The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

by Edward E. Baptist

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention had allowed the trade to go on. In the twenty years since, citizens of the new nation had dragged 100,000 more people from the African coast. Always, some fought. They clung to the doorposts of the dungeons and barracoons. They threw themselves in chained groups over the gunwales of the boats to drown together in the surf. They grabbed at the clubs the sailors used to beat them down onto the slave deck. They rushed the barricade when the crew let them out for exercise. Ten percent of Atlantic slave-trade voyages experienced major rebellions. But resistance almost always failed. Sailors fired grapeshot cannon into surging masses of desperate men and women in the midships. The scuppers ran with blood. The sharks ate.