The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett) shows in her new book Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade ) (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), the Amistad case is not exactly unique. By using the stories of re-captured Africans in detention in places like Key West, Florida and Charleston, South Carolina, Dr. Fett examines how pro-slavery and abolitionist factions used re-captives to argue their respective cases. She also examines the lives of re-captured slaves sent to “back” to Liberia, a place they had never been.
Adam McNeil is a soon-to-be PhD student and Colored Conventions Project Scholar at the University of Delaware. He received his M.A in History at Simmons College and B.S. in History at Florida A&M University. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty).
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