March 9, 1839 - The U.S. Supreme Court, with only one dissent, freed the slaves who had seized the Spanish slave ship Amistad, ruling that they had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus were free under American law.They had mutinied and taken control of the ship off the shore of Cuba (then a colony of Spain) and demanded to be taken back to Africa but wound up in U.S. waters off the coast of Long Island, New York.#Amistad
