What do you think?
Rate this book
Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution
On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, thirty-nine men from twelve states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Many were meeting for the first time, others after years of contention, and the inevitable clash of personalities would be as intense as the advocacy of ideas or ideals. No issue was of greater concern to the delegates than that of slavery. Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy. As the daily debates and backroom conferences in inns and taverns stretched through July and August of that hot summer--and as the philosophical leadership of James Madison waned--Goldstone clearly reveals how tenuous the document was, and how an agreement between unlikely collaborators--John Rutledge of South Carolina, and Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut--got the delegates past their most difficult point. Dark Bargain recounts an event as dramatic and compelling as any in our nation's history . . .
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 3, 2006
90 people are currently reading
352 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Goldstone
45 books199 followersLawrence Goldstone is the author of fourteen books of both fiction and non-fiction. Six of those books were co-authored with his wife, Nancy, but they now write separately to save what is left of their dishes.
Goldstone's articles, reviews, and opinion pieces have appeared in, among other publications, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Berkshire Eagle. He has also written for a number of magazines that have gone bust, although he denies any cause and effect.
His first novel, Rights, won a New American Writing Award but he now cringes at its awkward prose. (Anatomy of Deception and The Astronomer are much better.)
Despite a seemingly incurable tendency to say what's on his mind (thus mortifying Nancy), Goldstone has been widely interviewed on both radio and television, with appearances on, among others, "Fresh Air" (NPR), "To the Best of Our Knowledge" (NPR), "The Faith Middleton Show" (NPR), "Tavis Smiley" (PBS), and Leonard Lopate (WNYC). His work has also been profiled in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, numerous regional newspapers, Salon, and Slate.
Goldstone holds a PhD in American Constitutional Studies from the New School. His friends thus call him DrG, although he can barely touch the rim. (Sigh. Can't make a layup anymore either.) He and his beloved bride founded and ran an innovative series of parent-child book groups, which they documented in Deconstructing Penguins. He has also been a teacher, lecturer, senior member of a Wall Street trading firm, taxi driver, actor, quiz show contestant, and policy analyst at the Hudson Institute.
He is a unerring stock picker. Everything he buys instantly goes down.
Goldstone's articles, reviews, and opinion pieces have appeared in, among other publications, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Berkshire Eagle. He has also written for a number of magazines that have gone bust, although he denies any cause and effect.
His first novel, Rights, won a New American Writing Award but he now cringes at its awkward prose. (Anatomy of Deception and The Astronomer are much better.)
Despite a seemingly incurable tendency to say what's on his mind (thus mortifying Nancy), Goldstone has been widely interviewed on both radio and television, with appearances on, among others, "Fresh Air" (NPR), "To the Best of Our Knowledge" (NPR), "The Faith Middleton Show" (NPR), "Tavis Smiley" (PBS), and Leonard Lopate (WNYC). His work has also been profiled in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, numerous regional newspapers, Salon, and Slate.
Goldstone holds a PhD in American Constitutional Studies from the New School. His friends thus call him DrG, although he can barely touch the rim. (Sigh. Can't make a layup anymore either.) He and his beloved bride founded and ran an innovative series of parent-child book groups, which they documented in Deconstructing Penguins. He has also been a teacher, lecturer, senior member of a Wall Street trading firm, taxi driver, actor, quiz show contestant, and policy analyst at the Hudson Institute.
He is a unerring stock picker. Everything he buys instantly goes down.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
July 2, 2020
“[J]ust before the delgates were to adjourn for the day, [Rawlins] Lowndes rose to speak… ‘The interest of the Northern States would so predominate, as to divest us of any pretensions to the title of a republic,’ he protested. ‘In the first place, what cause was there for jealousy of our importing negroes? Why confine us to twenty years or rather why limit us at all…’ Slavery, as Lowndes made clear, was at the very heart of the matter. ‘Without negroes, this state is one of the most contemptible in the Union…Negroes were our wealth, our only natural resource; yet behold how our kind friends in the north were determined soon to tie up our hands, and drain us of what we had!’ The session ended and the delegates were left to spend the night pondering a South Carolina in which, because of treaties with foreign powers or Congressional fiat, slavery had withered away or been prohibited altogether. Thus, when General Pinckney rose to speak…he likely felt that in order to save the United States, he had to persuade his fellow Carolinians of what he himself was already convinced and had struggled for four long months to achieve – that the new Constitution did, in fact, protect and even encourage the institution of slavery…”
- Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution
The United States Constitution is a remarkable document for many different reasons. For me, at least, the most striking thing about it is how differently the 4,543 original words (7,591 words when the amendments are included) can be interpreted. Before the ink was even dry, the struggle to derive the Constitution’s intent had begun.
The trouble with divining a single, ultimate meaning from the Constitution’s oft-tortured syntax and grammatically confounding clauses is that the very men who drafted the words in the first place were at variance with each other about the scope, purpose, and effect of certain lines or phrases. The Constitution, after all, was the product of many authors, working many angles, from vastly different regions. One of the reasons that the Constitution often reads clear-as-mud is because a certain amount of flexibility was required to get the thing finished. Deals were struck and compromises made, and the resulting product was a flawed and imprecise text.
Among those deals and compromises baked into the essence of the Constitution was slavery. Lawrence Goldstone covers this messy process in Dark Bargain. Despite its somewhat-inflammatory title, this is not a polemic or screed, but a brisk, efficient, closely argued account of the Constitution’s creation that intently focuses on an aspect of the Founding that many other books on the subject tend to minimize.
Dark Bargain starts where all books about the Constitution must: with the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles created a very loose republic with a weak central government that lacked an executive and a court system. Under this charter, “its thirteen members lived under thirteen constitutions 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.”
From the start, Federalists such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wanted something stronger to bind the colonies. In Goldstone’s telling, one of the chief instigators in getting delegates to attend the Constitutional Convention was the fear of slave revolt. Experiences in the West Indies, in Jamaica, and during the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, had demonstrated the potential consequences of servile insurrection. And the handling of Shay’s Rebellion demonstrated the advantages of a strong central government. Once you read this book, the phrase “ensure domestic tranquility” found in the Constitution’s preamble takes on a whole new meaning.
The most overt and infamous intersection between the U.S. Constitution and slavery comes in the form of the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Three-Fifths Clause is found in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, right below the preamble. Though vitiated by later amendments, the words were not erased, and are still there today, four paragraphs below the bold declaration about how the Constitution was meant “to establish justice” and “ensure the blessings of liberty.”
Today, the Three-Fifths Clause is rightly seen as one of many reflexively inhumane actions directed at black people in America. In historical terms, though, the so-called “Three-Fifths Compromise” was vastly important to the Constitution’s drafters, because it dealt with congressional apportionment – that is, how the number of State representatives would be calculated. The bigger the population of a State, the more representatives – and power – they would have in Congress.
Northerners wanted apportionment based on their actual populations This would have put the less-populous South at a distinct disadvantage. The South, therefore, wanted to count their property as well. And by property I mean enslaved persons. This would give the South more representatives, and more legislative power, despite having far fewer people. It would also allow the South to be as strikingly hypocritical as humanly possible, by both denying and asserting the humanity of enslaved black persons as it suited their needs.
According to Goldstone’s narrative, the towering figure in this critical phase was not Madison – a lofty idealist and political theorist – but the South Carolinian John Rutledge, pragmatic and local-minded. Rutledge fought hard, and successfully, to ensure that the South would have a minority check on American government for decades to come. It was Rutledge, and the South, who most drastically shaped the Constitution by utilizing a powerful minority veto.
The Three-Fifths Compromise isn’t the titular “dark bargain,” however. That moniker instead refers to the agreement to allow the international slave trade to continue existence for several more years, in exchange for ratification. The discussion on the slave trade is fascinating because it explores the nuances of the South, rather than treating it as a monolithic whole.
The Upper South, such as tobacco-planting Virginia, wanted to ban the international slave trade. Tobacco planting was relatively less intense work, and Virginia planters had a surplus of slaves. For a variety of reasons – threat of revolt; reduced prices; the costs of idle capital – they wanted to reduce this surplus. The Upper South didn't need the international slave trade. Since their needs and their morality intertwined on this point, they were actually in favor of prohibiting this most ghastly aspect of a ghastly practice. (Further ghastly consequences would, of course, redound from the ending of the international trade).
On the other hand, the Lower South – South Carolina and Georgia – made its money off the extremely labor-intensive task of rice planting. Toiling in the malarial swamps, slaves died at an alarming rate. The Lower South therefore relied upon the slave trade to replenish their stocks. This put the Lower South at odds with the Upper South, leading to a Constitutional provision that satisfied none and remains a blemish all these years later. Goldstone does a really nice job summarizing the differences among the Southern States, making distinctions that are dwelt upon at great length in other works.
The Constitution cannot be judged solely on its worst aspects. At the time it came into being, it was attempting to create a unique governmental framework that allocated power differently than in any other place on earth. Look around the world at the time of the Constitution’s drafting, and you will understand the worth of this scroll of paper. Nevertheless, as Dark Bargain makes abundantly clear, the Constitution is exceedingly imperfect, a fact worth bearing in mind as we attempt to expound it today.
- Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution
The United States Constitution is a remarkable document for many different reasons. For me, at least, the most striking thing about it is how differently the 4,543 original words (7,591 words when the amendments are included) can be interpreted. Before the ink was even dry, the struggle to derive the Constitution’s intent had begun.
The trouble with divining a single, ultimate meaning from the Constitution’s oft-tortured syntax and grammatically confounding clauses is that the very men who drafted the words in the first place were at variance with each other about the scope, purpose, and effect of certain lines or phrases. The Constitution, after all, was the product of many authors, working many angles, from vastly different regions. One of the reasons that the Constitution often reads clear-as-mud is because a certain amount of flexibility was required to get the thing finished. Deals were struck and compromises made, and the resulting product was a flawed and imprecise text.
Among those deals and compromises baked into the essence of the Constitution was slavery. Lawrence Goldstone covers this messy process in Dark Bargain. Despite its somewhat-inflammatory title, this is not a polemic or screed, but a brisk, efficient, closely argued account of the Constitution’s creation that intently focuses on an aspect of the Founding that many other books on the subject tend to minimize.
Dark Bargain starts where all books about the Constitution must: with the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles created a very loose republic with a weak central government that lacked an executive and a court system. Under this charter, “its thirteen members lived under thirteen constitutions 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.”
From the start, Federalists such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wanted something stronger to bind the colonies. In Goldstone’s telling, one of the chief instigators in getting delegates to attend the Constitutional Convention was the fear of slave revolt. Experiences in the West Indies, in Jamaica, and during the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, had demonstrated the potential consequences of servile insurrection. And the handling of Shay’s Rebellion demonstrated the advantages of a strong central government. Once you read this book, the phrase “ensure domestic tranquility” found in the Constitution’s preamble takes on a whole new meaning.
The most overt and infamous intersection between the U.S. Constitution and slavery comes in the form of the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Three-Fifths Clause is found in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, right below the preamble. Though vitiated by later amendments, the words were not erased, and are still there today, four paragraphs below the bold declaration about how the Constitution was meant “to establish justice” and “ensure the blessings of liberty.”
Today, the Three-Fifths Clause is rightly seen as one of many reflexively inhumane actions directed at black people in America. In historical terms, though, the so-called “Three-Fifths Compromise” was vastly important to the Constitution’s drafters, because it dealt with congressional apportionment – that is, how the number of State representatives would be calculated. The bigger the population of a State, the more representatives – and power – they would have in Congress.
Northerners wanted apportionment based on their actual populations This would have put the less-populous South at a distinct disadvantage. The South, therefore, wanted to count their property as well. And by property I mean enslaved persons. This would give the South more representatives, and more legislative power, despite having far fewer people. It would also allow the South to be as strikingly hypocritical as humanly possible, by both denying and asserting the humanity of enslaved black persons as it suited their needs.
According to Goldstone’s narrative, the towering figure in this critical phase was not Madison – a lofty idealist and political theorist – but the South Carolinian John Rutledge, pragmatic and local-minded. Rutledge fought hard, and successfully, to ensure that the South would have a minority check on American government for decades to come. It was Rutledge, and the South, who most drastically shaped the Constitution by utilizing a powerful minority veto.
The Three-Fifths Compromise isn’t the titular “dark bargain,” however. That moniker instead refers to the agreement to allow the international slave trade to continue existence for several more years, in exchange for ratification. The discussion on the slave trade is fascinating because it explores the nuances of the South, rather than treating it as a monolithic whole.
The Upper South, such as tobacco-planting Virginia, wanted to ban the international slave trade. Tobacco planting was relatively less intense work, and Virginia planters had a surplus of slaves. For a variety of reasons – threat of revolt; reduced prices; the costs of idle capital – they wanted to reduce this surplus. The Upper South didn't need the international slave trade. Since their needs and their morality intertwined on this point, they were actually in favor of prohibiting this most ghastly aspect of a ghastly practice. (Further ghastly consequences would, of course, redound from the ending of the international trade).
On the other hand, the Lower South – South Carolina and Georgia – made its money off the extremely labor-intensive task of rice planting. Toiling in the malarial swamps, slaves died at an alarming rate. The Lower South therefore relied upon the slave trade to replenish their stocks. This put the Lower South at odds with the Upper South, leading to a Constitutional provision that satisfied none and remains a blemish all these years later. Goldstone does a really nice job summarizing the differences among the Southern States, making distinctions that are dwelt upon at great length in other works.
The Constitution cannot be judged solely on its worst aspects. At the time it came into being, it was attempting to create a unique governmental framework that allocated power differently than in any other place on earth. Look around the world at the time of the Constitution’s drafting, and you will understand the worth of this scroll of paper. Nevertheless, as Dark Bargain makes abundantly clear, the Constitution is exceedingly imperfect, a fact worth bearing in mind as we attempt to expound it today.
October 23, 2014
The desire of the southern states to keep slavery going was the biggest driver of what ended up in our Constitution, argues Goldstone convincingly. That idea you had about how high-minded and idealistic the Founding Fathers were - well, put it away. Most of them were motivated by the economic interests of their own state and region, far more than by the idea of forming a union. James Madison was seemingly one of the few who was motivated solely or mostly by his wishes for union, and it was precisely this desire for compromise at all costs that enabled him to allow such pro-slavery positions into the document. The lower South had everyone else over a barrel, and they knew it. We think of Madison as the "Father of the Constitution," but you may as well give that title to John Rutledge of South Carolina, argues Goldstone. Rutledge got everything he wanted into the Constitution, while most of Madison's propositions went by the wayside.
I'm pretty ignorant of many of the nuances of American history. I didn't know, for example, that the upper South and lower South had completely different ideas about slavery and the slave trade. The lower South (the Carolinas, Georgia) depended on the slave trade - imports of slaves from Africa - because of the crops they grew, rice and indigo. (The colonial era predated the cash crop of cotton.) Rice was wickedly difficult to grow and harvest, requiring swamps and brutal labor conditions, and slaves' life expectancies on rice plantations were lower than slaves' life expectancies on the tobacco plantations of the upper South (Virginia and Maryland). The convention delegates from Virginia, such as George Mason, although he owned 300 slaves and was one of the wealthiest men in America, wanted to abolish the slave trade. Naturally there was an economic motive for this: slaves in Virginia bred amply, there was an oversupply, and the upper South wanted to sell their oversupply to the lower South. But the lower South could buy slaves from overseas much more cheaply than the upper South was willing to sell them. A slaveowner put a lot of capital investment into a slave, raising him or her from babyhood to adulthood and working age, and slaveowners like George Mason weren't going to sell a slave in his prime below cost.
The topic of slavery and the Constitution is a fascinating and horrible one. There's a lot of interesting material here. But there's also a lot of dry recitation and details about committee work, which accounts for the 3-stars.
February 6, 2017
In this fascinating, but sad, account of the writing of the Constitution that transformed thirteen colonies into the United States of America, Goldstone presents an engrossing account of the people and the process of the event. The early colonists come alive in the details that Goldstone provides aided by the pictures of them throughout the book. The sadness comes from the issue that makes it a dark bargain. Slavery is central to the story. The representatives from the five southern states were not going to budge on the issue. The difference between the Southern states that grew tobacco and those that grew rice were interesting, since tobacco used up the land after several seasons encouraging the move west. Both North and South were concerned about the western territory would be integrated into the country. Virginia, which was tobacco growing, also had an excess of slaves so it was willing to accede to a future limit on imports of slaves so it could sell its slaves to the other slave owners. The northern states that were anti-slavery were mostly concerned with shipping and commerce. They were concerned about having to go to war to defend the slave owing states, but with the Shay rebellion, they were nervous about uprising. Shays Rebellion was much less than the fear raising stories that were circulated at the time. Shay and others were soldiers who had never gotten paid and so took up arms to get what was owed them. They were quickly subdued, but they made the North frightened, not quite as much as the South who lived in fear of a slave rebellion. What was clear about all of the men gathered in Philadelphia was that they did not believe that the populace should vote for those who ran the government, thus the electoral college. There were idealists and pragmatists who for the first months talked about principles, setting a friendly tone as they got to know each other. As things got down to the details, there were more heated disagreement, much of it centered around the three fifths of a person by which metric the slaves were to be counted. The meetings were kept secret from the public and we only know about them from the notes individual participants kept. The balance between states and national rights were an issue as were the economic interests of Northern capitalists and Southern slave owners. There was a great deal of difference in these economies as well as the cultures of these two regions. The pragmatists who were willing to compromise won out over the idealists. Goldstone makes the point that it was not the idealistic Federalist James Madison who was the Father of the Constitution as our mythic history likes to believe, but the pragmatic and slave owing John Rutledge who actually was. The irony is that what the pragmatist each gave to the other side wasn’t necessary, but the nationalists on both sides were willing to compromise. I look forward to reading other accounts of this event, but Goldstone makes it vivid so that the one wants to learn more about how our country was formed through this dark bargain with slavery. There were some passionate speeches against the “peculiar institution,” but these complex, fallible men did their best from their perspectives
September 5, 2014
Fascinating examination of the development of the US Constitution, reminding us once again why there are two things -- legislation and sausage--we'd prefer not to see made. Includes really interesting character and background sketches of convention delegates and focuses heavily on those that most participated and were most influential, rather than history's heavy hitters, such as Washington and Franklin. Displayed how slavery, our national sin, was a driving force and dealbreaker in the proceedings. Ultimately, it became an economic bargaining chip as even those who were virulently against slavery on moral grounds abandoned their ideals in the face of personal and regional economic loss, postponing clarification and a day of reckoning for future generations. Not a work of hagiography, Dark Bargain shows the struggles with self-interest and "deals with the devil" that existed from our nation's inception that led to the Civil War and whose effects still remain with us.
October 11, 2018
This gives a greater portrait of how slavery, northern shipping interests which benefited from the slave economy, and other such forces shaped the US Constitution.
If you're not already utterly amazed at the hypocrisy of the slaveholders / states, this should do the trick. Under the Articles of Confederation, the slave states didn't count their slaves in population counts for state legislature district, but demanded that [at least 3/5 of] slaves be counted in the population calculations for Congressional seats. They opposed taxes based on population if slaves were counted as people, they opposed taxes based on property if slaves were counted as property... The 3 southern-most slave states had agriculture forms which resulted in very short lives of slaves, so they demanded continued import of slaves. The upper slave states had agriculture that allowed longer slave lives and a growing slave population from births, so they would have found it convenient to end slave import and have the lower slave states have to buy from the upper slave states. (Although "all men are created equal," that didn't apply to babies born to slaves.) It seems that only when a slaveholder had sex with a slave did slave states have no question that a slave was so human that the slaveholder was innocent of any laws against sex with non-humans.
The Constitutional Convention was intentionally made secretive. Armed guards stopped anyone from observing, the proceedings' minutes were kept "sketchy," notes written by delegates such as Madison were not made public for decades. The delegates (with perhaps one exception) represented the elite (it's estimated that in 1790, only about 6% of the population was allowed to vote.)
- - - - -
It's been argued that these huge "compromises" were necessary - and without them things would have turned out less well. We can never know for sure. But if one considers the consequences of the path taken (submitting to ultimatums of an anti-humanitarian minority, a government which under-represents the majority, slavery, the deep racial mythology used to justify it, Civil War, segregation, poverty, etc.), I'm not convinced we necessarily got the better result. It could make interesting alternative history novels or "counterfactual" essays.
I've recently read about all the categories of people denied the right to vote in the early US, and the millions of former prisoners who are denied the vote now. Reading this book's discussion of denying the right to vote to slaves, yet demanding that at least 3/5 of the slaves be counted in order to give disproportionately more Congressional seats to slave states, made me think. Perhaps, the number of Congressional seats should be calculated based on either (1) how many state resident are permitted to vote by state law, or (2) how many state residents actually voted in the last election. (Option 2 could stop states from claiming more were allowed to vote than really are, and might show to what degree registered voters are discouraged from voting.) If we allow states to restrict the vote, give less seats to states that do.
Denying the right to vote has been a serious issue and still exists as a legal potential (and reality for former prisoners.) The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." But it didn't prevent states in the early US from excluding voters based on religion. The First Amendment doesn't say that after one exercises freedom of religion that one still can vote. States eliminated such restrictions in the past, but unless there is a constitutional amendment (such as giving women the vote), states still have the authority to make their own voter rules.
If you're not already utterly amazed at the hypocrisy of the slaveholders / states, this should do the trick. Under the Articles of Confederation, the slave states didn't count their slaves in population counts for state legislature district, but demanded that [at least 3/5 of] slaves be counted in the population calculations for Congressional seats. They opposed taxes based on population if slaves were counted as people, they opposed taxes based on property if slaves were counted as property... The 3 southern-most slave states had agriculture forms which resulted in very short lives of slaves, so they demanded continued import of slaves. The upper slave states had agriculture that allowed longer slave lives and a growing slave population from births, so they would have found it convenient to end slave import and have the lower slave states have to buy from the upper slave states. (Although "all men are created equal," that didn't apply to babies born to slaves.) It seems that only when a slaveholder had sex with a slave did slave states have no question that a slave was so human that the slaveholder was innocent of any laws against sex with non-humans.
The Constitutional Convention was intentionally made secretive. Armed guards stopped anyone from observing, the proceedings' minutes were kept "sketchy," notes written by delegates such as Madison were not made public for decades. The delegates (with perhaps one exception) represented the elite (it's estimated that in 1790, only about 6% of the population was allowed to vote.)
- - - - -
It's been argued that these huge "compromises" were necessary - and without them things would have turned out less well. We can never know for sure. But if one considers the consequences of the path taken (submitting to ultimatums of an anti-humanitarian minority, a government which under-represents the majority, slavery, the deep racial mythology used to justify it, Civil War, segregation, poverty, etc.), I'm not convinced we necessarily got the better result. It could make interesting alternative history novels or "counterfactual" essays.
I've recently read about all the categories of people denied the right to vote in the early US, and the millions of former prisoners who are denied the vote now. Reading this book's discussion of denying the right to vote to slaves, yet demanding that at least 3/5 of the slaves be counted in order to give disproportionately more Congressional seats to slave states, made me think. Perhaps, the number of Congressional seats should be calculated based on either (1) how many state resident are permitted to vote by state law, or (2) how many state residents actually voted in the last election. (Option 2 could stop states from claiming more were allowed to vote than really are, and might show to what degree registered voters are discouraged from voting.) If we allow states to restrict the vote, give less seats to states that do.
Denying the right to vote has been a serious issue and still exists as a legal potential (and reality for former prisoners.) The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." But it didn't prevent states in the early US from excluding voters based on religion. The First Amendment doesn't say that after one exercises freedom of religion that one still can vote. States eliminated such restrictions in the past, but unless there is a constitutional amendment (such as giving women the vote), states still have the authority to make their own voter rules.
June 15, 2021
Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution by Lawrence Goldstone
Please give my Amazon book review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is a nice book focused on some key personalities and issues involved in framing the Constitution. The author, Lawrence Goldstone, provides an informative survey of how the Constitution came to be written, what the framers were originally intending, and what the alternatives might have been.
According to Goldstone, the event that provided an impetus to the drafting of a new Constitution was Shay's Rebellion, which suggested that even northern states might be more susceptible to internal insurgencies than they had previously believed. Southern states knew that they had such a problem in the form of slave rebellions, although the south had largely avoided that form of domestic revolt. All states had some interest in a common defense against both domestic and foreign enemies, but they also had interests that were opposed.
Goldstone's thesis is that the interest that most divided the states - and which explains the development of the Constitution - was slavery. The northern states were opposed to slavery and wanted it ended; the lower southern states wanted to protect slavery; the upper South was more ambivalent than the lower South; they wanted to end the slave trade so that it could sell its own slaves more profitably and dreamed that slavery would naturally come to an end as had happened in the North.
The North's interest in ending slavery in the United States is a surprising feature for the time. No other sovereignty in the world had outlawed slavery at the time. The states were essentially separate countries, and they could have taken the position that what went on in other countries was not their business. This understanding obviously strengthened the hand of the deep South on issues pertaining to slavery since those issues mattered very much domestically to those states. Goldstone points out that the deep South was very successful in the struggle over the constitutional clauses dealing with slavery.
One such clause was the "3/5th Clause." The issue was whether slaves would count as the population for apportionment of representatives in one of the two houses of the legislature or not be counted. Goldstone locates the origin of the 3/5th compromise in prior compromises over taxation of states. The apportionment of taxes was to be done on the basis of state wealth, and slaves were certainly part of that calculation. Similarly, in the Constitution, any taxation was also to be done on the basis of wealth by apportioning taxes to states based on their representation. As it turned out, this method of taxation was never used and the Constitution was subsequently amended to permit direct taxation, but only based on the income of citizens.
One interesting feature is how James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," essentially receded from the picture as the negotiation went along. His ideas, such as basing one house of the legislature on apportionment by population excluding slaves and one house including slaves, were rejected in favor of the approach we have today.
There were high-minded calls against compromising with slavery from some delegates. However, even abolitionist New Englanders compromised their principles to avoid a walk-out by the lower South:
"Ellsworth and Sherman were creatures of their upbringing, their values, and the society in which they lived. They were in Philadelphia to protect and promote a way of life and this, not personal gain, or even a specific commercial advantage for Connecticut prompted them to act as they did. Both men genuinely believed that their actions, even their compromises with slavery, were for the betterment of the society they represented and, as such, were also for the betterment of the United States."
As a consequence, a fugitive slave provision was included, the slave trade was left untouched for twenty years, the electoral college was established, and even the census was compromised. Concerning the census, the belief of the delegates was that population growth would favor the South. Southerners, therefore, wanted more frequent census in order to adjust the House of Representatives in their favor. The ten-year census was very much a product of compromise.
The Northwest Ordinance may have been involved in the compromise. The Northwest Ordinance was passed by the old Congress virtually unanimously the day after the 3/5th compromise was accepted. Goldstone speculates that the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, which outlawed slavery in Northwest territories, was part of the inducement for the compromise. If so, that may have been what spelled the doom for southern slavery since those states were part of the alliance that defeated the Confederacy.
There is a lot of convenient finger-pointing about the compromise with slavery by people who were not there. Goldstone concludes on that subject:
"Philosophical concerns seemed to play only a minor role in the proceedings, and only then with but a few of the participants. Nonetheless, for all that, precisely because the delegates in Philadelphia were pragmatic, and were there to represent specific, parochial interests, they were able to draft a document that was workable, adaptable, and able to survive challenges that could never have been imagined in 1787. It is distinctly possible that had idealism dominated in Philadelphia, American democracy would have failed."
I found this to be a well-written, interesting and informative book. I appreciated that it avoided the moralism that is all too common in this day and age.
Please give my Amazon book review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is a nice book focused on some key personalities and issues involved in framing the Constitution. The author, Lawrence Goldstone, provides an informative survey of how the Constitution came to be written, what the framers were originally intending, and what the alternatives might have been.
According to Goldstone, the event that provided an impetus to the drafting of a new Constitution was Shay's Rebellion, which suggested that even northern states might be more susceptible to internal insurgencies than they had previously believed. Southern states knew that they had such a problem in the form of slave rebellions, although the south had largely avoided that form of domestic revolt. All states had some interest in a common defense against both domestic and foreign enemies, but they also had interests that were opposed.
Goldstone's thesis is that the interest that most divided the states - and which explains the development of the Constitution - was slavery. The northern states were opposed to slavery and wanted it ended; the lower southern states wanted to protect slavery; the upper South was more ambivalent than the lower South; they wanted to end the slave trade so that it could sell its own slaves more profitably and dreamed that slavery would naturally come to an end as had happened in the North.
The North's interest in ending slavery in the United States is a surprising feature for the time. No other sovereignty in the world had outlawed slavery at the time. The states were essentially separate countries, and they could have taken the position that what went on in other countries was not their business. This understanding obviously strengthened the hand of the deep South on issues pertaining to slavery since those issues mattered very much domestically to those states. Goldstone points out that the deep South was very successful in the struggle over the constitutional clauses dealing with slavery.
One such clause was the "3/5th Clause." The issue was whether slaves would count as the population for apportionment of representatives in one of the two houses of the legislature or not be counted. Goldstone locates the origin of the 3/5th compromise in prior compromises over taxation of states. The apportionment of taxes was to be done on the basis of state wealth, and slaves were certainly part of that calculation. Similarly, in the Constitution, any taxation was also to be done on the basis of wealth by apportioning taxes to states based on their representation. As it turned out, this method of taxation was never used and the Constitution was subsequently amended to permit direct taxation, but only based on the income of citizens.
One interesting feature is how James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," essentially receded from the picture as the negotiation went along. His ideas, such as basing one house of the legislature on apportionment by population excluding slaves and one house including slaves, were rejected in favor of the approach we have today.
There were high-minded calls against compromising with slavery from some delegates. However, even abolitionist New Englanders compromised their principles to avoid a walk-out by the lower South:
"Ellsworth and Sherman were creatures of their upbringing, their values, and the society in which they lived. They were in Philadelphia to protect and promote a way of life and this, not personal gain, or even a specific commercial advantage for Connecticut prompted them to act as they did. Both men genuinely believed that their actions, even their compromises with slavery, were for the betterment of the society they represented and, as such, were also for the betterment of the United States."
As a consequence, a fugitive slave provision was included, the slave trade was left untouched for twenty years, the electoral college was established, and even the census was compromised. Concerning the census, the belief of the delegates was that population growth would favor the South. Southerners, therefore, wanted more frequent census in order to adjust the House of Representatives in their favor. The ten-year census was very much a product of compromise.
The Northwest Ordinance may have been involved in the compromise. The Northwest Ordinance was passed by the old Congress virtually unanimously the day after the 3/5th compromise was accepted. Goldstone speculates that the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, which outlawed slavery in Northwest territories, was part of the inducement for the compromise. If so, that may have been what spelled the doom for southern slavery since those states were part of the alliance that defeated the Confederacy.
There is a lot of convenient finger-pointing about the compromise with slavery by people who were not there. Goldstone concludes on that subject:
"Philosophical concerns seemed to play only a minor role in the proceedings, and only then with but a few of the participants. Nonetheless, for all that, precisely because the delegates in Philadelphia were pragmatic, and were there to represent specific, parochial interests, they were able to draft a document that was workable, adaptable, and able to survive challenges that could never have been imagined in 1787. It is distinctly possible that had idealism dominated in Philadelphia, American democracy would have failed."
I found this to be a well-written, interesting and informative book. I appreciated that it avoided the moralism that is all too common in this day and age.
February 28, 2017
An excellent discussion of the Articles of Confederation and its short comings and the process of writing and passing the United States Constitution. The role of slavery is addressed as are several other issues. An excellent read on the Constitution.
June 12, 2020
Well that could've been a 30 page journal article. In fact, I think some brevity would've helped Goldstone's argument, because his connections are far too diffuse and obscured by clunky sentences and unnecessary dives into biographical information. This book has actually almost nothing to say about slavery and instead is a painfully slow and complicated rehashing of the constitutional convention, which it's clear the author really loves. Just very meh.
December 12, 2020
Review title: Property or person?
The Constitution that united the States was a miracle based on the Dark Bargain of Goldstone's title. The convention that wrote it was called to address the weakness of the first American government. While much of the debate on the issues plaguing the nation under the Articles of Confederation centered on how to represent small and large states equally in a new national government, after hours of enlightened debate on possible practical and philosophical solutions by some of the greatest political minds ever assembled, reality set in:
While his proposal would not survive intact, slavery had forced its way onto the floor in the debate.
The compromise to have one house of the legislature (what would become the Senate) represent the states while the other house (the future House of Representatives) represented the population of each state was presented in a subcommittee report with a proposed count of representatives for each state. The full convention immediately realized that the southern states seemed to be over represented, but without any accurate census in the American states, it was just a strong suspicion, soon to be confirmed, that the southern population number was inflated by including a proportion of slaves in the count (for more detail on slavery's effect on American geography, the apportionment debate and the first national census, see D. W. Meinig's
The Shaping of America, Volume 1, Atlantic America1492-1800, particularly p. 338-348). The dark bargain was in the room and would remain at the core of American democracy for the next 100 years.
The bitter irony at the core of the bargain: the Northerners, despite their opposition to slavery, would have preferred to count the slaves as property for tax purposes, while the Southerners, despite their absolute dependence and defence of slavery, would have preferred to count the slaves as people for representation purposes. Neither side was happy with their choice, with Northerners questioning if slaves were property for representation purposes why weren't other forms of property of which the Northerners were likely to hold more than the Southerners, also considered, giving the North superior numbers in the House, and Southerners questioning how quickly and how often the national census could be taken so that their growing slave population could be counted toward representation, arguing for an annual census and reapportioning of the House toward a Southern majority ; unsurprisingly, the first proposal was voted down without a single vote in favor.
Bargains have winners and losers.
The compromise has held, for nearly 250 years, with incalculable benefits and equally incalculable costs to the lives of slaves and their descendants and to the soul of and trust in the great American experiment in democracy, freedom, and equality. The compromise even on the ground in Philadelphia touched every section of the Constitution, from how Congress and the President was apportioned and elected, how import and export taxes were levied and viewed politically as well as economically, the when and how of a national census, how the new western states were admitted to the union, how treason was defined (it had less to do with betraying the government than with betraying fugitive slaves to their violent masters), and even how Americans used language (keeping the very word "slavery" out of the document which was shaped beginning to end by its existence). The bargain was made without the vote or input from a single African-American; property has no voice.
Goldstone's slim self-published volume summarizes the story of the background and the makeup of the constitutional convention, taking almost half the book to set the stage of the debates on the convention floor. He relies on the extensive published secondary sources for hisnl research and bibliography. The lack of an index could be a drawback if the content were longer or more scholarly, but as it is the treatment falls somewhere between high school and lower level college survey course material. Focusing on the narrow topic of the slavery debate in the broad scope of the convention means that the background threatens to overwhelm the title topic, but the topic is so pertinent to America's problems and prejudices that still remain that it is worth reading.
The Constitution that united the States was a miracle based on the Dark Bargain of Goldstone's title. The convention that wrote it was called to address the weakness of the first American government. While much of the debate on the issues plaguing the nation under the Articles of Confederation centered on how to represent small and large states equally in a new national government, after hours of enlightened debate on possible practical and philosophical solutions by some of the greatest political minds ever assembled, reality set in:
Madison "contended that the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two causes concurred in forming the great division.of interests in the U. States. It did not lie between the large & small States: It lay between the Northern & Southern, and if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to be mutually given to these two interests."
Madison proposed a solution. "Instead of proportioning the votes of the States in both branches, to their respective numbers of inhabitants computing the slaves in the ratio of 5 to 3, they should be represented in one branch according to the number of free inhabitants only; and in the other according to the whole [number] counting the slaves as if free. By this arrangement the Southern Scale would have the advantage in one House, and the Northern in the other." (p. 121)
While his proposal would not survive intact, slavery had forced its way onto the floor in the debate.
The compromise to have one house of the legislature (what would become the Senate) represent the states while the other house (the future House of Representatives) represented the population of each state was presented in a subcommittee report with a proposed count of representatives for each state. The full convention immediately realized that the southern states seemed to be over represented, but without any accurate census in the American states, it was just a strong suspicion, soon to be confirmed, that the southern population number was inflated by including a proportion of slaves in the count (for more detail on slavery's effect on American geography, the apportionment debate and the first national census, see D. W. Meinig's
The Shaping of America, Volume 1, Atlantic America1492-1800, particularly p. 338-348). The dark bargain was in the room and would remain at the core of American democracy for the next 100 years.
The bitter irony at the core of the bargain: the Northerners, despite their opposition to slavery, would have preferred to count the slaves as property for tax purposes, while the Southerners, despite their absolute dependence and defence of slavery, would have preferred to count the slaves as people for representation purposes. Neither side was happy with their choice, with Northerners questioning if slaves were property for representation purposes why weren't other forms of property of which the Northerners were likely to hold more than the Southerners, also considered, giving the North superior numbers in the House, and Southerners questioning how quickly and how often the national census could be taken so that their growing slave population could be counted toward representation, arguing for an annual census and reapportioning of the House toward a Southern majority ; unsurprisingly, the first proposal was voted down without a single vote in favor.
Bargains have winners and losers.
While northerners saw a new government that would encourage and protect commerce and shipping, slaveowners in particular had realized enormous benefits. Counting three fifths of their slave population in the apportionment of seats in the first house was an incalculable victory, one that promised the southern states a huge disproportion of power in that chamber, not only for the present, but in perpetuity. With no plans in place to initiate a levy on the states, apportioning a similar percentage for taxation had no immediate impact and was therefore only a hypothetical.* The restrictions in the Northwest Ordinance on the number of new states north of the Ohio gave the South every reason to expect that it would also dominate in any chamber in which the states voted equally. These provisions, as well as those covering treason and fugitive slaves, benefited all the slave states equally.
[*As it would remain]
(p. 204)
The compromise has held, for nearly 250 years, with incalculable benefits and equally incalculable costs to the lives of slaves and their descendants and to the soul of and trust in the great American experiment in democracy, freedom, and equality. The compromise even on the ground in Philadelphia touched every section of the Constitution, from how Congress and the President was apportioned and elected, how import and export taxes were levied and viewed politically as well as economically, the when and how of a national census, how the new western states were admitted to the union, how treason was defined (it had less to do with betraying the government than with betraying fugitive slaves to their violent masters), and even how Americans used language (keeping the very word "slavery" out of the document which was shaped beginning to end by its existence). The bargain was made without the vote or input from a single African-American; property has no voice.
Goldstone's slim self-published volume summarizes the story of the background and the makeup of the constitutional convention, taking almost half the book to set the stage of the debates on the convention floor. He relies on the extensive published secondary sources for hisnl research and bibliography. The lack of an index could be a drawback if the content were longer or more scholarly, but as it is the treatment falls somewhere between high school and lower level college survey course material. Focusing on the narrow topic of the slavery debate in the broad scope of the convention means that the background threatens to overwhelm the title topic, but the topic is so pertinent to America's problems and prejudices that still remain that it is worth reading.
March 20, 2011
Smartly written and carefully researched. A recommended read to anyone -- particularly those who often invoke "what the Founders intended." As Goldstone proves, the Constitution isn't an infallible document sprung out of the founders' head, but instead a record of compromise and self-interest. Very very engaging.
October 9, 2023
I read this on the recommendation of one of the men I worked with at Rikers, who said it held the key to systemic racism in the United States. I think that’s an overstatement, but Goldstone does a couple of things effectively: 1) shows how the most racist parts of the Constitution and early U.S. government were argued over, including the fugitive slave law, the Northwest Ordinance, the restriction on outlawing slavery via the Bill of Rights until after 1808, and “except in case of crime” language that eventually made it into the 13th Amendment; and 2) conveying the founders not as demigods but as self-interested gentry bent on preserving their own wealth and privilege into perpetuity.
I found reading it pretty tedious and dry, but I was glad for what it taught me. I couldn’t disagree more with Goldstone’s final conclusion that the founders’ self-interested pragmatism somehow made the Constitution a sacred document; if anything, my main takeaway was an understanding of how the interests and prejudices of a few wealthy landowners became established law that the same types of people cite today in the name of Constitutional originalism.
I found reading it pretty tedious and dry, but I was glad for what it taught me. I couldn’t disagree more with Goldstone’s final conclusion that the founders’ self-interested pragmatism somehow made the Constitution a sacred document; if anything, my main takeaway was an understanding of how the interests and prejudices of a few wealthy landowners became established law that the same types of people cite today in the name of Constitutional originalism.
August 6, 2025
Excellent, readable, clarifying
If you can only read one book about the Constitutional Convention (and every American should read at least one) make it this one. Concise but as comprehensive as necessary, it glosses over the noncontroversial (though essential) elements of our government and gives full and even-handed treatment to the messy stuff. Of course, slavery is given center stage, as it truly occupied in 1787. Both hypocrisy and pragmatism are well revealed and explained. You’ll smirk knowingly at some of the author’s skillful turns of phrase. You will enjoy this book and learn some things that give us valuable context.
If you can only read one book about the Constitutional Convention (and every American should read at least one) make it this one. Concise but as comprehensive as necessary, it glosses over the noncontroversial (though essential) elements of our government and gives full and even-handed treatment to the messy stuff. Of course, slavery is given center stage, as it truly occupied in 1787. Both hypocrisy and pragmatism are well revealed and explained. You’ll smirk knowingly at some of the author’s skillful turns of phrase. You will enjoy this book and learn some things that give us valuable context.
September 5, 2020
A short book that looks at the two parts of our country North and South and how negotiators were able to agree on a constitution. The South is mainly about counting slaves as people in the census for representation because their White population is small. The North concentrates on business mainly through shipping. Provides good insight into how the 3/5th compromise came about, agreements in settling the West and why the slave trade was agreed to be ended in 1820. How did the states come to agree on federal and state governments? This provides good insight.
August 14, 2019
The author makes a compelling argument that the creation of our constitution was the result of pragmatic agreements/concessions of representatives who generally had their own self-interest, rather than lofty ideals, in mind. Given the composition of the group, this should not be surprising but Goldstone makes a strong case. Well worth reading.
December 28, 2020
3.5 stars
February 15, 2021
Great read
Not history buff but have always been intrigued by how our nation was formed. Everyone should or needs to read this work.
Not history buff but have always been intrigued by how our nation was formed. Everyone should or needs to read this work.
June 27, 2022
Well written historical narrative, demonstrating how the idealist theoretical underpinnings of the US Constitution were no match for the harsh realities of northern capitalists and southern slavers.
March 8, 2021
You've probably heard slavery was written into the Constitution. This must-read explains why and how it happened. A bit unfocused but compelling.
December 2, 2017
Not as focused on the slave POV as I expected but a good history read just the same.
January 13, 2024
The Writer Lawerence Goldstone's book, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution is a study of the passage of the United States Constitution and what the Constitution says about slavery. The book argues that to pass the Constitution, the Constitution had to include a compromise on slavery. The book argues that one of the major figures in getting the Constitution passed was an officer under General George Washington named General Charles Cotesworth Pickney. Pickney who a member of the elites of South Carolina. Goldstone writes that “Charles Cotesworth Pickney had convinced the planters of South Carolina. Acting in the interest of their social system, slaveholders had helped preserve the social system” (Goldstone 6). I read the book on the Kindle. Along with Charles Cotesworth Pickney focuses on four members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, Rodger Sherman of Connecticut, John Rutledge of South Carolina, and George Mason of Virginia (Goldstone 21). Mason later refused to sign the Constitution for reasons that intertwined with slavery and worry about the future status of Virginia (Goldstone 177). Goldstone is interested in how the role of self-interest combined with political philosophy in creating the United States Constitution (Goldstone 20-21). Goldstone thinks it is important to show that the people who wrote the Constitution were regular men. Goldstone’s book, Dark Bargain, was interesting.
July 12, 2016
Review carried forward from "I'm Reading"
I really enjoyed this book, a detailed but brief look at how the topic of slavery wove through the Constitutional Convention.
Firstly, the book is an enjoyable overall primer on the convention itself, and its evolution over the summer of 1787 - from an expansive, gentlemanly discussion to a pragmatic, self-interested, knockdown negotiation.
Madison, usually credited as the father of the Constitution because of his role in bringing the convention together and his opening draft, faded into the shadows as the going got tough. The book makes a strong case that John Rutledge, leader of the South Carolina delegation, truly deserves the Father of the Constitution sobriquet. Certainly he was a master manipulator, and helped to engineer a result in which the Northern states agreed to every key deep South position.
From the the Three-Fifths Compromise through to the deferral (to 1808) of the right to abolish slave importation, dark bargains were made. It's fascinating and sobering stuff!
I really enjoyed this book, a detailed but brief look at how the topic of slavery wove through the Constitutional Convention.
Firstly, the book is an enjoyable overall primer on the convention itself, and its evolution over the summer of 1787 - from an expansive, gentlemanly discussion to a pragmatic, self-interested, knockdown negotiation.
Madison, usually credited as the father of the Constitution because of his role in bringing the convention together and his opening draft, faded into the shadows as the going got tough. The book makes a strong case that John Rutledge, leader of the South Carolina delegation, truly deserves the Father of the Constitution sobriquet. Certainly he was a master manipulator, and helped to engineer a result in which the Northern states agreed to every key deep South position.
From the the Three-Fifths Compromise through to the deferral (to 1808) of the right to abolish slave importation, dark bargains were made. It's fascinating and sobering stuff!
September 13, 2015
Dark Bargain has an interesting premise, to dig into the framing of the Constitution by evaluating it from an economic perspective which of course would be tied to our predominant trade, slavery. The book does a good job, of confronting the realities of building a free nation on the backs of enslaved people. It fleshes out characters beyond the usual suspects i.e. Madison, Jay, etc. It fails however in humanizing enslaved peoples and shedding a real light on the human toil of slavery. It's a good read but I view it as supplemental material...
February 11, 2016
Goldstone's thesis is that slavery had a huge impact on the Constitutional Convention. It shaped not only the three-fifths clause, but debates over tariffs, westward expansion (the South always had an eye to whether future states would be free or slave), and even the definition of treason (earlier drafts could have made it possible for states to define abolitionism as treason). I've seen some of this touched on elsewhere (Gary Wills The Negro President shows the impact of the three-fifths clause on future elections) but this covered a lot I didn't know, and did so well.
August 5, 2017
I think Goldstone's argument that slavery played a crucial role in the outcomes of the Constitutional Convention holds up well throughout this short book, and I learned an incredible amount about the participants and the circumstances of that seminal event in U.S. history. Still, there was something not quite rigorous enough about it that sort of nagged at me now and again. In any event, it's not going to stop me from delving into his "Inherently Unequal" when I get the chance.
October 27, 2015
Well written and a good example of what went on in the early days of our nation and how the institution of slavery shaded even one of our founding documents. The seeds of dissent and disagreement that would blossom into the Civil War are clearly already planted before Washington even took office as President.
September 20, 2013
This book contains the kind of information that every American student should learn in school but sadly does not. It explains clearly and concisely the bargains that were made between large states and small states and north and south with regard to slavery. Utterly fascinating reading. IN fact, I am getting ready to re-read this book. I highly recommend it.
April 18, 2012
so sensible that it fails to challenge readers' illusions or to provoke thought beyond the text. maybe i'd've been more surprised if i was a honky.
recommended for: honkies
recommended for: honkies
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews