Meriwether Monument
North Augusta, Aiken County, South Carolina
Marker Inscription
In life he exemplified the highest ideal of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By his death he assured to the children of his beloved land the supremacy of that ideal.
The Story
Erected by the state of South Carolina in 1916, this monument commemorates Thomas McKie Meriwether, the only white man killed in the Hamburg Massacre of July 8, 1876. In that episode, white paramilitary 'Red Shirts' besieged and attacked a Black state militia company in the Reconstruction-era town of Hamburg, killing several Black men, some of them after they had surrendered. The bloodshed was part of the broader campaign of armed intimidation that helped topple Reconstruction and restore white Democratic 'Redeemer' rule in South Carolina. Cast in the language of Anglo-Saxon supremacy, the monument stands today as a stark artifact of the Lost Cause movement that shaped how this history was publicly told.
Why it matters
The site marks one of the pivotal acts of racial terror that dismantled Black political power at the end of Reconstruction, and as a monument that openly enshrines white supremacy it has become a focal point of the national reckoning over how public memory has honored that cause.
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Related people
- · Thomas McKie Meriwether
Related events
- · Hamburg Massacre (1876)
Themes & tags
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