Member Review Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer by Rod Andrew

@War Horse Longstreet recommended Wade be moved west. Any idea of their relationship?
Well Pat, the only thing I can add at the moment is Longstreet respected Hampton as Stuart’s most reliable General. I’ll have to look and see if I can find a perticular reference. If you think about it, it was a no brainer.
 
Well Pat, the only thing I can add at the moment is Longstreet respected Hampton as Stuart’s most reliable General. I’ll have to look and see if I can find a perticular reference. If you think about it, it was a no brainer.
I need to learn my Confederate cavalry commanders better.
 
I need to learn my Confederate cavalry commanders better.
Two of the best resources on the subject are Eric’s books, “Plenty of Blame To Go Around” and “One Continouse Fight” at least concerning the ANV’s calvarly. There all there, not to mention a number of Union calvarly officers that made a huge difference for the Union cause.
 
I will post a few quotes from other reviews of this book. Michael Thomas Smith writing in the Journal of Southern History Aug. 2009:

Andrew's book is somewhat old-fashioned in its massive amount of bio graphical detail and unabashedly favorable interpretation of its subject, but it does appropriately draw on a wide range of recent scholarship, particularly relating to "the intertwining concepts of honor, paternalism, and chivalry," which he argues are fundamental to understanding Hampton's beliefs and behaviors (p. 3). This focus is useful and convincing to a point, though argu ing that "race was rarely [the] primary concern" of a figure so heavily com mitted to the Confederacy and the Redeemer movement might be overstating the case somewhat (p. xv). But, in fact, Andrew is generally judicious in inter pretation, if perhaps a bit strident in maintaining this position at times. He takes issue, for instance, with Stephen Kantrowitz's argument that Tillman's violently antiblack policy and Hampton's conciliatory paternalism were both essential to restoring **** to South Carolina and the South gener ally. Andrew is certainly right that the two men's racial attitudes were distinct and should not be conflated, but the basic point that both policies in practice worked toward the renewed subjugation of African Americans seems like the important one.
 
More from the review in the Journal of Southern History:

Nevertheless, Andrew provides an insightful analysis of Hampton's already anachronistic (if not outright mythical) paternalistic attitudes and their increas ingly overt and disdainful rejection by his fellow white Democrats in the post bellum South. As the Redeemers acted on their determination to accomplish the political disenfranchisement and social and economic subordination of African Americans through bloody violence, Hampton and his views became marginalized. By the time of the general's death in 1902, however, the dis credited, discarded political leader had been elevated to a lofty status in South Carolina (and nationally) as a supposed paragon of the martial, chivalric val ues of the Old South and the Lost Cause. The mythical paternalistic South that Hampton both loved and came to personify no longer existed, of course, and probably never really did. In this sense, studying the career of his bitter political enemy Ben Tillman would surely tell us more about the ugly practical social realities and political workings of the postbellum South. It is unsurpris ing, though, that modern historians and readers, as well as his contemporaries, would prefer to think about the more comfortable and admirable myth represented so well by Wade Hampton III.
 
Next up will be some excerpts from another review:

Reviewed Work(s): Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer by Rod Andrew, Review by: Fritz P. Hamer Source: The South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 110, No. 3/4 (JULY-OCTOBER 2009), pp. 188-191 Published by: South Carolina Historical Society

Andrew argues that Hampton and many other former Confederates believed that such rights were due to them based on their social position and their attitude of racial superiority. Yet it seems implausible that having just lost a war, these beliefs were still truly held by the vanquished, even from the perspective of the 1860s. But Andrew presses on with his argument. Even though Hampton expressed his vehement objections to the policies of Con gress that, among other provisos, excluded ex-Confederates from political office, the author argues that he somehow could not have had a role in the violence that engulfed the state leading up to the 1868 elections. When Hampton made an appeal to end the violence in the last weeks of the campaign, it seemed pitifully late. By the time the appeal was published, several black politicians had already been murdered. Then, as Klan violence continued after the elections, Andrew's Hampton appears aloof but innocent once again. Neither does Andrew find Hampton's profession of innocence suspect in view of his appeal to the public to contribute funds to defend Klansmen indicted for violence and murder after martial law was imposed in 1871.
 
More from the South Carolina Historical magazine:

The culmination of Hampton's political career came in the 1876 guberna torial campaign. Hailed by whites as the state's redeemer who would end Radical Republican rule, Andrew argues that Hampton's platform of equality and justice for all, regardless of color, was genuine. But his white supporters certainly did not agree. And even when Hampton extended a hand of reconciliation to blacks during the campaign, the candidate told white audiences that he stood for their superior role in politics and society. To make sure of this supreme position, Hampton's former subordinates in the war Martin Gary and Matthew C. Butler advocated a ruthless policy of intimida tion and, if necessary, murder for serious opponents (and even not so serious ones). Such rabid Hampton supporters formed Democratic rifle clubs to make certain the election's outcome. In spite of it all, Andrew insists that Hampton's publicly expressed opposition to such tactics was earnest.
 
Back
Top