Excerpt from An Oration on the Life, Character and Services of John Caldwell Calhoun: Delivered on the 21st Nov;, 1850, in Charleston, S. C., At the Request of the City Council Faith is an instinct of the human heart. Its strongest, its purest and its noblest instinct - the parent of love and of hope. In all ages and every where, mankind have acknowledged, adored and put their trust in the great Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And d sending from the invisible and infinite, to the visible and finite, they have entertained the same sentiments, differing only, in degree, for those of their own species, who have received from heaven an extraordinary endowment of intellect and virtue. The Ancient Heathen deified them. By the early Christians they were enrolled among the Saints. It is a shallow and a base philosophy which can see superstition only, in such customs, and fails to recognize the workings of a profound veneration for the attributes of Cod, as manifested through his favorite Creations. A better knowledge of the bounds which separate the natural from the supernatural, has taught us in our day to limit our homage, but still it is a deep and pure wisdom which counsels us to submit ourselves, in no grudging spirit, to the guidance of those great blinds that have been appointed to shed light and truth upon the world. To the honor and praise of South-Carolina it may be said that she has always recognized her prophets and believed their inspiration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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From his birth in 1807 to his death in 1864 as Sherman’s troops marched in triumph toward South Carolina, James Henry Hammond witnessed the rise and fall of the cotton kingdom of the Old South. Planter, politician, and an ardent defender of slavery and white supremacy, Hammond built a career for himself that in its breadth and ambition provides a composite portrait of the civilization in which he flourished. A long-awaited biography, Drew Gilpin Faust’s James Henry Hammond and the Old South reveals the South Carolina planter who was at once characteristic of his age and unique among men of his time. Of humble origins, Hammond set out to conquer his society, to make himself a leader and a spokesman for the Old South. Through marriage he acquired a large plantation and many slaves, and then through their coerced labor, shrewd management practices, and progressive farming techniques, he soon became one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served as governor of his state. Evidence that he sexually abused four of his teenage nieces forced him to retreat for many years to his plantation, but eventually he returned to public view, winning a seat in the United States Senate that he resigned when South Carolina seceded from the Union. James Henry Hammond’s ambition was unquenchable. It consumed his life, directed almost his every move and ultimately, in its titanic calculation and rigidity, destroyed the man confined within it. Like Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen, Faust suggests, Hammond had a “design,” a compulsion to direct every moment of his life toward self-aggrandizement and legitimation. Despite his sexual abuse of enslaved females and their children, like other plantation owners, Hammond envisioned himself as benevolent and paternal. He saw himself as the absolute master of his family and slaves, but neither his family, his slaves, nor even his own behavior was completely under his command. Hammond fervently wished to perfect and preserve what he envisioned as the southern way of life. But these goals were also beyond his control. At the time of his death it had become clear to him that his world, the world of the Old South, had ended.