Wade Hampton III

“ Wade Hampton's division on Lake Champlain, receiving promotion to captain of engineers, 13 Oct., 1813, and in 1814 under Gen. Moses Porter's forces in defence of Norfolk, Va., being brevetted major, 20 Feb., 1815, for distinguished services. In 1815 he was sent to Europe to examine military works and schools, and study the operations of the allied armies before Paris, but he was recalled in 1817 to the superintendency of the academy at West Point, which he assumed on 28 July of that year, and held till his resignation, 1 July, 1833. ”

“ The import of this bold declaration received additional light from the history of its genesis and adoption. Its immediate paternity belonged to Wade Hampton of South Carolina. In a speech at Charleston, within two weeks from the adjournment of the Convention, General Hampton recounted the circumstances which attended its insertion in the platform, and proudly claimed it as his own plank. He himself was a member of the Committee on Resolutions, and took an active part in its deliberations. All the members, he said, agreed that the control of suffrage belonged to the States ”

“ John O'Keefe, a British dramatic author, died at Southampton, England, aged 68.
1835. Wade Hampton died at Columbia, S. C., aged 81. He distinguished himself in the war of the revolution under Sumpter and Marion; and during the last war commanded a brigade on the northern frontier. He was reputed the most extensive planter in the United States; one of the wealthiest men in the whole southern country; and perhaps no other man in this country ever amassed so large a fortune by agriculture. ”

“ Joseph Taylor, U. S. N. After the Revolutionary War, David Hamilton, on his return to Charleston, became the partner in business of his brother-in-law, Christopher Fitz Simons, who, also an Irishman of wealth and culture, is the ancestor of the “Sir Rupert” of South Carolina, Wade Hampton, the third, the brave cavalry leader of the Southern army in Virginia. They carried on an extensive shipping, shipbuilding and wharfage business, Hamilton owning the ships and Fitz Simons the wharves. David Hamilton owned one hundred black men, slaves, with their families. ”

“ One brigade of our army was in the city and properly posted. Citizens and soldiers were on the streets, and good order prevailed. General Wade Hampton, who commanded the rebel rear guard of cavalry, had, in anticipation of the capture of Columbia, ordered that all cotton, public and private, should be moved into the streets and fired. Bales were piled everywhere, the rope and bagging cut, and tufts of cotton were blown about in the wind, lodged in the trees and against houses, so as to resemble a snow storm. ”

“ A mile or so distant was the place he called home, with a jeer in his heart at the word. He had no affection for it, or for the man who lived there; none received, none given. If he went on, he anticipated biting words, harsh words, a flame of anger rising in him against the dour and godly man who lived by the letter of the Scriptures and knew not the spirit which lay behind them.
Of his own will, Hampton would have avoided all this. He would have gone on to Beverly, where he knew that, welcome or not, certain work awaited him. Yet duty impelled him home. ”

“ I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.
After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Vermont. ”

“ When the tumult had quieted a little, and Marie had partially recovered, Hugh managed to escape from the crush of excited people, and drove rapidly homeward.
The crowd, now thoroughly good-natured, drifted back into the streets of Meade, and then celebrated, in various ways, the noted event. Every man in the vast throng inquired of his neighbor, over and over, where he supposed Major Hampton was. ”

“ Hampton, slender yet firmly knit, his movements quick like those of a watchful tiger, his shoulders set square, his body held erect as though trained to the profession of arms, his gray eyes marking every movement about him with a suspicion born of continual exposure to peril, his features finely chiselled, with threads of gray hair beginning to show conspicuously about the temples. One would glance twice at him anywhere, for in chin, mouth, and eyes were plainly pictured the signs of strength, evidences that he had fought stern battles, and was no craven. ”

“ We open on July first in Carnegie Hall and I'm bringing back a lot of veterans from my band."
He grew up in Chicago, but because of the gang fights in his neighborhood, Lionel's grandmother sent him to a Catholic school in Wisconsin. There a nun taught him to play the drums. The youngster learned fast; when he was 15, he made up his mind to head for the West Coast on his own, to pursue a jazz career. At the train station, he promised his grandmother that he would say his prayers and read the Bible every day.
Some 15 years later, Hampton was invited to join the Benny Goodman band in New York. ”

“ The trustees were in session on Wednesday, the 22d, on which day also was held the first meeting of the graduates of Hampton Institute. There were assembled in the beautiful “Whittier Chapel,” on the upper floor of Virginia Hall, a large representation of the 277 who had gone out, most of them as teachers of their race. Of that whole number, not a complaint has been made. They have become good and useful citizens, maintaining the high moral tone of Hampton, and evidencing that growth in character which is the best witness to the existence of a true life within. ”

“ He said that as the race problem is probably the hardest with which the world has to deal, and one of which we are the most profoundly ignorant, he would avoid the big and keep near the little. “One of the truest things about Hampton,” he said, “is that she is finding [12] out her own business, the real business of Hampton is to learn how a race can be disciplined into independence and how success is to be won. In this Hampton succeeds admirably.”
Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was then introduced and received a splendid ovation. ”

“ Suddenly Hampton, who was on the right of the rocky crown, was startled by a yell from Eli.
“Look out, Dick—feller creepin' up on you! By that ocotillo bush——”
Hampton twisted about, peered forth at the clump of long, slender cactus spires, and presently caught a movement to one side of it. He fired. A Yaqui leaped into the air like a stricken deer, and fell motionless. Bullets stormed in—one of them raked across Hampton's head, sending the blood dripping into his eyes.
“Come on yere an' take Frenchy's place, Hampton!” yelled Pap Hoskins. “Move smart!” ”

“ He was little inclined to admit, even to himself, that he had been fairly hit, yet the truth remained that this girl was beginning to interest him oddly. He admired her sturdy independence, her audacity of speech, her unqualified frankness. Mr. Hampton was a thoroughgoing sport, and no quality was quite so apt to appeal to him as dead gameness. ”

“ A new look of reviving determination swept into Hampton's gloomy eyes—beyond doubt this must be his man.
"How many horses did he have?"
"Two."
"Did you overhear him say anything definite about his plans for the trip?"
"What, him? He never talks, that fellow. He can't do nothing but sputter if he tries. But I wrote out his orders, and they give him to the twenty-fifth to make the Big Horn. That's maybe something like fifty miles a day, and he's most likely to keep his horses fresh just as long as possible, so as to be good for the last spurt through the hostile country. ”

“ With this recognized as a fact, was he justified in endeavoring to win Naida Gillis for himself? That the girl would find continued happiness with such a man as Hampton he did not for a moment believe possible; that she had been deliberately deceived regarding his true character he felt no doubt. The fellow had impressed her by means of his picturesque personality, his cool, dominating manner, his veneer of refinement; he had presumed on her natural gratitude, her girlish susceptibility, her slight knowledge of the world, to worm his way into her confidence, perhaps even to inspire love. ”

“ Satan performed his part of the contract to the letter. On the first day of every month the boots, which were hung on the crane in the fireplace the night before, were found in the morning stuffed full of guineas. It is true that Hampton had ransacked the village for the largest pair to be found, and had finally secured a brace of trooper’s boots, which came up to the wearer’s thigh; but the contract merely expressed boots, and the devil does not stand upon trifles.
Hampton rolled in wealth. Everything prospered. ”

“ He knelt down beside Murphy, unbuckled the leather despatch-bag, and rebuckled it across his own shoulder. Then he set to work to revive the prostrate man. The eyes, when opened, stared up at him, wild and glaring; the ugly face bore the expression of abject fear. The man was no longer violent; he had become a child, frightened at the dark. His ceaseless babbling, his incessant cries of terror, only rendered more precarious any attempt at pressing forward through a region overrun with hostiles. But Hampton had resolved. ”

“ The inhabitants of East Hampton are so much in love with their healthy home, which dates from 1648, that on its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, celebrated in 1898, the announcement was made that they "like East Hampton in a thick fog better than any other place in full sunshine." Eastward from Jamaica, in the western centre of Long Island, are Creedmoor, the noted rifle range, Hempstead, where the New York troops were mobilized in 1898 for the Spanish War, and Garden City, the model suburban town laid out by Alexander T. Stewart, containing a handsome Episcopal Cathedral. ”

“ Murphy was riding north upon a mission as desperate as ever man was called upon to perform. The chance of his coming forth alive from that Indian-haunted land was, as the operator truthfully said, barely one out of a hundred. Hampton thought of this. He durst not venture all he was so earnestly striving after—love, reputation, honor—to the chance of a stray Sioux bullet. No! and he remembered Naida again, her dark, pleading eyes searching his face. ”

“ He knew he could make his own way in the world. He was unusually robust, because he had always taken good care of himself. With health, 34with an education, and with an overwhelming desire to help his people, he left Hampton and started his life in the outside world.
Washington left Hampton in exactly the same financial condition as when he entered. He had a diploma in his pocket but no money. However, he was not ashamed of work, if it was honorable, and he was not afraid of any amount of it. Along with some other Hampton boys, he was offered a job in a summer hotel in Connecticut. ”

“ Lured by the prospect of an assured and swift California passage under experienced auspices, they had trusted themselves to Dias—and what would be the end of this affair?
“Damnation, damnation!” cried Hampton, as the prospect burned into him, torturing him with the anguish of his own futility. “Those whom he can't rob and strip along the isthmus, he'll pack into his schooners at Panama and rob on the way north—they'll never see California at all! He'll land them somewhere in Mexico, penniless and broken—he's not a man but a devil! ”

“ Thirty-one years after this fight, Hampton then being United States Railway Commissioner, and in [Pg 47] Denver, Colorado, a stranger called upon him and explained that he was the David Day, the spy captured in the affair, dressed in Confederate uniform. Hampton congratulated him and said he was "glad the hanging did not come off." "So am I," replied the other, laughing. ”

“ All men do.”
“I told ye I had interests down below. I know a number of men there—not good or godly men, mark you! If you and I go together and seek this man Winslow or Dias, if we combine against him, it's fight fire with fire. Are ye willing to join with these other friends o' mine, let me give you letters to them? There's little law down in Mexico, you understand. In a year you can make your fortune, gain your revenge, and all's clear.”
Hampton, astonished as he was, did not miss the dark hint. ”

“ George Murray, D.D., Bishop of Rochester, by whom he has issue living one son, the Hon. Herbert Perrott Murray Pakington, born in 1848; thirdly, in 1851, Augusta, daughter of Thomas Champion de Crespigny, Esq., and widow of Colonel Davis, M.P., of Elmley Park, Worcestershire, by whom he has no issue.
Lord Hampton is by no means entirely, or even mainly, indebted for renown to the high positions he has occupied, although they are among the very highest. There have been, of late years, few projects designed and calculated to benefit mankind to which he has not been, in some way, a contributor ”

“ Dick Hampton was taken back by this meeting, back across a year's time to that terrible winter's voyage from Bristol to Rio—an ice-sheeted ship, hammering through gales on gales with storm jib and to'gallant close-reefed barely keeping her but from under the roaring seas, and green water rolling waist-high across the decks. There men suffered or died, worked, sang, kept the ship going, saved each other, laughed or whimpered. Those tremendous arms of Job Warlock had saved Dick Hampton more than once, and more than once had Hampton's wide shoulders and lightning agility repaid the debt. ”