The following article contains mentions of slavery and racism.
Amistad is based on the true story of what happened on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad in 1839. With the schooner transporting Mende men who were kidnapped from Sierra Leone for the slave trade, the historical drama explores how these enslaved people gained control of the ship as it neared the coast of Cuba. Their struggle against their captors, their subsequent re-apprehension, and the legal battle around their status form the rest of the premise. Amistad is one of Steven Spielberg’s many movies based on real events, but he has a mixed track record in directing true stories, and this is one riddled with historical inaccuracies and creative liberties.
For Amistad screenwriter David Franzoni, his primary source of research was the 1987 nonfiction book Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy, by Howard Jones. Amistad did earn four Oscar nominations and largely positive reviews (via best movies based on little-known historical stories. But the true story in this context was showcased in a much more dramatic fashion than was required, as historians began pointing out in the years since Amistad was released in theaters.
The Amistad Case Was Not A Turning Point For Slavery In America
Amistad claims that the Supreme Court ruling to free Joseph Cinqué and his captive shipmates had a major impact on slavery in America. However, this can be a very misleading claim as Columbia University professor Eric Foner very ionately wrote against Spielberg’s movie. His opinion piece published on History Matters states that the Amistad case chiefly dealt with the triangular Atlantic slave trade “and had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery as a domestic institution." The movie portrays slavery as a homogenous institution, while in reality, it could generate different perspectives depending upon the territories involved. The binary of slavery’s defenders and opponents wasn’t as simple as shown in Amistad.
To quote Foner further, “It was perfectly possible in the 19th century to condemn the importation of slaves from Africa while simultaneously defending slavery and the flourishing slave trade within the United States”. Delving into this hypocrisy among the champions of freedom, sociologist Elmer P. Martin Jr. wrote in The Baltimore Sun about how abolitionist Frederick Douglass noted that some of the defenders of Amistad slaves excused “similar traffic carried on with the same motives and purposes” in America. Martin added Amistad could have included contemporary slave ship revolts like the Creole case of 1841 to understand the complexity of the situation.
President Martin Van Buren Did Not Campaign In 1840
President Martin Van Buren, who is largely against freeing the Amistad slaves fearing the ensuing diplomatic chaos, is also shown to be working hard on his re-election campaign in 1840. Eric Foner held back no punches when it came to listing out the historical inaccuracies of the Amistad movie as opposed to the original book. A whistle-stop train tour is a part of this campaign, but Foner notes, “In 1840, candidates did not campaign." While Van Buren’s opponent, William Henry Harrison, was involved in a smear campaign against him (via National Park Service), no official campaign — and definitely no train tour — was initiated.
John Quincy Adams Was Not A Lifelong Abolitionist
As it gives enough coverage to John Quincy Adams, Amistad is ranked among some incredible but historically inaccurate movies about U.S. Presidents. But rather than delving into Adams’s presidency, it depicts him as an aged lawyer coming out of retirement to represent the Amistad slaves. Garnering an Oscar for Best ing Actor, Anthony Hopkins even breaks into a rousing courtroom speech against slavery toward the end. In his Baltimore Sun feature, Elmer P Martin Jr. added that Adams’ abolitionist feelings were not as strong as depicted in the movie. Instead, Martin claims that Adams had a “solid record of political indifference and callousness toward the plight of black Americans."
Adams's unpredictable viewpoint toward slavery led abolitionists in his state to call him the “Man of Massachusetts," according to Elmer P. Martin Jr. One of Amistad's biggest changes to the true story is portraying Adams as a figure who empathizes with the slaves. As Howard Jones's original book and other critics suggest, Adams's motives in the Amistad trial might have been more political than personal. A News & Record analysis mentions that Adams never publicly denounced slavery during his tenure in the White House. While his anti-slavery sentiments were sincere during the trial, he previously hated slave-owning Democrats only because he felt they were behind “wrecking his presidency."
No One Was Talking About Civil War In 1840
Even though Amistad is set two decades before the Civil War, tensions around slavery become a talking topic among the common folk. Some perspectives on the movie can even suggest that it was the Amistad trial’s verdict that ushered in the conditions for a civil war. But the situation was different in real life, as the concept of a war between the pro- and anti-slavery factions was not being discussed in the public or in the press. Eric Foner dismisses “people constantly talking about the coming Civil War” as one of Amistad’s anachronisms.
Theodore Joadson Was Not A Real Person
Despite its changes to real events, Amistad is considered one of the best biopics directed by Steven Spielberg for putting the spotlight on real-life figures like Joseph Cinqué, John Quincy Adams, and others. Yet one of the movie's major characters is a fictional creation. Theodore Joadson is depicted as a former slave who becomes an associate of real-life abolitionist Lewis Tappan. Writing for The New York Review, historian Erick McCitrick criticized Joadson’s inclusion as an inaccurate depiction of American class relations in that era. “No such person of the bearing and dignity depicted by Mr. [Morgan] Freeman would have been allowed to exist in the America of 1840.”
However, Richard S. Newman insisted on not looking at Joadson as just a fictional character in Amistad. In his essay Not the Only Story in "Amistad": The Fictional Joadson and the Real James Forten, published in the anthology Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Newman compared Joadson to other early black abolitionists such as James Forten. A wealthy businessman from Philadelphia, Forten worked tirelessly for the national abolition of slavery and also financially ed other abolitionists. Newman claims that Forten and his efforts paved the way for many other abolitionists such as Joadson’s legal partner Lewis Tappan and anti-slavery journalist William Lloyd Garrison.
Roger Sherman Baldwin Was Older & More Experienced
Roger Sherman Baldwin is introduced in Amistad as a young novice who urges Lewis Tappan to hire him as a lawyer. As he fights the case, the realization of slaves being human beings instead of property dawns upon him. Baldwin's changing moral conscience becomes his defining trait in the movie. In reality, Baldwin was already a committed abolitionist and influential lawyer at the time. The blog An Historian Goes to the Movies mentions that being the grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman, Baldwin was highly respected and even served as a member of the Connecticut legislature. In fact, Tappan hired him for his political clout and strong abolitionist views.
