The Amistad: The Atlantic Slave Trade

After watching the Amistad movie, I had a better understanding about what happened in 1839 on the Amistad ship. The movie described the story of the slaves’ rebellion on the Amistad ship while sailing from Cuba to America. Then, they were imprisoned in Connecticut and their case became a heated subject at that time. Spielberg, the movie director, did an amazing job showing the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. In my opinion, the Amistad movie is historically accurate due to its true illustration about the brutal treatment to the slaves on the ship, the elegant speech and argument of John Quincy Adams in the Supreme Court while defending the Africans of the Amistad, and President Martin Van Buren’s attitude towards slavery and the abolitionists.
He did not support abolitionists and the antislavery sentiments. This was shown in the scene when Van Buren was riding his carriage during his reelection campaign and mentioned that he did not care about the slaves in the Amistad case . During the Amistad trial, President Van Buren was prone towards returning slaves to Cuba instead of freeing them. He was afraid of the resentment of the South where people were against abolitionists and antislavery petitions. After the district court ruled that Africans of the Amistad ship were not slaves and ordered that they be freed, President Van Buren ordered an appeal which had been confirmed by the class handout . The President’s attitude towards abolitionists and slavery were factually shown in the text book. James Roark described, during President Van Buren’s election he said that he was “a northern man with southern Principles.” He meant that although he is from the north where people favored the Abolitionists, he was with the southern proslavery Democrats. During his presidency, he expressed his southern sympathies by seizing the “gag rule” that was against antislavery petitions and passed by the congress in 1836. He repeatedly said, “Abolitionists were fanatics.” He rejected the issue of abolition as an
The genre of this movie is drama. The famous director, Spielberg, did an amazing job to grab the attention of the audience using the sound track. The scenes in the movie clearly portrayed the lives of the slaves during that era. The acting was amazing and the facial expressions of the actors grabbed my attention. The skill of the famous actors, such as Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins, was clearly evident in the movie. I believe that this movie is historically accurate as proved by the text book, scholarly journals, and the class