Having achieved his agriculture college, Tillman was not content to sit idly by because what he really desired was power and political office. After winning the 1890 election and becoming governor, Tillman renewed the attacks on the Conservatives and those who had thwarted his agriculture college. He saved the coup de grâce for Senator Wade Hampton III, a South Carolina College graduate and Confederate General during the Civil War, who "invoked Confederate service and honor as a barrier to Tillmanism." Tillman directed the legislature to defeat Hampton's renomination for another term in December 1890.