In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C H A P T E R 17 The Time to Die AMMOND SOON ABANDONED all reservations about secession. The prompt response of other states to Carolina's lead surprised and delighted him, and he hastened to embrace the separatism he had so recently deplored. "The moment I saw that it was a movement of the People of the South" and not just a "bullying movement of the politicians," he explained, "I went into it with all my Soul." Once the first step had been taken, he insisted that no compromise should halt progress toward the southern confederacy that he still regarded as "the cherished dream and hope of my life."1 Hammond's enthusiasm seemed at first almost boundless. Belittlingthe likelihood of war with the North, he confidently expected diplomatic recognition from England and France within forty days. He rejoiced at the successful resistance of the Confederate Constitutional Convention to pressures for democratization , and even defended the new Confederate tariff as a necessaryrevenue measure free from any taint of despisedprotectionism. But this optimismwas not long to last. The appointment of Jefferson Davis to the Confederate presidency brought the first appearance of Hammond's disenchantment, for the former Mississippi senator had snubbed him in Washington, and Hammond judged him the "most irascible man I ever knew. . . . [He was]as vain as a peacock asambitious as the Devil." Perhaps even more important to Hammond's growing disaffection, however, was the gradual recognition that his belated enthusiasm would not compensate in the public eye for his years of opposition to the movement for i. James Henry Hammond to Dear Sir, January 18, 1861, Hammond to J. D. Ashmore, April 2. 1861, both in JHH Papers, LC. H The Time to Die southern independence. Hammond could not ignore the failure of any constituency within the state to advance his name for office under the new regime, and he noted as well that the secession convention had not so much as sought his views. He insisted publicly that ill health had compelled his complete withdrawal from political life, but in private he could not help but regard his treatment in this hour of crisis as a "censure upon me and my Senatorial career."2 But Hammond's growing isolation was not entirelythe result of his nationalist past. Throughout the war he would carp at Confederate policies, certain that his own notions of finance, military strategy, and constitutional government would far more effectively serve the southern cause. The crisis he had identified in the antebellum years seemed only intensified under the pressures of the conflict . He complained that there was not "a Statesman, a General or a Financier & in the South no qualities whatever to carry out consistently & persistently any policy or plan of action, whether in the field or in the Senate." The Confederacy 's neglect of his own talents, he believed, bespoke a more general failure of leadership, which legitimated his reluctance to yield customary prerogative and submit to government direction. Like many other southern planters trained in the "habit of command," Hammond was temperamentally a general, not a common soldier. Denied the position of authority he felt he deserved, Hammond resisted the discipline rendered necessary even among civiliansby thisfirst modern war. Instead, Hammond maintained that his protests against Confederate taxes on his produce, against impressment of his slaves and crops, against conscription of his sons represented his dedication to a southern nation based in the principles of individual rights for which he had fought so long.' To many Carolinians, Hammond's behavior during the war years seemed less like principled independence than disloyalty. Tolerated in the prewar era, his idiosyncratic views of men and measures appeared in the hour of southern crisis as evidence of an already suspected indifference to the southern cause; the invo- -i. Hammond to M. C. M. Hammond, March i, 1861, Hammond to A. B. Allen, February 2, 1861, Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, March 24, 23, 1861, Hammond to I. W. Hayne, April 21, 1861, Hammond to Ashmore, April 2, 1861, Hammond to M. C. M. Hammond, February 6, 1861, all ibid. Hammond's nephew reported some interest in Charleston in sending his uncle to the secession convention, but this came to nought, as did the discussion among some of Hammond 's friends of pressing his name for governor in 1862. Christopher Fitzsimons to Hammond, November 29, 1860, James Henry Hammond Diary, Seprember 20, 1862, both in JHH Papers, SCL. 3. Hammond to Simms, July 10, 1862, in...

Share