March 9 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, with one dissent, that the enslaved Africans who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery and thus were free under U.S. law. Some 150 years later, a copy of the Bible given to former President John Quincy Adams as a thank you gift for representing the defendants in the case, was stolen and later returned . Advertisement In 1862, a battle between ironclad ships -- the Union's