I don't understand how you could not have been aware of the wider ideology and transnational ambitions.
I don't see how you could have been unaware of who is buried in Grant's tomb!
Robert Rhett was a congressman and known for his politicking, and NO, you will NOT find general knowledge in the body politick of his association with the Golden Circle, any more than anyone was aware Dr. Carson is a Seventh-Day Adventist (whose church was the mother stock of the Branch Davidian) until the Lamestream Media started making a big deal of it a few days ago in their cheesy campaign to score a few political points and drive Republicans toward another beatable RiNO nominee.
I came to Rhett via discussions in this forum of the causes and declarations of cause of the Civil War. Why should I have cared that Rhett was also a fly-fisherman, or a Woodman of the World? But you assign the responsibility to me retroactively, as if I'd missed a homework assignment. Which brings up another point: We don't accept homework assignments around here, especially not when some punk jumps up and announces that a) you didn't do your homework and b) the deadline was last week.
So don't do it.
As for your not finding Rhett's speech, well, I don't see how you could have missed it, since I told you to look for a speech (actually more of a pamphlet). But I believe he did give that address to the Georgia secession convention, at which fellow South Carolinian Robert Toombs also spoke, as well as (in opposition) Alexander Stephens, whose later "sense of the convention" speech on causes is very often quoted by Unionist aggrandizers and South-bashers without either context or nuance or any explanations of what the reader is looking at, which did not represent Stephens's own views, which were markedly different. Imagine the Declaration of Independence as it would look if written by a Tory dragooned to the Patriot cause by the weight of his loyalty to neighbors.
One might come to the conclusion that Rhett was a mega-maniacal bigot ....
You just stepped on your own crank, fella. Bigots are not visionaries. So which do you want, la-la fantasy or Archie Bunker bigotry?
As for "bigotry", I know a FReeper who got thrown off this board a few years ago for vigorously disputing the proposition that Lincoln was a race-relations visionary, by quoting him repeatedly and in extenso from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln used vernacular to refer to the black race and explain his own belief in strict social and political inequality.
Many of these ACW threads have run 3000 posts and more, and the ground has been plowed many times over, on the basic claims and counterclaims about the political underpinnings of our subject. And oh, by the way, we did reach elenchus, claimed and proven by appeal to the black-letter words of the Constitution and to the Federalist, fons et origo of originalism, that the South had the right and power to leave the Union and that yes, the People, acting as a State, has the final power to dissolve all ties to either the Union or the British Empire and go their separate way.
Not that I really care, but for your sake, you state the "we" don't give homework assignments around here (and then remind me that "you" told "me" to look up Rhett's speech). You say Rhett can't be a visionary and a bigot, but then it seems like you go on to say that Lincoln was a visionary bigot. I'm not really sure. And then it seems that you are informing me that the ACW is settled science around here and that the reasons for Southern secession are no longer open to discussion. (I am really trying hard to resist going tit for tat).
Let it suffice to say, that I hereby retract the question posed earlier to you and "all", (i.e., "If the South had won the war would it have freed the slaves?")
Just so you know, it was while searching golden circle that I came across Rhett's name. Funny how that works. I knew I had just heard that name and sure enough, you had said, (search Robert Rhett). At that point you hadn't yet mentioned his "Address to Slaveholding States". But I did eventually read it and about it, and even found a version that included explanation and commentary and fact-checking. That one said it was hogwash (specifically in regards to his claims about S.Carolina and ship building).