was a Mende rice farmer and trader with a wife and three children. In 1839, slave traders kidnapped him while he worked in the rice fields.

From the National Park Service:

Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinque) was born in Mani in present-day Sierra Leone in 1813/1814.  He was a rice farmer and trader, and at the time of his capture he had a wife and three children.

In 1839 slave traders kidnapped Pieh while he was working in the rice fields.  He was taken to Lomboko off of the Gallinas Coast.  He, with countless others, were sent to Havana, Cuba to be sold into slavery. Pieh and 52 men, women, and children were purchased by  two Spanish plantation owners and boarded onto the schooner La Amistad.

Three days into the voyage to Porto Principe, Cuba, Pieh freed himself and others from their shackles.  They killed the captain, cook, and two other crew members disappeared.  Having taken over the ship, Pieh ordered the schooner sail towards Africa. Rather than comply, the second-mate - who was steering the ship - secretly changed course at night, sailing west or north.  After two months at sea the Amistad was seized by the U.S. brig Washington off the coast of Long Island, NY. Sengbe Pieh and the surviving African captives were arrested and charged with murder and piracy.

They took him to Lomboko on the West African coast and shipped him across the Atlantic to Havana, Cuba, where he was sold.

Spain had prohibited the importation of African slaves into its territories after 1820, so Cinqué's enslavement was as illegal as it was immoral. Cinqué and the other captives were newly arrived Africans, but false documents presented them as people who could legally be held as slaves in Cuba. Two Spanish plantation owners bought 53 captives and placed them aboard the schooner La Amistad.

From the National Park Service:

The Amistad’s story began in 1839 when slave hunters captured large numbers of native Africans near Mendeland in present-day Sierre Leone. These captives were sent to Havana, Cuba to be sold into slavery. Two Spanish plantation owners, Don Jose Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, bought 53 African captives in Havana. They then began preparations to transport the captives on the schooner La Amistad to their plantations near Porto Principe in Cuba.

Three days into the trek a 25-year old Mendi man, Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinque), was able to unshackle himself and the others. They took control of the schooner by killing the captain and the cook, and ordered Ruiz and Montez to sail east to the rising sun - towards Africa. Rather than comply, Ruiz and Montez secretly changed course at night. They sailed the schooner around the Caribbean and eventually up the East Coast of the United States.

Three days into the voyage, Cinqué freed himself and helped free the others. They armed themselves and rose against the crew on July 2, 1839. The captain and cook were killed, and Cinqué then ordered the surviving Spaniards to sail east toward Africa.

The Spaniards deceived them; they sailed generally east during the day, then turned north or west at night. After nearly two months, the battered Amistad reached Long Island. An American naval vessel seized the schooner, and Cinqué and the surviving Africans were taken into custody.

From the National Archives:

On August 29, 1839, a lone West African man named Sengbe Pieh stood in shackles before a special session of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. Judge Andrew Judson convened the court of inquiry on board a navy vessel in the harbor of New London, Connecticut.

There the court heard the testimony of two Spanish planters from Cuba. The planters referred to the young African man as Cinque and told the court how he had led a revolt of other enslaved Africans on board the schooner Amistad. Cinque was among a group of fifty-three enslaved individuals whom the planters, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, purchased in Havana and then transported on the Amistad in the direction of plantations along the Cuban coast.

According to the planters, Cinque and his compatriots killed the ship's captain and the cook, then coerced the Spaniards to sail toward the rising sun in hopes of retracing the voyage that had brought them from West Africa.

Cinque spoke neither English nor Spanish and could not testify at the court of inquiry, but his presence dominated the proceeding. In the few short days between being taken into custody by the navy and appearing before the district court, Cinque emerged in press accounts as the near-mythical leader of the revolt on the Amistad.

A reporter who visited him before the court session wrote of Cinque's "uncommon decision and coolness, with a composure characteristic of true courage." The same reporter placed Cinque in a context more familiar to many in the United States by describing him as "a negro who would command in New Orleans, under the hammer, at least $1500."

Cinqué had broken his chains, taken command of the ship, and survived weeks at sea. Now he sat in an American jail while other men debated whether he was a person or property.

President Martin Van Buren's administration wanted the Africans returned to Spanish control. Secretary of State John Forsyth even arranged for a Navy ship to wait near Connecticut so the captives could quickly be removed if the courts ruled against them. Instead, the federal district court found that the Africans had been illegally enslaved. The administration appealed.

The fight eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

John Quincy Adams joined the legal team defending the Africans. The 73-year-old former president was then serving in the House of Representatives. He had not argued before the Supreme Court in over 30 years, but he spent months preparing for Cinqué's case.

From the National Archives:

The abolitionists' committee convinced John Quincy Adams to join Baldwin in representing the Mende before the Supreme Court. The seventy-three-year-old former President was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he had defended the abolitionists' right to petition Congress for an end to slavery in the District of Columbia. Once a noted advocate before the Supreme Court, he had not appeared before the bench in more than thirty years. Adams spent several months examining an extensive collection of government documents related to every aspect of the Amistad incident. In the fall he traveled to Connecticut to meet with Cinque and other captives, who remained in the custody of the marshal for the district of Connecticut, although they lived under far less restrictive confines in the village of Westville.

Adams would face a Supreme Court of nine justices, five of whom were residents of southern slave states. The Court only occasionally had heard cases related to slavery or the slave trade, and although it had enforced the prohibition on the African slave trade, the Court also had decided that slave property must be protected whenever slavery was permitted by a nation's laws. Adams and Baldwin asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the United States had no interest in the matter and because recently released documents indicated that the Spanish government had requested delivery of the Mende for trial in Cuba and not as property under the 1795 treaty. In a surprising concession to the laws of slave property, Adams and Baldwin also asked for dismissal because none of the Africans, "if slaves," was valued at the two-thousand-dollar minimum required for appeals to the Supreme Court. The Court postponed consideration of the motion and scheduled arguments in the case.33

On February 22, 1841, Attorney General Henry Gilpin opened oral arguments with a statement of the government's long-standing position that the treaty with Spain required the return of all Spanish property, with no payments for salvage. Gilpin reminded the Court that the Spanish planters had produced documentation of ownership of the enslaved Mende, and he warned that if the federal courts questioned the legitimacy of documents issued by foreign governments, the flow of international commerce would be threatened. Roger Sherman Baldwin repeated his argument that the Mende, recently transported from Africa, were free under Spanish law and thus not subject to the terms of the treaty between the nations.

Adams then appeared before the crowded chamber on the ground floor of the Capitol. The drama of his nearly eight hours of argument was only heightened by an unexpected interruption of several days for the funeral of Justice Philip Pendleton Barbour, who died the night after Adams began his remarks. Adams devoted most of his argument to a rebuke of the lame-duck Van Buren administration, which he alleged was well aware that they would be returning the Mende to certain death in Cuba. Adams closed his remarks with an appeal to the natural rights of the Mende and asked that the Court extend to the Africans the rights described in the Declaration of Independence.

Adams spoke for nearly eight hours, attacking the government's position and appealing to the natural rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled for the Africans. Justice Joseph Story wrote the decision affirming that they were free people who had been kidnapped and illegally transported into slavery. Their resistance didn't erase their freedom; it helped restore it.

From the National Archives:

In the trial before the Supreme Court, the Africans were represented by former U.S. President, and descendant of American revolutionaries, John Quincy Adams. Preparing for his appearance before the Court, Adams requested papers from the lower courts one month before the proceedings opened. For 8 ½ hours, the 73-year-old Adams passionately and eloquently defended the Africans' right to freedom on both legal and moral grounds, referring to treaties prohibiting the slave trade and to the Declaration of Independence.

The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, stating that they were free individuals. Kidnapped and transported illegally, they had never been slaves. Senior Justice Joseph Story wrote and read the decision: "...it was the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice." The opinion asserted the Africans' right to resist "unlawful" slavery.

The Court ordered the immediate release of the Amistad Africans. Thirty five of the survivors were returned to their homeland (the others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial).

Thirty-five survivors sailed from New York for Africa in November 1841 and reached Sierra Leone in January 1842. Cinqué crossed the Atlantic twice: the first time, men carried him across in chains, and the second time, he went home.

As a free man.

From the National Archives:

The decisions of the three federal courts that ruled on the Amistad proceedings resulted in the personal freedom of the African captives, but the courts provided no precedent for legal challenges to the institution of slavery. Until the Civil War, the federal courts continued to protect slave property whenever it was supported by law. One year after the Amistad decision, Justice Story wrote the opinion in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act that allowed slaveholders to reclaim their slaves who fled to free states, and in 1857 a majority of the Court, including three of the justices who had supported the Amistad decision, ruled in the Dred Scott case that African Americans, whether free or slave, held no rights as citizens under the federal Constitution.

Outside the courts, the Amistad case had more lasting benefits for those who opposed slavery. The campaign to free the Mende offered abolitionists the opportunity to refine their strategy of mobilizing public opinion. The publication of personal narratives of enslavement cultivated antislavery support even among those who resisted the more radical demands of the abolitionists. Above all, the presence of the Mende in the courts and in the public mind ensured that the Amistad proceedings stimulated public debates about slavery and the federal government's support of the institution. Although the case demonstrated that the federal courts, like the Congress and the federal executive, were unlikely to challenge the foundations of slavery in the United States, it also provided a prominent forum that drew new attention to the still-active Atlantic slave trade and heightened awareness of the human tragedy of slavery, as well as the bravery of these enslaved persons.

Most of us will never face a moment remotely like his. Our tests of courage usually arrive quietly; we fear losing a job, a friendship, a reputation, or the approval of people around us. Doing what's right carries a price, even when no chains are involved.

Cinqué reminds us that courage isn't the absence of fear: it's the refusal to let fear decide who we become.

Like the man escaping a burning house, he couldn't know what waited beyond the door. He only knew he was unable to stay inside.

That invariably leads to the question we all ask ourselves: when our own moment arrives, do we have what it takes to do the right thing?

Other columns in this series