<P> Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818--April 11, 1902) was a Confederate States of America military officer during the American Civil War and politician from South Carolina . He came from a wealthy planter family, and shortly before the war he was one of the largest slaveholders in the Southeast as well as a state legislator . During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate cavalry, where he reached the rank of lieutenant general . </P> <P> Following the war, he served as a Democratic Party politician in his home state . Near the end of Reconstruction, Hampton was elected as the 77th Governor of South Carolina, serving 1876 - 1879, and later was elected as a U.S. Senator . His campaign as governor was marked by extensive violence by the Red Shirts, a paramilitary group that served the Democratic Party by disrupting elections and suppressing black voting in the state . They contributed to the Democrats regaining control of the state government in this period . </P> <P> Wade Hampton III was born in 1818 at 54 Hasell St. in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of Wade Hampton II (1791--1858), known as "Colonel Wade Hampton", and Ann (née Fitzsimmons) Hampton . His mother was from a wealthy family in Charleston . After the War of 1812, his father had built his own fortune on land speculation in the Southeast . </P> <P> 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 and as Governor of South Carolina . In the late 1850s he was elected to the South Carolina Senate . </P>

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