The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

It had all started, apparently, in 1841 with Hammond’s move to Columbia and the construction of his house. His nieces, the youngest thirteen years old, had reason to come to the house on a regular basis because Hammond’s wife, their aunt Catherine, served as their surrogate mother, stepping into the role after their own mother had died some years earlier. They adored their handsome uncle. Whether the thing was triggered when the girls came over to help him decorate the new house or had some other proximate cause is not at all clear. Hammond, however, soon found himself engaged in sexual dalliance with all four girls. He confessed it later in his diary. “Here were four lovely creatures, from the tender but precious girl of 13 to the mature but fresh and blooming woman nearly 19 (in 1840–41), each contending for my love, claiming the greater share of it as due to her superior devotion to me, all of them rushing on every occasion into my arms and covering me with kisses, lolling on my lap, pressing their bodies almost into mine, wreathing their limbs with mine, encountering warmly every portion of my frame, and permitting my hands to stray unchecked over every part of them and to rest without the slightest shrinking from it, in the most secret and sacred regions, and all this for a period of more than two years continuously.” Hammond complained that instead of condemnation, he deserved praise. “Is it in flesh and blood to withstand this?” he wrote in his diary. “Is there a ma...