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

Chapter 16. The Violation of Order

C H A P T E R l6 The Violation of Order ; SOUTH CAROLINA flirted with secession during the 18505, James Henry Hammond confronted a paradox. Long the advocate of an independent southern nation, Hammond found himself in the years after Nashville actively opposed to his state's movement toward disunion. Although he had in no way abandoned his commitment to southern independence, Hammond deplored the "reckless &. excited ignorance" of the Carolina secessionists in 1851—1852. Throughout the years that remained before the outbreak of war, he would continue to oppose what he regarded as dangerously irrational and demagogic extremism.1 Hammond's professed allegiance to a politics of principle was hardly consistent with the mid-century foundations of American and even Carolinian public life. The role of the elite within politics had been irrevocably altered since 1800. Mass support, invoked by what Hammond regarded as corrupt self-interest, now had routinely to be mobilized to advance any individual or position that sought ascendancy. But Hammond never reconciled himself to the new character of public life. Democracy seemed to him the "despotism of the monster multitude . . . ruled . . . by the basest appetites, prejudices and vanities." For him the means of political action mattered as much as any substantive end. His commitment to a southern nation arose from his long-cherished belief that by sealing itself off from the increasinglymodern, industrialized, and egalitarian North the South could most effectively protect her special social order. To pursue secession i. James Henry Hammond Diary (MS in JHH Papers, SCL), January 6, 1852. A James Henry Hammond and the Old South without regard for these principles seemed to him self-defeating. Southern nationalism was in Hammond's view a means of retaining the traditional structure of regional society; his commitment to sectional independence was fundamentally conservative. "Order," he explained, "is a prime necessity in every community , especially an Agricultural one & most especially a slave-holding one. To the great body of the Southern People, the Union is the only tangible & appreciable Representative of Order, & it is solely on this account that they love & sustain it. ... steps must be taken to carry on resistance &. insure the ruptureof the Union, which do not in the first instance involve any violation of Order." Strict constitutionalism was the framework within which demagogic tendencies could be contained; constitutional principles had to serve as the guideposts as well as the legitimating force for southern actions.2 Such views isolated Hammond in Carolina political life of the 18505, where public affairs seemed too often based in the "rules of Knight errantry." Hammond was at heart a secessionist alienated from the style that dominated Carolina 's disunion party and from the faith in the federal government that characterized their more conservative opponents. Throughout the decade, he struggled to convert the secession movement to his conception of the purposes of separatism . But for the most part, whether hailed or condemned, he was misunderstood . The careful distinctions he wanted to draw between the means and ends of political action were too finely tempered for this new and fevered political age. The times had in a real sense passed him by.' As Barnwell Rhett fanned the flames of resistance in Carolina during the winter of 1851, Hammond watched with alarm from Silver Bluff. A "reign of terror" seemed underway, for Carolina now required that "men must cease to speak unless they speak to stimulate the frenzy of the mob." The statelegislature had called for the election in February of delegates to a convention to be held on some unspecified future date to consider secession, and Hammond was hardly surprised when extremists favoring separate state action by South Carolina won a substantial majority. But he saw this electoral victory as no triumph for his own ultimately disunionist views. Rhett, he believed, was acting imprudently, moving too fast, isolating Carolina from the rest of the region, and ensuring the ultimate failure of this movement for southern independence. If Carolina tried to secede and was defeated, she would "ruin the cause, perhaps forever, cer2 . Ibid., December 6, 1851. 3. Hammond, "Thoughts and Recollections" (MS vol. bd., 1852-53, JHH Papers, SCL),May 13, 1852. 332 The Violation of Order tainly for our time." He worried that Rhett's revolution would "turn out an insurrection."4 But in spite of dramatic developments in Carolina politics, Hammond could not maintain his usual intensity of interest in the events at hand. Preoccupied with...