“One step further and the case of the Antelope would have conferred unfading glory on the Supreme Court. One step more, and the heartless sophistry would have been silenced and the cold-blooded apathy to human suffering would have been stung into sensibility.” 

—John Quincy Adams (Supreme Court arguments in the Amistad Case) 

First New Light Baptist Church 

For the reason that may sound uninspired, but was heaven sent, I couldn’t pass by this church without stopping: first, to enjoy how wonderfully cute this church is, and then to break out my paints to prove it. This en Plein air is the fruit of that sentiment. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed painting it. 

Located at 601 Barnard Street just off Forsyth Park, The New Light Baptist Church looks like a building put to good use. The first thing that came to mind when I set up my easel, canvas, brushes, and palate was a short book a new American acquaintance gave me just after I arrived in the United States. 

The book, entitled I Shall Not Want: An Exposition of Psalm Twenty-three, was written long ago by a Baptist pastor named Robert T. Ketchum. It includes a fun story about a four-year-old girl who raised her hand enthusiastically when Ketchum asked her class who could quote the entire 23rd Psalm. 

The girl came to the front of the class and shouted: “The Lord is my Shepard, that’s all I want!” She then bowed, ran back to her seat, and sat down. It was the best Biblical interpretation Ketchum ever heard. 

I’ve already told the story of John Forsyth’s small role in the Amistad slave-ship (see PFS-2). I also recounted how Savannahian Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar inflamed violent political passions in the South by violating the ban on the importation of slaves in the Wanderer case (see PFS-76).  

Allow me to interject another little-known episode in Savannah history: The Antelope slave-ship. 

On a hot summer day in June 1820, over two-hundred Africans bound for slavery were brought to Savannah after the U.S. revenue cutter Dallas seized a Spanish-flagged ship off the coast of Florida. The survivors of the Antelope were placed into the custody of the U.S. Marshall in Savannah, John Morel. 

At the time, Richard W. Habersham, the grandson of James Habersham (see PFS-85) — Bethesda Orphanage founder George Whitefield’s right-hand man — was the United States Attorney. The importation of slaves into the United States had been illegal since 1808, and the 1819 Slave Trade Act placed violations within the illegal slave trade under federal jurisdiction.  

The complete story of the Antelope is magnificently told by Georgia Southern University Professor Jonathan M. Bryant in his book Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope (2015). The court case(s) would carry on for over eight years and take many twists and turns. The details and complexity Professor Bryant brings to the table are overwhelming. But in the end, three heroes who fought for Antelope’s kidnapped captives stood out to me.  

First, the same man who wrote the words to our Star-Spangled Banner after that fateful 1814 bombardment of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, argued the Antelope case before the Supreme Court Justices (four of whom were slave owners), saying: “By the law of nature, all men are free.” 

A second hero was Savannahian Richard Habersham, whose integrity and stubbornness kept the investigation and legal measures ongoing when judges and politicians attempted to quash the case because an indictment threatened some powerful Georgia officials involved in illegal slave trading. 

The third hero in the Antelope case was former President John Quincy Adams. Ultimately, the dark side driving human nature in the Antelope case facilitated the continuance of the Atlantic slave trade for four more decades, until a Civil War finally brought the evil practice of slavery to its bloody end.