Memory Stream Dipping into Philadelphia's illustrated past

In February 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Amistad case. Representing the government was Henry D. Gilpin, attorney general under former President Martin Van Buren. Although Gilpin was born in London, he had made Philadelphia his home. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and had previously been U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The case involved a Spanish slave ship, La Amistad, which was transporting Africans who had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone and transported to Havana, Cuba. Fifty-three of the Africans were purchased in Havana and put aboard the Amistad, en route to a Caribbean plantation, in violation of a U.S.-Spain antislavery treaty.

The Africans mutinied onboard and killed the Amistad's captain and cook. They intended to sail back to Africa, but the ship was seized by the U.S. Navy off the New York coast on Aug. 24, 1839.

Gilpin spoke for the U.S. government, and the Africans were represented by former President John Quincy Adams and Roger Sherman Baldwin. The question for the court was, were the Africans slaves subject to Spanish rule or free people? The court ruled in favor of the Amistad survivors and ordered them transported back to Africa.

After his tenure in Van Buren's cabinet, Gilpin became involved in the arts and cultural community in Philadelphia. He was president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, vice president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, director of Girard College, and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. Gilpin is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.