Dark Bargain Quotes

“South Carolina went on what was described as a "war footing" and commenced the hunt for the remaining slaves. 9 Every white male in the colony was armed, and checkpoints were established at ferry crossings. Members of the local Chickasaw and Catawba tribes were offered a bounty for every black they caught.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“Fear of black rebellion among planters was deep and long-standing. 7 It began in the first years that African slaves were brought ashore, but in 1739, an incident of unprecedented ferocity caught every slaveowner in its grip.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“The country may have been called the "United States," but its thirteen members lived under thirteen different constitutions, 9 with thirteen different ways to value money, thirteen different rules of commerce, and thirteen views on how all the problems of the nation should be solved.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“Beard concluded that those who supported the Constitution did so because the new government would guarantee their wealth and the payment of debts owed to them, while those opposed wanted to stay with the more impotent and forgiving Articles of Confederation.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“That slavery had been an evil forced on the South matched the public statements of a number of Southern delegates to the convention—George Mason had put forth this argument regularly and forcefully—and helped nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century readers square slavery with their otherwise exalted image of the framers. "As long as patriotism remained the principal ingredient of American historical writing, the constitutional convention was regarded as an assemblage of the gods," wrote Gordon Wood. 10”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“That no one could know for sure in those early days what the delegates really had in mind—or even had said—did nothing to stop those in favor and those opposed from issuing definitive judgments as to the intent of the framers and its effect on the nation.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“James Madison, for example, at one point observed that he "always conceived that the difference of interest in the U. States lay not between the large & small, but the N. & Southn States," and added that "it was pretty well understood that the institution of slavery & its consequences formed the line of discrimination.”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

“Even in the debates, so repellent was slavery to northerners—and so embarrassing to southerners—that when the subject came up, the delegates often danced around it, employing euphemisms, such as "this unique species of property" or "this unhappy class," as stand-ins for the more disagreeable "slaves." Thus, the words "slave" and "slavery" never appeared in the original Constitution, nor would they until ninety-one years later when the thirteenth amendment abolished the practice”
― Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution