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the sentiments of his Britannic Majesty with respect to the injustice and inhumanity of the traffic in slaves, stipulated that he would take into consideration with the deliberation which the state of his possessions in America demanded, the means of acting in conformity with those sentiments.

And on the 23d of September, 1817, by a treaty concluded between the same two powers, his Catholic Majesty engaged, that the slave-trade should be abolished throughout the entire dominions of Spain, on the 30th day of May, 1820; and that from and after that period, it shall not be lawful for any of the subjects of the crown of Spain, to purchase slaves, or to carry on the slave-trade, on any part of the coast of Africa, upon any pretext, or in any manner whatever; provided, however, that a term of five months from the said date of the 30th of May, 1820, should be allowed for completing the voyages of vessels cleared out lawfully, previously to the said 30th of May.

A decree of the King of Spain, of December, 1817, conformable to the above treaty-stipulation, prohibited all Spanish subjects from engaging in the African slave-trade, from and after the 30th of May, 1820.

The case of the Antelope first came before the District Court of the United States for adjudication, on the 27th of July, 1820. At that time the African slave-trade was forbidden to all Spanish subjects throughout the world, by a decree issued nearly three years before. But the Antelope had been fitted out at the Havana, upon her slave-trading expedition, and had even been captured by the Arraganta, before the 20th of May, 1820, and consequently before the legal prohibition had taken effect. The capture of her by the Arraganta had been made, not for breach of laws against the slave-trade, but as prize of war under a commission from the Oriental Republic. It was her captor who had incurred her forfeiture, and the liberation of the Africans taken in her by the violation of the laws of the United States against the slave-trade—not by purchasing or shipping the negroes in Africa, but for importing them into the United States contrary to law.— To the question of that forfeiture, that of the original property of the vessel and cargo was altogether foreign. That was res inter alios, with which the Courts of the United States had nothing to do. The smuggler was a citizen of the United States. He had proprietary possession of the vessel and of the negroes, which he 

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was smuggling in to be sold as slaves. It was the identical offence against which the laws of Congress had provided, and the negroes had by those laws, and by the violation of them committed by John Smith, acquired a right to freedom, infinitely more sacred, one would have thought, in an American Court of Justice, than the property in and to them, of the Spanish slave-traders who had kidnapped or bought them in Africa, and had not yet consummated their property by bringing them within the exclusive jurisdiction of Spain.

All the Courts of the United States did however think proper to go back to the proprietary right of the Spanish slave-trader; and two of them to sanctify that at the expense of the freedom of the captives, and of the vital spirit of the laws of the Union for the suppression of the African slave-trade. This sacrifice was made, by the District and Circuit Courts of the United States, in Georgia. It was never sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the Union. On this single point, the judgment of the Circuit Court, was saved from reversal, by a divided Court; but on all the collateral points the decisions of both the lower Courts were reversed, and on the single point of the Circuit Court, affirmed: the Chief Justice in affirming it gave explicit and emphatic warning, that no principle was settled. 

In all the three courts, the restoration of the Antelope, and of the Africans captured by the Arraganta on board of her to the Spanish claimants, was explicitly decreed on the fact that at the time of her expedition from the Havana, and of her capture by the Arraganta the prohibition of the slave trade by the King of Spain had not yet taken effect. All the courts agreed that if the case had occurred after the abolition of the trade by Spain, the judgment would have been different. That is, it must and would have been the emancipation and the restoration to their native country as freemen, of every individual African captured by Captain Jackson in the Antelope.  

With what color of reason then was the case of the Antelope made the corner stone of the Attorney General's report to the President of the United States, that the captives of the Amistad should be, by mere Executive warrant, delivered up in a mass, untold and unidentified, to the Spanish minister. Whatever there was or could be of authority in the case of the Antelope led directly to the opposite conclusion. The Supreme Court had top- [[toppled]]
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