genuinely religious, according to his brother. Were such characters the exception, they would baffle psychology. They were not rare, however, and the fact that they appeared in number shows why it was easy for this class idea to finally become a political one, until there had developed a local patriotism that burned far more fiercely than did the love of the entire country, at the North.
The chief exponent of that brand of patriotism was Robert Barnwell Rhett, editor of the Charleston Mercury, who, ten years before the war, was an ardent advocate of secession, and who saw in South Carolina's struggle a repetition of the story of the Greek republics. "Smaller states," he said, "have before us struggled successfully for their freedom against greater odds." Rhett's paper was the intellectual voice of the South. When Calhoun died in 1852, it was Rhett who took his place in the United States Senate; it was he who wrote South Carolina's appeal to the other states to secede;[1] when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederacy, it was on the arm of Rhett that he leaned when he entered the hall. The testimony of Rhodes is paid to Rhett, without mention of his name:
"Before the war," he states, "Charleston was one of the most interesting cities of the country. It was a small aristocratic community, with an air of refinement and distinction. The story of Athens proclaims that a large population is not necessary to exercise a powerful influence on the world; and, after the election of Lincoln in 1860, the 40,000 people of Charleston, or rather the few patricians who controlled its fate and that of South Carolina, attracted the attention of the whole country. The story of the secession movement of November and
- ↑ Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, iii, 110.
