Name/Title
Wade Hampton Inaugural Invitation (Loan)Entry/Object ID
L2014.3.3Description
Framed paper invitation. The frame is black and gold, while the invite is simple white with black lettering. The lettering informs the recipient of their invitation to an inaugural ball in honor of Governor Wade Hampton on Mary 3rd, 1877, at nine o'clock. The lower half of the invitation includes the names of the ball's managers and executive committee.
On Loan from the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.Context
An invitation to Wade Hampton III's (1818–1902) inaugural ball marked the return to power of white elites in South Carolina and the end of Reconstruction. Many of the ball's "senior managers" served as officers in the Confederate Army, including Martin W. Gary (1831–1881), who crafted the "Plan for the Conservative Campaign of 1876."
A member of South Carolina's antebellum planter class and a celebrated general of the Confederacy, Hampton was persuaded to run for South Carolina governor in 1876 in an effort to end Republican rule in the state. With the support of the Red Shirts—a white supremacist, paramilitary group that sought to intimidate and suppress Republican and Black voters—he won in what is widely perceived today as a fraudulent election. After several months of both parties claiming victory, the Compromise of 1877 led to Hampton III's installation in the spring.
Hampton III served as governor of South Carolina until February 1879 and later served two terms as a United States senator. Although widely celebrated throughout his life and for decades after his death as a political moderate who "redeemed" the state from "radical Republican rule," new scholarship has reframed Hampton's legacy as an enslaver of people who disenfranchised Black voters.Dimensions
Height
7-1/2 inWidth
5-3/16 in