President Wade Hampton III[]
Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818 – April 11, 1902) came from a wealthy planter family and shortly before
President Wade Hampton III in 1895
the war was one of the largest slaveholders in the Southeast. He was elected to the state legislature. During the American Civil War, he served as a Confederate cavalry leader, reaching the rank of lieutenant general. In the postwar years, he returned to serve as a Democratic Party politician from South Carolina, before joining the New Federalist Party in 1880. Hampton was also elected as the 77th Governor of South Carolina, serving 1876-1879, and later was elected Vice President under Pierre G.T. Beauregard from 1886-1892. Despite being a New Federalist, Hampton held staunchly conservative ideas on slavery and was fairly moderate on trade. Hampton's greatest weakness within his party was the fact that he refused to support a bill aimed at ending slavery in South Carolina as Governor. Due to his Democratic appeal, plus an endorsement from former President Pierre Beauregard, won Hampton the election.
As President[]
President Hampton's moderate views allowed him to work with Congress much better then his predecessor, getting a significant amount of bills passed during his administration, including one officially granting free blacks citizenship, although they still couldn't vote. Hampton also normalized the use of executive orders in the Confederate States, his most notable being one that granted reparations to former slaveholders who had lost profits after the institution was banned in Texas and Oklahoma. Despite being an effective President he often fought with members of his own party. On August, 3 1895, Hampton reluctantly signed a significant bill banning slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line. Hampton was also a firm believer in Manifest Destiny, launching an unsuccessful military program aimed at increasing confederate influence in Mexican territory.