Wade Hampton

Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818 – April 11, 1902) was a Confederate States of America military officer during the American Civil War and politician from South Carolina. He came from a wealthy planter family, and shortly before the war he was one of the largest slaveholders in the Southeast as well as a state legislator. During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate cavalry, where he reached the rank of lieutenant general.
At the end of Reconstruction, with the withdrawal of federal troops from the state, Hampton was leader of the Redeemers who restored white rule. His campaign for governor was marked by extensive violence by the Red Shirts, a paramilitary group that served the Democratic Party by disrupting elections and suppressing black and Republican voting in the state. He was elected Governor, serving 1876 to 1879. After that, he served two terms as U.S. Senator, from 1879 to 1891.
During the Overland Campaign of 1864, Hampton's cavalry fought at Todd's Tavern during The Wilderness, and patrolled the left flank of the Confederate position at Spotsylvania Court House, during which time J.E.B. Stuart was killed at the Yellow Tavern. Hampton escorted Lee's withdrawal to Richmond, fighting at North Anna and Haw's Shop before being detached from Lee's army to deal with Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry destroying railroad in central Virginia. He distinguished himself further with a successful strategic victory at the bloody Battle of Trevilian Station, the war's largest all cavalry battle. After his return to Richmond, he fought at Nance's Shop, and was given command of the Cavalry Corps on August 11, 1864. For the rest of the war, Hampton lost no cavalry battles. 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.
In October 1864, near Petersburg, Virginia, Hampton sent his son, T. Preston Hampton, a lieutenant serving as one of his aides, to deliver a message. Shortly afterward, Hampton and his other son, Wade IV, rode in the same direction. Before traveling 200 yards, they came across Preston lying on the ground; he was fatally wounded and soon died. As young Wade dismounted, he was also shot but survived.[8]
While Lee's army was bottled up in the Siege of Petersburg, in January 1865, Hampton returned to South Carolina to recruit soldiers. He was promoted to lieutenant general on February 14, 1865, but eventually surrendered to the Union along with General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina. Hampton was reluctant to surrender, and nearly got into a personal fight with Union Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick (often called "Kill-Cavalry") at the Bennett Farm.
Together with Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early, Hampton became a proponent of the Lost Cause movement. He worked to explain the Confederacy's loss of the war and deeply regretted the loss of the secure life he had before the war. He believed the official line that slavery as practiced in the American South was benign and that blacks were racially inferior to whites. He strongly resented the use of black troops as part of the Federal government's occupying force in South Carolina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Hampton_III