In the polit­i­cal­ly charged years between 1857 and 1858, James Ham­mond, a fig­ure marked by con­tro­ver­sy and scan­dal, was unex­pect­ed­ly nom­i­nat­ed to fill a vacant U.S. Sen­ate seat fol­low­ing the death of its pre­vi­ous occu­pant. Ham­mond’s polit­i­cal career had been tumul­tuous, char­ac­ter­ized by a sig­nif­i­cant elec­toral loss in 1840 and a nar­row vic­to­ry in 1842 for the gov­er­nor­ship. Despite his polit­i­cal ambi­tion, his rep­u­ta­tion was taint­ed by a scan­dalous affair involv­ing his young nieces, which had begun in 1841.

The indis­cre­tions com­menced dur­ing his relo­ca­tion to Colum­bia, where his nieces reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ed. Ham­mond engaged in sex­u­al activ­i­ties with all four girls over a two-year span, jus­ti­fy­ing his behav­ior in his diary as a con­se­quence of irre­sistible charm and love from the girls. He expressed a sense of vic­tim­hood, per­ceiv­ing him­self as deserv­ing of praise for not going even fur­ther in these rela­tion­ships. How­ev­er, lead­ing to the end of this affair was a con­fronta­tion with one of his nieces, Cather­ine, in 1843, which com­pelled him to cease his advances. A mis­guid­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their father, Wade Hamp­ton, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters, dev­as­tat­ing Ham­mond’s social stand­ing.

By 1844, whis­pers about the affair begun to per­me­ate the polit­i­cal elite, grow­ing into a cam­paign aimed at tar­nish­ing Ham­mond’s can­di­da­cy for the Sen­ate. Despite gain­ing sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic sup­port, these rumors cul­mi­nat­ed in a defin­i­tive loss, pri­mar­i­ly orches­trat­ed by Hamp­ton’s polit­i­cal machi­na­tions, result­ing in Ham­mond’s career being declared “anni­hi­lat­ed for­ev­er.”

In the midst of per­son­al tur­moil, Ham­mond also engaged in a long-term illic­it rela­tion­ship with an enslaved woman named Sal­ly John­son, which became pub­lic knowl­edge in 1850. His wife, Cather­ine, even­tu­al­ly left him, exac­er­bat­ing his domes­tic woes fur­ther. Despite these scan­dals, in 1857, pol­i­tics shift­ed again, and he found him­self elect­ed to the Sen­ate, albeit amid the seces­sion­ist rhetoric and grow­ing ten­sions over slav­ery.

With his arrival in the Sen­ate, Ham­mond deliv­ered a pow­er­ful speech defend­ing slav­ery and declar­ing “cot­ton is king,” which solid­i­fied his posi­tion among South­ern politi­cians, gar­ner­ing admi­ra­tion in his home state. Though his ide­o­log­i­cal stance seemed to strength­en his polit­i­cal image ini­tial­ly, it fore­shad­owed the dire con­se­quences of the pend­ing Civ­il War, as advo­cates in the South erro­neous­ly believed that a cot­ton-fueled econ­o­my would deter North­ern aggres­sion in future con­flicts.