Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/153

 Presenting Portrait of Gen. Wade Hampton. 141

white people to the manner born determined to strike for their lib- erties, their homes and firesides, their lares and penates, come weal or deeper woe.

As with one voice they selected a leader, nominated him for Gov- ernor and placed the fate of South Carolina in his hands. He was virtually clothed with dictatorial power; his will was the law of his people and party. We had made South Carolina proud of him on the battlefields of Virginia, and doubly proud of him as the successor of the chivalric, farfamed and lamented Stuart, as commander of the cavalry corps of the glorified Army of Northern Virginia, and they were willing to trust their ail to him. In the untried position to which he had been called he displayed the same supreme courage and superb judgment he had displayed in directing his divisions, where cannons roared and the missiles of death flew thick as hail.

From county to county, city to city, town to town, and hamlet to hamlet, he went arousing the men of South Carolina, with Caucasian blood in their veins, to rise in the majesty of their man- hood and strike for all that was sacred and dear strike with all their might and power.

His commanding personality, his fearless bearing, his bold and ringing utterances, his flushed cheek and flashing eye stirred the brave, gave courage to the timid and life to the laggard, and when his canvass ended every true white man was imbued with his spirit, animated and inspired, and every carpet-bagger stood trembling like an aspen leaf, for, like Belshazzar of old, he could read the hand-writing upon the wall he knew his days were few, and that before the setting of many suns he would have to pack his grip and seek a more congenial clime. Never was superior civic lead- ership shown; never was a civic leader more absolutely obeyed and followed.

WITHOUT A PEER.

Mr. Commander and Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen, this man had no predecessor in South Carolina, and he will have no succes- sor. He wrought more good for his State than any son before him, and more than any son that has come after him, or will come in future ages.

His service in the Senate of the United States extended from 1879 to 1891, two terms or twelve years. From the day he took his seat until his retirement he was a conspicuous figure in that august body. Every visitor to the gallery, if a stranger, wanted to have him