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La Amistad
Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno is a fictionalized account of a revolt on a Spanish slave ship captained by Don Benito Cereno. The enduring popularity of Benito Cereno with both readers and critics alike is largely due to its portrayal and discussion of race. Written in 1855, just six years before the start of the Civil War, it is nearly impossible to imagine that Melville did not take the question of race into consideration.
Over the course of the story, the reader learns that a group of slaves aboard the San Dominick, led by a man named Babo, took control of the ship after they killed their former master, Alexandro Aranda, along with many of the Spanish soldiers and sailors also aboard the vessel. The remaining men, including Cereno, were spared so long as they obeyed Babo’s orders. When American whaling captain Amasa Delano boards the damaged San Dominick to offer aid, unaware of what has transpired, Babo pretends to be Cereno’s faithful slave so that he can monitor Cereno’s every move and maintain control over the ship. Babo’s plan works until the very end, when Cereno flings himself overboard at the last minute—alerting Delano that something is wrong.
Benito Cereno is a fictional story, but it was likely partly inspired by a real slave revolt that occurred aboard the Spanish ship La Amistad only sixteen years before the novella was published. On June 28, 1839, La Amistad set sail from a small port located near Puerto Príncipe, Cuba. Along with material cargo, the ship also contained fifty-three enslaved Mende captives who were going to be sold to a sugar plantation. The Mende had been kidnapped by African slave catchers and illegally sold to European slavers. While on board, the fifty-three captives were split in two—half were kept in the main hold and the rest were kept on deck. The captives in the main hold managed to break their shackles with a rusty saw and they stormed the deck armed with large cane knives. The Mende were ultimately able to kill La Amistad’s captain and take control of the ship. They attempted to sail back to Africa but were misled by the navigator, who brought them to America instead. La Amistad was eventually discovered and the kidnapped Mende people were put on trial—a trial that they eventually won in 1841 after the Supreme Court sided with the Mende, a great victory in the American abolitionist movement.
It is unsurprising that Melville wrote about such an iconic moment in the American fight against slavery. He was raised in New York and lived his adult life in Massachusetts amongst the Transcendentalists—a hotbed of the abolitionist movement. Melville would go on to explore similar themes four years after Benito Cereno was published when he wrote the poem "The Portent" after the execution of John Brown, the militant abolitionist who had killed several slave owners.
