'Secret and Sacred:' The Identity of "A .S. Johnston" -- Archibald Simpson or Algernon Sidney Johnston?

In Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder, edited by Carol Bleser with a foreward by my old boss from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (University of South Carolina Press, 1997; originally published by Oxford University Press, 1988), there are six entries that mention "A. S. Johnston," who is identified in the index as Archibald Simpson Johnston. 

I suggest that "A. S. Johnston" was actually Algernon Sidney Johnston (1801-1852), brother of Edward William Johnston (1799-1867) and Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891). 

Building a case.

Archibald Simpson Johnston was a merchant in Charleston, South Carolina. Algernon Sidney Johnston was an editor, publisher and citizen of Columbia, South Carolina. The references to "A. S. Johnston" occur in and around Columbia, not Charleston, which was about 115 miles away. Furthermore, Algernon's brother Edward corresponded with Hammond about nullification and secession and other matters; there are extant letters from Johnston dated February and March, 1836, in the James Henry Hammond Papers (Library of Congress). 

Hammond refers to "Sid Johns[t]on" in an entry dated April 1, 1846 (Secret and Sacred, page 159). Sid was the same name that Algernon Sidney Johnston used as a "nickname," derived from his middle name. 

In an entry dated February 7, 1841, at Columbia, Hammond describes a dinner with several of the local intellectual elites, including professors from South Carolina College. There are among them a few of the same people who, along with Hammond himself, socialized with the Johnston brothers at their Columbia book shop in the late 1820s (See Charles Johnston, Memorials of Old Virginia Clerks, Lynchburg, J. P. Bell Company, printers, 1888, page 336).  "A. S. Johnston" is listed with the rest as "company" along with Professor Francis Lieber (Secret and Sacred, pages 26-27).

On February 28, 1841, at the occasion of christening his new house in Columbia, Hammond had the same guests, plus more, among the latter Wade Hampton and John Smith Preston (1809-1881), a cousin of the Johnston family of Virginia. (Another Johnston brother, Charles Clement, had married Eliza Madison Preston). To be sure, "A.S. Johnston" is among them. Of this gathering, Hammond quips in his diary: "Many odd remarks are made and all have tried their wit" (pages 36-37).

And on March 2, 1841, Hammond dropped into a place called Clark's, where he played Backgammon, "smoking segars which always make me sick, and in dull twaddling conversation with John Preston who happened to step in and Sid Johnston who came afterwards." Hammond went on to note: "It is surprising what mere trifles these grown men will talk about . . . Preston is a good-hearted, good meaning fellow, without any knowledge of any kind whatever, and who really appears never to think . . . Johns[t]on is a man of considerable information and some wit, but labors to give every thing some odd and trivial point, which effectively dampens all attempt at intellectual conversation." Later in the entry, he declaims: "I must be abstemious and study, quit segars and wine, and ride into the country" (Secret and Sacred, pages 38-39).

The next year, Hammond became Governor of South Carolina. 

Algernon Sidney Johnston remained in Columbia before he died "suddenly" of some pestilence in September, 1852. The year before that, though, on July 4, he gave a toast at another social gathering: “South Carolina . . . seventy-five years under the flag of the Union, she has been winning liberty and land, glory and gold, to be plundered from her by her faithless partners. When she next calls upon her sons to shed their blood, may it be for her own benefit, under the banner of the Southern Confederacy”  (Source: “SOUTH CAROLINA – Fourth of the July Gems,” The Baltimore Sun, July 12, 1851, XXIX, 46, p. [1]). 

He was buried in the Preston family plot in Columbia’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Cemetery with his gravestone inscribed: “Born, lived and died a gentleman” (Edwin L, Green, “University Notes” Columbia, S.C., The State, January 29, 1935, page 3).