ed
'fifties, he watched from a distance, but with ever increasing interest,
that negative Southern force which he, in the midst of it, comprehended,
while it drifted under the wing of the extremists. As he did so, the old
arguments, the old ambitions, the old hopes revived. In 1851 his cry
to the South was to assert itself as a Separate nation--not for any one
reason, but for many reasons--and to lead its own life apart from
the North. It was an age of brilliant though ill-fated revolutionary
movements in Europe. Kossuth and the gallant Hungarian attempt at
independence had captivated the American imagination. Rhett dreamed of
seeing the South do what Hungary had failed to do. He thought of the
problem as a medieval knight would have thought, in terms of individual
prowess, with the modern factors, economics and all their sort, left
on one side. "Smaller nations (than South Carolina)," he said in 1851,
"have striven for freedom against greater odds."

In 1860 he had concluded that his third chance had come. He would try
once more to bring about secession. To split the Union, he would play
into the hands of the slave-barons. He would aim to combine with their
movement the negative Southern movement and use the resulting coalition
to crown with success his third attempt. Issuing from his seclusion, he
became at once the overshadowing figure in South Carolina. Around him
all the elements of revolution crystallized. He was sixty years old;
seasoned and uncompromising in the pursuit of his one ideal, the
independence of the South. His arguments were the same which he had used
in 1844, in 1851: the North would impoverish the South; it threatens
to impose a crushing tribute in the shape of protection; it seeks to
destroy slavery; it aims to bring about economic collapse; in the wreck
thus produced, everything that is beautiful, charming, distinctive in
Southern life will be lost; let us fight! With such a leader, the forces
of discontent were quickly, effectively, organized. Even before the
election of Lincoln, the revolutionary leaders in South Carolina were
corresponding with men of like mind in other Southern States, especially
Alabama, where was another leader, Yancey, only second in intensity to
Rhett.

The word from these Alabama revolutionists to South Carolina was to
dare all, to risk seceding alone, confident that the other States of
the South would follow. Rhett and his new associates took this perilous
advice. The