United States v. The Amistad

United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international diplomacy as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison described it in 1969 as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott in 1857.

La Amistad was traveling along the coast of Cuba on her way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The Africans, Mende people who had been kidnapped in the area of Sierra Leone, in West Africa, illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. They killed the captain and the cook; two other crew members escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende directed the two Spanish navigator survivors to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them by sailing north at night. La Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service (the predecessor of the U.S. Coast Guard) and taken into custody. The widely-publicized court cases in the U.S. federal district court and eventually the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in 1841, which addressed international issues, helped the abolitionist movement.

In 1840, a federal district court found that the transport of the kidnapped Africans across the Atlantic Ocean on the Portuguese slave ship Tecora was in violation of US laws against slave trade. The captives were ruled to have acted as free men when they fought to escape their kidnapping and illegal confinement. The court ruled the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. Under international and Southern sectional pressure, U.S. President Martin Van Buren ordered the case appealed to the Supreme Court. It affirmed the lower district court ruling on March 9, 1841 and authorized the release of the Mende, but it overturned the additional order of the lower court to return them to Africa at government expense. Supporters arranged for temporary housing of the Africans in Farmington, Connecticut, as well as funds for travel. In 1842, the 35 who wanted to return to Africa, together with U.S. Christian missionaries, were transported by ship to Sierra Leone.

Background

Rebellion at sea and capture

On June 27, 1839, La Amistad ("Friendship"), a Spanish vessel, departed from the port of Havana, Cuba, for the Province of Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were Captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montes, all Spanish nationals. With Ferrer was Antonio, a man enslaved by Ferrer to serve him personally. Ruiz was transporting 49 Africans, who had been entrusted to him by the governor-general of Cuba. Montez held four additional Africans, also entrusted to him by the governor-general. As the voyage normally took only four days, the crew had brought four days' worth of rations and had not anticipated the strong headwind that slowed the schooner. On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Joseph Cinqué, freed himself and the other captives using a file that had been found and kept by a woman who, like them, had been on the Tecora, the Portuguese ship that had transported them illegally as slaves from West Africa to Cuba.

The Mende killed the ship's cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The Mende also killed Captain Ferrer, and the armed struggle resulted as well in the deaths of two Africans. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The Mende spared the lives of the two Spaniards who could navigate the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, if they returned the ship east across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. They also spared Antonio, a creole, and used him as an interpreter with Ruiz and Montez.

The crew deceived the Africans and steered La Amistad north along the East Coast of the United States, where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor half-a-mile off eastern Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went ashore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk. The vessel was discovered by a United States Revenue Cutter Service cutter ship, USRC Washington. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, commanding the cutter, saw some of the Africans on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of La Amistad and the Africans.

Taking them to the Long Island Sound port of New London, Connecticut, he presented officials with a written claim for his property rights under international admiralty law for salvage of the vessel, the cargo, and the Africans. Gedney allegedly chose to land in Connecticut because slavery was still technically legal there, under the state's gradual abolition law, unlike in nearby New York State. He hoped to profit from sale of the Africans. Gedney transferred the captured Africans into the custody of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, where legal proceedings began.

Parties

Lt. Thomas R. Gedney filed a libel (a lawsuit in admiralty law) for salvage rights to the African captives and cargo on board La Amistad as property seized on the high seas.

Henry Green and Pelatiah Fordham filed a libel for salvage and claimed that they had been the first to discover La Amistad.

José Ruiz and Pedro Montes filed libels requesting their property of "slaves" and cargo to be returned to them.

The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, representing the Spanish government, libeled for the "slaves," cargo, and vessel to be returned to Spain as its property.

Antonio Vega, vice-consul of Spain, libeled for "the slave Antonio" on the grounds that the man was his personal property.

The Africans denied that they were slaves or property and argued that the court could not "return" them to the control of the government of Spain.

José Antonio Tellincas, with Aspe and Laca, claimed other goods on board La Amistad.

British pressure

As the British had entered into a treaty with Spain prohibiting the slave trade north of the equator, they considered it a matter of international law for the United States to release the Africans. The British applied diplomatic pressure to achieve that such as invoking the Treaty of Ghent with the US, which jointly enforced their respective prohibitions against the international slave trade.

While the legal battle continued, Dr. Richard Robert Madden, "who served on behalf of the British commission to suppress the African slave trade in Havana," arrived to testify. He made a deposition "that some twenty-five thousand slaves were brought into Cuba every year – with the wrongful compliance of, and personal profit by, Spanish officials." Madden also "told the court that his examinations revealed that the defendants were brought directly from Africa and could not have been residents of Cuba," as the Spanish had claimed. Madden, who later had an audience with Queen Victoria concerning the case, conferred with the British Minister in Washington, D.C., Henry Stephen Fox, who pressured U.S. Secretary of State John Forsyth on behalf "of her Majesty's Government."

Fox wrote:

...Great Britain is also bound to remember that the law of Spain, which finally prohibited the slave-trade throughout the Spanish dominions, from the date of the 30th of May, 1820, the provisions of which law are contained in the King of Spain's royal cedula of the 19th December, was passed, in compliance with a treaty obligation to that effect, by which the Crown of Spain had bound itself to the Crown of Great Britain, and for which a valuable compensation, in return, was given by Great Britain to Spain; as may be seen by reference to the 2d, 3d, and 4th articles of a public treaty concluded between Great Britain and Spain on the 23d of September, 1817.

It is next to be observed, that Great Britain and the United States have mutually engaged themselves to each other, by the 10th article of the treaty of Ghent, to use their best endeavors for the entire abolition of the African slave-trade; and there can be no doubt of the firm intention of both parties religiously to fulfill the terms of that engagement.

Now, the unfortunate Africans whose case is the subject of the present representation, have been thrown by accidental circumstances into the hands of the authorities of the United States Government whether these persons shall recover the freedom to which they are entitled, or whether they shall be reduced to slavery, in violation of known laws and contracts publicly passed, prohibiting the continuance of the African slave-trade by Spanish subjects.

It is under these circumstance that her Majesty's Government anxiously hope that the President of the United States will find himself empowered to take such measures, in behalf of the aforesaid Africans, as shall secure to them the possession of their liberty, to which, without doubt they are by law entitled.

Forsyth responded that under the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution, the President could not influence the court case. He said that the question of whether the "negroes of the Amistad" had been enslaved in violation of the Treaty was still an open one, "and this Government would with great reluctance erect itself into a tribunal to investigate such questions between two friendly sovereigns." He noted that when the facts were determined, they could be taken into account. He suggested that if the Court found for Spanish rights of property, the Africans would be returned to Cuba. Great Britain and Spain could then argue their questions of law and treaties between them.

Spanish argument

Secretary of State Forsyth requested from the Spanish minister, Chevalier de Argaiz, "a copy of the laws now in force in the island of Cuba relative to slavery." In response, the Captain General of Cuba sent Argaiz "everything on the subject, which had been determined since the treaty concluded in 1818 between Spain and England." The minister also expressed dismay that the Africans had not already been returned to Spanish control.

The Spanish maintained that none but a Spanish court could have jurisdiction over the case. The minister stated, "I do not, in fact, understand how a foreign court of justice can be considered competent to take cognizance of an offence committed on board of a Spanish vessel, by Spanish subjects, and against Spanish subjects, in the waters of a Spanish territory; for it was committed on the coasts of this island, and under the flag of this nation." The minister noted that the Spanish had recently turned over American sailors "belonging to the crew of the American vessel 'William Engs,'" whom it had tried by request of their captain and the American consul. The sailors had been found guilty of mutiny and sentenced to "four years' confinement in a fortress." Other American sailors had protested, and when the American ambassador raised the issue with the Spaniards, on March 20, 1839, "her Majesty, having taken into consideration all the circumstances, decided that the said seamen should be placed at the disposition of the American consul, seeing that the offence was committed in one of the vessels and under the flag of his nation, and not on shore." The Spaniards asked how if America had demanded that the sailors in an American ship be turned over to them despite being in a Spanish port, they could now try the Spanish mutineers.

The Spaniards held that just as America had ended its importation of African slaves but maintained a legal domestic population, so too had Cuba. It was up to Spanish courts to determine "whether the Negroes in question" were legal or illegal slaves under Spanish law, "but never can this right justly belong to a foreign country."

The Spaniards maintained that even if it was believed that the Africans were being held as slaves in violation of "the celebrated treaty of humanity concluded between Spain and Great Britain in 1835," it would be a violation of "the laws of Spain; and the Spanish Government, being as scrupulous as any other in maintaining the strict observance of the prohibitions imposed on, or the liberties allowed to, its subjects by itself, will severely chastise those of them who fail in their duties."

The Spaniards pointed out that by American law, the jurisdiction over a

vessel on the high seas, in time of peace, engaged in a lawful voyage, is, according to the laws of nations, under the exclusive jurisdiction of the State to which her flag belongs; as much so as if constituting a part of its own domain. ...if such ship or vessel should be forced, by stress of weather, or other unavoidable cause, into the port and under the jurisdiction of a friendly Power, she, and her cargo, and persons on board, with their property, and all the rights belonging to their personal relations as established by the laws of the State to which they belong, would be placed under the protection which the laws of nations extend to the unfortunate under such circumstances.

The Spaniards demanded that the U.S. "apply these proper principles to the case of the schooner Amistad."

The Spanish were further encouraged that their view would win by U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun and the Senate's Committee of Foreign Relations on April 15, 1840 issuing a statement announcing complete "conformity between the views entertained by the Senate, and the arguments urged by the [Spanish Minister] Chevalier de Argaiz" concerning La Amistad.

Applicable law

The Spanish categorized the Africans as property to have the case fall under Pinckney's Treaty of 1795. They protested when Judge William Jay construed a statement by their Minister as seeming to demand "the surrender of the negroes apprehended on board the schooner Amistad, as murderers, and not as property; that is to say founding his demand on the law of nations, and not on the treaty of 1795."

The Spanish pointed out that the statement to which Jay was referring was one of the Spanish minister "speaking of the crime committed by the negroes [slave revolt], and the punishment which they merit." They went on to point out that the minister had stated that a payment to compensate the owners "would be a slender compensation; for though the property should remain, as it ought to remain, unimpaired, public vengeance would be frustrated."

Judge Jay took issue with the Spanish minister's request for the Africans to be turned over to Spanish authorities, which seemed to imply that they were fugitives instead of misbehaving property, since the 1795 treaty stated that property should be restored directly to the control of its owners. The Spanish denied that it meant that the minister had waived the contention of them being property.

By insisting that the case fell under the treaty, the Spanish were invoking the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which would put the clauses of the treaty above the state laws of Connecticut or New York, where the ship had been taken into custody, "no one who respects the laws of the country ought to oppose the execution of the treaty, which is the supreme law of the country." The case was already in the federal district court.

The Spanish also sought to avoid talk about the law of nations, as some of their opponents argued that it included a duty by the U.S. to treat the Africans with the same deference as would be accorded any other foreign sailors.

John Quincy Adams would argue that issue before the Supreme Court in 1841,:

The Africans were in possession, and had the presumptive right of ownership; they were in peace with the United States: ...they were not pirates; they were on a voyage to their native homes... the ship was theirs, and being in immediate communication with the shore, was in the territory of the State of New York; or, if not, at least half the number were actually on the soil of New York, and entitled to all the provisions of the law of nations, and the protection and comfort which the laws of that State secure to every human being within its limits.

When pressed with questions concerning the law of nations, the Spanish referred to a concept of Hugo Grotius, who is credited as one of the originators of the law of nations. Specifically, they noted that "the usage, then, of demanding fugitives from a foreign Government, is confined... to crimes which affect the Government and such as are of extreme atrocity."

Initial court proceedings

Economic

End of Atlantic slave trade

Panic of 1857

Political

Northwest Ordinance

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

Missouri Compromise

Nullification crisis

Gag rule

Tariff of 1828

End of slavery in British colonies

Texas annexation

Mexican–American War

Wilmot Proviso

Nashville Convention

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Kansas–Nebraska Act

Ostend Manifesto

Caning of Charles Sumner

Lincoln–Douglas debates

1860 presidential election

Crittenden Compromise

Secession of Southern states

Peace Conference of 1861

Corwin Amendment

Social

Nat Turner's slave rebellion

Martyrdom of Elijah Lovejoy

Burning of Pennsylvania Hall

American Slavery As It Is

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Bleeding Kansas

The Impending Crisis of the South

Oberlin–Wellington Rescue

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

Judicial

Trial of Reuben Crandall

Commonwealth v. Aves

The Amistad affair

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

Recapture of Anthony Burns

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Virginia v. John Brown

Military

Star of the West

Battle of Fort Sumter

President Lincoln's 75,000 volunteers

A case before the circuit court in Hartford, Connecticut, was filed in September 1839, charging the Africans with mutiny and murder on La Amistad. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction, because the alleged acts took place on a Spanish ship in Spanish waters. It was entered into the docket books of the federal court as United States v. Cinque, et al.

Various parties filed property claims with the district court to many of the African captives, to the ship, and to its cargo: Ruiz and Montez, Lieutenant Gedney, and Captain Henry Green (who had met the Africans while on shore on Long Island and claimed to have helped in their capture). The Spanish government asked that the ship, cargo and slaves be restored to Spain under the Pinckney treaty of 1795 between Spain and the United States. Article 9 of the treaty held that "all ships and merchandises of what nature soever, which shall be rescued out of the hands of pirates or robbers on the high seas, ... shall be restored, entire, to the true proprietor." The United States filed a claim on behalf of Spain.

The abolitionist movement had formed the "Amistad Committee," headed by the New York City merchant Lewis Tappan, and had collected money to mount a defense of the Africans. Initially, communication with the Africans was difficult since they spoke neither English nor Spanish. Professor J. Willard Gibbs, Sr. learned from the Africans to count to ten in their Mende language. He went to the docks of New York City and counted aloud in front of sailors until he located a person able to understand and translate. He found James Covey, a twenty-year-old sailor on the British man-of-war HMS Buzzard. Covey was a former slave from West Africa.

The abolitionists filed charges of assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment against Ruiz and Montes. Their arrest in New York City in October 1839 had outraged pro-slavery advocates and the Spanish government. Montes immediately posted bail and went to Cuba. Ruiz, "more comfortable in a New England setting (and entitled to many amenities not available to the Africans), hoped to garner further public support by staying in jail.... Ruiz, however, soon tired of his martyred lifestyle in jail and posted bond. Like Montes, he returned to Cuba." Outraged, the Spanish minister, Cavallero Pedro Alcántara Argaiz, made "caustic accusations against America's judicial system and continued to condemn the abolitionist affront. Ruiz's imprisonment only added to Alcántara's anger, and Alcántara pressured Forsyth to seek ways to throw out the case altogether." The Spanish held that the bailbonds that the men had to acquire so that they could leave jail and return to Cuba caused them a grave financial burden, and "by the treaty of 1795, no obstacle or impediment [to leave the U.S.] should have [been] placed" in their way.

On January 7, 1840, all of the parties, with the Spanish minister representing Ruiz and Montes, appeared before the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and presented their arguments.

The abolitionists' main argument before the district court was that a treaty between Britain and Spain in 1817 and a subsequent pronouncement by the Spanish government had outlawed the slave trade across the Atlantic. They established that the slaves had been captured in Mendiland (also spelled Mendeland, now Sierra Leone) in Africa, sold to a Portuguese trader in Lomboko (south of Freetown) in April 1839, and taken to Havana illegally on a Portuguese ship. The Africans were victims of illegal kidnapping and so, the abolitionists argued, were not slaves but free to return to Africa. Their papers wrongly identified them as slaves who had been in Cuba since before 1820 and so were thus considered to have been born there as slaves. They contended that government officials in Cuba condoned such mistaken classifications.

Concerned about relations with Spain and his re-election prospects in the South, U.S. President Martin Van Buren, a Democrat, sided with the Spanish position. He ordered the schooner USS Grampus to New Haven Harbor to return the Africans to Cuba immediately after a favorable decision, before any appeals could be decided.

The district court, led by judge Andrew T. Judson, ruled in favor of the abolitionists and the Africans' position. In January 1840, he ordered for the Africans to be returned to their homeland by the U.S. government, and for one third of La Amistad and its cargo to be given to Lieutenant Gedney as salvage property. (The federal government had outlawed the slave trade between the U.S. and other countries in 1808; an 1818 law, as amended in 1819, provided for the return of all illegally-traded slaves.) The captain's personal slave Antonio was declared the rightful property of the captain's heirs and was ordered restored to Cuba. (Sterne said that he returned to Cuba willingly. Smithsonian sources say that he escaped to New York, or to Canada, with the help of an abolitionist group.)[citation needed]

In detail, the District Court ruled as follows:

It rejected the claim of the U.S. Attorney, who argued on behalf of the Spanish minister for the restoration of the slaves.

It dismissed the claims of Ruiz and Montez.

It ordered that the captives be delivered to the custody of the U.S. President for transportation to Africa since they were in fact legally free.

It allowed the Spanish vice-consul to claim the slave Antonio.

It allowed Lt. Gedney to claim one third of the property on board La Amistad.

It allowed Tellincas, Aspe, and Laca to claim one third of the property.

It dismissed the claims of Green and Fordham for salvage.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, by order of Van Buren, immediately appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court for the Connecticut District. He challenged every part of the District Court's ruling except the concession of the slave Antonio to the Spanish vice-consul. Tellincas, Aspe, and Laca also appealed to gain a greater portion of the salvage value. Ruiz and Montez and the owners of La Amistad did not appeal.

The Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court's decision in April 1840. The U.S. Attorney appealed the federal government's case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arguments before Supreme Court

On February 23, 1841, U.S. Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin began the oral argument phase before the Supreme Court. Gilpin first entered into evidence the papers of La Amistad, which stated that the Africans were Spanish property. Gilpin argued that the Court had no authority to rule against the validity of the documents. Gilpin contended that if the Africans were slaves, as indicated by the documents, they must be returned to their rightful owner, the Spanish government. Gilpin's argument lasted two hours.

John Quincy Adams, a former U.S. President who was then a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, had agreed to argue for the Africans. When it was time for him to argue, he said that he felt ill-prepared. Roger Sherman Baldwin, who had already represented the captives in the lower cases, opened in his place.

Baldwin, a prominent attorney, contended that the Spanish government was trying to manipulate the Supreme Court to return "fugitives." He argued that the Spanish government sought the return of slaves who had been freed by the district court but was not appealing the fact of their having been freed. Covering all the facts of the case, Baldwin spoke for four hours over the course of February 22 and 23. (He was of no relation to the Court's Justice Henry Baldwin.)

Adams rose to speak on February 24. He reminded the Court that it was a part of the judicial branch and not part of the executive. Introducing copies of correspondence between the Spanish government and the U.S. Secretary of State, he criticized President Martin Van Buren for his assumption of unconstitutional powers in the case:

This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with utmost pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy – and a sympathy the most partial and injust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.

Adams argued that neither Pinckney's Treaty nor the Adams–Onís Treaty applied to the case. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty referred only to property and did not apply to people. As to The Antelope decision (10 Wheat. 124), which recognized "that possession on board of a vessel was evidence of property," Adams said that did not apply either since the precedent was established prior to the prohibition of the foreign slave trade by the United States. Adams concluded on March 1 after eight-and-a-half hours of speaking. (The Court had taken a recess following the death of Associate Justice Barbour).

Attorney General Gilpin concluded oral arguments with a three-hour rebuttal on March 2. The Court retired to consider the case.

Decision

On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty was ruled inapplicable since the Africans in question had never been legal property. They were not criminals, as the U.S. Attorney's Office argued, but rather "unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel." The documents submitted by Attorney General Gilpin were evidence not of property but rather of fraud on the part of the Spanish government. Lt. Gedney and the USS Washington were to be awarded salvage from the vessel for having performed "a highly meritorious and useful service to the proprietors of the ship and cargo." When La Amistad anchored near Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had never intended to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onís Treaty did not apply and so the President was not required to return the Africans to Africa.

In his judgment, Story wrote:

Joseph Story gave the Supreme Court's majority judgment.

It is also a most important consideration, in the present case, which ought not to be lost sight of, that, supposing these African negroes not to be slaves, but kidnapped, and free negroes, the treaty with Spain cannot be obligatory upon them; and the United States are bound to respect their rights as much as those of Spanish subjects. The conflict of rights between the parties, under such circumstances, becomes positive and inevitable, and must be decided upon the eternal principles of justice and international law. If the contest were about any goods on board of this ship, to which American citizens asserted a title, which was denied by the Spanish claimants, there could be no doubt of the right to such American citizens to litigate their claims before any competent American tribunal, notwithstanding the treaty with Spain. A fortiori, the doctrine must apply, where human life and human liberty are in issue, and constitute the very essence of the controversy. The treaty with Spain never could have intended to take away the equal rights of all foreigners, who should contest their claims before any of our courts, to equal justice; or to deprive such foreigners of the protection given them by other treaties, or by the general law of nations. Upon the merits of the case, then, there does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt, that these negroes ought to be deemed free; and that the Spanish treaty interposes no obstacle to the just assertion of their rights....

When the Amistad arrived, she was in possession of the negroes, asserting their freedom; and in no sense could they possibly intend to import themselves here, as slaves, or for sale as slaves. In this view of the matter, that part of the decree of the district court is unmaintainable, and must be reversed.

The view which has been thus taken of this case, upon the merits, under the first point, renders it wholly unnecessary for us to give any opinion upon the other point, as to the right of the United States to intervene in this case in the manner already stated. We dismiss this, therefore, as well as several minor points made at the argument....

Upon the whole, our opinion is, that the decree of the circuit court, affirming that of the district court, ought to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to be delivered to the president, to be transported to Africa, in pursuance of the act of the 3rd of March 1819; and as to this, it ought to be reversed: and that the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay.

Aftermath and significance

The Africans greeted the news of the Supreme Court's decision with joy. Abolitionist supporters took the survivors – 36 men and boys and three girls – to Farmington, a village considered "Grand Central Station" on the Underground Railroad. Their residents had agreed to have the Africans stay there until they could return to their homeland. Some households took them in; supporters also provided barracks for them.

The Amistad Committee instructed the Africans in English and Christianity, and raised funds to pay for their return home. One missionary was James Steele, an Oberlin graduate, previously one of the Lane Rebels. "In 1841 he joined the Amistad Mission to Mendhi, which returned freed slaves to Africa and worked to establish a mission there. However, Steele soon found that the Amistad captives belonged to seven different tribes, some at war with one another. All of the chiefs were slave traders and authorized to re-enslave freed persons. These findings led to the decision that the mission must start in Sierra Leone, under the protection of the British.”

Along with several missionaries, in 1842 the surviving 35 Africans returned to Sierra Leone, the other having died at sea or while awaiting trial. The Americans constructed a mission in Mendiland. Numerous members of the Amistad Committee later founded the American Missionary Association, an evangelical organization which continued to support the Mendi mission. With leadership of black and white ministers from mostly Presbyterian and Congregational denominations, it was active in working for abolitionism in the United States and for the education of Blacks, sponsoring the founding of Howard University, among other institutions. After the American Civil War, it founded numerous schools and colleges for freedmen in the South.

In the following years, the Spanish government continued to press the US for compensation for the ship, cargo, and slaves. Several Southern lawmakers introduced resolutions into the United States Congress to appropriate money for such payment but failed to gain passage, although it was supported by presidents James K. Polk and James Buchanan.

Joseph Cinqué returned to Africa. In his final years, he was reported to have returned to the mission and re-embraced Christianity. Recent historical research suggests that the allegations of Cinqué's later involvement in the slave trade are false.

In the Creole case of 1841, the United States dealt with another ship rebellion similar to that of the Amistad.

The US had prohibited the international slave trade in 1808, but ended domestic slavery only in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment. Connecticut had a gradual abolition law passed in 1797; children born to slaves were free but had to serve apprenticeships until young adulthood; the last slaves were freed in 1848.

In popular culture

The slave revolt aboard the Amistad, the background of the slave trade and its subsequent trial is retold in a celebrated poem by Robert Hayden entitled "Middle Passage", first published in 1962. Howard Jones published Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy in 1987.

A movie, Amistad (1997), was based on the events of the revolt and court cases, and Howard Jones' 1987 book Mutiny on the Amistad.

African-American artist Hale Woodruff painted murals portraying events related to the revolt on The Amistad in 1938, for Talladega College in Alabama. A statue of Cinqué was erected beside the City Hall building in New Haven, Connecticut in 1992. There is an Amistad memorial at Montauk Point State Park on Long Island.

In 2000, Freedom Schooner Amistad, a ship replica, was launched in Mystic, Connecticut. The Historical Society of Farmington, Connecticut offers walking tours of village houses that housed the Africans while funds were collected for their return home. The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, has numerous resources for research into slavery, abolition, and African Americans.

 

Bonnie Lee Bakely on TPKs Stories

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"Lights Over Phoenix": A UFO Mystery

The Phoenix Lights (sometimes called the "Lights Over Phoenix") were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the southwestern states of Arizona and Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora on March 13, 1997.

Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm MST, in a space of about 300 miles (480 km), from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft that were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing five spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona at the time, years later said he witnessed this incident, describing the object as being "otherworldly."

The lights were reported to have reappeared in 2007 and 2008, and were attributed to military flares dropped by fighter aircraft at Luke Air Force Base and flares attached to helium balloons released by a civilian, respectively.

Timeline

Initial reports

At about 6:55pm PST (7:55pm MST), a man reported seeing a V-shaped object above Henderson, Nevada. He said it was about the "size of a (Boeing) 747", sounded like "rushing wind", and had six lights on its leading edge. The lights reportedly traversed northwest to the southeast.

An unidentified former police officer from Paulden, Arizona, is claimed to have been the next person to report a sighting, after leaving his house at about 20:15 MST. As he was driving north, he allegedly saw a cluster of reddish or orange lights in the sky, comprising four lights together and a fifth light trailing them. Each of the individual lights in the formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of orange light. He returned home and watched the lights through binoculars until they disappeared south over the horizon.

Prescott and Prescott Valley

Lights were also reportedly seen in the areas of Prescott and Prescott Valley. At approximately 20:17 MST, callers began reporting the object was definitely solid because it blocked out much of the starry sky as it passed over.

Devon Lorenz and his aunt, Jamie Lorenz, were standing outside on his porch in Prescott Valley when they noticed a cluster of lights to the west-northwest of their position. The lights formed a triangular pattern, but all of them appeared to be red, except the light at the nose of the object, which was distinctly white. The object, or objects, which had been observed for approximately two to three minutes with binoculars, then passed directly over the observers, were seen to "bank to the right", and then disappeared in the night sky to the southeast of Prescott Valley. The altitude could not be determined but the object was fairly low and made no sound whatsoever.

The National UFO Reporting Center received the following report from the Prescott area: "We observed five yellow-white lights in a "V" formation moving slowly from the northwest, across the sky to the northeast, then turn almost due south and continue until out of sight. The point of the "V" was in the direction of movement. The first three lights were in a fairly tight "V" while two of the lights were further back along the lines of the "V"'s legs. During the NW-NE transit one of the trailing lights moved up and joined the three and then dropped back to the trailing position. I estimated the three light "V" to cover about 0.5 degrees of sky and the whole group of five lights to cover about 1 degree of sky.”

First sighting from Phoenix

Tim Ley and his wife Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson Damien Turnidge first saw the lights when they were above Prescott Valley, about 65 miles (100 km) away from them. At first, the lights appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc shape, as if they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized that the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes, the lights appeared to come closer, the distance between the lights increased, and they took on the shape of an upside-down V. Eventually, when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away, the witnesses could make out a shape that looked like a 60-degree carpenter's square, with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side. Soon, the object with the embedded lights appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived, about 100 to 150 feet (30 to 45 meters) above them, traveling so slowly that it appeared to hover and was silent. The object then seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Squaw Peak Mountain and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the object pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds; this was at approximately between 20:30 and 20:45 MST.

Arriving in Phoenix

When the triangular formation entered the Phoenix area, Bill Greiner, a cement driver hauling a load down a mountain north of Phoenix, described the second group of lights: "I'll never be the same. Before this, if anybody had told me they saw a UFO, I would've said, "Yeah and I believe in the Tooth Fairy." "Now I've got a whole new view and I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I've seen something that don't belong here." Greiner stated that the lights hovered over the area for more than two hours.

After Phoenix

A report came from a young man in the Kingman area who stopped his car at a payphone to report the incident. "[The] young man, en route to Los Angeles, called from a phone booth to report having seen a large and bizarre cluster of stars moving slowly in the northern sky".

Reappearance in 2008

On April 21, 2008, lights were again reported over Phoenix by local residents. These lights appeared to change from square to triangular formation over time. A valley resident reported that shortly after the lights appeared, three jets were seen heading west in the direction of the lights. An official from Luke Air Force Base denied any United States Air Force activity in the area. On April 22, 2008, a resident of Phoenix told a newspaper that the lights were nothing more than his neighbor releasing helium balloons with flares attached. This was confirmed by a police helicopter. The following day, a Phoenix resident, who declined to be identified in news reports, stated that he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.

Photographic documentation

Imagery of the Phoenix Lights falls into two categories: images of the triangular formation seen prior to 22:00 MST in Prescott and Dewey, and images of the 22:00 MST Phoenix event. Almost all known images are of the second event. All known images were produced using a variety of commercially available camcorders and cameras. There are no known images taken by equipment designed for scientific analysis, nor are there any known images taken using high-powered optics or night vision equipment.

First event

There are few known images of the Prescott/Dewey lights. Television station KSAZ reported that an individual named Richard Curtis recorded a detailed video that purportedly showed the outline of a spacecraft, but that the video had been lost.

Second event

During the Phoenix event, numerous still photographs and videotapes were made, distinctly showing a series of lights appearing at a regular interval, remaining illuminated for several moments and then going out. These images have been repeatedly aired by documentary television channels such as the Discovery Channel and the History Channel as part of their UFO documentary programming.

The most frequently seen sequence shows what appears to be an arc of lights appearing one by one, then going out one by one. UFO advocates claim that these images show that the lights were some form of "running light" or other aircraft illumination along the leading edge of a large craft – estimated to be as large as a mile (1.6 km) in diameter – hovering over the city of Phoenix. Other similar sequences, reportedly taken over a period of 30 minutes, show differing numbers of lights in a V or arrowhead array. Thousands of witnesses throughout Arizona also reported a silent, mile-wide V or boomerang-shaped craft with varying numbers of huge orbs. A significant number of witnesses reported that the craft was silently gliding directly overhead at low altitude. The first-hand witnesses consistently reported that the lights appeared as "canisters of swimming light", while the underbelly of the craft was undulating "like looking through water". However, skeptics claim that the video is evidence that mountains not visible at night partially obstructed views from certain angles, thereby bolstering the claim that the lights were more distant than UFO advocates claim.

UFO advocate Jim Dilettoso claimed to have performed "spectral analysis" of photographs and video imagery that proved the lights could not have been produced by a man-made source. Dilettoso claimed to have used software called "Image Pro Plus" (exact version unknown) to determine the amount of red, green and blue in the various photographic and video images and construct histograms of the data, which were then compared to several photographs known to be of flares. Several sources have pointed out, however, that it is impossible to determine the spectral signature of a light source based solely on photographic or video imagery, as film and electronics inherently alter the spectral signature of a light source by shifting hue in the visible spectrum, and experts in spectroscopy have dismissed his claims as being scientifically invalid. Normal photographic equipment also eliminates light outside the visible spectrum – e.g., infrared and ultraviolet – that would be necessary for a complete spectral analysis. The maker of "Image Pro Plus", Media Cybernetic, has stated that its software is incapable of performing spectroscopic analysis.

Cognitech, an independent video laboratory, superimposed video imagery taken of the Phoenix Lights onto video imagery it shot during daytime from the same location. In the composite image, the lights are seen to extinguish at the moment they reach the Estrella mountain range, which is visible in the daytime, but invisible in the footage shot at night. A broadcast by local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate KSAZ-TV claimed to have performed a similar test that showed the lights were in front of the mountain range and suggested that the Cognitech data might have been altered. Dr. Paul Scowen, visiting professor of Astronomy at Arizona State University, performed a third analysis using daytime imagery overlaid with video shot of the lights and his findings were consistent with Cognitech. The Phoenix New Times subsequently reported the television station had simply overlaid two video tracks on a video editing machine without using a computer to match the zoom and scale of the two images.

Wind direction data

Wind direction measured independently by several weather stations in the Phoenix area and archived by the National Centers for Environmental Information is consistent with reports about the movement of the lights. During the events, wind direction (origin) was changing from roughly west (i.e., blowing towards the east) to north (i.e., blowing towards the south). This supports the hypothesis that the flying objects were wind-driven and could simply have been balloons (such as sky lanterns or other balloon-carried light effects) or flares.

Explanations

There is some controversy as to how best to classify the reports on the night in question. Some are of the opinion that the differing nature of the eyewitness reports indicates that several unidentified objects were in the area, each of which was its own separate "event". This is largely dismissed by skeptics as an over-extrapolation from the kind of deviation common in necessarily subjective eyewitness accounts.[citation needed] The media and most skeptical investigators have largely preferred to split the sightings into two distinct classes, a first and second event, for which two separate explanations are offered:

First event

The first event – the "V", which appeared over northern Arizona and gradually traveled south over nearly the entire length of the state, eventually passing south of Tucson – was the apparently "wedge-shaped" object reported by then-Governor Symington and many others. This event started at about 20:15 MST over the Prescott area and was seen south of Tucson by about 20:45 MST.

Proponents of two separate events propose that the first event still has no provable explanation, but that some evidence exists that the lights were in fact airplanes. According to an article by reporter Janet Gonzales that appeared in the Phoenix New Times, videotape of the v shape shows the lights moving as separate entities, not as a single object; a phenomenon known as illusory contours can cause the human eye to see unconnected lines or dots as forming a single shape.

Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer, observed high altitude lights flying in formation using a Dobsonian telescope giving 43x magnification. After observing the lights, he told his mother, who was present at the time, that the lights were aircraft.

Second event

The second event was the set of nine lights appearing to "hover" over the city of Phoenix at around 10 pm. The second event has been more thoroughly covered by the media, due in part to the numerous video images taken of the lights. This was also observed by numerous people who may have thought they were seeing the same lights as those reported earlier.

The U.S. Air Force explained the second event as slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares dropped by a flight of four A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise at the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in western Pima County. According to this explanation, the flares would have been visible in Phoenix and appeared to hover due to rising heat from the burning flares creating a "balloon" effect on their parachutes, which slowed the descent. The lights then appeared to wink out as they fell behind the Estrella mountain range to the southwest of Phoenix.

A Maryland Air National Guard pilot, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, responding to a March 2007 media query, confirmed that he had flown one of the aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question. The squadron to which he belonged was in fact at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, on a training exercise at the time and flew training sorties to the Goldwater Range on the night in question, according to the Maryland Air National Guard. A history of the Maryland Air National Guard published in 2000 asserted that the squadron, the 104th Fighter Squadron, was responsible for the incident. The first reports that members of the Maryland Air National Guard were responsible for the incident were published in The Arizona Republic in July 1997.

Military flares such as these can be seen from hundreds of miles given ideal environmental conditions. Later comparisons with known military flare drops were reported on local television stations, showing similarities between the known military flare drops and the Phoenix Lights. An analysis of the luminosity of LUU-2B/B illumination flares, the type which would have been in use by A-10 aircraft at the time, determined that the luminosity of such flares at a range of approximately 50–70 miles would fall well within the range of the lights viewed from Phoenix.

Public response

News media

There was minimal news coverage at the time of the incident. In Phoenix, a small number of local news outlets noted the event, but it received little attention beyond that. But on June 18, 1997, USA Today ran a front-page story that brought national attention to the case. This was followed by news coverage on the ABC and NBC television networks. The case quickly caught the popular imagination and has since become a staple of UFO-related documentary television, including specials produced by the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.

Governor

Wiki-news has related news:

Former Arizona Governor says he saw a UFO during the 1997 Phoenix Lights

Shortly after the lights, Arizona Governor Fife Symington III held a press conference, stating that "they found who was responsible". He proceeded to make light of the situation by bringing his aide on stage dressed in an alien costume. (Dateline, NBC). But in March 2007, Symington said that he had witnessed one of the "crafts of unknown origin" during the 1997 event, although he did not go public with the information. In an interview with The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona, Symington said, "I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it". Symington had earlier said, "It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too. It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.

Symington also noted that he requested information from the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the general of the National Guard, and the head of the Department of Public Safety. But none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were also perplexed. Later, he responded to an Air Force explanation that the lights were flares: "As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation". In an episode of the television show UFO Hunters called "The Arizona Lights", Symington said that he contacted the military asking what the lights were. The response was "no comment". He pointed out that he was the governor of Arizona at the time, not just some ordinary civilian.

Frances Barwood, the 1997 Phoenix city councilwoman who launched an investigation into the event, said that of the over 700 witnesses she interviewed, "The government never interviewed even one".

Related films

The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone Documentary, Lynne D. Kitei, M.D., Executive Producer, in collaboration with Steve Lantz Productions. Based on the book, The Phoenix Lights...A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone and featuring Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, former Governor Fife Symington, former Vice Mayor, investigators, military, pilots and witnesses.

The Appearance of a Man, directed by Daniel Pace.

Night Skies, a horror movie starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, and Ashley Peldon, features the lights. It premiered direct-to-DVD in the US on January 23, 2007.

They Came from Outer Space (previous title: Phoenix Lights The Movie), a science fiction thriller starring Ossie Beck, Mackenzie Firgens, Yvette Rachelle, Matt Mercer, Terin Alba, Courtney Gains, Mark Arnold, Michael LeMelle, Aaron Mills, and Luke Amsden.

The Phoenix Incident, a science-fiction conspiracy horror film released in 2015.

The Phoenix Tapes '97, a found footage science-fiction horror film released in 2016.

Phoenix Forgotten, a found footage science-fiction horror film released in 2017.

Episode 3 of the 2021 documentary UFO Witness covers a new investigation about the lights.

 

Alien Abduction?: Betty and Barney Hill

Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who claimed they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961. It was the first widely publicized report of an alien abduction in the United States.

The incident came to be called the "Hill Abduction" and the "Zeta Reticuli Incident" because the star map shown to Betty Hill could possibly be the Zeta Reticuli system according to some researchers. Their story was adapted into the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and the 1975 television film The UFO Incident. In the early 21st century, plans were announced for a movie and a TV series based on the incident, although as of 2022 nothing has been produced.

Most of Betty Hill's notes, tapes, and other items have been placed in the permanent collection at the University of New Hampshire, her alma mater. In July 2011, the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources marked the site of the alleged craft's first approach with a historical marker.

The Hills' story was widely publicized in books and movies.

Background

The Hills lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Barney (1922–1969) was employed by the United States Postal Service, while Betty (née Eunice Barrett) (1919–2004) was a social worker. Active in the local Unitarian congregation, the Hills were also members of the NAACP and community leaders, and Barney sat on a local board of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. They were an interracial couple at a time when it was particularly uncommon in the United States; Barney was black and Betty was white.

UFO encounter

According to a variety of reports given by the Hills, the alleged UFO sighting happened about 10:30 p.m. Sept. 19, 1961. The Hills were driving back to Portsmouth from a vacation in Niagara Falls and Montreal. Just south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, Betty claimed to have observed a bright point of light in the sky that moved from below the moon and the planet Jupiter, upward to the west of the moon. While Barney navigated U.S. Route 3, Betty reasoned that she was observing a falling star, only it moved upward. Because it moved erratically and grew bigger and brighter, Betty urged Barney to stop the car for a closer look, as well as to walk their dog, Delsey. Barney stopped at a scenic picnic area just south of Twin Mountain.

Betty, looking through binoculars, observed an "odd-shaped" craft flashing multicolored lights travel across the face of the moon. Because her sister had several years earlier said she had seen a flying saucer, Betty thought it might be what she was observing. Through binoculars, Barney observed what he reasoned was a commercial airliner traveling toward Vermont on its way to Montreal. However, he soon changed his mind, because without looking as if it had turned, the craft rapidly descended in his direction. This observation caused Barney to realize, "this object that was a plane was not a plane." They quickly returned to the car and drove toward Franconia Notch, a narrow, mountainous stretch of the road.

The Hills said they continued driving on the isolated road, moving very slowly through Franconia Notch in order to observe the object as it came even closer. At one point, the object passed above a restaurant and signal tower on top of Cannon Mountain and came out near the Old Man of the Mountain. Betty testified that it was at least one and a half times the length of the granite cliff profile, which was 40 feet (12 m) long, and that it seemed to be rotating. The couple watched as the silent, illuminated craft moved erratically and bounced back and forth in the night sky.

About one mile south of Indian Head, they said, the object rapidly descended toward their vehicle, causing Barney to stop in the middle of the highway. The huge, silent craft hovered about 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 m) above the Hills' 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air and filled the entire field of view in the windshield. It reminded Barney of a huge pancake. Carrying his pistol in his pocket, he stepped away from the vehicle and moved closer to the object. Using the binoculars, Barney claimed to have seen eight to 11 humanoid figures, who were peering out of the craft's windows, seeming to look at him. In unison, all but one figure moved to what appeared to be a panel on the rear wall of the hallway that encircled the front portion of the craft. The one remaining figure continued to look at Barney and communicated a message telling him to "stay where you are and keep looking." Barney had a recollection of observing the humanoid forms wearing glossy black uniforms and black caps. Red lights on what appeared to be bat-wing fins began to telescope out of the sides of the craft, and a long structure descended from the bottom of the craft. The silent craft approached to what Barney estimated was within 50 to 80 feet (15 to 24 m) overhead and 300 feet (91 m) away from him. On Oct. 21, 1961, Barney reported to National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) investigator Walter Webb that the "beings were somehow not human."

Barney "tore" the binoculars away from his eyes and ran back to his car. In a near-hysterical state, he told Betty, "They're going to capture us!" He saw the object again shift its location to directly above the vehicle. He drove away as fast as he could, telling Betty to look for the object. She rolled down the window and looked up. Almost immediately, the Hills heard a rhythmic series of beeping or buzzing sounds, which they said seemed to bounce off the trunk of their vehicle. The car vibrated and a tingling sensation passed through the Hills' bodies. The Hills said that then they experienced the onset of an altered state of consciousness that left their minds dulled. A second series of beeping or buzzing sounds returned the couple to full consciousness. They found that they had traveled nearly 35 miles (56 km) south, but had only vague, spotty memories of this section of road. They recalled making a sudden, sharp unplanned turn, encountering a roadblock, and observing a fiery orb in the road.

Immediate aftermath

Arriving home at about dawn, the Hills assert that they had some odd sensations and impulses they could not readily explain: Betty insisted their luggage be kept near the back door rather than in the main part of the house. Their watches would never work again. Barney said that the leather strap for the binoculars was torn, though he could not recall it tearing. The toes of his best dress shoes were scraped. Barney says he was compelled to examine his genitals in the bathroom, though he found nothing unusual. They took long showers to remove possible contamination and each drew a picture of what they had observed.

Perplexed, the Hills say they tried to reconstruct the chronology of events as they witnessed the UFO and drove home. But immediately after they heard the buzzing sounds, their memories became incomplete and fragmented. After sleeping for a few hours, Betty awoke and placed the shoes and clothing she had worn during the drive into her closet, observing that the dress was torn at the hem, zipper and lining. Later, when she retrieved the items from her closet, she noted a pinkish powder on her dress. She hung the dress on her clothesline and the pink powder blew away, but the dress was irreparably damaged. She threw it away, but then changed her mind, retrieved the dress and hung it in her closet. Over the years, five laboratories have conducted chemical and forensic analyses on the dress.

There were shiny, concentric circles on their car's trunk that had not been there the previous day. Betty and Barney experimented with a compass, noting that when they moved it close to the spots, the needle would whirl rapidly. But when they moved it a few inches away from the shiny spots, it would drop down.

Initial report to the U.S. Air Force and NICAP

On September 21, Betty telephoned Pease Air Force Base to report their UFO encounter, though, for fear of being labeled eccentric, she withheld some of the details. On September 22, Major Paul W. Henderson telephoned the Hills for a more detailed interview. Henderson's report, dated September 26, determined that the Hills had probably misidentified the planet Jupiter. (This was later changed to "optical condition," "inversion" and "insufficient data.") (Report 100-1-61, Air Intelligence Information Record) His report was forwarded to Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO research project.

Within days of the encounter, Betty borrowed a UFO book from a local library. It had been written by retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe who was also the head of NICAP, a civilian UFO research group. On September 26, Betty wrote to Keyhoe. She related the full story, including the details about the humanoid figures that Barney had observed through binoculars. Betty wrote that she and Barney were considering hypnosis to help recall what had happened. Her letter was eventually passed on to Walter N. Webb, a Boston astronomer and NICAP member.

Webb met with the Hills on October 21, 1961. In a six-hour interview, the Hills related all they could remember of the UFO encounter. Barney asserted that he had developed a sort of "mental block" and that he suspected there were some portions of the event that he did not wish to remember. He described in detail all that he could remember about the craft and the appearance of the "somehow not human" figures aboard the craft. Webb stated that "they were telling the truth and the incident probably occurred exactly as reported except for some minor uncertainties and technicalities that must be tolerated in any such observations where human judgment is involved (e.g., exact time and length of visibility, apparent sizes of object and occupants, distance and height of object, etc.)."

Betty's dreams

Ten days after the alleged UFO encounter, Betty began having a series of vivid dreams. They continued for five successive nights. Never in her memory had she recalled dreams in such detail and intensity. But they stopped abruptly after five nights and never returned. They occupied her thoughts during the day. When she mentioned them to Barney, he was sympathetic, but not too concerned, and the matter was dropped. Betty did not mention them to Barney again.

In November 1961 Betty began writing down the details of her dreams. In one dream, she and Barney encountered a roadblock and men who surrounded their car. She lost consciousness but struggled to regain it. Then she realized that she was being forced by two small men to walk in a forest at night, and of seeing Barney walking behind her, though when she called to him, he seemed to be in a trance or sleepwalking. The men stood about five feet to five feet four inches tall and wore matching blue uniforms, with caps similar to those worn by military cadets. They appeared nearly human, with black hair, dark eyes, prominent noses and bluish lips. Their skin was a greyish colour.

In the dreams, Betty, Barney, and the men walked up a ramp into a disc-shaped craft of metallic appearance. Once inside, Barney and Betty were separated. She protested and was told by a man she called "the leader" that if she and Barney were examined together, it would take much longer to conduct the exams. She and Barney were then taken to separate rooms.

Betty then dreamt that a new man, similar to the others, entered to conduct her exam with the leader. Betty called this new man "the examiner" and said he had a pleasant, calm manner. Though the leader and the examiner spoke to her in English, the examiner's command of the language seemed imperfect and she had difficulty understanding him.

The examiner told Betty that he would conduct a few tests to note the differences between humans and the craft's occupants. He seated her on a chair, and a bright light was shone on her. The man cut off a lock of Betty's hair. He examined her eyes, ears, mouth, teeth, throat and hands. He saved trimmings from her fingernails. After examining her legs and feet, the man used a dull knife, similar to a letter opener, to scrape some of her skin onto what resembled cellophane. He then tested her nervous system and he thrust the needle into her navel, which caused Betty agonizing pain, whereupon the leader waved his hand in front of her eyes and the pain vanished.

The examiner left the room and Betty engaged in conversation with the "leader." She picked up a book with rows of strange symbols that the "leader" said she could take home with her. She also asked from where he came, and he pulled down an instructional map dotted with stars.

In Betty's dream account, the men began escorting the Hills from the ship when a disagreement broke out. The leader then informed Betty that she couldn't keep the book, stating that they had decided that the other men did not want her to even remember the encounter. Betty insisted that no matter what they did to her memory, she would one day recall the events.

She and Barney were taken to their car, where the leader suggested that they wait to watch the craft's departure. They did so, then resumed their drive.

Medical help and more interviews

Missing time

On November 25, 1961, the Hills were again interviewed at length by NICAP members, this time C. D. Jackson and Robert E. Hohmann.

Having read Webb's initial report, Jackson and Hohmann had many questions for the Hills. One of their main questions was about the length of the trip. Although the Hills had noted that they had arrived home later than anticipated (the 178-mile drive should have taken about four hours), they did not realize that they had arrived home seven hours after their departure from Colebrook. When Hohman and Jackson noted this discrepancy to the Hills, the couple had no explanation (a phenomenon ufologists call "missing time"). The Hills claimed to recall almost nothing of the 35 miles of US Route 3 between Lincoln/Indian Head and Ashland. Both claimed to recall an image of a fiery orb sitting on the ground. Betty and Barney reasoned that it must have been the moon, but Hohmann and Jackson informed them that the moon had set earlier in the evening.

The subject of hypnosis came up, and it was decided that it should be carried out in order to recover previously irretrievable memories. Barney was apprehensive, but thought it might help Betty put to rest what Barney described as "the 'nonsense' about her dreams."

By February 1962, the Hills were making frequent weekend drives to the White Mountains, hoping that revisiting the site might spark more memories. They were unsuccessful in trying to locate the site where they recalled seeing a fiery orb sitting in the road. However, they were able to eliminate several possible routes. (They found what they claimed was the "capture" site on Labor Day weekend in 1965.)

Private disclosure

On November 23, 1962, the Hills attended a meeting at the parsonage of their church where there was a guest speaker, Captain Ben H. Swett of the United States Air Force. Having had an interest in hypnosis, the Hills approached Swett privately and related their strange encounter. Swett was particularly interested in the "missing time" of the Hills' account. The Hills asked if he would hypnotize them to recover their memories, but Swett declined and cautioned them against going to an amateur hypnotist, such as himself.

First public disclosure

On March 3, 1963, the Hills first publicly discussed the UFO encounter with a group at their church.

On September 7, 1963, Captain Swett returned and gave a formal lecture on hypnosis to a meeting at the Unitarian Church. After the lecture, the Hills told him that Barney was going to a psychiatrist, a Mr. Stephens, whom he liked and trusted. Captain Swett suggested that Barney ask Stephens about the use of hypnosis in his case.

When Barney next met with Stephens, he asked about hypnosis. Stephens referred the Hills to Benjamin Simon of Boston.

On November 3, 1963, the Hills spoke before an amateur UFO study group, the Two State UFO Study Group, in Quincy Center, Massachusetts.

The Hills first met Simon on December 14, 1963. Early in their discussions, Simon determined that the UFO encounter was causing Barney far more worry and anxiety than he was willing to admit. Though Simon dismissed the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis as impossible, it seemed obvious to him that the Hills genuinely thought they had witnessed a UFO with human-like occupants. Simon hoped to uncover more about the experience through hypnosis.

Simon's hypnosis sessions

Simon began hypnotizing the Hills on January 4, 1964. He hypnotized Betty and Barney several times each, and the sessions lasted until June 6, 1964. Simon conducted the sessions on Barney and Betty separately, so they could not overhear one another's recollections. At the end of each session, he reinstated amnesia.

Barney's sessions

Simon hypnotized Barney first. His recall of witnessing non-human figures was quite emotional, punctuated with expressions of fear, emotional outbursts and incredulity. Barney said that, due to his fear, he kept his eyes closed for much of the abduction and physical examination. Based on these early responses, Simon told Barney that he would not remember the hypnosis sessions until he was certain he could remember them without being further traumatized.

Under hypnosis (as was consistent with his conscious recall), Barney reported that the binocular strap had broken when he ran from the UFO back to his car. He recalled driving the car away from the UFO, but that afterwards he felt irresistibly compelled to pull off the road and drive into the woods. He eventually sighted six men standing in the dirt road. The car stalled and three of the men approached the car. They told Barney not to fear them. He was still anxious, however, and he reported that the leader told Barney to close his eyes. While hypnotized, Barney said, "I felt like the eyes had pushed into my eyes."

Barney described the beings as generally similar to Betty's hypnotic (not dream) recollection. The beings often stared into his eyes, said Barney, with a terrifying, mesmerizing effect. Under hypnosis, Barney said things like, "Oh, those eyes. They're there in my brain" (from his first hypnosis session) and "I was told to close my eyes because I saw two eyes coming close to mine, and I felt like the eyes had pushed into my eyes" (from his second hypnosis session) and "All I see are these eyes…. I'm not even afraid that they're not connected to a body. They're just there. They're just up close to me, pressing against my eyes."

Barney related that he and Betty were taken onto the disc-shaped craft, where they were separated. He was escorted to a room by three of the men and told to lie on a small rectangular exam table. Barney's narrative of the exam was fragmented. He continued to keep his eyes closed for most of the exam. A cup-like device was placed over his genitals. He did not experience an orgasm, though Barney thought that a sperm sample had been taken. The men scraped his skin and peered in his ears and mouth. A tube or cylinder was inserted into his anus and quickly removed. Someone felt his spine and seemed to be counting his vertebrae.

While Betty reported a conversation with the "leader" in English, Barney said that he heard them speaking in a mumbling language he did not understand. Betty also mentioned this detail. The few times they communicated with him, Barney said it seemed to be "thought transference"; at that time, he was unfamiliar with the word "telepathy". Both Betty and Barney stated that they hadn't observed the beings' mouths moving when they communicated in English with them.

He recalled being escorted from the ship and taken to his car. In a daze, he watched the ship leave. Barney remembered a light appearing on the road, and he said, "Oh no, not again." He recalled Betty's speculation that the light might have been the moon, though the moon had set several hours earlier. He also stated that he attempted to produce the code-like buzzing sounds which seemed to strike the car's trunk a second time by driving from side to side and stopping and starting the vehicle. His attempt was unsuccessful.

Betty's sessions

Under hypnosis, Betty's account was similar to her five dreams about the UFO abduction, with some notable differences, mainly pertaining to her capture and release. Also, the technology on the craft was different, the short men differed significantly in physical appearance and the sequential order of the abduction differed. Barney's and Betty's memories in hypnotic regression were, however, consistent with one another.

Betty exhibited considerable emotional distress when recounting her capture and examination; Simon ended one session early because tears were flowing down her cheeks.

Simon gave Betty the post-hypnotic suggestion that she could sketch a copy of the "star map" that she later described as a three-dimensional projection similar to a hologram. Though the map she saw had many stars, she drew only those that stood out in her memory. Her map consisted of twelve prominent stars connected by lines and three lesser ones that formed a distinctive triangle. She said she was told the stars connected by solid lines formed "trade routes," whereas dashed lines were to less-traveled stars.

Simon's conclusions

After the hypnosis sessions, Simon speculated that Barney's recollection of the UFO encounter was possibly a fantasy inspired by Betty's dreams. Simon thought it was the most reasonable and consistent explanation. Barney rejected this idea, noting that while their memories were consistent in some regards, there were also portions of both their narratives that were unique to each. Barney was now ready to accept that they had been abducted by the occupants of a UFO, though he never embraced it as fully as Betty did.

Though the Hills and Simon disagreed about the cause of their distress, they all concurred that the hypnosis sessions were effective; the Hills were no longer tormented by abduction anxiety.

When the series of hypnosis sessions were complete, Simon wrote an article about the Hills for the journal Psychiatric Opinion, explaining his conclusion that the case was a singular psychological aberration.

Publicity after the hypnosis sessions

The Hills went back to their regular lives. They were willing to discuss the alleged UFO encounter with friends, family and the occasional UFO researcher, but the Hills apparently made no effort to seek publicity.

On October 25, 1965, a front page story in the "Boston Traveller" asked "UFO Chiller: Did THEY Seize Couple?" Reporter John H. Luttrell of the "Traveler" had allegedly been given an audio tape recording of the lecture the Hills had made in Quincy Center in late 1963. Luttrell learned that the Hills had undergone hypnosis with Simon; he also obtained notes from confidential interviews the Hills had given to UFO investigators. On October 26, United Press International (UPI) picked up Luttrell's story, and the Hills earned international attention.

In 1966 writer John G. Fuller secured the cooperation of the Hills and Simon and wrote the book "The Interrupted Journey" about the case. The book included a copy of Betty's sketch of the "star map."

Barney died of a cerebral hemorrhage on February 25, 1969, at age 46, after which Betty went on to become a celebrity in the UFO community. She died of cancer on October 17, 2004, at age 85, never having remarried.

Analyzing the star map

In 1968 Marjorie Fish of Oak Harbor, Ohio, read Fuller's book, Interrupted Journey. Fish was an elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer. Intrigued by the "star map," Fish wondered if it might be "deciphered" to determine which star system the UFO came from. Assuming that one of the fifteen stars on the map must represent Earth's Sun, Fish constructed a three-dimensional model of nearby Sun-like stars (i.e., stars deemed to have characteristics that could support life such as that found on Earth) using thread and beads, basing stellar distances on those published in the 1969 Gliese Star Catalogue. Studying thousands of vantage points over several years, the only one that seemed to match the Hill map was from the viewpoint of the double star system of Zeta Reticuli (about 39 light-years from Earth).

Fish sent her analysis to Webb. Agreeing with her conclusions, Webb sent the map to Terence Dickinson, editor of the magazine Astronomy. Dickinson did not endorse Fish and Webb's conclusions, but for the first time in the journal's history, Astronomy invited comments and debate on a UFO report, starting with an opening article in the December 1974 issue. For about a year afterward, the opinions page of Astronomy carried arguments for and against Fish's star map. Notable was an argument made by Carl Sagan and Steven Soter, arguing that the "star map" was little more than a random alignment of chance points. In an episode of "Cosmos" in 1980, Sagan demonstrated that without the lines drawn in the maps, the Hill map bore no resemblance to the real-life map. In contrast, those more favorable to the map, such as David Saunders, a statistician who had been on the Condon UFO study, disagreed. Saunders claimed that a match among sixteen stars of the specific spectral type among the thousand stars nearest the Sun is “at least 1,000 to 1 against."

In the early 1990s the European Hipparcos ("high precision parallax collecting satellite") mission, which measured the distances to more than a hundred thousand stars around the Sun more accurately than ever before, showed that some of the stars in Fish's interpretation of the map were in fact much farther away than previously thought. Other research revealed that some stars counted by Fish as likely to host life would have had to be excluded by her own criteria, while some other stars which had been discounted by Fish have been recognized as potential abodes for life. Results such as these led Fish herself to reject her hypothesis in a public statement.

Interrupted Journey

The 1966 publication of Interrupted Journey, by John G. Fuller, details much of the Hills' claims. Excerpts of the book were published in Look magazine, and the book went on to sell many copies and greatly publicize the Hills' account.

Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience by Betty Hill's niece and founder of the Mutual UFO Network Kathleen Marden further explored Fuller's themes along with scientist Stanton T. Friedman. Marden knew Betty well and had spoken with her at great length about the encounter. She examined the historical records and scientific reports pertaining to the case and transcribed the Hills' hypnosis sessions with Benjamin Simon for her detailed comparative analysis.

Rebutting the Hills

Psychiatrists later suggested that the supposed abduction was a hallucination brought on by the stress of being an interracial couple in early 1960s United States. Betty discounted this suggestion, noting her relationship with Barney was happy, and their interracial marriage caused no notable problems with their friends or family. As noted in The Interrupted Journey, Simon thought that the Hills' marital status had nothing to do with the UFO encounter.

Jim Macdonald, a resident of the area in which the Hills claimed to have been abducted, has produced a detailed analysis of their journey which concludes that the episode was provoked by their misperceiving an aircraft warning beacon on Cannon Mountain as a UFO. Macdonald notes that from the road the Hills took, the beacon appears and disappears at exactly the same time the Hills describe the UFO as appearing and disappearing. The remainder of the experience is ascribed to stress, sleep deprivation, and false memories "recovered" under hypnosis. After reading Macdonald's recreation, UFO expert Robert Sheaffer writes that the Hills are the "poster children" for not driving when sleep deprived. Macdonald's article focuses primarily on the Hills' observations of the light in the sky and the timing of the journey, discounting the Hills' accounts of close encounters south of Cannon Mountain as recovered memories.

Skeptical Inquirer columnist Robert Sheaffer wrote:

I was present at the National UFO Conference in New York City in 1980, at which Betty presented some of the UFO photos she had taken. She showed what must have been far more than 200 slides, mostly of blips, blurs, and blobs against a dark background. These were supposed to be UFOs coming in close, chasing her car, landing, etc. ... After her talk had exceeded about twice its allotted time, Betty was literally jeered off the stage by what had been at first a sympathetic audience. This incident, witnessed by many of UFOlogy's leaders and top activists, removed any lingering doubts about Betty's credibility — she had none. In 1995, Betty Hill wrote a self-published book, "A Common Sense Approach to UFOs." It is filled with delusional stories, such as seeing entire squadrons of UFOs in flight and a truck levitating above the freeway.

Sheaffer later wrote that as late as 1977, Betty Hill would go on UFO vigils at least three times a week. One evening she was joined by UFO enthusiast John Oswald. When asked about Betty's continuing UFO observations, Oswald stated, "She is not really seeing UFOs, but she is calling them that." On the night they went out together, "Mrs. Hill was unable to distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight." In a later interview, Sheaffer recounts that Betty Hill wrote, "UFOs are a new science … and our science cannot explain them."

Robert Sheaffer released 48 pages of archived documents relating to Betty and Barney Hill, Benjamin Simon and Philip J. Klass on the Internet on December 23, 2015.

Similarity to The Outer Limits

Bellero Shield alien

In his 1990 article "Entirely Unpredisposed," Martin Kottmeyer suggested that Barney's memories revealed under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the science fiction television show The Outer Limits titled "The Bellero Shield" which was broadcast about two weeks before Barney's first hypnotic session. The episode featured an extraterrestrial with large eyes who says, "In all the universes, in all the unities beyond the universes, all who have eyes have eyes that speak." The report from the regression featured a scenario that was in some respects similar to the television show. In part, Kottmeyer wrote:

Wraparound eyes are an extreme rarity in science fiction films. I know of only one instance. They appeared on the alien of an episode of an old TV series The Outer Limits titled "The Bellero Shield." A person familiar with Barney's sketch in The Interrupted Journey and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Baker will find a "frisson" of "déjà vu" creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. "The Bellero Shield" was first broadcast on 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separate the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wraparound eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces.

When a different researcher asked Betty about The Outer Limits, she insisted she had "never heard of it." Kottmeyer also pointed out that some motifs in the Hills' account were present in the 1953 film, Invaders from Mars. A careful analysis of Barney's description of the non-human entities that he observed reveals significant similarities between the "Bifrost Man" and Barney's descriptive details. One must also take into account Barney's conscious, continuous recall of the entities he observed on the hovering craft. They were dressed in black, shiny uniforms and were "somehow not human."

In popular culture

Barney Hill was on an episode of To Tell the Truth, episode airdate December 12, 1966. The couple was portrayed by James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons in the 1975 television film adapted by S. Lee Pogostin, The UFO Incident, and by Basil Wallace and Lee Garlington in the 1996 television series Dark Skies. In 2018 the story formed the basis of the "Dinner Party" virtual reality exhibit at the traveling art show Wonderspaces.

Betty and Barney Hill have been the topic of many podcasts over the years. Non-fiction television programs that have discussed the encounter include:

The 12th episode of Carl Sagan's miniseries Cosmos, "Encyclopedia Galactica."

An episode of the Travel Channel series Mysteries at the Museum

Fictional depictions include:

Details of the Hills' case were used in The X-Files episode "Jose Chung's "From Outer Space".

The graphic novel Saucer Country (2012) by Paul Cornell.

Elements of the Hill abduction were used in the American Horror Story season Asylum and Death Valley.

The incident is referenced in the episode "Alien Experiencer Expo" of the television series People of Earth, as part of a bonding experience between an interracial couple of alien abductees.

The ninth episode of the 2019 History Channel television series "Project Blue Book," entitled "Abduction," is based on the Betty and Barney Hill UFO incident.

The song "Bug in the Net", the tenth track on the Swedish death metal band Hypocrisy's 2021 album "Worship", centers on the Hills' abduction story.