"This Practice Against Law": Cuban Slave Trade Cases in the Southern District of New York, 1839-1841

by John D. Gordan III

Overview

Gordan’s research shines a new light on the legal tale of 19^th century American ships covertly intended for the Cuban-African slave trade. “This Practice Against Law” reconstructs the little-known story of the Butterfly and the Catharine, two slave ships from Havana seized by the British Navy off the African coast in 1839. These ships were tendered to the federal government for forfeiture proceedings and their captains prosecuted in the Southern District of New York and the Supreme Court of the United States. At the same time Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney conducted proceedings against the Catharine’s builders in the Circuit Court in Baltimore. Based on the original case files in the National Archives and British Parliamentary publications, this in-depth review refutes the criticism of the federal judiciary in the prior scholarly assessment of these cases and demonstrates that in fact the performance of the federal judges compares favorably with other branches of the American government. xv, 117 pp. 18 illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616195458
Publisher:	The Lawbook Exchange
Publication date:	08/11/2017
Pages:	134
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

JOHN D. GORDAN, III, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, clerked for the Honorable Inzer B. Wyatt, U.S. District Judge (S.D.N.Y.), from 1969 to 1971 and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (S.D.N.Y.) from 1971 to 1976. He was in private practice in New York City from 1976 to 2011. He is the author of The Fugitive Slave Rescue Trial of Robert Morris: Benjamin Robbins Curtis on the Road to Dred Scott.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part I

CONTEXT

1 The International Slave Trade 3

2 August 26, 1839 17

3 The First New York Cases 29

4 The Catharine and the Butterfly 41

Part II

WARREN HOWARD’S CRITICISMS 81

Appendix

The First Day of the Trial of Isaac Morris 99

Decision of Judge Samuel Rossiter Betts in the Butterfly 105

Index 115