Faust

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

Contradictions defined the life of South Carolina’s James Henry Hammond. Hammond (1807–1864) rose from common roots to become a critic of social mobility. The son of a schoolmaster from New England, Hammond became an ardent defender of slavery and the Old South’s hierarchical society. Perpetually concerned with self-control, Hammond found himself lacking confidence and wrecked his political ambitions with a sex scandal. Drew Gilpin Faust explores these fallacies and more in James Henry Hammond and the Old South. Faust, now president of Harvard University, drew heavily upon Hammond’s papers for her second book. The biography won the Jules F. Landry Award for 1982. The prize is given to the most outstanding southern study published by Louisiana State University Press.

Faust divides the book into five parts and follows the chronology of Hammond’s life from his youth, marriage and plantation management, his early political career, his intellectual career, and his final political deeds and death. Hammond was the eldest child and son of an educator from Massachusetts and a South Carolina woman from modest means. His upcountry family owned few slaves but Hammond’s father, Elisha Hammond, instilled a ferocious ambition in his son. Elisha Hammond forced the young Hammond to exercise constant and unremitting self-control. He compelled the boy to pursue education and warned him to respect the state’s slaveholding aristocracy. His father’s tutelage allowed Hammond to enter South Carolina College as a junior. There, as a senior, he heard a professor articulate the emerging conservative social thought that would come to dominate the southern mind. Hammond’s two-year college career followed the model established by his father. He excelled in his studies and led an oratory club. Graduation, however, unleashed insecurity. Hammond wandered around the state from job-to-job and worked as a tutor and schoolteacher. His domineering father’s fortunes failed and he relied on Hammond for support. Hammond struggled to balance his father’s expectations with his own lust for flirtatious women. Hammond settled into the study of law, opened his own practice in Columbia, and, during the 1832 Nullification Crisis, controlled a leading nullifier newspaper.

Hammond’s social and financial fortunes improved when he married Charleston heiress Catherine Fitzsimons. Hammond gained control of her family’s plantation, Silver Bluff, and its large slave population. Hammond embraced his new membership in the planter class and, ironically given his station as a child, derided social and political mobility. Hammond argued that the elites should be concerned with the welfare of the lower classes just as a planter cared for his slaves. Hammond’s talk of masters showing a paternal interest in their slaves did not match his actions. He implemented progressive farming techniques at Silver Bluff that enhanced his wealth and devastated his slaves. He exercised strict control over the lives of his slaves. He forbid black preachers and prohibited religious gatherings. Hammond insisted on naming slave children. Ironically, he fathered slave children and his wife temporarily abandoned their marriage.

Hammond parlayed the notoriety he gained during the Nullification Crisis and his new social standing into one unremarkable term in the U.S. House of Representatives (1835–1836). In Congress, he declared slavery a positive good and southern slavery as a model for society. His term as governor (1842–1844) ended with disgrace as Wade Hampton II, the husband of Catherine Hammond’s older sister, accused Hammond of seducing his four teenage daughters. The scandal threatened to destroy Hammond’s political career.

Hammond saw himself as the political heir of John C. Calhoun. His reputation still in ruins, Hammond failed to win Calhoun’s seat after the senator’s death in 1850. Hammond retired to his plantation, sulked, and tried to express his intellect in writing. Relief came with his election to the U.S. Senate on the eve of the Civil War. His term, like his time as Congressman and governor, was short and unexceptional. His single speech came in 1858 surrounding the controversy over the admission of Kansas with the proslavery Lecompton Constitution. Hammond spoke of southern superiority and the Old South’s leadership of the nascent United States. He bragged about his region’s social, economic, and military strength. The North would regret a war with the South. “No,” Hammond declared, “you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is King” (p. 346). Hammond resigned from the Senate with South Carolina seceded.

A man obsessed with control, Hammond failed to keep one brother from becoming a drunk and another from serving as a surgeon in the Union army. Hammond died with Sherman’s troops marching triumphantly toward South Carolina. Hammond provides his biographer with plenty of material. Faust tells his outrageous story with helpful explanations and careful analysis.

Texas Christian University Jeff Wells

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

James Henry Hammond emerged from relative poverty to become one of the most prominent politicians in South Carolina in the early nineteenth century. Drew Gilpin Faust’s biography James Henry Hammond and the Old South examines his life and career in an era of sectional tensions as he fought to defend the southern way of life. Hammond served in a variety of political positions, being elected to the United States House of Representatives, the Governor’s office, and the Senate on the eve of the Civil War. Though committed to Republican ideals, Hammond supported the secession of South Carolina as a means to protect the institution of slavery and southern society.

Hammond entered the aristocratic plantation society with his marriage to Catherine Fitzsimons, who inherited a plantation at Silver Bluff. Though his family had owned a handful slaves periodically during his childhood, for the first time Hammond found himself in the position of managing a large number of slaves. He thought of himself as a “beneficent master whose guidance and control represented the best of all possible worlds for the uncivilized and backward people entrusted to him by God” (73), though in reality he sought to dominate and control every aspect of his slaves’ lives. He eliminated preaching by slaves and religious congregations within the slave community. Hammond also altered the labor system of his plantation in order to reduce recreational time for the slaves and increase efficiency. He took even the most basic choices away from his slaves by naming their children. Hammond fathered children by some of his slaves, but believed freeing them would be cruelty. Instead, he instructed his legitimate son to keep them as slaves in the family and not to make them slaves of strangers. Although he married into the plantation society, Hammond wholly adopted the lifestyle and ideology of a southern gentleman. He recognized that plantations became “little kingdoms,” and understood that owning a plantation and slaves advanced his social status and political ambitions.

A supporter of both states’ rights and slavery, Hammond used the nullification crisis to propel himself into the House of Representatives. Once elected, he delivered the first Congressional defense of slavery as a “positive good.” While a staunch supporter of the southern institution, Hammond always felt himself an outside in society. Once elected Governor of South Carolina, his brother-in-law, Wade Hampton II, played on these fears in retaliation for Hammond’s sexual indiscretions with his four daughters. After discovering the affair, Hampton succeeded in alienating Hammond from aristocratic society. Unfortunately, by airing the scandal, Hampton ensured his daughters would remain unmarried for the rest of their lives. As a senator on the eve of the Civil War, Hammond continued to advocate the southern way of life. He felt that the south’s social and economic institutions, largely built on slavery, proved themselves superior to those in the north. He warned the north not to make war on the south, as southern cotton production had become a worldwide economic staple. He believed that the labor system that produced cotton, namely slavery, ensured the humane treatment of workers, which the free labor system in the north did not. In Hammond, the South found a rallying point.

Hammond died in November of 1864, shortly before the end of the Civil War. He clung to the southern way of life until the very end, calling slave children to his bed to sing spirituals. Rather than acknowledge the impending failure of the south, Hammond chose to remain fully committed to slavery. Faust’s biography is well researched and she presents an honest portrayal of Hammond. He proved a man of contradictions, believing in the Republic but still championing the south. He rose to the top of southern society, yet always felt himself an outsider. Hammond is not portrayed a hero of the south, rather Faust creates a tragic figure with few redeeming qualities. The author relies on Hammond’s personal papers to great effect. Hammond comes to represent the south’s total commitment to slavery, even to the point of accepting obvious moral and philosophical contradictions.

Drew Gilpin Faust. James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

In 1982 Drew Gilpin Faust produced a biography of prominent South Carolina politician and planter James Henry Hammond. Hammond, throughout the antebellum period, staunchly defended southern society and slavery. The South Carolinian believed that a system based upon deference and bonded labor offered an ideal model for other societies. Hammond was even ready to endorse secession when the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln, in the minds of many southerners, threatened the peculiar institution. Faust, though, notes numerous contradictions that existed throughout Hammond’s life. While Hammond was one of the foremost spokesmen for the South he increasingly felt alienated from certain aspects central to the region’s society. The author stresses these contradictions throughout her narrative.

Faust spends the first part of her book detailing the early years of Hammond’s life. The prominent southern politician began his life as the son of a middle class educator. Elisha Hammond, James’s father, put immense pressure on his son to succeed in both school and life. The younger Hammond, a byproduct of antebellum South Carolina, accepted the aristocratic society and slave culture of the state. His positions only hardened when he entered planter society through his marriage to the Charleston heiress Catherine Fitzsimons.

This union allowed Hammond to live the life of a powerful South Carolinian planter. The planter class, like in all other states of the Old South, dominated almost all political and social leadership positions. Hammond became one of the strongest advocates of the position of South Carolina’s elites. He decried the increasing social and political mobility emerging in the state. This was despite the fact that Hammond himself was a product of this process of upward mobility.

Faust also delves into Hammond’s views on slavery. She spends several illuminating chapters on life at Silver Bluff, Hammond’s South Carolina plantation. Faust describes how Hammond’s view on relationships between masters and slaves crystallized. Hammond, like many southern planters, saw themselves as paternal figures looking out after the interests of their slaves. These planters saw their charges as children who needed the firm but guiding hand of the master. In addition, the institution was a positive good that brought structure to African Americans. By extension, Hammond thought that the plantation and its patriarchal structure offered the ideal model for how social relations should be structured. A social order based upon the planter elites looking out for the welfare of the lower classes.

Nevertheless, while Hammond became one of the most vocal supporters of the Old South he also felt like an outsider. Hammond, because of his education, considered himself an intellectual. Hammond’s self described intellectualism set him apart from most southerners. His enhanced feelings of exceptionalism led Hammond to enjoy the company of other alienated southerners like William Gilmore Simms. Hammond and Simms both decried the lack of respect that the Old South possessed for the life of the mind.

Faust’s biography is well written and accessible. The author also used Hammond’s personal papers to produce an interesting and illuminating portrait of the planter politician. In addition, the author portrays Hammond as a deeply troubled man with her discussion of the South Carolinian’s incestuous relationship with his nieces. In all, Faust produces a fine study of the life and career of this influential southerner.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery.
Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

Throughout history, many people have sought to gain immense power and stooped to all levels to gain it. James Henry Hammond is a good example of this type of motivation and Drew Gilpin Faust tells his story in her book James Henry Hammond and the Old South. In her book, Faust not only examines the life of Hammond but also explores the Old South on many different levels. Though this is not a comprehensive study of the South it does highlight many different aspects of its past from relationships between master and slave to the life of a prominent politician. All these aspects present themselves in the life of a man driven by ambition to be the most prominent and influential person in the South before the Civil War.

Hammond came from a modest background that spurred him to become a very ambitious person with the ultimate goal of ruling the South. His first step toward mastery of the South was at South Carolina College when he received several honors for his oratory skills and became friends with many prominent men of the South. The next step he achieved towards prominence came when he married into a wealthy family that gave him a large plot of land and slaves. With a plantation, he no longer had to worry about supporting himself and began to focus his energies on politics.

Hammond entered South Carolina politics at the right moment to start an outstanding political career, during the nullification crisis. The nullification crisis gave him a platform to speak about states’ rights. In the process, he ran and got elected to the House of Representatives. As a freshman representative, he quickly became well known throughout Washington, D.C., for making a definitive stand against any possible move by the federal government to rule against the permanency of slavery. As quickly as this gave him a name, poor health forced him out of politics. To recover, Hammond and his wife toured Europe for fifteen months, which reinforced his belief in slavery, because of the number of impoverished he saw. When he returned to South Carolina he openly challenged John C. Calhoun in an attempt to dethrone him from the major leadership role of the South and failed.

For the remainder of his life he continued his quest of becoming the leader of the South. After a failed term as governor, spending thirteen years as part of an elite academic group that attempted to design a way to develop the economy of the South while maintaining its social structure, and trying to replace Calhoun at his death by adopting his ideals, Hammond was no closer to his goal than when he started. His last chance came when he unexpectedly won a seat in the Senate without putting his name on the ballot. He again won fame but could not hold onto it for long since his ideas proved too moderate compared to the younger Southern politicians that pushed for secession. With his last chance at prominence gone, he retired to his plantation. In the end, Hammond represented the Old South in his beliefs and actions. When the Old South was disappearing during the Civil War, his life did also. The only thing Hammond had to show for his life of pure ambition was a fractured and broken family

In the year that Faust published this book, he received the Jules F. Landry Award for his work. The book represents the award rightfully. Faust does an excellent job of not only telling the story of Hammond’s life but also placing it into context and examining how the South functioned during the time period. The author does this in a subtle manner, which allows the reader to follow Hammond’s life without interrupting the flow of the book by pointing out direct parallels. In addition, Faust does not commit a common error among biographers, resorting to hero worship. He does a great job presenting all sides of the story, even those aspects that seem damaging to Hammond’s name like his frolicking with his nieces, marrying his wife for money and prestige, and his hypochondriac nature. Lastly, the author includes several charts and graphs in the appendix of the book that clarify some of the information he presented in the body of the book.

If there are any criticisms of the book, it is the lack of a bibliography. Faust makes up for this mistake with a short bibliographical essay on the sources that he used. Overall, I found this to be an excellent book. I would recommend this book for both undergraduate and graduate courses on the Old South and the Civil War.

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982) xvii + 407.

The life of James Henry Hammond provides Drew Gilpin Faust with a unique opportunity. Hammond’s complexity and multiple achievements enables the author to delve into many facets of Southern antebellum society and thought through the life of his subject. Hammond typifies the aristocratic Southern plantation owner, owning a plantation with hundreds of slaves. His membership in a privileged class extended to participation in government, serving successively as a congressman, governor and senator of North Carolina. Faust’s subject gave the famous “Cotton is King” speech in the U. S. Senate, and in addition to writing a well received defense of slavery also served as a general in the militia and was also an influential agricultural reformer.

Given the complexity of his subject, Faust could have been content to merely tell his story (which he does to great satisfaction). Instead Faust finds in Hammond’s perplexing combinations of career an underlying and unifying theme present throughout his life: Hammond’s “design for mastery.”

All of Hammond’s endeavors (in Faust’s estimation), revolve around the question of power and domination. Aside from the obvious example of his participation in the slave system, Faust finds this theme present in Hammond’s relations with his poor white neighbors, his wife and his mother, and even the foreign servants serving him during trips abroad.

Hammond’s experiences led him to remark “I only succeed when everything is under my control,” and Hammond “sought obedience” from others, in every facet and in every social situation in which he found himself throughout his life (112). Whether from his own mother, who felt obligated to circumvent his wishes through a secret will, from his slaves, whom he beat and tried to destroy their religion, or from his “equals” in government, whom he also tried to dominate and control in all matters.

Power and domination also extended to his involvement in illicit relationships. Affairs with slave mistresses may have been common, and Hammond engaged in them constantly. Less common was his liaison with his four nieces, ages twelve to seventeen at the beginning, with him he engaged in “an extraordinary petting orgy,” over a period of years.

In looking at this theme of power and domination, Faust constructs in a sense a kind of “psycho-history” of Hammond. Not explicitly Freudian, Faust finds her subject craving, through domination, “a need for love (242).” While Faust does not delve into the language of any particular school of thought psychologically, she is almost obligated to deal with these issues having identified them as a unifying theme.

The implications of Faust’s theme naturally extends to the results of Hammond’s attempts at domination, and she finds unequivocally that he failed miserably. His attempts to destroy his slaves independent church failed, as did his total regulation of their lives. Slaves ran away, stole food and sabotaged his control over them in numerous other ways.

His marriage floundered through his affairs and his wife left him several times due to his refusal to give up his plantation mistresses, having fathered children by both a mother and her daughter. Politically he could never fully dominate his fellows and his advocation of conciliation during the time of secession gained him isolation rather than the domination he sought. His affair with his nieces left him in a sort of political “exile,” which lasted nearly sixteen years. His coldness and impossible demands on his sons led to threats on his part to disinherit them.

Discovering all of these failures, Faust draws as her controversial conclusion that masters, through participation in the slave system, must themselves also lead a life of dependence and domination. Hammond, like all masters, was also a slave, and ultimately it killed him. His driving desire to dominate extended to control of his bowels, which he attempted to control through the ingestion of mercury-based laxatives that eventually poisoned him.

Kenneth Greenbert, Faust’s reviewers, points out that her theme, “first and best stated by Hegal,” also informed the writings of David B. Davis and Eugene Genovese (Kenneth Greenberg Reviews in History Sept. 1983, 387). Attempts to of one human being to dominate another always end in failure. Hammond’s slaves molded Hammond as much as he molded them. His wife determined the effects of his excesses with his mistresses, not Hammond. Wade Hampton’s threats to expose his tryst with his nieces determined the course of his political career.

In all of this it is hard to see Hammond’s excesses as representing any sort of need for love. Another reviewer states, “To call the furies that drove Hammond a need for love seems to domesticate them beyond belief (Michael P. Johnson, Journal of Southern History, Nov. 1983, 620). While one may disagree with the reasons and psychological conclusions one draws from Faust’s portrait of Hammond, she provides a compelling and important portrait and narrative of a complex individual driven by power and the paradox posed by his experience.

Texas Christian University

Paul Schmelzer