The Antelope
| The Antelope | |
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| Full case name | The Antelope |
| Citations | 23 U.S. 66 (more) |
| Holding | |
| Approximately 120 slaves were repatriated to the American Colonization Society colony in what is now Liberia. Approximately 30 slaves were ruled to be the property of the Spanish claimants and went to slavery in Florida. | |
| Court membership | |
The Antelope, 23 U.S. 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".
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.
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.
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