Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, A Southern Slaveholder (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Secret and Sacred: The Diaries ofJames Henry Hammond, A Southern Slaveholder. Edited by Carol Bleser, foreword by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. xxix, 342. $22.95.) "I write these pages to vent my feelings," confessed James Henry Hammond (p. 106). Hammond, whom Drew Faust and Carol Bleser in an earlier study have so handsomely and insightfully portrayed, had need for such an outlet. He suffered from lifelong, chronic depression, perhaps partially genetic in character but mostly environmental. His father Elisha, a New England-bred South Carolina schoolteacher, failed financially time and again, but through his son he sought to achieve what always had eluded him: a secure place in the state's rigid hierarchy. As a result, his eldest son James Henry early felt unrelenting pressure to achieve perfection in all his endeavors. Provided with a gifted mind, a handsome physique, and a social bearing that met all the criteria ofthat gregarious, formal culture, the young Hammond seemed destined for great things. But the roguish Elisha never praised his achievements; he only whined, wheedled, and found fault. In reaction, Hammond periodically "would self-destruct, either through illness or flagrantly foolish sexual misadventures," Louis Rubin observes in his thoughtful foreword (xvii). For instance, as early as his college days at South Carolina College, where he was a prizewinning student, he may have sexually assaulted Thomas Jefferson Withers, his sleeping roommate. Faust in her biography and Bleser in her thoughtful and convincing introduction here, both deny the possibility. On the other hand, Martin Duberman has erroneously transformed the incident into a gay-rights polemic. From reading the correspondence, I believe that something took place because men do not refer to a roommate's attempt at intercourse even injest and yet remain good friends as this pair did. Most likely, the affair resembled a prison-style encounter between two physically unequal partners, one ofwhom, Hammond, translated his compulsion for oedipal power into sexual aggression. Certainly Hammond's treatment of women was suspiciously hostile: to him they were usable commodities and little else, as his actions, diary, and letters of advice to male relations bluntly attest. BOOK REVIEWS261 In any event, Hammond paired his extravagant ambitions for wealth, intellectual fame, and political power with a self-defeating desire for degradation and exposure. Although different in so many ways in character, Hammond shared with former President Richard Nixon a strange desire to leave for posterity his most secret thoughts, opinions, and passions—a record that anyone else would have made sure never gained public exposure. The document itself is a masterpiece in unconscious self-revelation. Begun in 1 84 1 and ended in 1 864, shortly before his death at the relatively young age of fifty-seven, Hammond's diaries are a rich source of social, political, and psychological insight with regard to Hammond himself, Carolina society , and the planter class as a whole. Prior to his first diary entry, Hammond had begun a successful lawpractice in Columbia; obliged well placed Nullifying patrons like Francis Pickens; married Catherine Fitzsimons, a quiet, homely heiress who belonged to the powerful Hampton clan that vainly opposed their union; and served briefly in Congress before psychosomatic illness temporarily blunted his ambitions. The journal chronicles his maneuvering to obtain the governor's chair, a gift of annual legislative vote that made it more honorific than substantial. Like other planters, Hammond loved titles like governor, senator, or general, as they signified status, popularity, dignity. For instance, he sought a militia post in part because he was "very sick" of his present rank "and altho' militia titles are of no consequence, since they will stick to us, we had as well have the highest" (p. 30). Having eventually won the governorship, however, he then proceeded not only to ruin himself but also his three nieces, daughters ofWade Hampton, byengaging them in sexual play. Rumors circulated; the nieces were doomed to spinsterhood in that shame-conscious society. Forced by Hampton's outrage into political exile, Hammond sought emotional release by plunging into harsh slave management to resurrect his properties; by writing diaries, proslavery pieces, and letters to intellectual friends; and by losing himself in the...