Why was John Quincy Adams able to win the Amistad Case?

Answer 1

The slaves were illegal and therefore free. So they were able to go back to Africa. The importing of African slaves to America was a thriving business and the Spanish captain thought he could extract revenge by sailing the ship to the United States instead of back to Africa after the Africans took control.

None of the treaties between The United States and Spain were applicable to people but merely land and goods. The slaves didnt belong to the United States or Spain, so they were declared free. I think they all returned to Africa because of the public backlash, even though they could've stayed in one of the safehouses of the Underground railroad.

Answer 2

~He didn't. Actually, Adams had nothing to do with the trials.

The first trial in US circuit court was the criminal trial before US Supreme Court Justice Smith Thompson and the case was dismissed by Judge Thompson on jurisdictional grounds. William Holabird, US Attorney for the district of Connecticut represented the government.

The second trial, in US District Court, was a civil trial over ownership of the Amistad Africans. Holabird again represented the government and Judge Andrew Judson presided.

Cinque, Sengbe, Kono and company were represented in both trials initially by Roger Baldwin, a staunch abolitionist who would later serve as governor of Connecticut and then in the US Senate (his great-grandfather was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence so, even though Anthony Hopkins didn't play him, Baldwin was a tremendous orator, a damn fine lawyer and of a prominent and highly respected Connecticut family)

Baldwin brought in two other preeminent lawyers of the day, Theodore Sedgwick and Seth Staples (founders of the Yale Law School). The second trial was based on property rights and the defense argued that the Africans were not property of the plaintiffs because of the manner in which the came to be in the possession of Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montez. Ruiz and Montez did not attend, probably because they had jumped bail on charges pending against them in New York. Their absence may have had some bearing on the outcome but, given the language of the decision, probably not. Judge Judson found on behalf of the Africans and ordered them to be set free and returned to Africa.

Martin Van Buren, having just opened the world's first concentration camps (for the Cherokee in Tennessee and Alabama - he called the reservations), being the fine humanist that he was, and needing the Democratic votes of the southern slaveholders, ordered Holabird to appeal.

When the case finally reached the US Supreme Court, Baldwin decided he needed a big name on the case (more for publicity and to garner support for the abolition movement and to restore some cohesiveness to the fractured abolitionist groups) and he brought in Adams. Adams had not practiced law for more than 30 years and was reluctant to get involved for fear he would damage the case.

Baldwin argued the case before the Supreme Court first. Adams then spoke for several hours. If you read the arguments of Baldwin and Adams and the Court's decision, it is abundantly clear that Baldwin's argument carried the day, a fact that Adams himself acknowledged to Baldwin in a letter after the decision was handed up.

Moral: don't get you history from Hollywood or Yahoo Answers.