"There Was No Slaveholders' Ploy"

"A good way to summarize what actually happened inside the convention is to recall the place of slavery in the different plans that the convention considered about electing the president.  The delegates weighed three options: the president would be selected by direct popular vote, by Congress, or by electors who would be chosen either by the people or the state legislatures. Direct election failed, but not because it was intolerable to the slaveholders, as Amar maintains. It failed because it enjoyed little support in the convention, for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery. The real choice for the framers was between the congressional method and the electoral method. Both methods gave the slave states an extra measure of power in selecting the president; so once direct election was scrapped, the convention was bound to grant the slave states some sort of bonus. But this was because the great majority of the convention did not trust in the people at large to choose the president." 

Sean Wilentz at History News Network writes that "like most of my fellow American historians, I have been wrong about slavery and the Electoral College."