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Because the abolitionists could demonstrate that the mutineers had not been born slaves but, rather, had been taken illegally from their homes in Africa, Judson decided in their favor. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which also decided in favor of freeing the slaves in early 1841. Within a year, most of the surviving Africans had returned to Sierra Leone, accompanied by Congregational missionaries intent on furthering the work of the church—but that's another story.
Because these Africans were slaves for only a short period of time and never did settle on any one plantation, Spielberg cannot do for American slavery what he did for the Holocaust in Schindler's List. He cannot show the day-to-day lives of third- or fourth-generation American slaves or the masters who had to live with them and continually justify their relationship. But he does convey some of the horrors of the slave trade in a harrowing sequence that chronicles the kidnapping, selling, and systematic murder of African slaves en route to the Americas. And through it all, he keeps his focus on the Africans themselves.
Lest the white characters overwhelm the story once the slaves are brought before the American courts, the film also introduces a fictitious black abolitionist named Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman). Joadson is a former Georgia slave who maneuvers between Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard), defense attorney Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), and former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) and unites their efforts. It may not be going too far to say that, within the film, it is Joadson who makes it possible for these people to work together, and without him they would go their separate ways.
Joadson is Amistad's main attempt to give African Americans mainstream representation. And to preserve this characterization, the film seriously downplays—even eliminates—the racism that existed in the northern states and would have dogged Joadson's steps at that time. Joadson is also remarkably free of religious convictions; those belong, instead, to such real-life abolitionists as Lewis Tappan, and while Spielberg highlights their religious motivations—it's not often a film allows the positive use of a word like righteousness—he does so in a way that reflects Hollywood's distrust of evangelical Christianity.
The abolitionist movement, as represented here, is distinctly lacking in political savvy. Groups of abolitionists loiter both outside and inside the prison to sing off-key hymns; the slaves wonder who these "miserable-looking" people are and suspect that they must be entertainers. One of the abolitionists coerces a slave named Yamba (Razaaq Adoti) into touching his Bible; Yamba snatches it from his hands in anger. And Tappan seems a bit too fond of martyrdom; in one scene, as he concludes that the Africans will probably be executed, he remarks that they might be more valuable to the cause in death than in life.
Tappan almost certainly did not take this stance. There were, indeed, abolitionists who failed to articulate their ideals in the political arena, but the historical Tappan does not appear to have been one of them. Tappan and his friends believed so strongly in the slaves' freedom that they briefly considered taking up arms to break them out of jail,3 but they decided against this course of action because—apart from the fact that it would have compromised their pacifism—they hoped the Amistad case would vindicate their faith in the American courts and in their own ability to persuade the public. If they could win this case by working within the system, then perhaps America as a whole could be cleansed of slavery from within.
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