- Adams Leonard
Leonard Adams is an inhabitant of
this City about 65 years of age, originally from Massachusetts, but who
has resided many years, here and raised by laborious industry a family
of ten children, five of whom are yet living. He has been these two
years working as a labourer at the Patent Office, and came now to ask my
influence to obtain for him some place in one of the Departments as a
watchman or Messenger— I might as well undertake by my influence to
obtain for him the Office of Porter at the gate of Heaven— I looked into
the massive Volumes of Correspondence, communicated to the British
Parliament, and found several documents relating to the case of the
Amistad, and large portions of the correspondence of Nicholas P. Trist— Much of the day
wasted in this reading, with very little progress made. I went to the
Department of State, and examined the correspondence between the
late Secretary of State, and
the U.S. District Attorney in
Connecticut Holabird relating to the Amistad Africans. The
Original draught of the order, of Martin
Van Buren dated 7. Jany 1840.
to the Marshal of the District of
Connecticut, to deliver over to Lieutenant John S. Paine of the United States Navy, and
aid in conveying on board the schooner Grampus, under his command all the negroes, late of the Spanish Schooner
Amistad, in his custody, under process now pending before the circuit
Court of the United States for the district of Connecticut, is annexed
to the draught of a Letter from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Navy of 7. January
1840 published in Document 185— There is in the draught of the order, an
interlineation erased, making it conditional on the event of the
dismissal of the suit by the Courts, the date of 7. Jany 1840. is also erased—but no record of the
correction made, after the return of the warrant by the District
Attorney—nor any notice of the change in the volume of Records— The
Letters from Holabird to Forsyth of 5, 9. and 21. Septr. 1839 are all garbled in Document 185— I
asked Mr
Webster if the President could not authorize a public vessel going to be
stationed on the Coast of Africa to give a passage to all the liberated
Africans— The District and Circuit Courts having so decreed, and the
decree of the Supreme Court, though declaring them free—not Slaves, not
Pirates, not Robbers, yet having taken from them the vessel found in
their possession, indispensable to them for the accomplishment of their
voyage home, and her cargo, their lawful prize of War, and which
furnished them with ample means for their return to Africa— Mr Webster appeared at first startled at the
idea, that the Amistad and her Cargo were the property of the Africans,
but afterwards upon my urging the equity of sending them home, and its
conformity to the policy of the Slave trade acts of Congress, he said he
saw no objection to furnish them with a passage in a public ship, and
would speak of it to morrow to the Secretary of the Navy.— I spent the Evening in answering
Letters of invitation to deliver Addresses, Discourses and Lectures.