“Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations.” With those sentences, John Rutledge of South Carolina set the terms for the darkest bargain of the Constitutional Convention. This is August 1787, told in the delegates’ own words: Gouverneur Morris calling slavery the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed — and 2 weeks later proposing the bargain himself; George Mason, master of hundreds, thundering that every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant and that providence punishes national sins with national calamities; Oliver Ellsworth answering that a man who never owned a slave could not judge — and that Virginia’s morality paid a dividend, since her surplus slaves would rise in value the day the trade closed; the Pinckneys stating South Carolina’s terms as facts of nature. Then the trade itself: 20 years of the open slave trade for New England’s votes, navigation acts by simple majority for the deep south’s — an understanding, as Madison’s own footnote confessed, that had taken place. The fugitive clause slipped through almost without debate. And the mover of the Virginia Plan rose to say he doubted he could sign.
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