Amistad Argument - Amistad Argument
In another part of his letter, M. d'Argaiz says of Ruiz and Montes, that they were not exempted from the persecutions of an atrocious intrigue, and the undersigned Is not the first who has so styled this persecution.' This is a pretty plain intimation that the American Secretary of State was the first who called the suit of my clients for legal redress " an atrocious intrigue," in his " confidential conversation" with the Spanish minister. This is followed by an idea so novel and ingenious that it is necessary to repeat the whole of it. After complaining that Negroes should be allowed to be complainants, he goes on to argue that they ought to be considered, "morally and legally, as not being in the United States," and of course, if they should be delivered up physically, I suppose it was to be inferred that the Executive would not incur any responsibility. "They are morally and legally not in the United States, because the court of Connecticut has not declared whether or not it is competent to try them. If it should declare itself incompetent, it declares that they are under the cover of the Spanish flag; and, in that case, they are physically under the protection of a friendly government, but morally and legally out of the territory and jurisdiction of the United States; and, so long as a doubt remains on this subject, no judge can admit the complaint. If this argument be of any value to the Secretary of State of the Government of the Union, the undersigned entreats him to prevail on the President to cause a protest, founded on this argument, to be officially addressed to the court of New York." His predecessor, M. Calderon, called upon the President for a proclamation forbidding the courts to take up the case, and the present minister of Spain insists that he shall send forth his protest to take it out of the hands of the courts—and this on the ground, that my clients, although personally imprisoned for eighteen months by the U.S. Marshal, under order of the
U. S.
Court, yet are "not morally and legally in the United States." There is another argument of the same gentleman, very much of the same character. The court will find it in his first letter after the arrest of Ruiz and Montes at New York. He says: "It would be easy to demonstrate the illegality of these arrests, the orders for which have possibly been obtained from the attorney by surprise: as it would also be easy to show the ignorance of the declarant, Tappan, in declaring that Ruiz is known by the name of Pipi, whereas he would have been known and distinguished throughout Spain, as all other Joses are, by the diminutive of Pepe, and thus it appears that a Pepe has been imprisoned instead of a Pipi, which I believe the law does not permit." The argument is certainly ingenious, and if it is sound at all, it is worth more in favor of the Africans than of the Spaniards, as I may hereafter have occasion to show, when I come to consider the case of nine-and forty persons with Spanish names, who have been arrested and brought into court by African names. The Chevalier d'Argaiz, in the close of this letter, exhibits his loyalty towards the then acting sovereign of his nation. " At the moment when the heart of the august Queen Governess is filled with delight on account of the termination of a civil war, and the assurance of the throne of her august daughter, her minister in the United States has to perform the painful duty of diminishing her happiness by communicating to her, as he did by letter on the 19th instant, the disagreeable event which forms the subject of this communication, The desire of calming the disquiet which this news may occasion in the mind of her Majesty, together with that of alleviating the lot of the two prisoners, urge the undersigned to entreat you, Mr. Secretary of State, to take into consideration what he has here set forth, and to afford him the means, in a prompt reply, of satisfying those just desires, which will be completely done if he is able to transmit such a reply to his Government by the packet sailing for Havre on the 1st of November next." It must doubtless, said Mr. A., be some consolation to this loyal minister, to reflect that before the august Queen Governess could have received the painful intelligence of the imprisonment of two such meritorious subjects as Ruiz and Montes to diminish her happiness her heart had been gratified in a much better manner. In the pursuit of that happiness for which she longed, it seems that she retired altogether from the cares of state, into the comforts of domestic life, with a husband that, I hope has calmed her disquiet, and if it should ultimately turn out that the lives of these poor Africans are saved, there will be no further occasion to diminish the happiness of the august Queen-Governess. On the 30th of December, five days after the date of the letter I have been commenting upon, the Chevalier d'Argaiz wrote again to the Secretary of State. (WASHINGTON, December 30, 1839.) "SIR—In the conversation which I had with you on the morning of the day before yesterday, you mentioned the
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