Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,116

This is the grave of James Henry Hammond, one of the worst humans in American history,

Born into the slaveholding class in 1807 in Newberry County, South Carolina, Hammond grew up reasonably well off but not super rich. He went to South Carolina College, graduating in 1825. Today that’s the University of South Carolina. He had to work, at least for awhile. He did a lot of the jobs that young educated men did–taught school, worked at a newspaper, and studied for the law. He passed the bar in 1828 and started practicing in Columbia. He married and started buying slaves. His wife was super wealthy, from big time planter money. So now that was him. He was going to go all the way to defend where he had gotten. And yet somehow, being the biggest defender of slavery out there was not the worst thing about Hammond. He became a big time slave owner, with about 300 slaves at his peak. That was a lot, even for the elite. He had lots of plantations, the whole thing.

Hammond became a big time nullifier, following people such as John C. Calhoun into the abyss of southern extremism. This is also not the worst thing about him, not by a long shot. He was elected to Congress in 1835, but only served a year. He had some kind of health issue and was often sickly for much of his life. He did some kind of cure in Europe and then came back to South Carolina and his plantations.

In 1842, Hammond returned to politics and was elected governor of South Carolina. He had two years in the office, but something got in the way of his career, for awhile. And now the reveal.

So what makes James Henry Hammond one of the worst Americans? Well, in addition to being a southern extremist and a huge slaver, he also saw his own nieces as his personal harem. He raped all four of them, repeatedly. He raped slaves too and taught his son to do the same. I am definitely not downplaying that. But yes, he routinely raped his four nieces from the time they were young. He wrote about it too. He kept a diary. He wrote of raping his nieces daily. He was a pedophile. He wrote about how hot young girls were and that they lured him in. These were the daughters of his sister-in-law and Wade Hampton II, the father of the evil scumbag leader of white supremacy Wade Hampton III. When Hampton found out, he went public about it. The elites of South Carolina were horrified, but only to an extent. It did end Hammond’s political career for awhile when word leaked about this in 1843. It did not, however, end his career. Just delayed it. Oh also, he first raped the daughter of his slave when she was 12 and she had many children by him.

Interestingly, letters were uncovered in the 1970s–since Hammond hid nothing in his writing–that he was also in a homosexual relationship with another politician named Thomas Jefferson Withers. That’s just extremely rare to have actual physical evidence of this from the early 19th century.

After Hammond the pedophile became known, he was not going to run for reelection. But let’s be clear, he was mildly disgraced here and not more than that. After all, he was a southern white man. The world was his oyster. His wife basically left him at this point, or as much as any wife could leave a southern planter man in this time and place, which was certainly not to the point of divorce. Also, since this was public, none of Hammond’s nieces were ever able to marry since they were seen as stained by him.

In 1857, the South Carolina legislature was split between two factions. Unable to agree on who to send to the Senate, they compromised on Hammond the pedophile. Now, Hammond was still a southern extremist and still the biggest pro-slavery guy on the planet. But he was smarter than most of these people. He believed secession was stupid. His position–and this was unquestionably correct–was that the South already dominated the Democratic Party and had stopped any meaningful anti-slavery action from taking effect and it could continue this for the foreseeable future. When I teach the Civil War, I routinely talk to my students about the white South overplaying their hand and this is the key example–how long does slavery remain if the South does not secede? Several decades.

But before we go more into Hammond around secession, we need to discuss his other major contribution, if you want to call it that, to these debates. This is the infamous Mudsill Speech. He made this when Democrats were trying to ram Kansas into the Union as a slave state even though almost no one who actually lived there wanted that. You can read the whole thing here. He advanced his theory that all great societies were based on slavery and that a man was either a slaver or a slave. This theory of history became central to Republican attacks on slavery. I also laugh at the end of it, where Hammond just shit talks the North:

Transient and temporary causes have thus far been your preservation. The great West has been open to your surplus population, and your hordes of semi-barbarian immigrants, who are crowding in year by year. They make a great movement, and you call it progress. Whither? It is progress; but it is progress toward vigilance committees. The South have sustained you in great measure. You are our factors. You fetch and carry for us. One hundred and fifty million dollars of our money passes annually through your hands. Much of it sticks; all of it assists to keep your machinery together and in motion. Suppose we were to discharge you; suppose we were to take our business out of your hands; – we should consign you to anarchy and poverty. You complain of the rule of the South; that has been another cause that has preserved you. We have kept the government conservative to the great purposes of the Constitution. We have placed it, and kept it, upon the Constitution; and that has been the cause of your peace and prosperity. The senator from New York says that that is about to be at an end; that you intend to take the government from us; that it will pass from our hands into yours. Perhaps what he says is true; it may be; but do not forget—it can never be forgotten— it is written on the brightest page of human history— that we, the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, we surrendered her to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and admiration of the world. Time will show what you will make of her; but no time can diminish our glory or your responsibility.

Hammond also coined the phrase “Cotton is King,” which he used in a Senate speech saying, “You dare not make war on cotton — no power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king.” This became synonymous with the South long after the Civil War.

Hammond was of skeptical secession, thinking it suicidal for southern interests. And again, he was right about that. Once it happened though, he was sticking with his state. But he hated Jefferson Davis and loathed the idea of the government requisitioning his slaves for work on defense. He considered that, wait for it, slavery. Of him.

Hammond’s health was never good and whatever he had, he was treating himself with large amounts of mercury. That killed him, in 1864. He was 56 years old. Too bad he didn’t live another year to see his slaves go away. On the other hand, maybe there was a lot of pain. I hope so.

James Henry Hammond is buried in Hammond Cemetery, Beech Island, South Carolina.

If you would like this series to visit other slaver scumbags–and they are just great people in addition to being slaver scumbags, funny how that works–you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Thomas Roderick Dew is in Williamsburg, Virginia and William Harper is in Salem Crossroads, South Carolina. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.