James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design For Mastery - Book Review

Drew Gilpin Faust provides the definitive account of James Henry Hammond’s life. Instead of the subtitle A Design for Mastery, Gilpin Faust could have chosen Great Expectations. Hammond’s father had great expectations for him as a young boy, and Hammond had extreme great expectations for himself. Born into humble beginnings, Hammond would go on to marry well and become one of the wealthiest planters of the Old South in South Carolina. Hammond expected great things of himself and of his surroundings based on his ability to control them. Attempting to realize these great expectations, Hammond became a leading political leader of South Carolina as governor, and the United States as senator. Hammond’s father instilled in him at an early age that he would be ambitious and successful. To do so, Hammond would need to master every aspect of his life. But, Hammond’s inability to completely master himself and attain his lofty ambitions would eventually contribute to his death. As Hammond died, so did the Old South.
 Anyone searching for understanding of the rich planter class of the Old South would be fascinated with this book. Hammond’s attention to detail regarding his plantations and personal life gives clarity into the Old South period of American history. Gilpin Faust seamlessly guides the reader through Hammond’s life and career, leaving the reader to hate Hammond on one page, and cheer him on the next. As president of Harvard University, Gilpin Faust’s other books include Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War and The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South.1

Gilpin Faust uses communication between Hammond and his children as primary evidence of his controlling nature. With his children dependent upon him for financial assistance, “Hammond employed his financial authority to reinforce his psychological dominance.”2 Hammond’s children were never able to feel like adults because of Hammond’s need to control. Gilpin Faust convincingly maintains that Hammond wanted his children to be dependent upon him, while at the same time attempting to make their own way.3 For instance, when Hammond reached his fifties, he was ready for his sons to take over the plantation. When the Civil War broke out and Hammond’s eldest son, Harry, enlisted for the Southern cause, Hammond complained at all the plantation work Harry would be neglecting.4 Hammond did not stop there. In a particularly memorable passage, Gilpin Faust transcribes a portion of a letter Hammond had written to his brother about controlling their own bowel movements.5 In Hammond’s world, every action, involuntary or not, could be controlled.
Gilpin Faust explains Hammond’s desire to master his surroundings using his own detailed plantation records. Hammond was a meticulous record keeper, especially when it came to his plantations. In his plantation journals, Hammond tracked crop output, crop experiments, slave efficiency, and agricultural economics. It is easy for the reader to comprehend Hammond’s attempts at mastery solely based on Gilpin Faust’s use of the Hammond plantation journals. The Appendix may also be referenced for better understanding of Hammond’s plantation records.

Minute record keeping alone would not satisfy Hammond in his quest for absolute dominance in all aspects of his plantation, he also needed control over the particulars of the lives of his slaves. Shortly after taking the reins of Silver Bluff plantation Hammond set about exerting his dominance over his slaves. In order to prevent religion from becoming a vehicle for slave revolt, Hammond ordered black religious meetings stopped. Gilpin Faust argues that part of Hammond’s plan of exerting omnipotence over his slaves was taking away their religious activities, but another part was showing his slaves that he was their benefactor. So while black religious meetings were stopped, Hammond allowed white clergy members to minister to the blacks, albeit in a very controlled environment.6
In all of his efforts of mastery, Gilpin Faust points to one area Hammond was unable to control: his own sexual desires. Hammond carried on a type of concubinage relationship with two of his slaves. He even admitted to fathering several children with these two women, who also happened to be mother and daughter.7 In typical Hammond fashion, when his wife, Catherine, found out about the affairs and demanded the two slaves sold, Hammond controlled the situation and would not allow their sale.8
! In another example of Hammond’s inability to control his sexual desires, Gilpin Faust describes the mishap with Hammond and his four teenage nieces, Harriet, Catherine, Anne and Caroline Hampton.9 While Hammond admitted the indiscretion, the

repercussions to his political career were severe, not to mention his exile from his extended Hampton family. Although Hammond did not live during the Reconstruction years after the Civil War, one of Blight’s categories of historical memory in Race and Reunion is still applicable to Hammond’s life: Hammond was a virulent white supremacist. With his desire to become a man of literature in the Old South, Hammond wrote proslavery tracts. Here, “Hammond would justify slavery in terms of a hierarchical ideology that called not only for the dominance of white over black but for the preeminence among whites of men of intellectual endowments like his own.”10 Not only did Hammond believe whites should dominate blacks, but that whites, especially whites in the Southern aristocracy class like himself, were superior to blacks. Hammond took this dominant mindset to Europe during a nearly two year respite trip. Accustomed to an army of slaves to attend to his every need, Hammond was impatient with European servants and the free-labor system. Events climaxed into Hammond assaulting a servant and spending a night in a Belgian jail, in the “midst of all the felons.”11James Henry Hammond and the Old South is a great biography of one of the Old South’s true sons. James Henry Hammond exemplifies everything about the elite Old South: wealthy, intelligent, white supremacist, and a slave owner. Gilpin Faust provides readers with a riveting first-hand account of not only the life of Hammond, but of the true picture of elite Southerners in the years leading up to the Civil War. 

1 Harvard University. “Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust.” accessed June 9, 2014, http://www.harvard.edu/ president/biography.
2 Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond, 320. 
3 Ibid., 325.4 Ibid., 367.5 Ibid., 376.
6 Ibid., 73-74. 
7 Ibid., 87.8 Ibid., 316.9 Ibid., 241.

10 Ibid., 279. 
11 Ibid., 199.