H. P. Hammett and the Anxieties of the New South after the 1888 Election

Audience Advisory: This historical article contains the language, attitudes, and racial beliefs of its time, which may include terms or themes that are offensive or disturbing today.

In November 1888, just days after the presidential election, H.P. Hammett sat down in Greenville, South Carolina, and wrote an anxious letter to his business partner, W. H. Baldwin Jr.  By all accounts, Hammett was successful and respected, a symbol of the New South’s promise of industry and progress.  Yet his letter reveals a man deeply worried by the politics of his time.1

Hammett feared that the presidential election of Republican Benjamin Harrison over Democrat Grover Cleveland spelled disaster for the South.  He felt that the election signaled a return to Northern Reconstruction Era punitive actions on the South by the newly elected Republican controlled government. In his letter wrote that the result had nothing to do with tariffs or taxes, as newspapers claimed, but with what he called “sectional hatred, the hatred of the North for the South.”  Hammett believed the new Republican government would once again impose federal control on the region and restore Black political power.  To him, this meant, as he put it, “negro governors,” “carpetbaggers,” and "Judge Bond", with “negro juries.”2  The very language shows how strongly memories of Reconstruction still haunted white Southerners twenty years after the Civil War.  Furthermore, he feared a return of Northern biased justice.  Hammett’s reference to “Judge Bond” likely points to Hugh Lennox Bond, a federal circuit judge who presided over Reconstruction-era civil rights and election cases in the South.3  Among Southerners, Bond symbolized federal enforcement of racial equality and control that was widely resented for rulings against Southern defendants.

Hammett’s fears went beyond politics.  He connected the election directly to his business. He claimed Piedmont stock had lost half its value since the vote and suggested halting completion of mill number three.4  For him, the success of his textile mill depended on the South maintaining control of its section and resistance against Northern interference.  Without that foundation, he believed the entire Southern economy and all the work he had done could collapse.4   This letter captures the state of mind of many Southern leaders in the late 1800s, who were determined to modernize and control their own section.  Southerners wanted progress, but only on their own terms without Northern interference.  Hammett’s letter shows that the same tensions, distrusts, and resentments continued long after the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction.

Hammett’s reaction to the 1888 election also reminds us how fragile confidence was in the Gilded Age South. Political uncertainty could send shock waves through business and community life.  To Hammett, national elections weren’t abstract, they were matters of survival. His fears of economic ruin, injustice, and racial “chaos” reveal the deep connection between politics, race, and economics in his world. Seen today, Hammett’s letter helps us understand that the industrial revolution in the South was not simply a story of progress.  It was also a story of fear, fear of losing control.  The words in his letter show how closely race, capitalism, and justice were tied to shaping the Southern region’s identity.  

Footnotes

1. Donna Roper Collection, H. P. Hammett to W. H. Baldwin Jr., November 9, 1888, Piedmont Manufacturing Company Records, Piedmont Historical Preservation Society, Greenville County, S.C.

2. H. P. Hammett to W. H. Baldwin Jr., November 9, 1888.

3. H. P. Hammett to W. H. Baldwin Jr., November 9, 1888.

4. H. P. Hammett to W. H. Baldwin Jr., November 9, 1888.