>When the senior Hampton learned that Hammond had raped his four Hampton nieces as teenagers, he made the scandal public. The publicizing of his crimes nearly derailed Hammond's career, but he later was elected to the United States Senate.>Hammond was known to have repeatedly raped two enslaved women, one of whom may have been his daughter. He raped the first enslaved woman, Sally Johnson, when she was 18 years old. Such behavior was rampant among white men of power at the time; their mixed-race children were born into slavery and remained there unless the fathers took action to free them.> Later, Hammond raped Sally Johnson's daughter, Louisa, who was a year-old baby when he bought her mother. The first rape occurred when Louisa was 12; she also bore several of his children.
