Robert Rhett

Robert Rhett

Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr. (born October 21, 1800 in Beaufort , South Carolina , † September 14, 1876 in St. James Parish near New Orleans , Louisiana ) was a politician of the United States and the Confederate States of America from South Carolina .

Career

Rhett's original name was Smith, but when he stepped into the public spotlight in 1838, he changed hands and took the name of his prominent colonial ancestor Colonel William Rhett . He studied law and was then elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1826 .

His great-uncle was MP Robert Barnwell and the father of MP Robert Woodward Barnwell . A cousin of the Barnwells was the wife of Alexander Garden , a soldier from the American Revolutionary War .

After serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives, Rhett was Attorney General of his state in 1832 , a member of the United States Congress from 1837 to 1849 , and US Senator from 1850 to 1852 . He was also highly Southern in his views, sharing leadership with John C. Calhoun in the Bluffton Movement for Independent Government in the 1842 Fee Schedule in 1844 . He was also one of the leaders of the Fire-Easters in the Nashville Convention of 1850, which failed in their endeavors after the secession of the entire south.

secessionist

When South Carolina passed an ordinance in 1852 that merely declared its state right to secession, Rhett resigned from his seat in the US Senate. He went on to voice his fiery secession views in the Charleston Mercury , which was revised by his son, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., a member of the later 1860 South Carolina Secession Convention . In the Montgomery Convention , which was originally convened to To shape a provisional government for the breakaway states, he was one of the most active delegates, as well as chairing the committee that wrote the constitution of the Confederate States of America .

Although he was considered worthy of the office of President of the Confederate States , he could only achieve a mandate in the lower house of the Provisional Confederate Congress . He also received no higher office in the Confederate government, so he returned to South Carolina, where he sharply criticized the policies of Confederate President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi .

After the end of the American Civil War , he settled in Louisiana. He was rumored to have been a delegate to the 1868 Democratic National Convention, but in truth it was his son, Robert Rhett, Jr., who had taken on his father's editorial responsibility.

Rhett died in St. James Parish near New Orleans. He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.

Honors

The Robert Barnwell Rhett House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973 .

Individual evidence

• Laura A. White. Robert Barnwell Rhett: Father of Secession (1931)
• A Fire-Eater Remembers: The Confederate Memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett edited by William C. Davis (2001)

Web links

• Robert Rhett in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Robert Rhett in the database of Find a Grave (English)