2nd most-quoted character in Amistad (1997): in 3 of its 16 quotes
He reminds me of that Fula of Baoma, you know the one who hires himself to scrape elephant dung from the crop rows.
A dung-scraper might be just the kind of man we need right now.
Roger Sherman Baldwin Here, Africa? Is this where you're from? A-fri-ca?
Roger Sherman Baldwin On the other hand, let's say they aren't slaves. If they aren't slaves, in which case they were illegally acquired, weren't they? Forget mutiny, forget piracy, forget murder and all the rest. Those are subsequent irrelevant occurrences. Ignore everything but the pre-eminent issue at hand. The wrongful transfer of stolen goods. Either way, we win.
Sir, this war must be waged on the battlefield of righteousness.
Roger Sherman Baldwin The what?
Roger Sherman Baldwin Cinque describes the cold-blooded murder of a significant portion of the people on board the Tecora. Mr Holabird sees this as a paradox. Do you, sir?
Often when slavers are intercepted, or believe they may be, they simply throw all their prisoners over board and thereby rid themselves of the evidence of their crime.
Roger Sherman Baldwin Drown hundreds of people?
Yes.
It hardly seems a lucrative business to me, this slave trading. Going to all that trouble, rounding everybody up, only to throw them all overboard.
No, it's very lucrative.
Roger Sherman Baldwin If only we could corroborate Cinque's story somehow with evidence of some kind.
The inventory. If you look, there's a notation made on May tenth, correcting the number of slaves on board, reducing their number by fifty.
Roger Sherman Baldwin What does that mean?
Well, if you look at it in conjunction with Cinque's testimony, I would say that it means this: The Tecora crew have greatly underestimated the amount of provisions required for their journey, and solved the problem by throwing fifty people overboard.
I am looking at the same inventory, Captain, and I am sorry, I don't see where it says, 'Today we threw fifty slaves overboard', on May tenth or any other day.
As, of course, you would not.
I do see that the cargo weight changed. They reduced the poundage, I see. But that is all.
It's simple, ghastly arithmetic.
Well, for you, perhaps. I may need a quill and parchment, and a better imagination.
And what poundage do you imagine the entry may refer to, sir? A mast and sails perhaps?
