of the world. Whether it really caused Yancey's death is another
question. However, the moment of his passing has dramatic
significance. Just as the battle over conscription was fully
begun, when the fear that the Confederate Government 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