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Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution

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We have a view, useful in teaching civics and in promoting reverence for governmental authority, that America's Founding Fathers were all amateur Enlightenment philosophers, and that when they met in Philadelphia in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention, they were engaged in high-minded debate about imbuing their principles into the new republic. It does not detract from the amazing document which these men brought forth to realize that they were men, not idealized participants in Socratic dialogues. They were not only men, but they were businessmen, and they were politicians, and what they accomplished was in many cases pragmatic compromising to make practical laws and maintain the Union. The real work of getting the Constitution written involved months of argument and sarcasm, and in the view of Lawrence Goldstone, central to the rancor and the forging of the document was the issue of slavery. In _Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution_ (Walker & Company), he gives a sometimes day-by-day account of how the vexed question of owning other humans entered the debates and how pragmatism triumphed over idealism. Slavery was not a footnote to the proceedings, but according to this book, integral to the writing of the whole.

The greatest conflict that had to be settled concerned the legislative branch. The problem was that southern states were large if slaves were included in the head count, and they were small otherwise, and much of _Dark Bargain_ has to do with the wrangling over this issue. The members of the Convention tried various power-plays, some of which threatened to bring the Convention to a halt, as they jockeyed to get their states and regions more power in the eventual government. A compromise was worked out to allow a Senate composed of two senators from each state, and a House of Representatives, composed of larger numbers of representatives from more populous states. The famous "Three-Fifths Clause," which said that slaves could be counted in the population, but at only 60% of their actual numbers, was the compromise worked out between slave states and free. Goldstone writes that this was a great irony: "Southerners, who insisted that blacks were property, had to assert that they were at least partly people, and northerners, who regularly denounced the enslavement of their fellow human beings, had to acknowledge blacks as at least partly property."

That was the settlement for the most contentious issue, but Goldstone shows that slavery impinged on further discussions of the census, the electoral college, taxes, western expansion, and even the definition of treason. In each case, the founders looked for practical solutions. This forces a shift in our emphasis on how the Constitution was formed. James Madison, for instance, is known as the "Father of the Constitution," and his idealism in seeking a higher good was operative in at least the first weeks of the Convention. As time went on, he gave fewer speeches, and his philosophic tone was more and more ignored, with few of his original proposals adopted. What happened is that practical men, with their own interests (and, let us grant, the interest of their states and regions) at heart took over to make a working document. Madison himself wrote about slavery and the eventual outcome of the Convention, " Great as the evil is, a dismemberment of the Union would be worse." The members of the Convention all knew that continuing slavery was paradoxical in a nation that was so earnest about the pursuit of equality and freedom. In their debates, and even in the final document, they never used the term "slave" or "slavery," preferring euphemisms like "this unique species of property" or "this unhappy class". They had secured the Union in perhaps the only practical way the issue of slavery could have been bypassed, and could not have known that their practical solution set the nation up for slavery to make a bloody divide eighty years later.

Lawrence Goldstone, in his new book Dark Bargain, has given us a different view of the Constitutional Convention than the one that we are accustomed to - he has given us a slant on it from a pro-slavery perspective, one that tells the reader that the Constitution was framed largely on the viewpoints of the Pro-Slavery Southern states.

There is no question that the Constitution of the United States is indeed pro-slavery in its original text (exclusive of the Bill of Rights or any amendments), which is why Goldstone makes the argument (quite successfully, in fact) that John Rutledge of South Carolina was the father of the Constitution more than James Madison (the Philosophical leader of the framers) or Gouvernor Morris (the man who wrote the Constitution's text).

There are two major clauses in the Constitution that Goldstone points to as evidence that the document was formed by a Pro-Slavery group of men: The three-fifths compromise (for apportionment purposes, each Slave was counted as 0.6 free persons), and the fact that a 20 year extension of the International Slave Trade was granted by the framers. The three-fifths compromise, naturally, benefited the South above all others - the majority of the Slaves in the republic were in the Southern states (Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia). The extension of the Slave Trade was of benefit to the Carolinas (as they could import Slaves for less cost than purchasing Slaves from Virginia, for example) and the northern Merchants, who were earning vast profits by transporting this human cargo from Africa to North America.

Goldstone calls John Rutledge "Dictator John" because he was able to wrangle compromises out of people that benefited him while giving up very little or nothing of substance. Rutledge was also able to wield a powerful weapon - the threat of a walkout, which nobody else in the convention was able to successfully utilize.

Overall, Goldstone has given us an interesting view of the Constitutional Convention and the men we know as the framers of the Constitution. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding a revisionist theory of the 1787 Convention and comparing it to what most of us were taught in school.

"Regardless of how events played out, sectionalism and slavery are key to understanding the major debates and compromises in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787." This short quote sums up the basic thesis of Lawrence Goldstone in his fine volume entitled Dark Bargain- Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution. This is the conclusion of most serious scholars currently working on the topic of the Constitutional Convention.Goldstone examines the central role slavery played in the Constitution with a focus on how the founders agreed on counting people for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives.In this context he deals with the infamous 3/5's compromise. He also deals with the importation of slaves as it pertained to the Constitution. In his study he mainly focuses on 4 founders and their positions on slavery before and during the construction of the Constitution.( Oliver Ellsworth, Roger Sherman,John Rutledge and George Mason) His final conclusion that slave owner John Rutledge had more of a lasting impact on the Constitution then James Madison is provocative. Because his main focus is slavery, Goldstone deals with the large state versus small state arguments and the central government versus states rights controversy though the prism of the particular institution and although this is interesting not all debates revolved around one single issue. He also paints Ben Franklin as something of an out of it cipher which is a little harsh. His ultimate conclusion is that the founders were not so much political philosophers as they were pragmatic individuals with their own agendas and their gift to us is a document that was workable and capable of being adapted to various challenges, but that document was deeply influenced by a horrible practice.

The issue of slavery was actually a concern for convention delegates, and was the main issue which evoked the most resistance to compromise: that's the contention of DARK BARGAIN: SLAVERY, PROFITS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION. In fact, the Constitution was molded by the controversies, needs, and presence of slavery: a fact which receives much emphasis and attention in a study which focuses on source material to recreate backroom debates, underlying issues, and philosophical differences between our country's founding fathers. A revealing state-by-state survey enables readers to pinpoint differences and their effects on the Constitution's language and intentions.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Unfortunately "Dark Bargain Slavery, Profits ...etc" is flawed because of; either, a lack of knowledge about the true history of slavery in North America, or the conventionally biased view of slavery in the Southern Colonies/States. Dr Goldstone writes "African slaves had been in Virginia since the 1620s.." But this is not true. Slavery was not legal in Virginia until 1667. This issue has been extensively researched by The Colonial Jamestown Foundation. The first Africans in Va. were indentured servants [as were many early white settlers].These Africans were successful in working off their indenture obligations and participated quite successfully in society in colonial Virginia, many became land owners and some of their descendents were slaveowners. Slavery was first legalized in Colonial America in Mass. in 1641. The legislation was called "The Body of Liberties", it made slavery legal legal for slaves captured in a "just war" or acquired by legal purchase. The Puritans had just waged a war of genocide against the Pequot Indians slaughtering most but enslaving some. Indians were not good slaves because they could easily run away so the Pequot slaves were shipped to the West Indies in exchange for "seasoned" african slaves who were purchased by the Puritans.

Slavery was legal and was practiced in every northern colony/state for 150 years before the Constitutional Convention. Northerners benefited from the practice of slavery and particularly the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade which was conducted exclusively by northern merchants [the first New England slave trader on the coast of West Africa was registered with a Boston home port in 1644]. Slave trading voyages were financed and insured by New England banks and merchants, the vessels themselves were built in New England ship yards and manned by New England crews. The slave trade was extremely profitably and these profits financed much of the economy in the northern colonies.

Northern states were largely cleansed of slavery [and most Africans] by the Revolutionary War because the British offered freedom to any slaves who would join their side while the Patriot side offered freedom to any slaves who would actually fight on their side. The drastic decline in black/slave population made it relatively easy for northern states to officially "abolish" slavery, although, in fact, all of the northern states practed "gradual emancipation' which converted existing slaves into "indentured servants" who were indentured to their origional owners for 25 years or more.

"Dark Bargain" makes no mention, whatsoever, of slavery in New England and the northern states/colonies whereas it makes numerous, and in my opinion, gratuitous, mentions of brutal treatment of slaves, but only in the southern colonies/states. This made Goldstone's arguments about the importance of the slavery issue in the framing of the Constitution appear to be too one sided and subjective. It is difficult to place oneself into the midst of an event that transpired over 200 years ago and even more difficult to accurately reflect the real motives behind the decisions and compromises that were made. The convention delegates surely were driven primarily by the economic interests of their native states and secondarily by sectional interests. [The New England state of Rhode Island benefited the most from the extension of the legal slave trade. Slave traders from RI made 500 voyages to the coast of West Africa between 1787 and 1808.]

The attitude concerning the issue of slavery was far different in 18th Century America than it is in 21st Century America. It is misleading and perhaps even historically dishonest to impose 21st Century values on 18th Century events.

While I found the book interesting, well written, and informative, I felt it missed the point of the title i.e. Slavery & Profits...the "Dark Bargin". I expected a more detailed analysis of the extent of slavery's impact on the economic interests represented at the convention. Instead I got a unrelated albeit interesting perspective on the individual participants with a much too subtle reference to the slavery issue.

I got the feeling an editor, or someone representing the publisher, embellished the material to give it a more marketable title. I felt the same way about H.W. Brands book about FDR: "Traitor to His Class..." An interesting read but far from a disertation on FDR's betrayal of the moneyed interests of the wealthy.

Got here on time for class and was a lot cheaper than the fsu bookstore!! Turned around and sold it back to the school and made a profit!!