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This is terrible. The writers’ representation of Wade Hampton and that monument is so backward it hurts. It is factually inaccurate and he should know better. @postandcourier postandcourier.com/opinion/commen…
At the dedication of the Hampton monument Samuel Mitchell spoke. Not surprisingly given the audience & the celebratory nature of the monument, Mitchell focused not on wartime defeat but on Hampton’s postwar career as the leader of the South Carolina Red Shirts and Rifle Clubs.
Indeed he celebrated how “The supremacy of Hampton’s character was shown in his leadership of his people in 1876 when he redeemed the State from the rule of radicals and scallywags.” This was a reference to disenfranchising African Americans.
This was overtly racial to everyone in the audience. The red shirts and rifle clubs were white supremacist terrorist groups committed to keeping African Americans from voting.
These militants drove African Americans from the polls, threatened them with violence, disarmed black militias created for self-defense, and murdered freed people across the state.
Exactly how many African Americans were killed in election related violence in 1876 remains unknown but over thirty were murdered in one incident alone.
The Red Shirts also committed widespread voter fraud and ballot box stuffing. In one county 2000 more votes were cast than there were voters in the county. Hampton won his election on fraud and terror. That is what was being celebrated with that monument.
Mitchell celebrating Hampton’s success in 1876 said “He showed himself as great a pacificator as he had been a military leader, & like Lee, Hampton showed that he could lead his people in peace & in war.” He was ‘pacifying’ African American by ending democracy in SC.
His success was a success for White supremacy. While“Hampton called for racial harmony & fair play”superficially his supporters ensured his victory through violence, appeals to racism, & cheating. His racial harmony was premised on African Americans accepting a subservient place.
The audience would have understood this. I’ll let @BlainRoberts1 and @EthanKytle weigh in on how he portrays the Calhoun monument but I have some thoughts on the defenders of Fort Sumter monument.
In 1932 one speaker noted incorrectly that the war was not about slavery, and then defended slavery he claimed rather paradoxically that “the negroe slaves in the South enjoyed a far larger degree of economic freedom than their masters.”
This was part of a larger narrative of the past known as the Lost Cause. As I discuss in my forthcoming book “The False Cause” and others have made clear (@SassyProf for example) this narrative serviced to reinforce white supremacy and justify upholding Jim Crow.
The speaker at the 1932 monument also declared “the war of the sixties is not yet over.” The greater struggle continued to rage in his mind. A struggle to ensure white supremacy. I’ll add a few threads below for those wanting to know more.
Here is a thread about how the Lost Cause narrative is tied to white supremacy (using @unc’s monument as an example) twitter.com/i/moments/8999…
If you want more on this specific Charleston example see @EthanKytle and @BlainRoberts1 amazing book @DenmarkVeseysG1. For more on the Lost Cause check out the definitive work on the UDC @SassyProf’s Dixie’s Daughters (new edition just released!)
And if anyone thinks slavery was benevolent (or "not that bad") check out this old thread twitter.com/i/moments/9389…
Also he claims “South Carolinians […] idolized Calhoun as a national leader since the 1830s” ignoring the fact that the majority of South Carolinians from 1830-1900 were not white and did not idolize Calhoun. He means white South Carolinians.
Quite the opposite, as Ethan Kytle and Blain Roberts have shown in their book Denmark Vesey’s Garden, African Americans actively rejected this white washed memory of the past.
