ARGUMENT OF ROGER S. BALDWIN, OF NEW HAVEN, BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, IN THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES, APPELLANTS, VS. CINQUE, AND OTHERS, AFRICANS OF THE AMISTAD

New York: S.W. Benedict, 1841. 32pp, light scattered foxing, bound in later cloth. Else Very Good.

One of the great lawyers of his era in one of the great pre-Civil War human rights cases, Baldwin teamed up with former President John Q. Adams successfully to represent the Africans of the Amistad before the Supreme Court.
The slaves on board the Amistad, a Spanish schooner, had mutinied off the coast of Cuba, killed some crew members, and forced the ship to head north. A U.S. ship off the coast of Long Island captured the Amistad; the Africans awaited their fate in a New Haven jail.
While "Adams presented a bitter political denunciation of the federal government's treatment of the Amistad captives, Baldwin presented a convincing legal argument" [Finkelman]. Baldwin spoke first, his oral argument printed here. He extensively analyzes Spanish law, Spanish-U.S. treaties, and the law of New York-- the Amistad's initial landing point in the U.S.-- to demonstrate that the slaves were illegally imported Africans, captured by piracy, and hence free.
This argument prevailed, and the Africans were sent home.
FIRST EDITION. Finkelman 225, 237. Work 344. Dumond 24. Marvin 90. I Harv. Law Cat. 110. LCP 808.