In the middle of Calhoun Park in North Augusta, just as Carolina Avenue and Georgia Avenue split, is an obelisk. At the base of its most southerly face it reads “MERIWETHER.” At waist height each of the four faces of the monument engravings explain that the monument, dedicated in 1916, is dedicated to Thomas Meriwether, a “young hero of the Hamburg Riot.”

The Meriwether Monument sits in Calhoun Park in North Augusta, between Georgia and Carolina Avenues, just up the hill from downtown. The monument is a white stone obelisk about twenty feet tall. It was erected in 1916 with support from the state government. Its base bears inscriptions dedicating the monument to Thomas McKie Meriwether the “young hero of the Hamburg Riot.”

            The Hamburg Riot, more accurately known as the Hamburg Massacre, was but one in a series of episodes in a campaign of election related violence across South Carolina in 1876 lead by Benjamin Tillman in service of electing Wade Hampton as Governor of S.C. In Hamburg, then a majority black town on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, members of a white supremacist, fascist organization known as Red Shirts laid siege to a company of National Guardsmen, eventually capturing, and brutally murdering several guardsmen in cold blood.

            At least six Black men were killed. Meriwether, a participant in the Red Shirt mob, was the only white casualty. The monument is effusive in its praise for Meriwether’s martyrdom. Meriwether quite literally died in defense of white supremacy, and the monument does not belie this: “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 idea.”

The monument’s engravings appear below:

Dec. 4, 1852- July 8, 1876 In Memory of Thomas McKie Meriwether, who on 8th, of July 1876, gave his life that the civilization builded by his fathers might be preserved for their childrens children unimpaired

MERIWETHER

Southern face of Meriwether Monument.

In his 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. “As his flame of life was quenched, it lit the blaze of victory.”

Eastern face of Meriwether Monument

In youths glad morning the unfinished years of manhood stretching befor him, with clear knowledge and courageous willingness, he accepted death and found forever the greatful remembrance of all who know high and generous service in the maintaining of those civic and social institutions which the men and women of his race had struggled through the centuries to establish in South Carolina. What more can a man do than to lay down his life.

Northern face of Meriwether monument

This memorial is erected to the young hero of the hamburg riot, by the state, under an act of the general assembly, with the aid of admiring friends.

Western face of Meriwether monument.