Wade Hampton I

Wade Hampton I
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from South Carolina's 4th district
In office
March 4, 1803  March 4, 1805
Preceded by Richard Winn
Succeeded by O'Brien Smith
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from South Carolina's 2nd district
In office
March 4, 1795  March 3, 1797
Preceded by John Hunter
Succeeded by John Rutledge, Jr.
Personal details
Born 1752
Died February 4, 1835
Political party Democratic-Republican
Profession planter, soldier, politician
Military service
Allegiance  United States of America
Service/branch Continental Army
 United States Army
Years of service 1777 - 1781; 1808 - 1814
Rank Major general
Battles/wars American Revolutionary War
1811 German Coast Uprising
War of 1812

Wade Hampton (1752 – February 4, 1835) was a South Carolina soldier, politician, two-term U.S. Congressman, and wealthy planter. 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.[1]

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 owned more than 3,000 slaves. 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.

Hampton County, South Carolina, is named for the former Congressman.

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.

Notes

  1. Heitman p. 78

References

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by
John Hunter
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from South Carolina's 2nd congressional district

1795-1797
Succeeded by
John Rutledge, Jr.
Preceded by
Richard Winn
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from South Carolina's 4th congressional district

1803-1805
Succeeded by
O'Brien Smith
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