Hurrah for Hampton! Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction [Hardcover]

Edmund L Drago (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557285411
• ISBN-13: 978-1557285416
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #526,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good look at hidden history, August 18, 2005

By 

Andre M. "brnn64" (Mt. Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hurrah for Hampton! Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Hardcover)

Edmund Lee Drago does a good job in his use of primary sources to create what is essentiually a docmuentary history of the Black Red Shirts.

To novices-The "Red Shirts" of South Carolina formed after the KKK was outlawed as the terrorist schock troops desgined to get the (mostly Black) Republicans out of power during the Reconstruction era. Sadly, it worked. Dr. Drago disscusses the littel-known fact that a number of these men were actually Black! He explains why this has not been publicized over the years (and not JUST for the obvious reasons) and provides us with transcripts of trial testimonies of the political violence of Reconstruction-era South Carolina as well as WPA Slave Narrative interviews with ex-slaves in the 1930s who rode with the Red Shirts in their youth. Since the latter two come from the own words of the participants, it adds to the value as I am personally quite fond of books that use documentary histories and books of obscure history.

As is the case of Larry Koger's "Black Slaveowners" and a book I once read (whose title I forget) about men of remote Jewish ancestry who served as Nazis, this goes to show that history does not always follow nice neat lines of logic.