Dark Bargain

by Lawrence Goldstone

9. See Edgar, South Carolina, 75.

  10. One incident of note occurred in Virginia in 1767, when some slaves poisoned their overseers, several of whom died. Four slaves were executed for the crime, "after which their heads were cut off, and fixed on chimmes of the court house; and it was expected that four more would soon meet the same fate." Some of the slaves likely belonged to George Mason. (See Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 199-200.)

  11. The pervasive southern fear of slave uprisings is recounted, with some overstatement, in Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, and also in Elkins, Slavery. Ulrich Phillips regularly provides a flavor for slaveowners' paranoia although, apologist that he can often be, he is less specific about labeling it as such.

  12. Quoted in Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 20.

  13. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist, 293.

  14. Haw, John and Edward Rutledge, 73.

  15. Adams, Papers, ii:183.

  16. Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 21.

  17. Phillips, Slave Economy, 200.

  18. Adams, Papers, ii:183.

  4. Taming the West: The Ohio Company of Virginia

  1. Farrand, Records, n:3.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Miller, George Mason, 21.

  4. "Slaves do not signify property. The young and the old cannot work," complained South Carolina's John Rutledge in 1776. South Carolina grew rice, not tobacco, but the principle was the same (Adams, Papers, n:245).

  5. Quoted in Phillips, Slave Economy, 137.

  6. This contrasted with "Yankee skipper[s] . . . who made a genuine profit on every exchange and thriftily laid up his savings" (Phillips, Economics of the Plantation, 260). Phillips is almost totally ignored today. He was perhaps the most infamous perpetrator of the "sambo" image of enslaved Africans. Still, his studies of the slave economy and the sociopolitical effects of slavery on Southern life are unsurpassed.

  7. McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum, 118.

  8. Freidenberg, Life, Liberty, 99-

  9. In 1775, Michael would raise a company of volunteers whom he would lead on a forced march to Boston to support Washington, but die of exhaustion just before reaching Massachusetts. Michael also had an attractive daughter named Maria who would eventually marry a rising young Maryland lawyer named Luther Martin.

  10. He also found a mammoth's tooth and ribs in his travels.

  11. The French, who promised to limit settlement in the region, convinced the chiefs that an En glish victory would result in hordes of pioneers pouring over the mountains, which is precisely what happened.

  12. Rowland, George Mason, i:78. Kate Mason Rowland was a great great-great grandniece of George Mason IV and created an excellent two-volume part biography and part collection of papers at the end of the nineteenth century. (She subsequently dropped the name Rowland and was known as Kate Mason until her death in 1916.) Robert Rutland's 1970 three-volume collection of papers is more extensive, but lacks some of Ms. Rowland's material, which had been lost in the interim. Still more of Mason's letters and other papers were lost in a fire in the mid-nineteenth century.

  13. Mason's buying activities can be traced as far back as 1749, when, only twenty-four years old, he had bought up a large chunk of the newly laid-out city of Alexandria when lots were first put up for sale.

  14. Mason and Franklin became "leading opponents in the ensuing rivalry between Pennsylvania and Virginia for the riches of the Ohio country" (Miller, George Mason, 181), and this com petition between two of America's foremost citizens, the aristocratic southern slaveholder and the shrewd northern capitalist, personified the battle between slave states and free that would be waged in Philadelphia almost two decades later.

  15. This made it far less painful for Virginia to give in to Maryland's demand and cede the land to the federal government. Virginians knew that their claims were moot anyway.

  5. Sorcerer's Apprentice: Virginia and the Upper South

  1. Morgan, American Slavery, 304.

  2. Ibid., 304-5.

  3. In the West Indies, slavery supplanted white labor when growers switched to sugar from tobacco and could not find enough whites willing to sign on for such grueling work.

  4. Hawk, Economic History, 231.

  5. Quoted in Miller, George Mason, 13.

  6. Ibid., 6.

  7. Rowland, George Mason, i:102.

  8. Morgan, American Slavery, 307-8. Also see Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 93-

  9. Population figures before the census of 1790 vary widely and are notoriously unreliable. A widely circulated estimate put the white population at 252,000 while slaves numbered 280,000 and General Pinckney used this estimate in the South Carolina legislative debates. Other estimates have the slave population as a lower percentage as compared to whites, but not by very much.

  10. Maryland, for example, in 1783, passed a law that made it "unlawful to import any slave for sale or to reside with in this state: and any slave brought into this state contrary to this act shall thereupon immediately cease to be a slave and set free" (quoted in DuBois, Suppression, 226). In 1778, Virginia levied a £1000 fine for each newly imported slave (ibid., 226).

  11. How George Mason I and Gerard Fowke advanced their positions in the colony, or whether they married wealthy widows or simply eligible daughters of successful planters, is not clear. By the time of George IV's birth, however, both the Masons and the Fowkes had prospered, the descendants of each well fixed in land and slaves. The Masons particularly had also be come active in the political affairs of the colony.

  12. Jefferson was another exception, beginning Monticello when he was twenty six.

  13. Rowland, George Mason, i:101.

  14. Ibid., i:103.

  15. Ibid., i:104.

  16. Mason was beset with a lifelong case of gout. Flare ups could be severe and debilitating and on many occasions he complained of ill health in his correspondence, especially to Washing ton during the war years. Whether or not this was prompted by guilt at not participating while his friend was enduring the hardship of war cannot be known. His illness was certainly the justification for declining military service.

  17. Some biographers hypothesize that Mason was granted the title as recompense for his war work, but no documentary evidence backs that up.

  18. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, i:6l-62.

  19. He would use the Roman example again in his famous August speech in Philadelphia.

  20. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, i:173.

  21. The slave trade was a different matter. That Mason wanted abolished immediately and for ever. But the slave trade and slavery were two very different phenomena, as will be seen in chapter 15.

  22. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, ii:448. Mason did not mean "all men" so much as "all men of property."

  23. The second amendment provision about bearing arms originated at about this time—1774— with the resolutions to arm militias in the various states, steeped in what Rowland (George Mason, I : 183 ) calls "abhorrence of standing armies, and their conviction that the militia is the true defence of the free country." Mason participated in the drafting of the Fairfax County resolution in January 1775, the first in Virginia, which said, "a well regulated militia is the natural strength and stable security of a free government," language remarkably similar to the amendment to come.

  24. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, ii:263.

  25. Rowland, George Mason, i:188.

  26. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, ii:498.

  27. Ibid., ii:595.

  28. That he did so until his death in 1792 is an indication that he never quite got over the sting.

  6. Gold in the Swamps: South Carolina, Rice, and the Lower South

  1. Barry, Mr. Rutledge, 103.

  2. Butler was in fact the second son of an Irish baronet and had, in the fashion of those who would not inherit, pursued a career in the army. Butler had a notable military record, studied law, married well, and became one of the major slaveholdmg delegate
s in Philadelphia.

  3. There is are only two serious modern works on John Rutledge, Richard Barry's Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina (1942), written as narrative with an extensive bibliography but no endnotes, and James Haw's 1997 John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, an overtly scholarly treatment. Although the plodding, sterile Haw dismisses Barry's more florid work as "unreliable," the two actually differ very little in substance. In addition, Barry's work was apparently reliable enough to be used as source material by Forrest McDonald and M. E. Bradford, among others. In any event, both Haw and Barry relied heavily on History of South Carolina: from its first settlement in 1670 to the year 1808, by planter, physician, and Rutledge's fellow legislator David Ramsay, but this treatment of Rutledge is so reverential that the Old Dictator's feet never seem to touch the ground. An example of Ramsay's prose: "When Rutledge spoke it was as if he transported us, by some magic, to an ancient place, far removed from all the feeling of the day. We were all like little boys listen mg to a revered headmaster, whose words were eagerly absorbed, so that they might be for ever treasured."

  4. Andrew Rutledge's exact lineage has never been established. He was possibly of humble beginnings from County Tyrone or descended from royalist aristocrats forced into hiding, or something different entirely.

  5. Rutledge's exact birth date is unknown.

  6. Barry, Mr. Rutledge, 21.

  7. Barry provides a florid and detailed description of the lives of the South Carolina elite. Even factoring in some overstatement, his account does not differ a great deal from that of Haw or Edgar.

  8. Edgar, South Carolina, 162.

  9. For an excellent overview of the rice economy, see Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina.

  10. Quoted in Hawk, An Economic History, 94.

  11. Hawk, An Economic History, 94.

  12. With tobacco planters of the Upper South facing an increasing oversupply of slaves, and slaves to work rice plantations in constant demand, a natural market would have seemed to exist. But Upper South planters had accrued substantial costs in raising slaves to adulthood and the prices they asked of Lower South planters reflected the expense. Domestically raised slaves were more socialized to the culture, it was true, but with life expectancy so tenuous rice planters preferred the far lower priced imports. Planters in the Upper South realized that they needed to find a way to eliminate competition from the African slave trade or the domestic market for their surplus would dry up.

  13. It was in one of these cases that Rutledge lost in court for the only time in his career.

  14. Barry, Mr. Rutledge, 58.

  15. Adams, Papers, ii:119.

  16. Ibid., ii:173.

  17. Ibid., ii:151.

  18. Barry, Mr. Rutledge, 211.

  19. Ibid., 264.

  20. Edgar, South Carolina, 244.

  7. The Value of a Dollar: Connecticut

  1. Rakove, Original Meanings, 86.

  2. Collier, Roger Sherman's Connecticut, 197.

  3. Ibid., 222.

  4. Brown, Life of Ellsworth, 12. There is a remarkable paucity of biographical material on Ellsworth. Brown's study, now a century old, is still considered definitive. There is, unfortunately, no central collection of Ellsworth's papers.

  5. One look at the portraits of the dour, glowering Ellsworth would be enough to convince any doubters that this was not a man given to pranks.

  6. Brown, Life of Ellsworth, 26.

  7. Ibid., 22-24.

  8. He was well suited to the task, having grown to what was reported as a strapping six-foot two, making him as tall as Washington and Gouverneur Morris.

  9. Brown, Life of Ellsworth, 33.

  10. Ibid., 35.

  11. Ibid., 85.

  12. Ibid.

  13. In ruling for a married woman in a case in which she sought the right to dispose of her estate without it passing through to her husband, Ellsworth wrote, "Political considerations, therefore, so far as they can be of weight, serve to confirm the opinion" (Brown, Life of Ellsworth, 115).

  14. Farrand, Records, m:89.

  15. Ibid., m:88-89.

  16. Adams, Papers, ii:173.

  17. Contrary to popular belief, a man named Nathaniel Ames, not Benjamin Franklin, produced the most popular and humorous version.

  18. Boardman, Roger Sherman, 117.

  19. Adams, Papers, ii:247.

  20. McDonald, We the People, 48.

  21. Republicans wanted to maintain a loose confederation with a weaker central government. Nationalists, of course, favored a strong central government.

  22. Farrand, Records, m:33-34.

  8. Philadelphia: The Convention Begins

  1. For a description of Washington's arrival, see Pennsylvania Packet, May 14, 1787.

  2. Postcolomal Philadelphia is excellently rendered in Weigley, Philadelphia, while a flavor for the city, including shipping news, real estate ads, lottery results, and criminal activity, can be acquired in just about any edition of the Pennsylvania Packet.

  3. Pennsylvania Packet, May 23,1787.

  4. McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum, 261.

  5. If there was ever someone who did not know when to stop, it was Morris. His house of speculative cards eventually collapsed and he ended up in debtors' prison. Morris died as he was born, destitute.

  6. In the early days of the Supreme Court, justices "rode circuit," that is, visited assigned states twice yearly to hear cases in focal jurisdictions.

  7. According to the census of 1790, there were 2,648 slaves in Connecticut; 0 in Massachusetts; 157 in New Hampshire; 958 in Rhode Island; 21,193 in New York; 11,423 in New Jersey; 3,707 in Pennsylvania; 8,887 in Delaware; 103,036 in Maryland; 292,627 in Virginia; 100,783 in North Carolina; 107,094 in South Carolina; and 29,264 in Georgia. On a percentage basis, slave population was no more than 6 percent of the total in the seven northern most states, 15 percent in Delaware, and in excess of 30 percent in the five southernmost states. By 1790, slavery had either been abolished or was in the process of being phased out in all of the northern states, except Delaware.

  8. Rutland, Papers of Mason, 111:881. Mason's enthusiasm cooled. Only ten days later, he wrote, "I begin to grow tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city."

  9. In the absence of any convention sessions, Madison had convened the delegation at 3:00 p.m. each day to discuss, in Mason's words, "the great subject of our mission." In these meetings the Virginia Plan was put into the form that was later presented to the convention.

  10. McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum, 265-66.

  11. Ann Gerry would live until 1842 and thus be the longest surviving spouse of any delegate.

  12. He moved there after the convention, set himself up as a minor potentate, then resorted to bribery, fraud, and chicanery to further improve his position. When Tennesse became a state, largely as a result of his efforts, Blount was elected to Congress and soon became the first man ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives and then expelled by the Senate.

  13. He was to write on July 10, in a letter to Hamilton, "The Men who oppose a strong & ener getic government are, in my opinion, narrow minded Politicians, or are under influence of local views" (Farrand, Records, m:56). Despite his feelings, Washington was to play virtually no role in the debates, contenting himself with his duties as chair or, when the convention adopted a more informal structure "the Committee of the Whole," sitting without comment with his Virginia colleagues.

  14. The distinction is figurative only. Paterson, generously listed at five foot two, was even tinier than Madison.

  15. In all, fifty five delegates from twelve states would participate in the debates. Of these, less than a third made substantive contributions, and they have been noted in the text. Few of the delegates attended all of the sessions and, even among those whose input was vital to the outcome— Hamilton and Ellsworth, for example—absenteeism was common.

  9. June: The Colloquium

  1. Text of the Virginia Plan is found in Farran
d, Records, r.20-22.

  2. The notion of wealth as a standard of both taxation and representation had been tossed about since debates on the Articles of Confederation in July 1776. Slaves were brought into the picture when Samuel Chase asserted, "If Negroes are taken into the Computation of Numbers to ascertain Wealth, they ought to be in settling the Representation." It was here that Rut ledge added, "I shall be happy to get rid of the idea of Slavery. The Slaves do not signify Property. The old and young cannot work. The Property of some Colonies are to be taxed, in others not. The Eastern Colonies will become carriers for the Southern. They will obtain Wealth for which they will not be taxed" (Adams, Papers, n:245-46). Rutledge would take a different view of slaves as wealth in Philadelphia.

  3. Madison never could figure out how to navigate between these two extremes. Eventually, he would simply try and include both in a bicameral legislature.

  4. That was likely a bit too enfant terrible for a convention the average age of whose delegates was in the mid-forties. At his real age, thirty, Pinckney would have fit in well with Randolph, who was thirty-four, and the thirty-six-year-old Madison. Hamilton, the convention's other enfant terrible, was also thirty. Pinckney's plan was therefore lost to history until, thirty two years later, in 1819, he re created it for John Quincy Adams. In 1818, Adams was preparing the official record of the convention for publication (not including Madison's notes) and discovered that the Pinckney plan was missing. He asked Pinckney if he had a copy and some weeks later Pinckney sent him what he said was a copy of the original plan. This version of the "Pinckney Plan," however, was remarkably similar to the draft produced by the Committee of Detail, and other surviving members of the convention said it was bogus. Later historians, after carefully examining the debates, have concluded that Pinckney's ideas were, in fact, debated, with many finding their way into the Constitution.

  5. McDonald, £ Pluribus Unum, 166.

  6. The June debates were the culmination of what Jack Rakove termed the "Madisonian Moment."

  7. Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, chapter 1.

  8. On May 31, for example, George Mason rose to deliver a short lecture on democracy, arguing that one house of the legislature should be elected directly by the people. "[The legislature] ought to know & sympathise with every part of the community . . . we ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people. [I have] often wondered at the indifference of the superior classes of society to this dictate of humanity & policy . . . Every selfish motive, therefore every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than the highest orders of Citizens" (Farrand, Records, i:48-49). Mason took every opportunity to expound on the evils of tyranny, the meaning of liberty, and, ultimately, the horrors of the slave trade. But he was also well known as the convention's largest slaveholder, one of the most inveterate speculators, and a man who had bought up huge tracts of land and distributed not one square foot to those common people for whom he claimed to have such sympathy. But, since this was June and everyone was still being nice to one another, not one delegate commented on the inconsistencies between Mason's words and deeds. This would not be the case in August. Then, both the colonel's positions and his speeches received far less generous treatment, resulting in Mason radically changing his definition of the convention's mission.