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Jesus Pimp · 06-16-2003, 02:57 PM

1841 Supreme Court rules on Amistad mutiny

At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law.

In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the U.S. was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s.

On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Príncipe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the "black schooner" was first spotted by American vessels.

On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.

The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before a federal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson's findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.

On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans' defense team. In Congress, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation's highest court he presented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad.

On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard the Amistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio's integrated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s, before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson.

1847 U.S. forces land at Vera Cruz

During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott invade Mexico three miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering little resistance from the Mexicans massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the last of Scott's 10,000 men came ashore without the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in U.S. history and not surpassed until World War II.

The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government's 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor's forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. In March 1847, General Scott's forces landed near Vera Cruz, and by March 29, with very few casualties, the Americans had taken the fortified city and its massive fortress, San Juan de Ulua. In April, Scott began his devastating march to Mexico City, which ended on September 14, when U.S. forces entered the Mexican capital and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma.

In February 1848, representatives from the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War, recognizing Texas as part of the United States and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean.

1862 Battle of the Ironclads

During the American Civil War, the CSS Virginia, a captured and rebuilt Union steam frigate formerly known as the Merrimac, engages the USS Monitor in the first battle between iron-fortified naval vessels in history.

The Confederate navy's addition of iron plates to the captured USS Merrimac steam frigate temporarily made it an unstoppable force in the disputed waters of the Civil War. After seeing the Merrimac in action, the Union navy constructed its own ironclad, the USS Monitor. On March 8, 1862, the Virginia attacked a Union squadron of wooden-hulled vessels in Hampton Roads off the Virginia coast. The USS Congress, a frigate, and the USS Cumberland, a sailing sloop, were easily sunk by the Virginia, which suffered no noticeable damage. Late that night, the USS Monitor arrived in the area. With its deck nearly at the water level, the Monitor had an unassuming appearance, but it was a formidable match for the Confederate ironclad.

On March 9, the two vessels engaged each other, and both the Monitor and the Virginia suffered direct hits that failed to penetrate their iron shells. Finally, after four hours, a cannon blast from the Virginia hit the Monitor's pilothouse, temporarily blinding the ship's captain, Union Lieutenant John L. Worden. The Virginia was thus allowed to escape to Norfolk, Virginia, and the Battle of the Ironclads ended in a draw. Two months later, the Virginia was trapped in Norfolk by advancing Union forces, and its Confederate crew blew up the fearful vessel rather than allow it to fall into Union hands.

1932 China's last emperor is Japanese puppet

Henry Pu Yi, who reigned as the last emperor of China from 1908 to 1912, becomes regent of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, comprising the Rehe province of China and Manchuria.

Enthroned as the emperor Hsüan-T'ung at the age of three, he was forced to abdicate four years later in Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution. He took the name of Henry and continued to live in Beijing's Forbidden City until 1924, when he was forced into exile. He settled in Japanese-occupied Tianjin, where he lived until his installment as the puppet leader of Manchukuo in 1932. In 1934, he became K'ang Te, emperor of Manchukuo. Despite guerrilla resistance against his puppet regime, he held the emperor's title until 1945, when he was captured by Soviet troops in the final days of World War II.

In 1946, Pu Yi testified before the Tokyo war crimes tribunal that he had been the unwilling tool of the Japanese and not, as they claimed, an instrument of Manchurian self-determination. Manchuria and the Rehe province were returned to China, and in 1950 Pu Yi was handed over to the Chinese communists, who imprisoned him at Shenyang until 1959, when Chinese leader Mao Zedong granted him amnesty. After his release, he worked in a mechanical repair shop in Peking.

Birthday Board: March 9

1854 - Eddie (Edwin Fitzgerald) Foy, Sr. (actor, comic, dancer: entertained on the musical stage and in vaudeville for four decades; father of The Seven Little Foys)

1902 - Will Geer (Ghere) (actor)

1914 - Fred Clark (actor: Sunset Boulevard, Bells Are Ringing, The Caddy)

1918 - Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison) (writer of Mike Hammer mysteries: I the Jury, My Gun Is Quick, Kiss Me Deadly, Vengeance Is Mine)

1920 - Carl Betz (actor: Deadly Encounter, The Meal, Spinout)

1923 - Andre Courreges (fashion designer)

1923 - James Buckley (politician)

1925 - Billy Ford (singer: group: Billy & Lillie: La Dee Dah, Lucky Ladybug)

1927 - Jackie Jensen (baseball: Boston Red Sox Outfielder: Baseball Writer's Award [1958])

1932 - Keely Smith (Dorothy Keely) (singer: That Old Black Magic, How Are Ya' Fixed for Love?; ex-Mrs. Louis Prima)

1933 - Lloyd Price (songwriter: Lawdy Miss Clawdy; pianist; singer: Stagger Lee, Personality, I'm Gonna Get Married; record label owner; producer; booking agent)

1934 - Yuri Gagarin (Russian cosmonaut: the first man to travel in space)

1934 - Joyce Van Patten (actress: Monkey Shines, The Goodbye Guys, Bad News Bears, Breathing Lessons)

1936 - Marty Ingels (Ingerman) (actor: If It's Tuesday This Must be Belgium)

1937 - Mickey Gilley (American Country Music Entertainer, Male Vocalist and Single of the Year [1976]: Bring It on Home to Me, Stand By Me; You Don't Know Me; owner: Gilley's Club; Jerry Lee Lewis' cousin)

1940 - Raul Julia (actor: The Addams Family, Kiss of the Spider Woman; received four Tony award nominations: Proteus, Mack the Knife)

1941 - Jim Colbert (golfer)

1942 - Bert Campaneris (baseball)

1942 - Mark Lindsay (saxist, singer songwriter: group: Paul Revere & the Raiders: The Great Airplane Strike, Good Thing, Him or Me - What's It Gonna be, Indian Reservation; solo: Arizona, Silver Bird)

1943 - Bobby Fischer (chess champion)

1943 - Trish Van Devere (Patricia Dressel) (actress: Hollywood Vice Squad, All God's Children, The Day of the Dolphin, Deadly Currents)

1948 - Jimmie Fadden (singer, musician: harmonica, guitar: group: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Mr. Bojangles, An American Dream, Make a Little Magic, Modern Day Romance, Long Hard Road [The Sharecropper's Dream])

1950 - Andy North (golfer: U.S. Open Champion [1978 and 1985])

1951 - Spencer Thomas (football)

1971 - Emmanuel Lewis (actor: Webster)

Chart Toppers: March 9

1958
Sweet Little Sixteen - Chuck Berry

The Stroll - The Diamonds

You Are My Destiny - Paul Anka

I Beg of You - Elvis Presley
1966
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra

California Dreamin' - The Mamas and the Papas

Elusive Butterfly - Bob Lind

The Ballad of the Green Berets - SSgt Barry Sadler
1979
Do Ya Think I'm Sexy - Rod Stewart

Fire - Pointer Sisters

Tragedy - Bee Gees

Golden Tears - Dave and Sugar
1988
Father Figure - George Michael

Can't Stay Away from You - Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine

Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley

Face to Face - Alabama

06-16-2003, 02:57 PM	#13 (permalink)
Jesus Pimp The Original JizzSmacka	1841 Supreme Court rules on Amistad mutiny At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law. In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the U.S. was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s. On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Príncipe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the "black schooner" was first spotted by American vessels. On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa. The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before a federal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson's findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again. On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans' defense team. In Congress, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation's highest court he presented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard the Amistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio's integrated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s, before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson. 1847 U.S. forces land at Vera Cruz During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott invade Mexico three miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering little resistance from the Mexicans massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the last of Scott's 10,000 men came ashore without the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in U.S. history and not surpassed until World War II. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government's 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor's forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. In March 1847, General Scott's forces landed near Vera Cruz, and by March 29, with very few casualties, the Americans had taken the fortified city and its massive fortress, San Juan de Ulua. In April, Scott began his devastating march to Mexico City, which ended on September 14, when U.S. forces entered the Mexican capital and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma. In February 1848, representatives from the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War, recognizing Texas as part of the United States and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean. 1862 Battle of the Ironclads During the American Civil War, the CSS Virginia, a captured and rebuilt Union steam frigate formerly known as the Merrimac, engages the USS Monitor in the first battle between iron-fortified naval vessels in history. The Confederate navy's addition of iron plates to the captured USS Merrimac steam frigate temporarily made it an unstoppable force in the disputed waters of the Civil War. After seeing the Merrimac in action, the Union navy constructed its own ironclad, the USS Monitor. On March 8, 1862, the Virginia attacked a Union squadron of wooden-hulled vessels in Hampton Roads off the Virginia coast. The USS Congress, a frigate, and the USS Cumberland, a sailing sloop, were easily sunk by the Virginia, which suffered no noticeable damage. Late that night, the USS Monitor arrived in the area. With its deck nearly at the water level, the Monitor had an unassuming appearance, but it was a formidable match for the Confederate ironclad. On March 9, the two vessels engaged each other, and both the Monitor and the Virginia suffered direct hits that failed to penetrate their iron shells. Finally, after four hours, a cannon blast from the Virginia hit the Monitor's pilothouse, temporarily blinding the ship's captain, Union Lieutenant John L. Worden. The Virginia was thus allowed to escape to Norfolk, Virginia, and the Battle of the Ironclads ended in a draw. Two months later, the Virginia was trapped in Norfolk by advancing Union forces, and its Confederate crew blew up the fearful vessel rather than allow it to fall into Union hands. 1932 China's last emperor is Japanese puppet Henry Pu Yi, who reigned as the last emperor of China from 1908 to 1912, becomes regent of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, comprising the Rehe province of China and Manchuria. Enthroned as the emperor Hsüan-T'ung at the age of three, he was forced to abdicate four years later in Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution. He took the name of Henry and continued to live in Beijing's Forbidden City until 1924, when he was forced into exile. He settled in Japanese-occupied Tianjin, where he lived until his installment as the puppet leader of Manchukuo in 1932. In 1934, he became K'ang Te, emperor of Manchukuo. Despite guerrilla resistance against his puppet regime, he held the emperor's title until 1945, when he was captured by Soviet troops in the final days of World War II. In 1946, Pu Yi testified before the Tokyo war crimes tribunal that he had been the unwilling tool of the Japanese and not, as they claimed, an instrument of Manchurian self-determination. Manchuria and the Rehe province were returned to China, and in 1950 Pu Yi was handed over to the Chinese communists, who imprisoned him at Shenyang until 1959, when Chinese leader Mao Zedong granted him amnesty. After his release, he worked in a mechanical repair shop in Peking. Birthday Board: March 9 1854 - Eddie (Edwin Fitzgerald) Foy, Sr. (actor, comic, dancer: entertained on the musical stage and in vaudeville for four decades; father of The Seven Little Foys) 1902 - Will Geer (Ghere) (actor) 1914 - Fred Clark (actor: Sunset Boulevard, Bells Are Ringing, The Caddy) 1918 - Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison) (writer of Mike Hammer mysteries: I the Jury, My Gun Is Quick, Kiss Me Deadly, Vengeance Is Mine) 1920 - Carl Betz (actor: Deadly Encounter, The Meal, Spinout) 1923 - Andre Courreges (fashion designer) 1923 - James Buckley (politician) 1925 - Billy Ford (singer: group: Billy & Lillie: La Dee Dah, Lucky Ladybug) 1927 - Jackie Jensen (baseball: Boston Red Sox Outfielder: Baseball Writer's Award [1958]) 1932 - Keely Smith (Dorothy Keely) (singer: That Old Black Magic, How Are Ya' Fixed for Love?; ex-Mrs. Louis Prima) 1933 - Lloyd Price (songwriter: Lawdy Miss Clawdy; pianist; singer: Stagger Lee, Personality, I'm Gonna Get Married; record label owner; producer; booking agent) 1934 - Yuri Gagarin (Russian cosmonaut: the first man to travel in space) 1934 - Joyce Van Patten (actress: Monkey Shines, The Goodbye Guys, Bad News Bears, Breathing Lessons) 1936 - Marty Ingels (Ingerman) (actor: If It's Tuesday This Must be Belgium) 1937 - Mickey Gilley (American Country Music Entertainer, Male Vocalist and Single of the Year [1976]: Bring It on Home to Me, Stand By Me; You Don't Know Me; owner: Gilley's Club; Jerry Lee Lewis' cousin) 1940 - Raul Julia (actor: The Addams Family, Kiss of the Spider Woman; received four Tony award nominations: Proteus, Mack the Knife) 1941 - Jim Colbert (golfer) 1942 - Bert Campaneris (baseball) 1942 - Mark Lindsay (saxist, singer songwriter: group: Paul Revere & the Raiders: The Great Airplane Strike, Good Thing, Him or Me - What's It Gonna be, Indian Reservation; solo: Arizona, Silver Bird) 1943 - Bobby Fischer (chess champion) 1943 - Trish Van Devere (Patricia Dressel) (actress: Hollywood Vice Squad, All God's Children, The Day of the Dolphin, Deadly Currents) 1948 - Jimmie Fadden (singer, musician: harmonica, guitar: group: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Mr. Bojangles, An American Dream, Make a Little Magic, Modern Day Romance, Long Hard Road [The Sharecropper's Dream]) 1950 - Andy North (golfer: U.S. Open Champion [1978 and 1985]) 1951 - Spencer Thomas (football) 1971 - Emmanuel Lewis (actor: Webster) Chart Toppers: March 9 1958 Sweet Little Sixteen - Chuck Berry The Stroll - The Diamonds You Are My Destiny - Paul Anka I Beg of You - Elvis Presley 1966 These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra California Dreamin' - The Mamas and the Papas Elusive Butterfly - Bob Lind The Ballad of the Green Berets - SSgt Barry Sadler 1979 Do Ya Think I'm Sexy - Rod Stewart Fire - Pointer Sisters Tragedy - Bee Gees Golden Tears - Dave and Sugar 1988 Father Figure - George Michael Can't Stay Away from You - Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley Face to Face - Alabama __________________ Never date anyone who doesn't make your dick hard.