Wade Hampton
Wade Hampton III was a prominent figure in 19th-century American history, born on March 28, 1818, in Charleston, South Carolina. He hailed from a wealthy plantation family, with his grandfather amassing significant wealth during the American Revolution and his father expanding their plantation holdings and slave ownership. Hampton became a successful cotton planter, acquiring multiple plantations in Mississippi, but faced devastating financial losses during and after the Civil War.
Despite his initial hesitations about secession, he became an active Confederate leader, organizing the Hampton Legion and rising to the rank of lieutenant general. The war brought personal tragedy, including the deaths of family members and the destruction of his property. After the war, Hampton transitioned to a political career, serving as governor of South Carolina and later as a U.S. senator. His legacy is complex, as he is remembered both for his military leadership and for his defense of the Confederacy, reflecting the deeply entrenched social and racial hierarchies of his time. He passed away on April 11, 1902, in Columbia, South Carolina, where he was mourned by many.
Wade Hampton
- Born: March 28, 1818
- Birthplace: Charleston, South Carolina
- Died: April 11, 1902
- Place of death: Columbia, South Carolina
American planter, military leader, and politician
Born into a rich South Carolina family, Hampton gained wealth of his own as a planter before the Civil War. Suffering financial losses because of emancipation and the war, he afterward became a symbol of Southern honor.
Sources of wealth: Inheritance; real estate; slaveholding
Bequeathal of wealth: Unknown
Early Life
The wealth Wade Hampton III possessed before the Civil War originated with his grandfather Wade Hampton I, a backwoods businessman in South Carolina who grew rich during the American Revolution. When he died in 1835, his estate was worth $1,641,065, making him one of the foremost American planters. His son Wade Hampton II became the owner of thousands of acres of lands and hundreds of slaves, with property in Mississippi as well as South Carolina. Wade Hampton III was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 28, 1818, and he learned to ride and hunt and be a gentleman. In addition, he studied Greek and Latin at South Carolina College, from which he graduated in 1836, and later studied law.
First Ventures
During ten years in the 1840’s and 1850’s, Hampton invested deeply in the raising of cotton in Issaquena and Washington Counties, Mississippi, where the soil was better than in South Carolina. In Mississippi, he bought four plantations with a total of eight thousand acres, in addition to a hunting preserve of more than two thousand acres. In 1855, he borrowed $170,000 from the Bank of Louisiana. When his father died in 1858 without a will, he worked with his brothers and sisters to divide their inheritance equitably. Through this agreement, he acquired the Walnut Ridge Plantation and its slaves in Mississippi, but he also acquired four-fifths of his father’s $500,000 debt.
Mature Wealth
At the beginning of the Civil War, Hampton owned nine hundred slaves and twelve thousand acres of land. Although he thought secession was unwise, he believed the South had a right to secede when President Abraham Lincoln in 1861 called for soldiers to crush Southern resistance. Hampton viewed Lincoln’s remarks as a declaration of war against the Confederate states. Despite Hampton’s financial trouble, he promised his cotton crop of 1861 to the Confederacy, organized the thousand-man Hampton Legion, and paid for much of his men’s equipment.
Starting the war as a colonel, Hampton rose to lieutenant general and proved he was an officer who skillfully led his men in battles and tried to ease their sufferings off the battlefields. The war, however, was a disaster for him. A brother and a son were both killed in action, he himself was wounded, through necessity his debts went unpaid, and Union troops devastated his Mississippi property. In 1865, Union soldiers burned the mansion at his Diamond Hill Plantation in South Carolina, and Hampton’s outnumbered army had to retreat from Columbia, South Carolina, leaving it to burn under enemy occupation.
Bankruptcy came in December, 1868, when Hampton owned real estate worth $235,500 and personal property worth $7,905 but owed $1,012,328 and had received nothing for his freed slaves. Eventually, Hampton’s household goods were auctioned in Columbia for a total of $118.65. As the only bidder for Diamond Hill, Hampton himself bought what was left of it for $100. Embarrassed at his financial trouble, Hampton still wanted to pay his creditors in full but found that he could never do so.
Legacy
The life of Wade Hampton III as a materially rich man ended in 1868, but as a man of modest means he became rich in the esteem bestowed upon him by most Southerners and even some Northerners. After the Civil War, he served as governor of South Carolina and as a U.S. senator from this state. A Democrat born into the ruling class of the Old South, he believed that he and men like him should govern for the good of everyone, regardless of race. He remained faithful to his state and his former comrades in arms, and while acknowledging Southern military defeat, he defended what he considered the justice of the Confederate cause. Upon his death from heart disease on April 11, 1902, in a house his fellow South Carolinians had given him in Columbia, the South mourned.
Bibliography
Ackerman, Robert K. Wade Hampton III. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.
Andrew, Rod, Jr. Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Cisco, Walter Brian. Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2004.