Dark Bargain

by Lawrence Goldstone

  9. Farrand, Records, i:35- Once again, Madison's notes—as well as those of Yates and the other delegates—sometimes refer to speakers in the first person, sometimes in the third person, and sometimes in both the first and third person within a single speech. Any speech in quotes has been rendered exactly as it appears in the record and represents, as precisely as we know, a delegate's actual words.

  10. Ibid., i:36.

  11. Unless otherwise noted, all citations from the June 11 debates appear in Farrand, Records, i:196-201.

  12. This was made clear in Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, 12.

  13. In trying to count slaves for purpose of apportionment, a position to which he would doggedly adhere throughout the debates, Rutledge had changed his stance markedly since the Confederation debates of July 1776. Forgotten was his assertion that "slaves were not wealth" (Adams, Papers, ii:245).

  14. The three fifths clause had never been used for apportionment, only taxation.

  15. Rutledge might then have passed on the formula to Charles Pinckney or perhaps Pinckney simply seized on it as a good idea.

  16. According to Butler's notes, Gerry's comments were more provocative. "Are we to enter into a Compact with Slaves No!" (Hutson, Supplement, 70).

  17. The New Jersey Plan is from Farrand, Records, i:242-45.

  18. Madison's version of Hamilton's address is from Farrand, Records, i:283-92.

  19. Yates's version of Hamilton's address is from Farrand, Records, i:294-301.

  20. Rakove, Original Meanings, 64.

  21. Debates of June 19 are from Farrand, Records, i:312-33.

  22. The Great Compromise of July 16 eventually justified their decision to stick things out and was sufficient to persuade most of the states' rights delegates to support the new Constitution.

  23. Some historians have contended that the first phase of the convention continued through the end of July, but June and July were two very different months in Philadelphia. With the apparent rejection of the New Jersey Plan—although different aspects of Paterson's proposals would continue to resurface—the delegates were ready to discuss a more nuts-and-bolts diagram of their proposed new government. When they did so, tempers in the chamber increased along with temperatures outside. As practical politics began to dominate the discussions, the artificial bonhomie of June gave way to partisanship, rigidity, and anger.

  24. Madison's and Yates's versions are from Farrand, Records, i:337-41, but neither evidently gives anything but a cursory flavor of Martin's interminable and meandering rhetoric.

  25. Ford, Essays, 183. Ellsworth (who was writing anonymously as a Landholder) took some serious liberties. First of all, Martin had actually arrived on June 9, three weeks before, and had spoken very little during that period. Second, not everyone had the same opinion of Martin's address.

  26. Ibid., 130.

  27. Farrand, Records, i:456. This statement appears in Yates's notes but not Madison's.

  28. Ibid., i:452.

  29. McDonald wrote, "The lineup was much more nearly sectional than large-versus small: states south of the Potomac consistently voted with Madison's 'large states' bloc, 4 to 0; those north of it . . . voted as small states 6 to 2." (Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were the exceptions.) McDonald added that, when huge Virginia and tiny Delaware were factored out, the population of the "large" states was only 10 percent greater than that of the "small" ( £ Pluribus Unum, 274).

  30. Farrand, Records, 1:486-87.

  31. Ibid., i:510-11.

  32. Ibid., i:532-33.

  10. Slavery by the Numbers: The Mathematics of Legislative Control

  1. Debates of July 9 appear in Farrand, Records, i:557-62.

  2. Twenty six, if Delaware, which is sometimes considered a slave state, is included. Although slavery was, in fact widespread in Delaware, it had already begun to be more influenced by the industry to the north than by the plantations to the south.

  3. Debates of July 10 appear in Farrand, Records, i:563-72.

  4. New Hampshire was the easiest and most obvious target since its delegates had still not arrived, despite entreaties by a number of northern delegates that their presence was desperately needed.

  5. Debates of July 11 appear in Farrand, Records, i:573-88.

  6. Mason was to add later in the debate, "As soon as the Southern & Western population should predominate, which must happen in a few years, the power wd. be in the hands of the minorlty, and would never be yielded to the majority, unless provided for by the Constitution."

  7. Mason prefaced his remarks by noting that he "could not agree to the motion, not with standing it was favorable to Virga. because he thought it unjust." Mason, as with almost all his pronouncements about slavery, was a bit disingenuous here. Counting slaves as equal with freemen would in no way favor Virginia if slaves were also counted in full for purposes of taxation. Three fifths would be all that most of the cash-strapped planters could bear. As for the injustice, Mason made it quite clear that he was referring to the black man's equality, not his enslavement.

  8. Delaware's aye vote is bizarre unless one assumes that, doing everything it could to retain the Articles of Confederation, it voted for an obviously unacceptable proposal in the hopes that the entire plan might end up sufficiently odious as to be voted down by the states.

  9. This was as blatant an attempt to appeal to Gouverneur Morris as Morris's hollow arguments against the census had been to appeal to Rutledge.

  11. Sixty Percent of a Human Being

  1. Hutson, Supplement, 158.

  2. Debates of July 12 appear in Farrand, Records, i:589-97.

  3. Davie overcame his objections and became instrumental in North Carolina's eventual (but belated) ratification in November 1789, the last of the original thirteen states to do so, except Rhode Island.

  4. Debates of July 13 appear in Farrand, Records, i:598-606.

  12. Balancing Act: Two Great Compromises

  1. Delaware and New Jersey had consistently refused to have the second house apportioned by population. They had sometimes been joined by Maryland, sometimes by New York, sometimes by Massachusetts, and sometimes, when slavery was involved, by Southern states.

  2. No similar sentiment existed among the smaller states in the South. Georgia, with its tiny population, usually voted as a large state and North Carolina, which shifted allegiances regularly, would provide the swing vote to enact the Great Compromise on July 16.

  3. Debates of July 14 appear in Farrand, Records, ii:1-12.

  4. Congress was as dysfunctional as ever. Although having more than fifty members whose credentials had been accepted, rarely were more than twenty in the chamber at any one time. Seven delegations were necessary to constitute a quorum and often as not Congress fell short and was forced to adjourn. To pass the Northwest Ordinance, eight states had delegations present, with three New England states—Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire— not bothering to show up to vote on the most important piece of legislation in the preconstitutional period, which ironically was one of the few proposals that did not require either nine votes or unanimous approval to enact.

  5. Article VI also said, "Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid," but even so, it was the first piece of national legislation to specifically outlaw slavery.

  6. Eleven if Delaware's two delegates are included.

  7. Staughton Lynd in Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution attributes direct cause and effect to these two events, which he terms "the fundamental compromise of 1787."

  8. Almost twenty delegates in Philadelphia also held credentials for the 1787 Congress. The list included Madison, Gorham, King, Charles Pinckney, Butler, Lansing of New York, and William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, half the Georgia delegation and the entire delegation from Ne
w Hampshire. Most delegates spent more time in Philadelphia than New York, but almost all of them traveled north at some point in the summer.

  9. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:73.

  10. His support of war veterans was not absolute. Later in 1786, he would head a regiment of the army Benjamin Lincoln led to suppress Shays' Rebellion (Szatmary, Shays' Rebellion, 86).

  11. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, I:181.

  12. For an excellent dissertation of the western movement of the 1780s, see Onuf, Statehood and Union, especially chapter 2, "Squatters, Settlers and Speculators."

  13. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:195.

  14. Ibid., i:196.

  15. Linklater, Measuring America, 80.

  16. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:236.

  17. Ibid., i:237.

  18. Cutler was particularly impressed by Elbridge Gerry. "Few old bachelors, I believe, have been more fortunate in marriage . . . his lady is young, handsome . . . I should suppose her not more than 17, and believe he must be turned 55" (Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:255).

  19. That Article VI was an amendment was indicated in the Journals of the Continental Congress, but these journals were only compiled between 1834 and 1856 from newspapers and other ancillary records. The Congressional Record was not begun until 1873. There were no official minutes kept of congressional sessions in 1787 and therefore just who proposed Article VI has been lost to history.

  20. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:293.

  21. As it turned out, the slavery provision was widely ignored. There were slaves in Ohio until after the turn of the century and in Illinois until the 1820s.

  22. Lee had given up on the claims of Virginia's Ohio Company and hoped that the treasury might make some money from this one.

  23. Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, i:294.

  24. Ibid., i:296.

  25. This was Cutler's way of acknowledging French aid during the Revolution. Marietta was to remain as the touchstone of the American public land movement, while Marie Antoinette met quite a different fate in quite a different revolution.

  26. Staughton Lynd, as noted, originated the "deal" theory, but Paul Finkelman persuasively laid out its flaws. Finkelman and Lynd do agree on two other possible reasons that southern congressmen supported the Northwest Ordinance. The first was that the South wanted to keep the northerners from competing in the tobacco and indigo markets—a sentiment also put forth by a Virginia congressman—although this seems climatically unlikely, especially as one moves farther north. The second was that the South expected the new states in the Northwest, once admitted, to vote with their agrarian cousins from the Atlantic South rather than the capitalists and small businessmen who dominated politics in the Atlantic North.

  27. Barrett, Jay, Evolution, 22. This was the type of provision that Mason, had he been sincere in his desire to end slavery, might easily have proposed himself. He never did.

  28. These were the sales that proved so disappointing two years later.

  29. Farrand, Records, i:578-80.

  30. Morris, Witnesses, 192. Staughton Lynd (in Class Conflict, 194) adds, "Thus while from the standpoint of the North the Ordinance appeared an antislavery triumph, to the South it may have seemed the end of the national government's attempt to prohibit slavery South of the Ohio."

  31. Farrand, Records, ii:19-20.

  32. Madison had made no secret of his distaste for the Connecticut Compromise. He likely had a greater role in assembling this group than he indicated here.

  13. Not a King, But What?

  1. "Qualified" because there was sharp disagreement on just who would be allowed to vote. Suf frage would be argued vociferously in the coming weeks.

  2. Debates of July 17 appear in Farrand, Records, n:21-36. This definition was not as broad as it seemed. By "freeholders," Morris meant only those men who owned property, and would ex elude merchants and artisans, restrictions that would be hotly contested in early August.

  3. This was in stark contrast to Mason's previously voiced sentiments on the nobility of lower classes.

  4. The same term that was later applied to Supreme Court justices and other federal judges. There is no specific provision in the Constitution for a judge to serve for life, nor is there a definition of "good behavior."

  5. Ultimately more than sixty votes were required to finalize what was to become Article II of the Constitution.

  6. Farrand, Records, n:58.

  7. Ibid., ii:63.

  8. The vow of secrecy that the delegates had taken was evidently being observed. During this period, when nothing could be agreed upon, and irritation was ubiquitous, the Pennsylvania Packet reported, "So great is the unanimity, we hear, that prevails in the Convention, upon all great federal subjects, that it has been proposed to call the room in which they assemble— UNANIMITY HALL." The Packet was not exactly impartial. The item also noted, "May the enemies of the new confederation, whether in Rhode Island or elsewhere, whether secret or open, meet with the same fate as the disaffected in the late war."

  9. This debate is covered in Farrand, Records, n:47-49.

  14. Details

  1. John Langdon and Nicholas Gilman of New Hamsphire finally arrived during the last week of July, but the addition of another northern "small state" delegation did not infuse new energy into the proceedings.

  2. Although Ellsworth and Rutledge were only lukewarm nationalists when they arrived, they were by then among the most robust supporters of a strong central government. Gorham and Wilson had been nationalists from the beginning, as had been Randolph, the ostensible author of the Virginia Plan. (Sherman had shifted his position as well. By this time, Ellsworth and Sherman were acting as one, and both had seen in Rutledge someone with whom they could do business.)

  3. Farrand, Records, u:129-33.

  4. It was during this recess that Washington went fishing, not while the convention was in session, as is often said. Also, counter to conventional wisdom, although he originally fished for trout, he caught perch.

  5. Randolph's completed outline, with corrections and additions by Rutledge, can by found in the George Mason papers.

  6. Farrand, Records, m:137.

  7. Many of these documents were unearthed by Max Farrand, who then pieced together a speculative chronology of the committee's proceedings. Richard Barry in Mr. Rutledge provided a vivid account of the committee's affairs that, while glorious if true, unfortunately seems to be a complete flight of fancy.

  8. Farrand, Records, ii:177-89.

  9. Nothing bespeaks Randolph's lack of clout more than its inclusion.

  10. Debates of August 7 appear in Farrand, Records, ii:193-212.

  11. Debates of August 8 appear in Farrand, Records, ii:213-26.

  12. "Special interests month" is from McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum 174.

  13. Martin, for all his faults, was one of the few delegates whose opposition to slavery was not for sale. According to McDonald, he "devoutly and genuinely opposed the institution" ( £ Pluribus Unum, 180).

  14. Mason, as will be seen, had far greater problems with slavery and commerce issues, and Gerry, although more difficult to read, seems to have decided that the new government would turn despotic.

  15. Randolph may well have passed this along during the recess, if not to Mason directly, then through Madison.

  16. For a florid but splendidly Machiavellian rendition of Martin's soirees, see McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum, 295-301.

  15. Dark Bargain: The Slave Trade and Other Commerce

  1. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, viii:181.

  2. Elliot, Debates, ii:279-80.

  3. Debates of August 16 appear in Farrand, Records, ii:303-311.

  4. The degree to which the other delegates were surprised is unclear, but Rutledge had now brought the issue out of the backrooms and onto the floor.

  5. Madison, Quoted in Farrand, Records, iii: 436.

  6. Farrand, Records, ii:328.


  7. On August 23, the Pennsylvania Packet, sensitive to the grumbling among the citizenry, wrote, "The punctuality with which the members of the Convention assemble every day at a certain hour, and the long time they spend the deliberations of each day (sometimes 7 hours) are proof, among other things, of how much they are entitled to the universal confidence of the people of America. Such a body of enlightened and honest men perhaps never before met for political purposes in any country upon the face of the earth." The next day, August 24, the delegates unanimously agreed to return the afternoon adjournment time to 3:00 p.m.

  8. This debate of August 20 appears in Farrand, Records, ii:345-50.

  9. Madison was the convention's chameleon. No one could ever be sure whether he would wear his nationalist philosopher's hat or his Virginia one, or attempt to wear both at once. Here he chose the first.

  10. He did not give up entirely, however. The issue of fugitive slaves would be dealt with later.

  11. Debates of August 21 appear in Farrand, Records, ii:352-65.