10 Wheat. (23 U.S.) 66 (1825), argued 26 Feb.–3 Mar. 1825, decided 16 Mar. 1825, Marshall for the Court, with the justices divided in various and sometimes conjectural ways on the issues presented; no dissents. The Antelope raised for the first time in the Supreme Court the question of the legitimacy of the international slave trade. In 1822, Justice Joseph Story on circuit had held in United States v. La Jeune Eugenie that trade was illegal and “repugnant to the general principles of justice and humanity,” that is, natural law. The Antelope revisited this question under the following facts. A privateer raided North Atlantic shipping, capturing the slaver The Antelope. The captors and slaves were seized by an American revenue cutter and brought for disposition before Justice William Johnson on circuit, who ordered the slaves apportioned by lottery among American, Spanish, and Portuguese claimants.
In the Supreme Court on appeal by various claimants, Chief Justice John Marshall conceded that the slave trade was “contrary to the law of nature,” but held that it had nevertheless been sanctioned by “the usages, the national acts, and the general assent” both of colonizing nations and of the peoples of western Africa, and therefore “claimed all the sanction which could be derived from long usage and general acquiescence” (pp. 66, 115, 121). His disposition of the case, however, had the effect of remitting approximately 120 of the slaves, as “American,” to “repatriation” to the American Colonization Society's colony in modern‐day Liberia, and approximately 30, as “Spanish” (i.e., the property of Spanish claimants), to slavery in Florida.
— William M. Wiecek
