James Hamilton, Jr., whether deliberately or unwittingly, became the center of the Denmark Vesey controversy. On the one side were people from old South Carolina families like John Cordes Prioleau and John Lyde Wilson who supported secret tribunals, but allowed Hamilton to take credit. On the other were men like William Johnson, Jr. and Thomas Bennett who feared some conspiracy might exist, but believed the rule of law should prevail.
Hamilton later played the same role in the nullification crisis of the 1832 when he was governor. Then, John Calhoun was more adept at positioning himself politically, and while he lost any hope of becoming president, still served in the United States Senate until he died from tuberculosis in 1850.
In both cases Hamilton held positions which were largely symbolic. Power in South Carolina is held by the General Assembly, and in Charleston by the city council. One wonders what kind of man was willing to countenance the execution of potentially innocent men and threaten the political stability of the United States for political celebrity.
Robert Tinkler says Hamilton’s parents preferred life in Newport, Rhode Island, to that on a humid, disease infested lowland rice plantation. For many years of his childhood, he stayed north to attend school while his father returned to South Carolina.
However, by the time he was a teenager, the family wealth was evaporating. His parents had guaranteed loans for his mother’s stepfather, William Mountrie, who died in debt in 1805. His father was from Pennsylvania, and had no aptitude for managing a rice plantation. When he married, his wife’s lands were worth $250,000; they later were valued at $6,000.
Young Hamilton was forced to sign away any rights to his inheritance when he turned 21 in 1807. His father finally declared bankruptcy in 1811 and moved in with his daughter, Hannah Prioleau. James Junior found himself in exactly the same position his father had been, a young man without means living in an aristocratic society.
He first studied law and served as secretary to the 1810 governor, Henry Middleton, the son and grandson of friends of his father. Tinkler says he found politics more to his likely than the routine of law. Then like his father, he enlisted in the War of 1812 and married a young heiress he met in 1813.
Like him, Elizabeth Heyward was raised in lowland Carolina society, but was no longer part of it. When her wealthy father died, his family took over managing the estate until his widow married a New Yorker who sued the family to protect the girl’s rights and those of her mother. While she owned Callawassie Island in the Colleton River on the south coast of the state, she’d lost any connection with the Heywards and probably any protection by the dowagers.
Apparently, her stepfather, Nicholas Cruger, didn’t trust James Hamilton, or was naturally suspicious. He demanded a prenuptial agreement to place Callawassie Island in trust. William Behan says Hamilton refused. Instead, he sold her land and slaves and put the money in a postnuptial trust in 1919. Behan believes he wanted to speculate in banks and other investments.
For the next two years he served in the state House of Representatives, then became intendant of Charleston in 1822. While he was pursuing Denmark Vesey in June of 1822, he accepted the congressional seat of William Lowdes, who’d been forced to resign in May by tuberculosis.
In the years he served in the national House of Representatives as a Jacksonian, Behan says he was manipulating the funds in the trust in contravention to the postnuptial agreement. He bought back Callawassie Island from Cruger, who had been ruined by the Panic of 1819, and bought two other rice plantations and slaves in his name alone.
One term into Jackson’s administration, he left Washington to become South Carolina governor, just as the tariffs of 1826 and 1832 were an issue. A previous governor, John Lyde Wilson, and Hamilton’s brother-in-law Samuel Prioleau, who was the first cousin of John Cordes Prioleau, had first bruited the possibility of nullification in the mid-1820's.
The state divided into two parties, the one led by Hamilton unified in its demands for nullification, the other more diverse in its responses. Politicians were pressured to take sides, and even John Calhoun, then the vice president, was forced to support nullification or lose political support in the state.
Hamilton called the Nullification Convention of 1832 which formally refused to obey the law. When Andrew Jackson passed a bill that gave him the right to use the military to enforce United States laws, Hamilton called another session of the convention to repeal its 1832 acts and nullify the Force Act. South Carolinians claimed surprise at the president’s actions and the failure of other southern states to support their actions.
Hamilton remained in the state senate and turned to business, first with the Bank of Charleston and then as a cotton broker with his oldest son, James. By 1836, Behan says, he had title to 16 plantations in four states, all mortgaged, and was buying land script in Texas for the South Carolina Land Company. His investors included large planters like Wade Hampton and politicians like Robert Young Hayne.
The Panic of 1937 destroyed his Texas plans and left him financially vulnerable. The panic had been caused by problems with the Bank of England that led to the failure of three banks that handled southern cotton. Nicholas Biddle successfully manipulated cotton prices the next year, by buying cheap cotton and holding if off the market until prices rose.
After Biddle died, Hamilton thought he could do the same thing, only his son James died from yellow fever in 1839 before he could sell at a profit. The next year he changed the terms of his trustee relationship for Mary Martha McRa, through an agreement with her son, and started depositing her dividends from the Bank of Charleston into an account with a Charleston cotton factor.
In 1842 Hamilton owed over $700,000. His wife, with his consent, sued him for violating the terms of the 1819 trust. The judge stopped any claims against her money until the suit was settled, which took four years. Aggravating matters, in 1842 Sam Houston took over the government of Texas, and cancelled any financial agreements the republic had made with Hamilton.
In 1846 Hamilton and his wife moved to a cotton plantation in Alabama, and two years later he declared bankruptcy in the state of Georgia. In 1850, the McRa estate sued him for diverting funds from her estate, and discovered he had promised the proceeds from his claim against Texas to at least six different creditors.
He took over management of his daughter’s plantation in Bluffton on the Savannah River in 1849, when her husband made clear he preferred to spend his time in Newport. They moved there in 1855, after he was forced to sell his Texas sugar plantation. He died in a steamboat accident two years later still trying to get reimbursed for his claims against the state, while his wife died in exile in Savannah during the Civil War.
His sons, who bought the Texas plantation, finally gave up in 1868. In 1911, Texas leased the plantation from Nellie League for a prison farm and bought what had become known as Burnin’ Hell outright in 1918.
Notes: Samuel Prioleau and Providence Hext were the parents of John Cordes’ father Samuel and Samuel’s father Philip according to Rob Salzman’s e-familytree website.
Behan, William A. A Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina, 2004, on Elizabeth Matthews Heyward.
Lucko, Paul M. "Retrieve Plantation," Handbook of Texas Online.
Tinkler, Robert. James Hamilton of South Carolina, 2004.
Showing posts with label Celebrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celebrity. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Childhood Memories
Should an historian try to recreate a past era so completely the reader recognizes its very alienness or should he or she focus on those parts of the past that survive into the present and influence its form?
The first is the province of the historical novelist; the second drives the mystery writer.
A few years ago I took down a book by Hugh Walpole thinking then was perhaps the right time to read a genuine gothic novel. I didn’t think too much when it began with an adventure of an eight-year-old boy, but when I was half way through and the boy was only a few months older I realized I’d confused Hugh with Horace.
By then I was hooked on Jeremy, a series of childhood adventures published by Walpole in 1919. Nothing could be more removed from my experience, and yet every vignette rang true. Some were the events of psychological growth, when Jeremy got his first dog or when he realized he’d been tormenting his nurse. Others were just the things that happen, the first exposure to town life at the local fair or to the arts when his uncle took him to the theatre.
After each adventure I thought, yes, that’s how it was, not for Jeremy, but for me. The event wasn’t the same, but the experience was. Walpole wrote fiction, created an imaginary town from places he’d lived, yet he evoked the universal in those adventures.
I just finished Agatha Christie’s autobiography and the reading experience couldn’t have been more different.
She didn’t begin to write for an outside reader, but for herself in 1950 when she was back in Iraq with her husband after World War II. She says she didn’t know why she wanted, suddenly, to record the past, but I rather suspect it was the realization, that as she was turning 60, life as she had known it had changed dramatically during the war.
What’s obvious is that when she returned to it in 1965, at age 75, she was looking at the manuscript as a reminder of her past, not as a literary project. Indeed, her celebrity and her personal experiences prevented her from reworking the material. She knew that many would read it for errors, and so she was inhibited from reworking material the way the obscure Walpole could.
More she knew everyone wanted to know what led to her breakdown in 1926 after her husband announced he was in love with another woman and she had disappeared for a few days. She continually tells you she’s a private person, and the experience of being hounded by the media, omitted from this book, instead appeared in her novels when she focused on the horror of being wrongly suspected and the double villainy of a murderer who is willing to let an innocent person suffer for his crimes.
By the time she published her autobiography, Christie also had the view that "we are all the same people as were at three, six, ten or twenty years old." Youth is a time of inventing oneself and maturity occurs when "it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day."
And so, Christie focused on the points of continuity, her life of the imagination when she created dramas in her mind about some kittens, or later some girls. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember exactly what those stories were or how she created them, only that, in fact, she had done so. Her childhood of unrecallable events and ones unmentioned lest they be used to scout out her psychology makes for very dull reading.
The differences between Walpole and Christie are vast: the second was far more successful and more creative. Although both were writing immediately after wars, one was writing in his mid thirties when life was still unfolding as a series of new adventures, while the other was much older and seeing only what had survived the transformation of war.
Still, it’s Walpole who was the better writer of childhood because he was able to capture the inner life of the child. The older Christie was too wise to consider what she couldn’t recall had mattered very much after all.
The first is the province of the historical novelist; the second drives the mystery writer.
A few years ago I took down a book by Hugh Walpole thinking then was perhaps the right time to read a genuine gothic novel. I didn’t think too much when it began with an adventure of an eight-year-old boy, but when I was half way through and the boy was only a few months older I realized I’d confused Hugh with Horace.
By then I was hooked on Jeremy, a series of childhood adventures published by Walpole in 1919. Nothing could be more removed from my experience, and yet every vignette rang true. Some were the events of psychological growth, when Jeremy got his first dog or when he realized he’d been tormenting his nurse. Others were just the things that happen, the first exposure to town life at the local fair or to the arts when his uncle took him to the theatre.
After each adventure I thought, yes, that’s how it was, not for Jeremy, but for me. The event wasn’t the same, but the experience was. Walpole wrote fiction, created an imaginary town from places he’d lived, yet he evoked the universal in those adventures.
I just finished Agatha Christie’s autobiography and the reading experience couldn’t have been more different.
She didn’t begin to write for an outside reader, but for herself in 1950 when she was back in Iraq with her husband after World War II. She says she didn’t know why she wanted, suddenly, to record the past, but I rather suspect it was the realization, that as she was turning 60, life as she had known it had changed dramatically during the war.
What’s obvious is that when she returned to it in 1965, at age 75, she was looking at the manuscript as a reminder of her past, not as a literary project. Indeed, her celebrity and her personal experiences prevented her from reworking the material. She knew that many would read it for errors, and so she was inhibited from reworking material the way the obscure Walpole could.
More she knew everyone wanted to know what led to her breakdown in 1926 after her husband announced he was in love with another woman and she had disappeared for a few days. She continually tells you she’s a private person, and the experience of being hounded by the media, omitted from this book, instead appeared in her novels when she focused on the horror of being wrongly suspected and the double villainy of a murderer who is willing to let an innocent person suffer for his crimes.
By the time she published her autobiography, Christie also had the view that "we are all the same people as were at three, six, ten or twenty years old." Youth is a time of inventing oneself and maturity occurs when "it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day."
And so, Christie focused on the points of continuity, her life of the imagination when she created dramas in her mind about some kittens, or later some girls. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember exactly what those stories were or how she created them, only that, in fact, she had done so. Her childhood of unrecallable events and ones unmentioned lest they be used to scout out her psychology makes for very dull reading.
The differences between Walpole and Christie are vast: the second was far more successful and more creative. Although both were writing immediately after wars, one was writing in his mid thirties when life was still unfolding as a series of new adventures, while the other was much older and seeing only what had survived the transformation of war.
Still, it’s Walpole who was the better writer of childhood because he was able to capture the inner life of the child. The older Christie was too wise to consider what she couldn’t recall had mattered very much after all.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Malaria and Men
It all began with a grammar error.
On August 3rd of this year, Nathan Wolfe told readers of the Huffington Post "today, me and my colleagues from Cameroon, Germany and the United States announced our discovery of the origin of malaria."
If he had said "my colleagues and I," I wouldn’t have noticed the many violations of scientific etiquette embedded in his posting. But instead, he baldly declared "me discovery."
Now anyone who’s read the history of science or novels by C. P. Snow knows scientific etiquette is, at best, a veneer disguising ambition, jealousy and all the other human emotions that characterize the interactions of competitive individuals. Wolfe’s comment is only noteworthy for revealing the contemporary narcissistic form, "it’s all about me."
The National Academy of Science did indeed publish an on-line article that day, "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," with Stephen Rich as the lead author. After whatever jockeying for credit occurred, Wolfe came out last in the list of 14.
He wasn’t the only co-author to promote an independent narrative. Number 13, Francisco Ayala, used the University of California at Irvine as his more discrete, third-party platform. Unlike Wolfe, he at least did admit Rich was the lead author, but not without emphasizing Rich had been one of his students.
Reuters apparently used the Irvine news release for its story the next day, while the Associated Press relied on Wolfe. The New York Times picked up the latter, thereby giving Wolfe the edge in kudos for the team’s research.
Ayala, now in his 70's, is of an age when men secretly hope to win a Nobel Prize to recognize their lifetime achievements, and he has been one of the pioneers investigating the evolution of the malaria parasite. Irvine’s story emphasized that his work probes one of the great questions of contemporary medicine, how diseases like AIDS and influenza migrate between animals and humans.
But, as is the way with science, he is not alone in his presumed quest for recognition from that notoriously factious, political group in Sweden. In May of this year another team, this one centered in France and Gabon, published their findings that documented genetic similarities between the human and primate forms of malaria. Either team could make the final breakthrough that might receive the award.
Wolfe is younger and no doubt knows only one prize is awarded each year in any field and every year there are more scientists in more countries doing innovative work. He probably also knows that historians have found most scientists make their most important contribution before they are 30, and if they haven’t achieved some fame by then, they probably won’t. He’s nearing 40.
California has developed an alternative paradigm for the young that promises them celebrity at an early age if they can patent something that can be sold. Wolfe has already been tempted by that siren. Last year, Frank Rijsberman, of Google’s philanthropic group, gave money to support Wolfe’s work with the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and declared "Nathan is going to be a rock star in this field." Wolfe’s Huffington Post release emphasized the possibilities of a sellable product, a vaccine.
Ayala represents pure science grappling with the workings of nature, while Wolfe is promoting practical applications for that knowledge. A malaria vaccine would certainly be useful, but will face the same cultural and financial impediments the Bill Gates’ foundation confronts now in fighting malaria in Africa. The individual or group who finds the best way to convince humans to change their behavior without coercion may be the one who should win the prize.
Notes:
Associated Press. "First Origin of Malaria May Have Been Found," 3 August 2009.
Fitzenberger, Jennifer. "Scientists Report Original Source of Malaria," University of California at Irvine news release, 3 August 2009, has best discussion of research in the field.
Ollomo, Benjamin and 7 others. "A New Malaria Agent in African Hominids," PLoS Pathog, 29 May 2009.
Reuters. "Malaria May Have Come from Chimps," 4 August 2009, edited by Xavier Briand.
Rich Stephen and 13 others. "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," National Academy of Sciences, online Proceedings for 3 August 2009.
Svoboda, Elizabeth. "Nathan Wolfe: Deep in the Rain Forest, Stalking the Next Pandemic," The New York Times, 20 October 2008.
Vasich, Tom. "Biologist Francisco J. Ayala Wins National Medal of Science," University of California at Irvine news release, 9 May 2002.
Wolfe, Nathan. "The Origin of Malaria: Discovered," Huffington Post, 3 August 2009.
On August 3rd of this year, Nathan Wolfe told readers of the Huffington Post "today, me and my colleagues from Cameroon, Germany and the United States announced our discovery of the origin of malaria."
If he had said "my colleagues and I," I wouldn’t have noticed the many violations of scientific etiquette embedded in his posting. But instead, he baldly declared "me discovery."
Now anyone who’s read the history of science or novels by C. P. Snow knows scientific etiquette is, at best, a veneer disguising ambition, jealousy and all the other human emotions that characterize the interactions of competitive individuals. Wolfe’s comment is only noteworthy for revealing the contemporary narcissistic form, "it’s all about me."
The National Academy of Science did indeed publish an on-line article that day, "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," with Stephen Rich as the lead author. After whatever jockeying for credit occurred, Wolfe came out last in the list of 14.
He wasn’t the only co-author to promote an independent narrative. Number 13, Francisco Ayala, used the University of California at Irvine as his more discrete, third-party platform. Unlike Wolfe, he at least did admit Rich was the lead author, but not without emphasizing Rich had been one of his students.
Reuters apparently used the Irvine news release for its story the next day, while the Associated Press relied on Wolfe. The New York Times picked up the latter, thereby giving Wolfe the edge in kudos for the team’s research.
Ayala, now in his 70's, is of an age when men secretly hope to win a Nobel Prize to recognize their lifetime achievements, and he has been one of the pioneers investigating the evolution of the malaria parasite. Irvine’s story emphasized that his work probes one of the great questions of contemporary medicine, how diseases like AIDS and influenza migrate between animals and humans.
But, as is the way with science, he is not alone in his presumed quest for recognition from that notoriously factious, political group in Sweden. In May of this year another team, this one centered in France and Gabon, published their findings that documented genetic similarities between the human and primate forms of malaria. Either team could make the final breakthrough that might receive the award.
Wolfe is younger and no doubt knows only one prize is awarded each year in any field and every year there are more scientists in more countries doing innovative work. He probably also knows that historians have found most scientists make their most important contribution before they are 30, and if they haven’t achieved some fame by then, they probably won’t. He’s nearing 40.
California has developed an alternative paradigm for the young that promises them celebrity at an early age if they can patent something that can be sold. Wolfe has already been tempted by that siren. Last year, Frank Rijsberman, of Google’s philanthropic group, gave money to support Wolfe’s work with the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and declared "Nathan is going to be a rock star in this field." Wolfe’s Huffington Post release emphasized the possibilities of a sellable product, a vaccine.
Ayala represents pure science grappling with the workings of nature, while Wolfe is promoting practical applications for that knowledge. A malaria vaccine would certainly be useful, but will face the same cultural and financial impediments the Bill Gates’ foundation confronts now in fighting malaria in Africa. The individual or group who finds the best way to convince humans to change their behavior without coercion may be the one who should win the prize.
Notes:
Associated Press. "First Origin of Malaria May Have Been Found," 3 August 2009.
Fitzenberger, Jennifer. "Scientists Report Original Source of Malaria," University of California at Irvine news release, 3 August 2009, has best discussion of research in the field.
Ollomo, Benjamin and 7 others. "A New Malaria Agent in African Hominids," PLoS Pathog, 29 May 2009.
Reuters. "Malaria May Have Come from Chimps," 4 August 2009, edited by Xavier Briand.
Rich Stephen and 13 others. "The Origin of Malignant Malaria," National Academy of Sciences, online Proceedings for 3 August 2009.
Svoboda, Elizabeth. "Nathan Wolfe: Deep in the Rain Forest, Stalking the Next Pandemic," The New York Times, 20 October 2008.
Vasich, Tom. "Biologist Francisco J. Ayala Wins National Medal of Science," University of California at Irvine news release, 9 May 2002.
Wolfe, Nathan. "The Origin of Malaria: Discovered," Huffington Post, 3 August 2009.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Sarah Palin
I’ve always thought Sarah Palin represented the first generation that believed celebrity was the same as the effort that created fame. For an aspiring journalist in the 1980's, it didn’t matter if one were Robert Redford playing Bob Woodword or Woodword himself - the work of acting and reporting were insignificant beside the reality of appearing on television.
I don’t think Palin really understood the difference between being herself or Tina Fey playing her, so long as her face was on Saturday Night Live. When she was invited to appear as a guest, the doubling that tantalized the audience meant little to her because the only thing she understood was the reality of being there.
Perhaps this is why she reserves her bitterest comments for people in the media who destroy her pleasure in finally achieving her goal. For Palin being on Katie Couric’s show was all that mattered. When she was criticized for not doing something she was genuinely confused. The appearance was the achievement.
When she placed second in the Miss Alaska pageant the lesson she learned was that she hadn’t been savvy enough to garner more media attention. It never seriously occurred to her the winner might have been the more attractive candidate or that she needed to work on the skills required to be a beauty queen like those successful winners from places like Texas. In the future she focused on being the center of attention.
Since she announced her planned resignation as governor of Alaska many have speculated on her attacks on those who filed ethical complaints against her. When she was campaigning with John McCain she got her first exposure to the adulation of large crowds, as well as an opportunity to observe the gilded life of the media and to wear expensive clothes.
Now that she’s back in Alaska, her out-of-state public appearances bring complaints of dereliction of duty. Her book contract raises concerns that it violates state limits on an elected official’s secondary activities. If political office is not a step to higher office, but to greater celebrity, then one can understand why she chaffs at bureaucratic restraints when she’s so close to achieving her goal.
She is like the child who spent her time in front of a mirror with a toy mike practicing her acceptance speech rather than doing the same dance step or musical passage over and over like Michael Jackson did. She doesn’t know fame is not an end in itself, but the reward given by people who appreciate the effortless efforts of the talented or something undefinably unique.
I don’t think Palin really understood the difference between being herself or Tina Fey playing her, so long as her face was on Saturday Night Live. When she was invited to appear as a guest, the doubling that tantalized the audience meant little to her because the only thing she understood was the reality of being there.
Perhaps this is why she reserves her bitterest comments for people in the media who destroy her pleasure in finally achieving her goal. For Palin being on Katie Couric’s show was all that mattered. When she was criticized for not doing something she was genuinely confused. The appearance was the achievement.
When she placed second in the Miss Alaska pageant the lesson she learned was that she hadn’t been savvy enough to garner more media attention. It never seriously occurred to her the winner might have been the more attractive candidate or that she needed to work on the skills required to be a beauty queen like those successful winners from places like Texas. In the future she focused on being the center of attention.
Since she announced her planned resignation as governor of Alaska many have speculated on her attacks on those who filed ethical complaints against her. When she was campaigning with John McCain she got her first exposure to the adulation of large crowds, as well as an opportunity to observe the gilded life of the media and to wear expensive clothes.
Now that she’s back in Alaska, her out-of-state public appearances bring complaints of dereliction of duty. Her book contract raises concerns that it violates state limits on an elected official’s secondary activities. If political office is not a step to higher office, but to greater celebrity, then one can understand why she chaffs at bureaucratic restraints when she’s so close to achieving her goal.
She is like the child who spent her time in front of a mirror with a toy mike practicing her acceptance speech rather than doing the same dance step or musical passage over and over like Michael Jackson did. She doesn’t know fame is not an end in itself, but the reward given by people who appreciate the effortless efforts of the talented or something undefinably unique.
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