Robert Barnwell Rhett’s “Union of the White Race of the South”

South Carolina

Robert Barnwell Rhett, the “father of secession,” looked forward to the day when the South would rise again and secede from the United States.

During Reconstruction, Rhett hoped that the Yankee occupation would prove to be so extreme that it would provoke a backlash which would culminate in the “Union of the White Race of the South.”

Even after the abolition of slavery, Rhett continued to attack the “negroites” in the Charleston Mercury and defend the traditional Southern view that Dixie always was and ought to remain a “White Man’s Country”:

“They should rule us directly by the sword,” he said, rather than “that we should attempt to rule ourselves under their authority,” for that would be merely to sanction their despotism. “Obey and suffer, and bide our time” was his counsel.

Indeed, he almost feared the Union would be too lenient and forbearing with them, for it would only lure the South once again into the impossible notion that the two sections could live together. He hoped the Yankees would harass them sufficiently that it would create a reaction among Southerners so great as to achieve “the Union of the White Race of the South” to a degree they had not been united during the war, defeat forever the evil delusion of Reconstruction, and set them on the course to revolution and independence once more “under the great principles of the Confederate States’ Constitution.” . . .

Not surprisingly, he and the Mercury railed against the “carpetbaggers and negroites” ruling the South, and they warned that if they tried to use their military force to impose domination, they risked awakening once more the slumbering Southern spirit of resistance.

The United States was intended to be a white man’s government, he declared, deploring those who favored providing education and property to black men to qualify them to vote, for he accused them of doing it only to conciliate the Radical Republicans.”

If Robert Barnwell Rhett were alive today, he would surely have a few choice words for the Negrophiles with their “Black Confederates” and “Heritage Not Hate” propaganda that has nothing whatsoever to do with the historical Confederacy.

William Lowndes Yancey would have been equally disgusted by their liberal and profoundly non-traditional racial views:

“A few days later at a bipartisan meeting held to plan the course of action for Alabama, some questioned whether Alabama should secede even if many slave states remained in the Union. Yancey replied, “Shall we remain [in the Union] and all be slaves? Shall we wait to bear our share of the common dishonor? God forbid!” And even if disunion resulted in war, Yancey declared that rather than live under a Lincoln government that “places me in a position inferior to the Northern free negro,” he would rather gather a corps of brave men who “however few in number, would find a grave which the world would recognize, my countrymen, as a modern Thermopylae.”

Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, we will continue to defend the traditional Southern view of race, and we will continue to relentlessly mock the Negrophiles and their ridiculous cartoon version of Southern history.