A Book Review: Wade Hampton, III

For years and years, there was only one full-length biography of Wade Hampton, written in the 1940’s by Manly Wade Wellman titled Giant in Gray: A Biography of Wade Hampton of South Carolina. Although it was an early biography and clearly biased toward the Southern perspective, it nevertheless gave full coverage to both Hampton’s military career during the Civil War as well as his long-running post-war political career. This book’s weaknesses are its obvious lack of objectivity, and its failure to take advantage of unpublished manuscript material.

The last few years have seen a sudden explosion of new biographies of Hampton. The first one, by Ed Longacre, is titled Gentleman and Soldier: A Biography of Wade Hampton, III. Longacre’s biography, published in 2003, provides the best coverage of Hampton’s military service of any of the books. It’s well written and well-researched (I gave Ed some material for the project). Its coverage of Hampton’s political career is not as strong, which is this book’s weakness. The second one, by Walter Brian Cisco, titled Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman, was published in 2004. Like Wellman, Cisco is a Southerner, and his book is a bit controversial. It has some focus on Hampton’s military career, but its primary focus is Hampton’s political career, examined in exhaustive detail. Unfortunately, Cisco is a Southern apologist, and his book’s most significant flaw is that it fails to recognize any of Hampton’s human foibles (note: I reviewed the manuscript when the publisher was deciding whether to accept it for publication and blurbed it on the dust jacket, something that I now regret a bit, as I have since learned that there are inaccuracies in it). In short, if you combined the strengths of Longacre’s book and the strengths of Cisco’s book, you would have the perfect biography of Hampton.

Robert K. Ackerman, a retired history professor, is the latest to pitch into the fray. His new biography of Hampton, published by Hampton’s alma mater, the University of South Carolina Press, earlier this year, is titled simply Wade Hampton, III. This book has the advantage of having been written by a trained, seasoned academic historian, and it reads well. The problem with Ackerman’s book is that its coverage of Hampton’s military career is superficial at best. In a 340 page book, only about 30 pages are devoted to Hampton’s Civil War career, and the rest to his political career. The coverage of the Battle of Trevilian Station, Hampton’s finest moment in command of the Army of Northern Virginia’s Cavalry Corps, gets three sentences. There is not a single map to be found anywhere in the discussion of Hampton’s Civil War service, and no detail to speak of, either. Although it does address the impact of the combat deaths of Hampton’s son and brother on the general, it doesn’t give any detail upon which to evaluate the impact Hampton had on the Confederacy; arguably, Hampton’s victory at Trevilian Station bought the Confederacy another eight months of life, but there is no mention of this to be found.

The good news is that this book does provide the most fair and balanced coverage of Hampton’s post-war political career yet written. As just one example, it provides the best discussion of the falling out between Hampton and one of his erstwhile followers, Martin W. Gary, of the four published books. It also gives some of the best coverage and discussion of the relationship between Wade Hampton and his true protege, Matthew C. Butler. For that, it is worthwhile. However, I find it interesting that, unlike the other three published biographies of Hampton, the choice of cover art for the book is not Hampton as soldier, but rather a painting of Hampton in very old age. That probably says more about this book than anything else.

Thus, the door remains wide open for the definitive biography of Wade Hampton. Fortunately, there is one yet to be published in this barrage of Hamptonmania. Prof. Rod Andrew, Jr. of Clemson University has his book, Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer, due out next. Rod’s book will be published by the University of North Carolina Press next April. I gave Rod a fair amount of material for use in his book and also spent some time discussing things with him while he was writing it. Knowing the biography series published by the University of North Carolina’s Press, I am very hopeful that Rod’s book–the last of the four–will end up being the most comprehensive of all and will give both aspects of Hampton’s life the coverage that they deserve.