The Antelope

In 1819, a ship clandestinely left Baltimore with an American crew. The crew changed the flag, renamed the ship the Arraganta, and attacked slave ships along the coast of Africa. The Arraganta captured several ships, one American, multiple Portuguese, and one Spanish, called the Antelope. The Arraganta took on hundreds of enslaved Africans. The Arraganta and the Antelope sailed to Brazil, where the Arraganta wrecked. The surviving crew and Africans moved to the Antelope, which then sailed toward Florida. Suspecting that the Antelope was smuggling slaves into the United States, an American ship captured the Antelope, and it was ordered to Georgia for adjudication. At that point, the Antelope was carrying about 280 Africans. Spanish and Portuguese diplomats (plaintiffs) claimed their citizens owned the captured Africans and demanded their return. Spain provided proof of ownership, but Portugal did not. The United States (defendant) argued that the Africans had been brought from foreign locales against American law and were entitled to their freedom. Congress had outlawed importing new slaves, although owning slaves remained legal. The trial court held that the Africans from the captured American ship were freed but those captured from Portuguese ships or the Antelope were to be divided proportionally between Portugal and Spain. The United States appealed to the Supreme Court. A third of the Africans died before the Court’s judgment in 1825. [Editor’s Note: In 1825, Portugal but not Spain had abolished trading African slaves.]