[1] His campaign for governor was marked by extensive violence by the Red Shirts, a white supremacist paramilitary group that disrupted elections and suppressed Black voters in the state.

[2] The senior Hampton was an officer of dragoons in the War of 1812 and an aide to General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.

His was an active outdoor life; he rode horses and hunted, especially at his family's North Carolina summer retreat, High Hampton.

[6] Although he had no military experience, his years of managing plantations and serving in state government were considered signs of leadership.

Of officers without previous military experience, he was one of three to achieve the rank of lieutenant general, the others being Nathan Bedford Forrest and Richard Taylor.

Hampton's first combat came at the First Battle of Manassas, where he deployed his unit at a decisive moment, reinforcing a Confederate line that was retreating from Buck Hill, giving the brigade of Thomas J. Jackson the time to reach the field and make a defensive stand.

Hampton's brigade was left in Richmond to observe McClellan's withdrawal from the Peninsula, while the rest of the army participated in the Northern Virginia Campaign.

Thus, Hampton and his men missed the Second Battle of Manassas, re-joining the army shortly thereafter; but were present on the extreme left of the Confederate line at Sharpsburg.

His brigade was selected to participate in Stuart's Chambersburg Raid in October 1862, in which Hampton was briefly appointed "military governor" of the town following its surrender to the Confederate cavalry.

[7] During the winter of 1862, Hampton led a series of cavalry raids behind enemy lines and captured numerous prisoners and supplies without casualties, earning a commendation from General Lee.

Immediately thereafter, Hampton's brigade participated in Stuart's raid in Pennsylvania, swinging around the U.S. army and losing contact with Lee.

In September, Hampton conducted what became known as the "Beefsteak Raid", where his troopers captured over 2400 head of cattle and more than 300 prisoners behind enemy lines.

[9] While Lee's army was bottled up in the Siege of Petersburg, in January 1865, Hampton returned to South Carolina to recruit soldiers.

Hampton resented the U.S. government's use of United States Colored Troops in occupying forces in South Carolina.

[10] Hampton was offered the nomination for governor in 1865 but refused because he believed Northerners would naturally be suspicious of a former Confederate general seeking political office only months after the end of the Civil War.

He helped raise money for legal defense funds after the U.S. government began enforcing anti-Klan legislation of 1870 and 1871 to suppress the Ku Klux Klan's violence against freedmen and white Republicans.

In South Carolina and other states, groups of men calling themselves "rifle clubs" formed to act as vigilantes in the years after the war.

[11] Beginning in the mid-1870s, the white supremacist paramilitary group known as the Red Shirts developed chapters in most South Carolina counties.

"[12] They marched in parades during campaigns, openly disrupted Republican meetings, and worked to suppress black voting in the state by violence and intimidation.

[13] Hampton opposed the Radical Republicans' Reconstruction era policies in the Southern United States, especially African Americans being allowed to vote and participate in politics.

"[16] Indeed, Benjamin Tillman, the undisputed leader of the Red Shirts, would be instrumental in removing Hampton from his Senate seat in 1890.

In 1877 Hayes ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Southern United States, essentially leaving whites to reassert control over freedmen.

[18] In the wake of the June 17, 2015, massacre at the Charleston Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by white supremacist Dylann Roof, there was a push to remove Confederate symbols in the United States Capitol, including the Hampton statue.

[22] An artillery battery was named after Wade Hampton at Fort Crockett, built on Galveston Island, Texas.

During World War II, the SS Wade Hampton, a Liberty ship named in honor of the general, was sunk off the coast of Greenland by a German U-boat.

[23] In Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara's first husband, Charles Hamilton, serves in Hampton's regiment.

In the film version of Gone With The Wind, the letter sent to Scarlett advising her of Charles' death is shown to be signed by Hampton.

In the North and South trilogy by John Jakes, the character Charles Main serves with Hampton's cavalry throughout the Civil War.

Hampton appears in a small role in How Few Remain, the first novel in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series, an alternate history in which the South wins the American Civil War.

Hampton is mentioned in Chapter 14, Section V of Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, when Jean Louise's Uncle Jack is trying to get her to understand her father Atticus's actions regarding the citizens' committee after the Brown v Board of Education 1954 Supreme Court decision.