Hurrah for Hampton!
Subtitle: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina during Reconstruction
By: Edmund L. Drago.
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Fayetteville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 158
Subjects: Hampton, Wade, 1818-1902.; African Americans -- South Carolina -- Politics and government -- 19th century.; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) -- South Carolina.; South Carolina -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950.
Description: This Post-Revisionist Study examines the motives and the concerns of the ex-slaves in South Carolina who supported a movement that eventually led to white supremacy. Although most freedmen throughout the states of the former Confederacy were Republicans loyal to the party of the Federal government that had emancipated them, there were factions of African-American voters who aligned themselves with local white Democratic leaders.

One such group of black conservatives joined the "Red Shirts," white paramilitary clubs that attempted to restore antebellum values in electing former Confederate general Wade Hampton governor of South Carolina in 1876.

Drago's analysis recovers and explains this lost aspect of Southern black history. Drawing on primary sources that include testimonies of seven black Red Shirts before a Congressional investigation of the election and eleven slave narratives, he de-romanticizes the black experience by examining the relationship between black initiative and southern paternalism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-154) and index.