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.