Rhett, Robert Barnwell (1800–1876)

US representative, senator, and political idealogue. He served in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, South Carolina) 1837–49 and in the US Senate 1850–52 and opposed all attempts at compromise over the issues of slaves (of which he owned many) and states' rights. He was a central delegate at the South Carolina secession convention of 1860 and wrote an ‘Address to the Slaveholding States’ to encourage secession.

He was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. He served in the state legislature 1827–32 and was the state's attorney general 1832–37. (It was in 1837 that he adopted the surname of an ancestor.) Inspired by the political rhetoric of the American Revolution, he became a ‘fire-eater’ secessionist and was briefly John C Calhoun's protégé. After he failed to become president of the Confederate States of America, he vocally opposed President Jefferson Davis and his conduct of the war. He also carried on his campaign through the columns of the Charleston Mercury, which he owned. He moved to Louisiana in 1867 and although he was a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1868, he never abandoned his belief in a ‘separate and free’ South.