UNDER THIS BLUFFTON LIVE OAK EARLY SEEDS OF SECESSION WERE SOWN
Robert Barnwell Rhett was born in Beaufort, SC in 1800, and was admitted to the bar at the age of 21. When he was 25 years old he was elected to the SC state legislature, and is described as being full of "passion, excitement and fire; quick in movement and temper." He was a "crusader and revolutionist," who radically opposed the tariff on foreign products needed by the planters of the agricultural south.
In 1832 the federal tariff was increased, potentially crippling the southern economy, and a movement to nullify the tariff arose with Rhett at its center. A resulting compromise with President Andrew Jackson kept Rhett and the 'nullifiers' at bay until another increase of the tariff in 1842 brought animosity to the surface once again. The price of Carolina Gold rice had provided great wealth to the planters of South Carolina, and it was said that "her aristocracy reached its highest splendor", during these times. Pressure was on for the radicals like Rhett to rally the populace to resist the unfair tariffs, and he scheduled a series of political events across the state where his thoughts hinged on the radical notion of SC seceding from the Union in resistant rebellion. The first of these "fire-eater" events was held in Bluffton on July 31, 1844. The legacy of this mid-summer meeting has become an historic chapter in Bluffton's fascinating history.
Invitations were sent to area parishes, newspapers and "prominent" men in the Lowcountry. It had rained for three days before the scheduled event, and the hot July day may have had something to do with the special brand of fire and rhetoric that came from the quickly-constructed wooden platform. This invitation appeared in the Daily Georgian in Savannah:
"Dinner to the honorable R. B. Rhett. Those citizens of Bluffton and its vicinity who have untied in the tender of their hospitality to the Honorable R. B. Rhett respectfully invite all the citizens in Savannah to partake of their bounty and to hear his address this day the Thirty First."
At about 2:00 p.m., according to the Charleston Mercury, "carriages containing the ladies of Bluffton and many fair visitors," approached the May River banks where a great Live Oak tree had been chosen for the event's backdrop. To a large gathering, Rhett spoke for an hour and a half, interrupted only by cheers and applause. The Mercury account continues, "youth and old age of both sexes mingled together, hung breathless on every word, and the whole mass seemed as if moved by a single thought." Secession was a concept that was gathering momentum, and Bluffton was perceived as a 'hotbed' of radicalism.
After the dinner, newspaper accounts referred to the gathering as, "the Bluffton Movement", and local politicians of the day who supported Rhett became known as the "Bluffton Boys". William Calhoun, a colleague and popular SC politician, succeeded in quelling some of the momentum of Rhett's 'fire-eaters.' Though he agreed with many of Rhett's ideas, Calhoun felt that a strong radical and secessionist approach was wrong, and when a Bluffton candidate for governor was defeated by a Unionist, the movement lost much of its energy.
Sixteen years after the dinner under the 'Secession Oak', as it would become known, the flames of secession would again rise from the sparks of Rhett's ideas in South Carolina's legislature. The southern politics of rising taxes and tariffs would result in the state's secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. The first shots would follow at Charleston's Fort Sumter just four month's later, on April 12, 1861, as South Carolina plunged headlong into a ruinous Civil War.
Kelly Logan Graham is Executive Director of the Bluffton Historical Preservation Society, which owns and operates the Heyward House Museum, which is the official Welcome Center for the Town of Bluffton.