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114

The judge of the Circuit Court at first decreed the manner, in which the sixteen freemen should be drawn by lot from the whole surviving cargo of the Antelope, as taken by Captain Jackson. He allowed a certain average portion of the survivors of 93 to the whole number; to be delivered to the Spanish Vice Consul, together with the proceeds of the vessels, and with suitable deductions for the salvage, forthwith-and he reserved for further consideration, and further evidence, till the next term of the court, the final distribution of the residue of the slaved between the Spanish and Portuguese Vice Consuls.
 
On the 16th of July, 1821, the designation was accordingly made by lot of the sixteen persons drawn from 204, and delivered to the marshal of the United States to abide the order of the court-that is, for emancipation. It does not appear that the Spanish Vice Consul received those which had been provisionally assigned to him. On the 27th day of December, 1821, the judge of the Circuit Court held, together with Jeremiah Cuyler, the newly appointed judge of the District Court in the place of William Davis deceased, a special court, at which the case was argued and further evidence filed-and on the next day, the court "Ordered and decreed, that the residue of the negroes imported in the General Ramirez [Antelope] be divided between the Spanish and Portuguese claimants in the ratio of one hundred and sixty-six on behalf of the Spanish claimants, and one hundred and sixty-six on behalf of the Portuguese claimants,  and that they be delivered up to the agents of the individuals as soon as their respective powers of attorney shall be duly authenticated and filed with the clerk if this court; and they shall respectively comply with the Decretal Order of this court, in paying the expenses incurred on said negroes in the ratio above stated, and in giving bond and security as therein directed for transporting them beyond the limits of the United States to some permitted port, allowing however six months from the date of the bond instead of three months as in that decretal order aforesaid, and that the proceed sales of the vessel, after deducting the costs of court, exclusive of marshal's bills for maintenance, be paid over to the Spanish claimants."

On the 2d of January, 1822, the District Attorney of the United States, appealed in their behalf to the Supreme Court of the United States from so much of the said decree, of the said Circuit Court as decreed the said African negroes to the Portuguese Vice Consul.



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And thus, in February, 1822, the case of the Antelope, and her cargo, came up for the adjudication of the Supreme Court of the United States, the result of which is reported on the 10th, 11th, and 12th volumes of Wheaton's Reports.

Three long years passed away before the first judgment of the court in the case was pronounced. Nearly two years before has elapsed from the capture of the Antelope by Captain Jackson. For little short of the space of five years, nearly three hundred captured Africans had been kept as prisoners of the United States, and to abide the decision of their tribunals for the enjoyment of their inalienable right to liberty. What had they been doing, during this long captivity? They had been maintained at the cost of the United States, we shall see hereafter to what tune. While the slow, solemn and majestic march of the law was progressing in the search "for the legal standard of morality" to fix the destiny of these human victims, time and chance had disposed of them more mercifully than the decrees of the District or of the Circuit Court. The marshal had bound most of them out to labor in the sweat of their brows, at the erection of fortification, for the defense of the LIBERTIES of this, our beloved country. The judges who passed upon the fate of these their fellow men-the wives-the children-the property-the neighbors-the country of those judges were armed in panoply against foreign aggression by the daily labor of these stolen Africans, whose lives, and liberty American judges were committing by the legal standard of morality to the cast of a die. During those five years it may be well conjectured that the condition of those captives of the Antelope thus employed was less rigorous and afflicted than it was made by the lottery judgment of the court.

The judgment of the Supreme Court in 1825, reversed his lottery judgment of the Circuit Court. It reversed the whole allotment of one hundred and thirty to the Portuguese Vice Consul, and awarded to them the blessing of liberty intended for them by the law, and yet so harshly denied them by the decrees of the courts below. It reduced the number to be delivered to the Spanish claimants from a ratio of 166 to 93 to the whole number, and vigorously exacted proof to the satisfaction of the Circuit Court of the identity of every individual to be delivered up, as having been of the number taken by the Arraganta in the Antelope. The allowances of salvage and of gratuity to Captain Jackson