ernment had arrayed itself against the rights of the States had
definitely taken shape, when this dread had been reenforced by the alarm
over the suspension of habeas corpus, the great pioneer of the secession
movement went to his grave, despairing of the country he had failed to
lead. His death occurred in the same month as the Battle of Gettysburg,
at the very time when the Confederacy was dividing against itself.

The withdrawal of Rhett from active life was an incident of the
congressional elections. He had consented to stand for Congress in the
Third District of South Carolina but was defeated. The full explanation
of the vote is still to be made plain; it seems clear, however, that
South Carolina at this time knew its own mind quite positively. Five
of the six representatives returned to the Second Congress, including
Rhett's opponent, Lewis M. Ayer, had sat in the First Congress. The
subsequent history of the South Carolina delegation and of the State
Government shows that by 1863 South Carolina had become, broadly
speaking, on almost all issues an anti-Davis State. And yet the largest
personality and probably the ablest mind in the State was rejected as
a candidate for Congress. No character in American history is a finer
challenge to the biographer than this powerful figure of Rhett, who in
1861 at the supreme crisis of his life seemed the master of his world
and yet in every lesser crisis was a comparative failure. As in Yancey,
so in Rhett, there was something that fitted him to one great moment but
did not fit him to others. There can be little doubt that his defeat
at the polls of his own district deeply mortified him. He withdrew from
politics, and though he doubtless, through the editorship of one of
his sons, inspired the continued opposition of the Mercury to the
Government, Rhett himself hardly reappears in Confederate history except
for a single occasion during the debate a year later upon the burning
question of arming the slaves.

The year was marked by very bitter attacks upon President Davis on
the part of the opposition press. The Mercury revived the issue of the
conduct of the war which had for some time been overshadowed by other
issues. In the spring, to be sure, things had begun to look brighter,
and Chancellorsville had raised Lee's reputation to its zenith. The
disasters of the summer, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, were for a time
minimized by the Government and do not appear to have caused the