James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery

Introduction

Introduction N A RIDGE high above the Savannah River stands Redcliffe, presiding over carefully planned avenues of magnolias and groves of hickory and pine that slope down towards Augusta, visible mure than five miles away. The house was designed to dramatize the magnificence of this view. Its first floor was elevated well above ground level by brick supports, its facade graced on both upper and lower levels by wide porticoes, its roof topped by a windowed cupola. In the decade after its completion in 1858, there was much to see from the vantage point Redcliffe provided. The Savannah still served as a busy avenue of commerce and transportation, and even closer to the house stretched the young vineyards, the peach and apple orchards, and the ornamental gardens set out to embellish the mansion above them. Farther to the south lay the acres of corn and cotton fields and quarters for the three hundred slaves who made this elegance possible. Today the cupola and second-story porch are gone; the fruit orchards and vineyards have disappeared; the magnolias have grown to a grandeur that those who planted them could have scarcely imagined. But Redcliffe seems little changed. Except for the hint of industrial smoke on the horizon above Augusta the view appears almost untouched by the passage of time. Perhaps more happened at Redcliffe in its first decade than in the century that followed, for it was these early years that witnessed the creation and destruction of a nation and the dissolution of a way of life. During the Civil War, Redcliffe's residents heard the discharge of shore batteries on the coast, nearly fifty miles away; from the house's balconies they O James Henry Hammond and the Old South watched the arrival and departure of Confederate officers, come to discuss defenses for the river below; they observed the unwelcome visits of the impressment officer, appearing to seize materials necessary for support of the southern armies and sometimes leaving with a wagonload of corn or frightened slaves. And from Redcliffe they gazed out towards Georgia and the horizon to the southwest where early in 1865 the soldiers of William Tecumseh Sherman marched within fourteen miles of the house cutting their destructive swath through the countryside to bring the South to its knees. But on the November day that Sherman set out from Atlanta toward South Carolina and the sea, the inhabitants of Redcliffe were preoccupied with other matters. For this was a day of personal grief that took precedence over national calamity. The master of Redcliffe was dead, victim of disease rather than Yankee bullets. But his family believed him a war casualtynonetheless. "Father's death," observed his son, "was largely an act of will." It was "time for me to die," James Henry Hammond had declared just before taking to his bed in mid October. By summer, he predicted, the Confederacy would be no more. A curtain would be lifted on a new world. "I do not care to see behind it. Enough, that all the efforts of my life, all my reflections &. conclusions, will be upset & reversed." Hammond wished to die with the Old South, for it had given him his identity and purpose. His funeral served as a fitting culmination to Hammond's life in this society and as a final affirmation of a social order and personal power that had nearly ceased to exist. With freedom only months away, his nearly two hundred adult slaves filed two by two up the wide steps into Redcliffe's hall to view their master 's face. This was a last gesture of deference to Hammond and perhaps to the slave system as well. Ninety-five carriages and scores of horsemen and pedestrians came up the avenue of magnolias to pay tribute to the man who had been South Carolina's governor, its last United States senator, and one of the staunchest defenders of its way of life. On this autumn day, with the desolation of winter and defeat close at hand, James Henry Hammond was buried, as he had directed , near two large hickory trees "on the highest ground around." But he had insisted, "if we are subjugated run a plow over my grave."1 i. Edward Spann Hammond, "Last Moments of J. H. Hammond, November, 1864, (MS vol. bd., 1861—1909, Edward Spann Hammond Papers, SCL); Edward Spann Hammond to Loula Comer Hammond, March n, 1903, in Clement Claiborne Clay Papers, DU; Virginia ClayClopton , A Belle of the...