JAMES HENRY HAMMOND 1807-1864 BY ELIZABETH MERRITT A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1921 BALTIMORE 1923 JAMES HENRY HAMMOND 1807-1864 JAMES HENRY HAMMOND 1807-1864 BY ELIZABETH MERRITT A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1921 BALTIMORE 1923 Copyright 1923 by THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS LANCASTER PRESS, INC. LANCASTER, PA TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface vii Chapter I. Youth and Entrance into Politics 9 Chapter II. Hammond in Congress 28 Chapter III. Governor of South Carolina 45 Chapter IV. Hammond in Retirement 78 Chapter V. The Vigorous Movement for Southern Nationality 88 Chapter VI. Hammond in the Senate 109 Chapter VII. Hammond in the Confederacy 133 Bibliography 148 v Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 http://archive.org/details/jameshenryhammoOOmerr PREFACE James Henry Hammond of South Carolina was active in the political life of his State from 1828 to i860. He was in office only a few years, representative in 1836, gov- ernor 1842-1844, senator from 1857 t0 i860, but his office- holding was by no means a measure of his importance. During nullification times he was the leader of his district and a favored lieutenant of Hayne and Calhoun and Hamil- ton. His unavailing fight for the governorship in 1840 showed that he was one of the strong men of the State. Just at the close of his governorship he wrote to Thomas Clarkson, the British anti-slavery agitator, two letters in defense of African slavery as it existed. It would be dif- ficult to overestimate the importance of these letters upon the general defense of slavery and upon Hammond's reputa- tion. He was a leader in the cooperation movement in South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. In 1857, after a complete retirement for half a decade, he was sent to the United States Senate by an overwhelming vote. During his senatorship he made, in the Senate or at home, several widely heralded speeches in support of his cherished idea of a Southern nation. In precipitating the final crisis of December 20, i860, Hammond played no part because he did not believe that the movement would succeed at that time, and he was never willing to countenance such an isolated movement as Rhett and Maxcy Gregg favored in 1850-1852. The study here presented is an attempt to show that there was in South Carolina a distinct body of public opinion, respectable in numbers and in eminence, which from nullification in 1832 to secession in i860 was working for a united South, for a Southern Nation. I shall content myself with naming, not all who have helped me, but only those without whom this life of Ham- vii viii JAMES HENRY HAMMOND mond could not have been written. First comes Dean John H. Latane, under whose direction the work has been done. Another is John C. Fitzpatrick of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, known and honored of all American workers with manuscripts. In a peculiar sense do I owe gratitude to the surviving members of the Hammond family, who so graciously put themselves at my disposal. E. M. JAMES HENRY HAMMOND, 1807-1864. CHAPTER I Youth and Entrance into Politics James Henry Hammond could trace his Hammond an- cestry back for seven generations with entire certainty. The first Hammond in America was Benjamin, son of Wil- liam Hammond of London, and of Elizabeth Penn, sister of the great admiral and aunt of William Penn. After his father's death, Benjamin left England with his mother and three sisters, and came in 1634 to Sandwich, Massa- chusetts. In Massachusetts the family lived and flourished for four or five generations. In 1774, while Ebenezer, the great grandson of the first Benjamin, was living in New Bedford, his eldest son Elisha was born on October tenth. 1 Of the early life of Elisha Hammond nothing is known save that he graduated from Dartmouth in 1802, when he was nearly or quite twenty-eight years old. That is several years above the average age even for this day; it was almost ten years older than that of a century ago. It was probably poverty which caused this late graduation, for later testimony to his ability and scholarship as a teacher preclude the idea that he lacked brains. In 1803 Elisha Hammond left Massachusetts and came to South Carolina to teach in the recently established Metho- dist Mt. Bethel Academy. In 1803, education, especially higher education, 2 in the upper country of South Carolina was 1 During the battle of Bunker Hill, Ebenezer Hammond, his wife and child were all three imprisoned in Boston, and the tale is told that Mrs. Hammond, a high-spirited, nervous woman, anxious for the safety of her brothers whom she knew were in the battle, dropped the baby Elisha to the floor at the first sound of cannon-fire. 2 For the whole subject of Higher education in South Carolina, see Colyer Meriwether's " History of Higher Education in South Caro- lina," in Contributions to American Educational History, Bureau of Education, vol. i, No. 4. 9 10 JAMES HENRY HAMMOND most imperfect. Mt. Bethel was one of the earliest classi- cal schools in the region and quickly gained wide reputation under Professor Hammond. It furnished to South Caro- lina College its first students and graduates, says O'Neall, and gave to the country 3 such men as Judge Crenshaw, his brothers Dr. Crenshaw, and Walter Crenshaw, Chancel- lor Harper, John Caldwell, Esq., Governor Richard Man- ning, N. R. Eaves of Chester, and Thomas Glover of Orangeburg.4 It also gave to South Carolina College an excellent man to fill one of the professorships. On April 25, 1805, Elisha Hammond was selected professor of mod- ern languages. Judge Evans, who was a student there in the elder Hammond's day, says that he was captivating in manner and in appearance and that he was hardly less popular than the great Doctor Maxcy himself. In 1806 Elisha Hammond married Miss Catherine Fox Spann of Edgefield District. The Spann family is widely scattered over South Carolina, and the Fox family, of which Mrs. Hammond's mother was a member, was con- nected with that of Charles James Fox. Mrs. Hammond, if we may judge from her portrait which hangs today on the wall of Redcliffe, was a woman of immense force and decided personality. No weakling could have had the chin the picture shows. It is altogether probable, as a present- day member of the family ^suggested, that James Henry inherited from his father his brains and from his mother his energy. For some reason college life was not agreeable to Profes- sor Hammond, despite his popularity. On January 31, 1807, he resigned and returned to Newberry. Here he lived until 181 5. And here at Stoney Battery, Newberry, was born November 15, 1807, his eldest and best-known son, James Henry. 5 During Hammond's childhood his father turned 3 " " Need it be said that by country O'Neall meant South Carolina? 4 O'Neall and Chapman, Annals of Newberry, p. 53. 6 James H. Hammond's name was certainly James Henry and not James Hamilton, though some secondary authorities and some of the Library of Congress cards in the catalogue have it James Hamilton. The mistake arose I know not how, but it was made possible by the YOUTH AND ENTRANCE INTO POLITICS II his hand to many things. For some years he was principal of Mt. Bethel, where he had taught before he went to the college. Later, or possibly at the same time, he was a farmer. He kept a store there, too. At the time of his death in 1829, he was principal of New Macon Academy in Macon, Georgia. The little boy grew up as small boys do today, going to school to his father, playing around the store, driving the cows and riding his father's oxen. Years after, he used to tell his own children about seeing the great teams, which had carried cotton to market, unloading goods at his home, which had been hauled all the way from Phila- delphia. 6 Young James H. Hammond's early education was got from his father, who was a fine scholar and, from all ac- counts, an unusually gifted teacher. Though he speaks with such concentrated bitterness in later years of his childhood and early schooling, 7 he must have had, even then, some- thing of the mental capacity of his prime, for he was able in 1823, when he was barely sixteen, to enter the Junior class of the South Carolina College. In 1823 when Ham- mond entered South Carolina College, Thomas Cooper, the learned, ingenious, scientific, talented madcap was its presi- dent. Not yet had he begun to shock the minds of Caro- linians as he was to do in a few years, until he was put upon his trial. Taught by such men, a talented boy like Hammond could hardly avoid learning and doing well. His graduation standing was fourth in a class which num- bered at the end thirty-three members, among them John Gist, Randell Hunt, and Bishop Stephen Elliott, and which LaBorde described as signalizing the year by its " uncommon talent." 8 Hammond's extra-curricular activities, unex- pectedly modern in direction, prove that he was no cloistered fact that he never signed his name more fully than James H.