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

by Erik Larson

ambition. From the press and the public at large, Hammond received plaudits for his performance as governor and exhortations to run for the U.S. Senate. Hammond’s confidence grew. He cast himself as the torchbearer for slavery, in part because this of all things seemed to draw him acclaim. In 1845 he began writing what would become two long “letters”—essays really—in defense of slavery, addressed to Thomas Clarkson of England, “the Patriarch of Abolition,” as Hammond called him. Clarkson, then eighty-four, had led the campaign that resulted in Britain, in 1807, ending its involvement in the international slave trade, and triggered what by mid-century had become a worldwide drive toward abolition. Hammond’s “Letters” were published by the Columbia South-Carolinian “and have produced quite a sensation,” Hammond noted in his diary. “I have received many extravagant compliments.” By 1846 Hammond was widely considered a contender for the Senate. To stop him, Wade Hampton took the scandal public; he circulated to state legislators a document full of details. In Carolina’s honor-bound culture this was a risky thing to do. Hampton himself came in for significant criticism for airing so private a matter in the legislature and thereby publicly tarnishing the reputations of his own daughters, but he succeeded in hobbling Hammond’s candidacy. Hammond lost by a vote of 97 to 46.