"In the Hands of the Compromisers": Letters of Robert W. Barnwell to James H. Hammond

"IN THE HANDS OF THE COMPROMISERS": LETTERS OF ROBERT W. BARNWELL TO JAMES H. HAMMOND Edited byJohn Barnwell Late in the winter of 1850, John C. Calhoun, desperately ill and confined much of the time to his rooms in Hill's boarding house, struggled to rally the South in defense of slavery. Pinning his hopes on the Nashville Convention, he began to develop a common program for the delegates who would assemble in June. But a South united behind his demands was once more beyond Calhoun's reach. He died on March31. The principal rivals for Calhoun's Senate seat—and his preeminence in South Carolina pohtics—were Robert Barnwell Rhett and James Henry Hammond. Governor Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, however, selected James Hamilton, Jr. as Calhoun's replacement. In order to give neither Rhett nor Hammond an advantage in the forthcoming election for senator, Seabrook determined to name an interim incumbent who would be content to play a caretaker's role.1 Seabrook's first choice proved to be a blunder. Hamilton's financial interest in the Texas boundary and debt proposal and his lobbying activities in behalf of Henry Clay's entire compromise package made him exceedingly unpopular with the South Carolina gentry. The governor hastily withdrew Hamilton's appointment and sought out the distinguished , seventy-three-year-old Langdon Cheves. When Cheves declined on account of his age, Seabrook persuaded Franklin H. Elmore, Calhoun's longtime confidant and advisor, to become interim senator. Unfortunately Elmore died on May29, barelythreeweeks after he had taken his seat. Seabrook turned finally to Robert W. Barnwell, who met both the governor's requirements and those ofSouth CaroUna's planters. Barnwell represented the state during the tumultuous and climactic debate on the Compromise of 1850.2 Honors and office came almost too easily to Robert Barnwell. Hewas born into an old South Carolina family, reared in the privileged little world of Beaufort's planters, and educated at Harvard. Elected to the state's lower house in 1826 and to Congress two years later, he found a 1 John Barnwell, Love of Order, South Carolina's First Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1982), 97-98. 2 Ibid., 98-100. ROBERT W. BARNWELL155 political career tiresome, and, although unopposed for reelection, he retired after his second term in the House. In 1835 he accepted the presidency of South Carolina CoUege, succeeding Thomas Cooper, whose unorthodox religious views had diminished both the school's enrollment and its prestige. Barnwell, a devout Episcopalian and respected member of the gentry, won generous funding from the legislature ; he expanded the college's physical plant and presided over an improved faculty as weU as increasing numbers of students. In 1841 he suddenly resigned. His plea was ill-health, although he Uved another forty-one years. He had succumbed, seemingly, to self-doubt and ennui.3 Barnwell's sense ofpoUtical dutywas temporarily arousedbyhisbrief tenure in the Senate and by South Carolina's internecine conflict over secession during 1851. In December 1850, on the legislature's firstballot to choose Calhoun's successor, Barnwell received 27 of the 168 votes cast. But he had already renounced any desire for official station.4 He did not want to stand in theway ofhis second cousin Rhett, who coveted Calhoun's vacant seat.5 And he was reluctant, as hewrote Hammond, to give up his "ease and freedom." James Henry Hammond, widely noted for his defense of Southern slavery and patriarchal order, was a first-generation South Carolinian. Elisha Hammond, a transplanted New Englander, held an insecure place in Southern society, but he did impart to his eldest son James a good education and a fierce desireto rise in theworld. JamesHammond graduated from South CaroUna CoUege, read law, and was admitted to the bar. In 1830 he estabUshed his credentials as a nuUifier by editing the Southern Times. His entree into theplantingaristocracy, however, came only with his marriage to Catherine Elizabeth Fitzsimons, a Charleston heiress. Hammond was, bluntly, a "tough son of a bitch," who obtained land and money through his wife and "proceeded to exploit her property to the fuUest . . . ."e By 1846 Hammond's appetite for recognition had been partiaUy satedbyservice ascongressmanandgovernor, buthe stiU craved...