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

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From 1501 to 1867 more than 12.5 million Africans were brought to theAmericas in chains, and many millions died as a resultof the slave trade. The US constitution set a 20-year time limit onUS participation in the trade, and on January 1, 1808, it wasabolished. And yet, despite the spread of abolitionism on both sides ofthe Atlantic, despite numerous laws and treaties passed to curb theslave trade, and despite the dispatch of naval squadrons to patrol thecoasts of Africa and the Americas, the slave trade did not end in 25 percent of all the enslaved Africans to arrive in the Americaswere brought after the US ban – 3.2 million people.

Thisbreakthrough history, based on years of research into privatecorrespondence; shipping manifests; bills of laden; port, diplomatic,and court records; and periodical literature, makes undeniably clear howdecisive illegal slavery was to the making of the United economic development and westward expansion, as well as the growthand wealth of the North, not just the South, was a direct result anddriver of illegal slavery. The Monroe Doctrine was created to protectthe illegal slave trade.

In an engrossing, elegant,enjoyably readable narrative, Stephen M. Chambers not only shows howillegal slavery has been wholly overlooked in histories of the earlyRepublic, he reveals the crucial role the slave trade played in thelives and fortunes of figures like John Quincy Adams and the “generationof 1815,” the post-revolution cohort that shaped US foreign is a landmark history that will forever revise the way the earlyRepublic and American economic development is seen.