y a large portion of our citizens. It presents, for the first time, the question, whether the government, which was established for the promotion of justice, which was founded on the great principles of the revolution, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, can, consistently with the genius of our institutions, become a party to proceedings for the enslavement of human beings cast upon our shored, and found, in the condition of freemen, within the territorial limits of a free and sovereign state? (http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/library/court/supreme/1841.01decision.2.html), 34.The Amistad case gave the nation a wake up call. The United States realized that there is an evident conflict on the issue of slavery. This conflict escalated years later into the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War. The result of the war was the most significant legal development since the first Amistad case. It was, of course, the abolition of slavery. With the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the U.S. Constitution guaranteed that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction."( http://www.nps.gov/malu/frames/amend13.htm),1....
