No God But Gain: The Untold Story of Cuban Slavery, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Making of the United States

From 1501 to 1867 more than 12.5 million Africans were brought to the Americas in chains, and as many as 100 million Africans died as a result of the slave trade. The U.S. constitution set a 20-year time limit on U.S. participation in the trade, and on January 1, 1808, it was abolished. And yet, despite the spread of abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic, despite numerous laws and treaties passed to curb the slave trade, and despite the dispatch of naval squadrons to patrol the coasts of Africa and the Americas, the slave trade did not end in 1808. Fully 25 percent of all the enslaved Africans to arrive in the Americas were brought after the U.S. ban--3.2 million people. This breakthrough history, based on years of research into private correspondence; shipping manifests; bills of laden; port, diplomatic, and court records; and periodical literature, makes undeniably clear how decisive illegal slavery was to the making of the United States. U.S. economic development and westward e