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Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope

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A dramatic work of historical detection illuminating one of the most significant--and long-forgotten--Supreme Court cases in American history. In 1820, the slave ship Antelope was captured off the Florida coast. Though the slave trade was prohibited, slavery was still legal in half of the United States, and it was left to the Supreme Court to determine whether nearly 300 Africans on board were considered slaves and if so, to whom they belonged. Mining untapped archives, Jonathan M. Bryant recounts the Antelope fraught journey across the Atlantic, leading up to the momentous courtroom battle of 1825 that defined the moral and legal implications of slavery for a generation and was enormously influential in the Amistad trial. For Havana ports to the West African coast, from Georgia plantations to a Liberian settlement, Dark Places of the Earth creates a multidimensional portrait of the global slave trade. Bryant's work restores the Antelope to its rightful place as one of the most shocking and unjustly forgotten episodes in America legal history.

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First published July 6, 2015

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Jonathan M. Bryant

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
Profile Image for Bob Schnell.
652 reviews14 followers
October 15, 2015
Jonathan Bryant is a history professor who specializes in slavery and constitutional law. That sums up his book "Dark Places of the Earth" pretty well. It is the story of the slave ship Antelope and how the captive Africans aboard her got caught up in the American legal system of the 1820's. It is the case that was the precedent for the more famous Amistad trials. It is the struggle between nature's law that says all men are free and positive law that says national laws supersede natural law. The African captives in question are left in a hellish limbo for years while the case plays out in politics and court.

While the story is certainly fascinating and would make for a great historical legal drama screenplay, the author speaks a bit too much legalese for the average reader and it is too easy to zone out until the more interesting parts. Lawyers and law students may have a different opinion. For me the most interesting parts were learning more about lesser known early Americans like Francis Scott Key and John Quincy Adams. Also, the stories of the African captives while they await their declaration as slaves or free men is tragic in many ways. The thought I came away with was how little jurisprudence in America has changed and how politics and ego too often trumps the people caught in the middle, even back then.
Profile Image for Doug Dillon.
Author 8 books139 followers
August 23, 2015
Johnathan Bryant does a masterful job of shedding a bright light on a little known but extremely important event in American History. Meticulously researched, the author’s efforts show in graphic detail the plight of over 300 Africans brought to the shores of the United States by the slave ship Antelope. And in the process, he lays before readers the intricate legal wrangling that ended in Supreme Court rulings solidifying the rights of property over the natural rights of human beings, rulings that lasted for thirty-five years.

As the book title indicates, this is a dark tale, one that throws readers directly into the horrors of the slave trade and the institution of slavery as practiced during the early years of the republic. Author Bryant’s simple statistics of what remained of the Antelope’s starving and diseased human cargo when it finally arrived in Savannah, Georgia during the year 1820 give stark and concise testimony to the brutality of such transatlantic profit seeking voyages:
• Out of 331 people originally captured and put aboard the Antelope, only 258 remained alive – a 22% loss of life.
• 83% of the captives were under the age of 20.
• The average age of all the captives was 14.
• 106 were between the ages of 5 and 10.
• 8 were between the ages of 2 and 5. 2 and 5 (that is an intentional factual repeat)

For almost eight years after landing in the United States, the captives languished in servitude on Savannah plantations as if they had been bought and sold as slaves, which they were not. And after those eight years, most of those people who actually survived were legally enslaved and sent to Florida by Supreme Court rulings. Only a small group ended up being sent back to Africa where they faced severe hardships, disease and attack by the nearby native population.

Jonathan Bryant’s story of the multiple legal battles that caused the captives to wait nearly eight years is fascinating and so full of detail as to almost be overwhelming. But true to presenting the facts as he found them, the author offers readers these historical events in step-by-step fashion so as to leave no doubt about what happened. His 47 pages of notes at the end of the book speak to the incredible depth of his research.

One of the most telling scenes is when the Antelope case finally arrives at the Supreme Court of the United States in 1825, five years after the captives set foot in Georgia. The legendary John Marshall was Chief Justice and four of the justices were slave owners. The attorney for the supposed owners of the captives, Spanish and Portuguese citizens, was a slave owner as well. Enter the attorney for the government of United States trying to free the captives, Francis Scott Key. The same F.S. Key of the Star-Spangled Banner fame had slaves of his own. Slave ownership stood out on that day as a vivid yet unofficial finger pressing on the scales of justice.

This author’s work is beautifully organized, well written and thoroughly documented. It is an important scholarly work and should be read by those deeply interested in slavery, the slave trade, constitutional law, international law, and American politics during the first quarter of the 19th century.

Profile Image for Marti.
444 reviews19 followers
October 21, 2020
This might not be the sort of thing I would read unless it were given to me for free, but I certainly learned a lot about maritime law and the early history of the Supreme Court. The fact that it was accessible to someone like me who does not have a law background must say a lot about the skills of the author as this is a very convoluted case. However, there were enough other stories intertwined in it to make it interesting for someone who prefers social history (and perhaps some background on how small groups of pirates could take over a whole ship).

I also knew almost nothing about John Quincy Adams (like his father John Adams, he too was obnoxious and disliked), or Francis Scott Key (who did more than write the "Star Spangled Banner"). Not much was known about the individual captives aboard the slave ship Antelope because no one bothered to record their real names (they were given anglicized nicknames). However, what is known is that they were forced work as slaves while the courts dithered for seven years to decide if they were free.

Though it was a very complicated mess to sort through, it boiled down to a lottery to determine the "lucky" few who would get shipped "home" to Liberia, the colony established to solve the "free blacks" problem which was hundreds of miles from the place where the original captives were taken. (That some who were sent there were not even from Africa, but the Caribbean, was not a problem either)..

What you do come away with is the sense that the law is written by and for the wealthy, who can make up any rules they want as long as it benefits them. Nobody really wanted to rule against the rights of southern slave owners as the country was already becoming agitated over the slavery question. Thus, all but a few wanted this case to go away.
Profile Image for Darlene.
Author 8 books172 followers
July 28, 2015
Extensively researched and densely packed with information, this disturbing tale of the fate of slaves when the ship they're on is captured by pirates will appeal most to serious historians, legal scholars, and researchers. Unlike the better-known tale of the Amistad, this earlier court case has little in the way of testimony from the Africans themselves. In addition, the ordeal of the Africans aboard the Antelope is a tale of children, many little more than toddlers, thrust into a legal morass where they became property to be used and their fate tossed about like a shuttlecock. If it's ever turned into a film, it would be a horror story.

It's also a tale of the legalities of piracy and privateering in the early 19th c., and how the Atlantic slave trade and the ban on importing slaves into the U.S. contributed to crime at sea, and in the Territory of Florida south of the United States. I recommend it to students of Florida history as well as of U.S. history.
Profile Image for Nd.
640 reviews7 followers
April 20, 2022
This story of the capture and long, drawn-out prosecution of those commandeering the slave ship Antelope when it was captured documents how Britain's admiralty and maritime laws were adapted for use in the United States. More importantly, language used in the dissolution of this case, which lasted from 1820 to around 1828, was not emphatic enough to end slavery and later was used to enable it. The Antelope's voyage and cargo involved multiple nations, multiple ships, slaves from a number of countries, and court systems, judicial officials, judges, lawyers, etc. who kowtowed to nepotism and cronyism. The argued question of the Antelope's cargo, when it was brought to Georgia after being captured, was dependent upon the laws and treaties of the countries that had slaves onboard when it was captured. Many places, including the U.S., outlawed slavery (even as they had slaves). The charges became a issue of whether the ship was being used for salvage (legal or illegal), piracy, privateering, or slavery when it changed its flags numerous times and with them so convoluted, it's no wonder the outcome was as well.

Bryant's research uncovered a remarkable amount of documentation, particularly remarkable since some of his sources were in the Georgia Archives, which were undergoing funding issues and were not consistently accessible. The details in this tale were involved and complicated enough that it took a while to grab hold of the facts and to sort all of the sundry players, courts, ethnicities, etc., most of which did not acquit themselves well in the issue of morality or even of interpreting the law. I'm glad I'm not taking an exam on this fascinating treatise.
189 reviews
October 7, 2020
Excellent, educating, illuminating book. Well researched, well written. The book is far more than the story of the slave ship itself. It is more than the story of the six-year legal battle over it and its captives. It is a story of slavery and the slave trade around the world and America's part in it. It reveals the early US Supreme Court not usually exposed to us and the roles of some of the public figures and statesmen of the era. I am glad to have read it. I recommend it for those who wish to learn something of the slave trade and the appalling positions taken to justify it.
32 reviews1 follower
January 14, 2024
A very interesting legal history about the slave trade, and a legal case that determined the fate of the captives. A lot of history that I hadn’t previously learned. Slow going because I kept stopping to google people, events etc. I gave up several times, but glad I powered through.
Profile Image for Tom.
758 reviews9 followers
November 6, 2015
This book does an excellent job of shedding light onto the murky depths of 19th Century jurisprudence. It also, like many books discussing, 18th and 19th Century America, really makes you loathe the perverse hypocrisy of early America. I caught wind of this book listening to the radio.

The case of the Antelope dealt with the fate of African captives. These people had been captured on slave ships of Spanish and alleged Portuguese provenance, but were then captured by a ship manned by Americans. These Americans claimed to be commissioned privateers for South American republics attempting to break away from their European colonial overseers. This case delves into the strange world of admiralty and maritime law. Oddly, if the Americans were declared pirates, the Africans would be returned to the Spanish and Portuguese as chattel, but if they were deemed legitimate privateers, there was a far better chance that the Africans could be free.

While all the legal machinations were being deliberated, however, American authorities treated these captives, most of whom were children, as slaves and farmed out their labor. The U.S. Marshal in Savannah, GA, John Henry Morel, exploited these people with a ruthless efficiency, while still having gall to charge for providing for these people.

Of all the Americans in this tale, only Richard Wylly Habersham comes through looking like a just man. His efforts and strategies on behalf of the captives were rather dogged, although sometimes that meant he sandbagged other cases, such as the initial piracy trial. Whenever he asked for advice from the Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, he received no response. In many ways, Habersham jeopardized his own career aspirations with this trial. It was odd how Adams ignored or avoided the case at the time for political expediency. Yet the case of the Antelope was so instrumental in freeing the captives of the Amistad which Adams was successfully involved in representing 15 years later at the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court, the people arguing for the freedom of the Antelope captives included Francis Scott Key, which was an interesting side note.

After the near decade of legal battles, the majority of the surviving captives were liberated. However, some remained enslaved, and all of the captives in the interim had been treated as slaves. While the liberated captives were taken back to Africa, they were settled in Liberia, over 1000 miles from their homeland. Between the passage on slave ships, yellow fever in Savannah, fatal exhaustion at the hands of slave drivers, and resettlement in malarial Liberia, the mortality for the captives was extraordinarily high. Their lives was one of seemingly endless tragedy and horror, and so much of their experience is lost to history.

America goddam...
Profile Image for Jonathan.
370 reviews16 followers
April 8, 2016
I had no idea the US had banned the importation of slaves as early as 1819. This book explains in great detail the complex web of trade in slaves and goods in the maritime world of the early 19thC. The book focuses on the Antelope a Spanish owned Portuguese ship crewed by many Americans (pretending not to be Americans who got, captured, recaptured, escaped, caught, prosecuted.....it is an incredibly complicated tail and it is all drawn in great detail from the records of the a Supreme Court case where the fate of the ships prisoners was decided. It is vastly more complicated than I've described but just discovering this explains so much about the period and how difficult to solve the issue of slavery appeared to Europeans at the time even if they thought the trade despicable. This book shows just how much money was tied up in the business and how the Byzantine rules of international shipping made prosecuting slavers. It all just seemed too difficult to most Europeans, a similar set of issues apply today to the maltreatment of internationally crewed boats today.

The basic issue the Supreme Court had to decide was whether the rights of owners of the Slave "property" outweighed the rights to freedom as human being of the slaves themselves. It's shocking to hear the SC justices blandly arguing such despicable concepts as if they are somehow equivalent. It's one of the reasons I love history like this: things that seemed too complicated or "natural" are now looked on as abhorrent and immoral.

Profile Image for Megargee.
643 reviews17 followers
January 23, 2016
Despite its title, Dark Places of the Earth is not a book about caves or geology but instead a treatise on maritime and international law as it pertained to the slave trade in the 1820s. The author is a Southern historian and legal scholar whose specialty is slavery and the events leading up to the Civil War.
Two decades before the more celebrated Amistad case, a US cutter seized the brig Antelope illegally attempting to import 280 Africans into the US. What should be done with the cargo? Should they be sold, freed, returned to their Spanish and Portuguese owners, or simply put to work by the local officials entrusted with their care? There is little suspense because Bryant discloses the outcome early on. Instead the book focuses on the maritime and international laws and precedents governing the case and the legal reasoning of those involved including Francis Scott Key, John Quincy Adams and John Marshal. Not being especially interested in these topics (the book was a selection of my history reading club) I found much of the material tedious. No doubt a legal scholar would be fascinated.
Profile Image for Megargee.
643 reviews17 followers
September 4, 2017
Despite its title, Dark Places of the Earth is not a book about caves or geology but instead a treatise on maritime and international law as it pertained to the slave trade in the 1820s. The author is a Southern historian and legal scholar whose specialty is slavery and the events leading up to the Civil War.
Two decades before the more celebrated Amistad case, a US cutter seized the brig Antelope illegally attempting to import 280 Africans into the US. What should be done with the cargo? Should they be sold, freed, returned to their Spanish and Portuguese owners, or simply put to work by the local officials entrusted with their care? There is little suspense because Bryant discloses the outcome early on. Instead the book focuses on the maritime and international laws and precedents governing the case and the legal reasoning of those involved including Francis Scott Key, John Quincy Adams and John Marshal. Not being especially interested in these topics (the book was a selection of my history reading club) I found much of the material tedious. No doubt a legal scholar would be fascinated. (less) [edit]
Profile Image for Cindy.
984 reviews
December 17, 2015
This had a lot of technical legal stuff about 19th century piracy vs privateering, which I am not 100% interested in. But I am interested in the evolution of attitudes toward slavery in the US. Some of the most passionate defenders of these poor people (captured slaves on a ship taken during the time when slavery was still legal, but the African slave trade was not) owned slaves themselves. It was a complicated time. Years of legal wrangling resulted in some success, but no real happy endings for anyone.
One question to self: Why am I reading so many sad slavery-related books in a row? Just finished "King Leopold's Ghost" and am now reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
536 reviews
July 24, 2016
Through the story of the slave ship Antelope, and its captive Africans, I learned how lucrative slavery and the slave trade was in the US in the first half of the 19th century. But also, how much control and influence rich and powerful slave owners had on all levels of government. Four of the six Supreme Court justices who heard one of the several cases concerning the ship and its captives were slave holders. The final ruling in the case allowed the slave trade to continue for many more years. So much about this part of our history is not widely known. The author takes the reader clearlythrough the trials and arguments of this case.
Profile Image for Colleen.
1,316 reviews16 followers
January 24, 2016
This is a very thorough book and gives a lot of detail about the supreme court case, the surrounding legal and political climate and even international maritime law.
I wish there had been more of a human element. As with so many books involving slavery, the voices of most of the people involved were lost, as they were not yet literate in English and, even if they were, their writings were unlikely to be preserved.Still wish more letter and diary entries from the lawyers and judges involved had surfaced
Profile Image for Ava M. .
24 reviews11 followers
November 18, 2015
Basically at the time of what transpired during the Antelope case, the US government were making rules and laws up as new situations arose during the slavery period. Just goes to show you that if you think the American government is fucked up now, it was just as archaic and lacking common sense and reason way back then.
397 reviews3 followers
January 27, 2016
This was required reading for a history book club. The book is divided into 5 parts: Prologue, Sea, Savannah, Washington DC and Legacies. The prologue and Part 4 (legacies and epilogue) were interesting. I read at least the first chapter of the other parts, but soon discovered that I was not really interested in that much detail.
Profile Image for Paul.
1,187 reviews40 followers
August 13, 2016
I think this book was just fine, probably closer to 3.5 stars, rounding up. I don't think I totally understood the legal situation here - I kept losing track of where slavery and slave trading was legal. I didn't realize that slave trading was illegal well before slavery itself was illegal. It's also crazy how little the slaves themselves seemed to be involved in the case.
Profile Image for Dennis Martin.
Author 12 books7 followers
October 12, 2015
This book really sheds light on early 19th century America. Not very pretty. It is jamb-packed with detail that showcases the tremendous amount of research done by the author. I found out so many things about the formation of our young nation that I never knew before.
Profile Image for Denise.
80 reviews1 follower
January 30, 2016
This book was more about everything else than about the Antelope. I had hoped for a little more in depth discussion about the victims of the slave ship, but they were touched on very lightly and the author digressed to things that caused my confusion. I was disappointed.
Profile Image for Brent.
2,248 reviews195 followers
July 20, 2016
What travails.
This true story of the commerce in human lives, and the early American republic, especially Georgia, weaves together more than I can hint at in a brief review. You must read this.
My highest recommendation.
Profile Image for Carolyn Thomas.
370 reviews8 followers
December 13, 2015
A tragic tale, meticulously researched and well told, of a dark time in the history of the U.S when a few decent men endeavoured to do the right thing.
Profile Image for Aaron Yoder.
7 reviews
December 31, 2015
Very good historical record and interesting; yet, for me it took a little effort to read. Simply, it wasn't an extraordinarily fun book to read but worthwhile all the same.
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