Anne and Wade's son Wade Hampton III entered the Confederate Army, becoming a prominent Confederate cavalry general in the American Civil War. After restrictions against former Confederates were lifted, he entered politics. During the end of Reconstruction, he was elected as Governor of South Carolina in 1876 as white Democrats took back political control of the state through use of paramilitary groups, such as the Red Shirts. They publicly disrupted Republican meetings, intimidated and attacked black voters and suppressed their voting during this campaign, and again in the gubernatorial campaign of 1878. Historian George C. Rable said these groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."