The thoughts, triumphs, travails, and, at times, despicable actions of a leading antebellum politician

A remarkably candid set of diaries, Secret and Sacred brings to light the intimate journal notations of James Henry Hammond, a prominent South Carolina planter and slaveholder whose life story is as intriguing as that of a Faulkner character.

James Henry Hammond was born into poverty but married into wealth and expanded his plantations and slaveholdings until they were among the largest in the South. A leading spokesman for the South, he served as a congressman, U.S. senator, and South Carolina governor. In his private life, he dominated his family, sexually violated his young nieces (causing a scandal that nearly wrecked his career), and fathered children by his slaves. All the while he kept his secret and sacred journals. These diaries, which span from 1841 to 1864, reveal a man whose fortune and intellect combined to make him an important southern leader but whose deep character flaws kept him from the true greatness to which he aspired.

Carol Bleser gracefully explicates Hammond’s background and weaves his entries into a cohesive collection that reads like a novel of the Old South.