Scan­dal loomed over James Hammond’s polit­i­cal career in the late 1850s, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing his unex­pect­ed nom­i­na­tion to fill a vacant U.S. Sen­ate seat in 1857. Ham­mond, despite fac­ing a series of per­son­al and polit­i­cal chal­lenges, had spent years embroiled in con­tro­ver­sy. His pre­vi­ous elec­toral loss­es in 1840 and 1842, com­bined with his involve­ment in mul­ti­ple scan­dals, made his rise to polit­i­cal promi­nence high­ly con­tentious. One of the most dam­ag­ing aspects of his per­son­al life was his affair with his nieces, which began in 1841 and last­ed for two years, dur­ing which Ham­mond engaged in inap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al con­duct with all four girls. He jus­ti­fied his actions in his per­son­al diaries, blam­ing his irre­sistible charm and the affec­tion he believed the girls felt for him, por­tray­ing him­self as a vic­tim of cir­cum­stances rather than a per­pe­tra­tor of wrong­do­ing.

Hammond’s actions came to a head in 1843 when he was con­front­ed by one of the nieces, Cather­ine, forc­ing him to end the affair. This per­son­al cri­sis was com­pound­ed when a poor­ly word­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their father, Wade Hamp­ton, made the scan­dal pub­lic. By 1844, whis­pers of the affair had grown loud­er with­in polit­i­cal cir­cles, lead­ing to a con­cert­ed effort to derail Hammond’s bid for the Sen­ate. Despite his ini­tial polit­i­cal sup­port, the rumors and his tar­nished rep­u­ta­tion ulti­mate­ly led to his defeat in the Sen­ate race, with his career being described as “anni­hi­lat­ed for­ev­er” by his crit­ics. The scan­dal had a last­ing effect on Hammond’s rep­u­ta­tion, cast­ing a shad­ow over his future ambi­tions in pub­lic office.

While his per­son­al life remained mired in scan­dal, Hammond’s polit­i­cal career was far from over. In 1850, his long-term illic­it rela­tion­ship with an enslaved woman, Sal­ly John­son, became pub­lic knowl­edge, adding anoth­er lay­er of per­son­al dis­grace. His wife, Cather­ine, left him, com­pound­ing his per­son­al and famil­ial trou­bles. Nev­er­the­less, by 1857, the polit­i­cal tide had shift­ed in his favor, and he was appoint­ed to the Sen­ate once more, this time amidst the charged atmos­phere of seces­sion­ist rhetoric and the nation­al debate over slav­ery. As ten­sions sur­round­ing the issue of slav­ery esca­lat­ed, Ham­mond became more vocal in his defense of the insti­tu­tion, deliv­er­ing a speech in which he declared “cot­ton is king.” This speech, which cham­pi­oned the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er of slav­ery, strength­ened his posi­tion among South­ern politi­cians, earn­ing him admi­ra­tion in his home state of South Car­oli­na.

Hammond’s speech in the Sen­ate was a key moment in his career, as it solid­i­fied his ide­o­log­i­cal stance as a defend­er of slav­ery. The dec­la­ra­tion that “cot­ton is king” was meant to assert the South’s eco­nom­ic dom­i­nance and its per­ceived invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, based on the belief that North­ern aggres­sion would be deterred by the South’s con­trol over the cot­ton trade. Hammond’s views res­onat­ed with South­ern lead­ers who saw cot­ton as an eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, believ­ing that the South­ern economy’s reliance on slave labor would safe­guard them from North­ern influ­ence. How­ev­er, this belief in the pow­er of slav­ery would ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the deep­en­ing divi­sions between the North and South, and, as his­to­ry would show, the South’s reliance on cot­ton would not be enough to pre­vent the Civ­il War. Hammond’s polit­i­cal career, though marked by scan­dal and per­son­al fail­ings, aligned him with the ris­ing seces­sion­ist sen­ti­ments, and his staunch defense of slav­ery fur­ther entrenched him in the polit­i­cal strug­gles of the time.

The esca­la­tion of ten­sions between the North and South, spurred by fig­ures like Ham­mond, sig­ni­fied the widen­ing chasm that would soon lead to the out­break of the Civ­il War. Ham­mond’s per­son­al and polit­i­cal jour­ney serves as a micro­cosm of the South’s grow­ing resis­tance to abo­li­tion­ist move­ments and the moral reck­on­ing that was loom­ing over the nation. His com­plex lega­cy, shaped by scan­dal and the polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies of his time, high­lights the deeply entrenched beliefs that fueled the con­flict. Despite the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing him, Hammond’s role in the polit­i­cal cli­mate of the South reflect­ed the increas­ing polar­iza­tion and the even­tu­al divi­sion of the Unit­ed States along ide­o­log­i­cal and moral lines.