Wade Hampston was one of the wealthiest men in the South before the Civil War. He served the Confederacy as a top cavalry commander. After the war he was the outstanding political representative of the planter class and he became governor of South Carolina in 1877.
In October 1868 Wade Hampton wrote a widely republished letter in which he accepted the outcome of the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the establishment of basic civil rights for African Americans. Hampton says in his letter that the war was fought over the issues of secession and slavery. This letter was written by Hampton in support of the Democratic political campaign in 1868.
Date: October 22, 1868
Location: New York, New York
Newspaper: New York Herald
When Hampston finally took the South Carolina governorship in 1867, he began the long process of reduction in the rights held by the state’s African Americans.
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Hampton says in his letter that the war was fought over the issues of “secession” and “slavery.”
SECESSION….. Which in Northern views For the UNION was also the issue… Confederates were fighting for their own Union for their own interests and whereas Northerners particularly Republicans formed a Confederation and were fighting to dominate the Union for their own interests. Slavery just determined the occasion for an excuse and a cause between the sections wherein one had established the Cornerstone of the Nation and the Other wanted dominance of the new addition.
Foolish drivel!
Gen. Hampton was stating facts. War was fought first over union (from the Yankee perspective of Lincoln) and the Southern States asserted their proscribed constitutional rights to remove themselves from that Union and were invaded by the United States. As the War processed after the Battle of Sharpsburg, Lincoln issued his Presidential edict, the Emancipation Proclamation, which liberated the slave property of the Southerners and thereby created a slave revolt and an illegal taking of property by encouraging the slaves to walk away from their owners. Therefore such unconstitutional action by the US President and the use of those “controbands” as soldiers created a second reason for the War. The returning of stolen property by the US government and the taking of that property certainly became a second cause belli
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