A fire-eater remembers
Subtitle: the Confederate memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett
By: edited by William C. Davis.
Contributors: Davis, William C., 1946-
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 152
Subjects: Rhett, Robert Barnwell, 1800-1876.; United States. Congress. Senate -- Biography.; Legislators -- South Carolina -- Biography.; Secession -- South Carolina.; Legislators -- United States -- Biography.; Statesmen -- Confederate States of America -- Biography.; South Carolina -- Politics and government -- 1775-1865.; Confederate States of America -- Politics and government.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "A Fire-Eater Remembers affords a look at the secession crisis and the formation of the Confederacy as seen through the eyes of the man some called the Father of Secession. Never before published, Robert Barnwell Rhett's personal account of the years 1859 through 1865 is the fullest memoir to have survived from any member of South Carolina's Secession Convention and the Confederate Provisional Congress. Like Rhett himself, the writings are opinionated, contentious, arrogant, and unforgiving.

They reveal much of Rhett's inside view of the effort to separate from the Union, and they depict his participation in the founding of the Confederacy.".

"Presented as Rhett composed it, the volume includes the southerner's thoughts on the nature of free government, his advocacy of free trade, and his gloomy forecast for the future of the Union after war and Reconstruction. Although no portion of this memoir has been published before, it served as a model for such famous Confederates as P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston, who read parts of it while writing their own personal accounts of the war."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-148) and index.