Customer Reviews

Black Odyssey: The Case of the Slave Ship `Amistad'

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I read this book for a summer reading assignment; not until my history teacher returned the reviews we had written did I learn that the book assigned was actually a different book of the same title! I took MY Black Odyssey out of a library in Pennsylvania (I live in New England), and as it is listed on Amazon as "rare/out of print" I suppose I was fairly lucky (if you could call it that) to find it. Anyway on to the book itself...
Black Odyssey is about the landing of the Spanish slave ship Amistad (bound for Cuba) on American soil, and more importantly, the events and controversies which this precipitated. The(black) slaves on the ship rebelled against their white masters and crew, killing all but a few of the free men on board, and to make a long story short the Amistad landed off the coast of long island sound and caused a major controversy, leading to multiple highly-publicized court cases. The surviving Spaniards who had been on the ship, as well as the Spanish government and most American politicians, obviously held the opinion that the blacks were a)of course still slaves, and b)had committed a crime and should be deported to Cuba. Abolitionist groups and politicians, however, held the conviction that since the slaves had come to America and were on free soil (this was Connecticut in the 1840s), they were no longer slaves; furthermore, allowing the Spanish government to force deportation of people on American soil violated the principles of republican solidarity and statehood on which the US was founded. It was this last point which drove the argument of ex-President John Quincy Adams, who agreed to represent the Amistad Africans in court (an entire chapter is devoted to his opening statement; its really boring but the themes in it are interesting in my opinion). In the end, the Africans who had taken over the Amistad were, after much trial and tribulation, set free (some of them later assisted in setting up Christian missions in their native Sierra Leone; the last section of the book deals with this).
A lot of Black Odyssey is somewhat boring or overly detailed, and some sections, for instance the last section about African missionaries, seem superfluous. However I thought it was impressive how the book used the Amistad-related court cases to demonstrate some very BIG ideas about government and statehood. The Amistad case becomes an example of the fundamental differences between two different types of government which existed in the West in the early 19th century. The author talks about the Spanish ambassadors' conviction that the American President should order the slaves' deported to Cuba, and their ignorance to the fact that the American President was NOT royalty and could not make such an order. The country must decide instead through legal and democratic process what to do about the Amistad slaves, and the Spaniards could not interfere with the processes of American politics. This distinction is put forth in John Q. Adams court arguments where he equates deporting the slaves on command of the Spanish government to giving up the country's democracy and sovereignty.

I found this book to be very interesting and fairly approachable for someone who is not overly knowledgeable about this period. Some parts were a little dry; but how else is a discussion of the legal procedures pertaining to the legal issues surrounding ownership of the mutinous slaves, salvage rights and legal jurisdiction, etc.? Have to disagree with the previous reviewer: the whole missionary aspect of the story is quite relevant, as it shows in the end how the Amistad slaves were manipulated and exploited, how essentially the goodwill of their abolitionist supporters was conditional.

This book is great!It's very detailed and is very entertaining,it feels like puts you on the Amistad itself and you are watching everything happen, like a movie.I liked the slave ship because it was true in some ways Africans were captured and brought to places around the world. If you read this book you'll know how it must have been for them with a new land and they maybe even lost some family members.