The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66 (1825), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States considered, for the first time, the legitimacy of the international slave trade, and determined "that possession on board of a vessel was evidence of property".[1]
The importation of slaves into the United States became illegal in 1808, under the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. That act did not include any effective penalties for violation, and did not specify what was to be done with illegally imported slaves. In practice, each state auctioned off such slaves and kept the proceeds. In 1819 the Act in Addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade gave the President authority to use U.S. Navy and other armed ships to capture slave ships, and to see to the "safe-keeping, support and removal beyond the United States" of any Africans found on captured slave ships. In 1820 the capture of "negroes or mulattoes" for the purpose of enslaving them, and the importation of slaves into the United States,was defined as "piracy" by an amendment to the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy.[2][3]
On June 29, 1820, the United States Revenue-Marine cutter Dallas captured the slave ship Antelope, carrying some 280 Africans, off the coast of Florida (which was still Spanish at the time) on suspicion that it intended to illegally import slaves into the United States. The ship had been built in the U.S. and named Antelope. It was later sold to a Spanish owner, renamed Fenix, and licensed by the Spanish government to carry slaves from Africa to Cuba. The Antelope had been captured by a privateer at Cabinda, renamed General Ramirez, and used to transport slaves already on board, as well as slaves taken from other ships flying the Portuguese flag, and from an American ship. The Antelope, its crew, and the Africans aboard were taken to Savannah, Georgia.[4]
Captain John Jackson of the Dallas filed a claim (called a "libel" in admiralty law) in federal court in admiralty in Savannah to be paid either $25 a head for the Africans on the Antelope under the provisions of the 1819 Act in Addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade, if they were free, or the salvage value as property lost at sea, if they were slaves of Spanish and Portuguese owners. In early August, libels were filed in federal court in admiralty that 150 or more of the Africans aboard the Antelope belonged to the King of Spain, and that 130 belonged to the King of Portugal. Later in August Richard W. Habersham, the United States District Attorney for Georgia, filed a libel in court that under the Act in Addition, the Africans on the Antelope were free, on the grounds that they had been removed from Africa by persons intending to sell them in the United States.[5]
John Smith was first mate on the Columbia, later renamed Arraganta, when it sailed from Baltimore, Maryland under a letter of marque issued by the Uruguayan revolutionary José Gervasio Artigas. (American law prohibited U.S. citizens from serving on foreign war ships, and all of the crew on the Columbia had sworn that they were not U.S. citizens.) After the Arraganta captured the Antelope, John Smith became captain of the prize crew on the Antelope, which was renamed General Ramirez.[6]