Wade Hampton III

Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818 – April 11, 1902) was an American politician from South Carolina. He was a prominent member of one of the richest families in the antebellum Southern United States, owning thousands of acres of cotton land in South Carolina and Mississippi, as well as thousands of slaves. He became a senior general in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War. He also had a career as a leading Democratic Party politician in state and national affairs.

By 1877, at the end of the Reconstruction era, Hampton was a leader of the Redeemers, white Southerners who successfully fought to restore white supremacy in the state. His campaign for governor was marked by extensive violence by the Red Shirts, a white-supremacist paramilitary group that disrupted elections and suppressed black voters in the state. Hampton was elected governor, serving from 1876 to 1879. After that, he served two terms as U.S. Senator from 1879 to 1891.

Wade Hampton III was born in 1818 at 54 Hasell St. in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of "Colonel" Wade Hampton II (1791–1858) and Ann (née Fitzsimmons) Hampton. His mother was from a wealthy family in Charleston. After the War of 1812, his father built a fortune on land speculation in the Southern states.

The senior Hampton was an officer of dragoons in the War of 1812 and an aide to General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. The boy was the grandson of Wade Hampton (1754–1835), lieutenant colonel of cavalry in the American War of Independence, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and brigadier general in the War of 1812. Wade III's uncle by marriage, James Henry Hammond, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Governor of South Carolina and, in the late 1850s, elected to the United States Senate.

Wade Hampton III grew up in a wealthy planter family, receiving private instruction. He had four younger sisters. His was an active outdoor life; he rode horses and hunted, especially at his family's North Carolina summer retreat, High Hampton. All of his life he took hunting trips alone into the woods, hunting American black bears with only a pack of hounds and a knife.

In 1836, Hampton graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) and was trained for the law, although he never practiced. His father assigned certain plantations to him to manage in South Carolina and Mississippi. The younger man also became active in Democratic state politics.

He was elected to the South Carolina General Assembly in 1852 and was a state senator from 1858 to 1861. After Hampton's father died in 1858, he inherited a vast fortune, plantations, and enslaved people.

During the Civil War, Hampton served in the Confederate army, resigning from the South Carolina Senate to enlist as a private in the South Carolina Militia. The governor of South Carolina insisted that Hampton accept a colonel's commission.