Preceded by Richard Winn Grandchildren Wade Hampton III Succeeded by John Rutledge, Jr. Children Wade Hampton II | Preceded by John Hunter Role Former U.S. Congressman Succeeded by O'Brien Smith Name Wade I | |
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Profession Planter, soldier, politician Died February 4, 1835, Columbia, South Carolina, United States Party Democratic-Republican Party Great grandchildren Thomas Preston, Mary Singleton Hampton Similar People Wade Hampton II, Charles de Salaberry, Joe Wilson, Trey Gowdy | ||
Political party Democratic-Republican | ||
Wade hampton iii
Wade Hampton (1752 – February 4, 1835) was a South Carolina soldier, politician, two-term U.S. Congressman, and may have been the wealthiest planter and one of the largest slave holders in the U.S. at the time of his demise. He was the scion of the politically important Hampton family, which was influential in state politics almost into the 20th century. His second great-grandfather Thomas Hampton (1623–1690) was born in England and settled in the Virginia Colony.
Hampton served in the American Revolutionary War as a lieutenant colonel in a South Carolina volunteer cavalry regiment. He was a Democratic-Republican member of Congress for South Carolina from 1795 to 1797 and from 1803 to 1805, and a presidential elector in 1801.
He was appointed to the US Army as Colonel of Regiment of Light Dragoons in October 1808, and was promoted to Brigadier General in February 1809, appointed as the top military officer in the Territory of Orleans.
He used the U.S. military presence in New Orleans to suppress the 1811 German Coast Uprising, a slave revolt which he believed was a Spanish plot. In the same year, he purchased The Houmas, a sugar plantation in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. This may have been a gift for his daughter and son-in-law, as the son-in-law was managing the plantation by 1825.
During the War of 1812, Hampton commanded the American forces in the Battle of the Chateauguay in 1813, leading thousands of U.S. soldiers to defeat at the hands of a little over a thousand colonial Canadian militia and 180 Mohawk warriors, then getting his army lost in the woods. On April 6, 1814, he resigned his commission and returned to South Carolina.
Thereafter, he acquired a large fortune through land speculation. At his death in the 1830s, it was said that he was the wealthiest planter in the U.S. and possessed some 3,000 slaves amongst his holdings. Hampton had a mansion, now known as the Hampton-Preston House, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in Columbia, South Carolina.
His son Wade Hampton II and grandson Wade Hampton III also became prominent in South Carolina social and political circles. The younger man served as the state's first Democratic Party governor after the American Civil War and then was elected to the United States Senate. During the war, he had a distinguished career as a general in the Confederate army.
Wade Hampton I is interred in the churchyard at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina's capital city.