Background
RHETT, Robert Barnwell was born on December 24, 1800 in Beaufort, South Carolina, United States, United States. Son of James and Marianna (Gough) Smith.
congressman editor lawyer planter
RHETT, Robert Barnwell was born on December 24, 1800 in Beaufort, South Carolina, United States, United States. Son of James and Marianna (Gough) Smith.
Public school.
His formal education ended at the age of seventeen. In 1824, he was admitted to the bar and began a law practice in Beaufort. He married Elizabeth Washington Burnet in 1827 and, after her death, Catherine Dent in 1853.
Rhett developed a good law practice and also owned a plantation, but his major interest was politics. He served in the South Carolina legislature from 1826 to 1832, where he was a vigorous nullifier. He was also attorney general of South Carolina in 1832, and he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1837 and served until 1849.
In the early 1840s, he organized a radical secessionist movement in Barnwell County called the Bluffton Movement. He was a delegate to the Nashville convention in 1850 and the Southern Rights convention in 1852. Rhett also served in the U.S. Senate from 1850 to 1852.
He owned and edited the Charleston Mercury and used his paper to take an extreme position in favor of secession. At the South Carolina secession convention in 1860, he drafted the Secession Ordinance and called for the Montgomery convention. As a member of the provisional Confederate Congress, he chaired the committee for drafting the permanent Confederate Constitution, opposed the closing of the African slave trade, and supported a six-year presidential term.
He was considered a possibility for president, but his extreme secessionism destroyed his chances. His contributions to the permanent Constitution were major, and he also served on the Foreign Affairs and Financial Independence Committees. He was defeated in his bid for a seat in the first Confederate House because of his known criticism of the Davis administration.
As editor of the Charleston Mercury throughout the war, he became a vigorous opponent of the Davis administration. When the war ended, he temporarily retired to private life. He was a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1868.
Rhett moved to St. James Parish, Louisiana.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Spouse Elizabeth Washington Burnet.