AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING ON THE STREET, IN WHICH TWO GREAT MEN ARE
RECOGNIZED AS THE TYPES OF TWO CLASHING THEORIES—TOOMBS’S
SUCCESSES—BROWN’S JUDGMENT.
THE other day I saw two men meet on the street, bow cordially, and pass.
I was struck by the contrast between them—by the difference in their
walk, appearance and manner. This suggested that the contrast in their
lives, in their lineage and their methods, was even greater than their
physical make-up. And then, forgetting for the moment that a
gubernatorial campaign of great fierceness was raging, I fell to
wondering if there had ever been two masterful men whose paths lay near
each other, and whose performance was so nearly equal, who had been born
in such dissimilar conditions, and moved by such dissimilar motives. Joe
Brown and Bob Toombs! Both illustrious and great—both powerful and
strong—and yet at every point, and from every view, the perfect
opposites of each other.
Through two centuries have two strains of blood, two conflicting lines
of thought, two separate theories of social, religious and political
life, been working out the two types of men, which have in our day
flowered into the perfection of contrast—vivid, thorough pervasive. For
seven generations the ancestors of Joe Brown have been aggressive
rebels; for a longer time the Toombs have been dauntless and intolerant
followers of the king and kingliness. At the siege of Londonderry—the
most remarkable fasting match beyond Tanner—Margaret and James Brown,
grandparents of the James Brown who came to America and was grandparent
of Joe Brown, were within the walls starving and fighting for William
and Mary; and I have no doubt there were hard-riding Toombs outside the
walls charging in the name of the peevish and unhappy James. Certain it
is that forty years before, the direct ancestors of General Toombs on
the Toombs estate were hiding good King Charles in the oak at Boscabel,
where, I have no doubt, the father and uncles of the Londonderry Brown,
with cropped hair and severe mien, were proguing about the place with
their pikes, searching every bush, in the name of Cromwell and the
psalm-singers. From these initial points sprang the two strains of
blood—the one affluent, impetuous, prodigal, the other slow, resolute,
forceful. From these ancestors came the two men—the one superb, ruddy,
fashioned with incomparable grace and fulness; the other pale,
thoughtful, angular, stripped down to bone and sinew. From these
opposing theories came the two types—the one patrician, imperious, swift
in action and brooking no stay; the other democratic, sagacious, jealous
of rights and submitting to no imposition. The one for the king; the
other for the people. It does not matter that the elder Toombs was a
rebel in Virginia against the fat George, for that revolt was kingly of
itself, and the Virginian cavaliers went into it with love-locks flying
and care cast to the winds, feeling little of the patient spirit of
James Brown, who, by his Carolina fireside, fashioned his remonstrance
slowly, and at last put his life upon the issue.
Governor Brown and General Toombs started under circumstances in
accordance with the suggestions of the foregoing. General Toombs’s
father had a fine estate, given him by the State of Georgia, and his son
had a fine education and started in life in liberal trim. Governor Brown
had nothing, and for years hauled wood to Dahlonega; and sold vegetables
from a basket to the hotel and what others would buy. Young Toombs made
money rapidly, his practice for the first five years amounting to much
over $50,000. He conquered by the grace of his genius, and went easily
from triumph to triumph. Young Brown moved ahead laboriously but
steadily. He made only about $1200 his first year, and then pushed his
practice to $2000 or $3000. He made no brilliant reputation, but never
lost a client, and added to his income and practice. His progress was
the result of hard labor and continuous work. He lived moderately and
his habits were simple. General Toombs has lived in princely style all
his life, and has always been fond of wine and cards. Both men are rich,
and both are well preserved for their time of life. General Toombs is
seventy-one and Governor Brown fifty-nine. Each had a lucky stroke early
in life, and in both cases it was in a land investment. General Toombs
bought immense tracts of Texas land, of which he has sold perhaps
$100,000 profit and still holds enough to yield double or treble that
much more. Governor Brown, when very young, paid $450 for a piece of
land, and afterward sold a half interest in a copper mine thereon for
$25,000. This he invested in farms, and thus laid the basis of his
fortune.
The first time these men met was in Milledgeville, in 1851 or ’52, when
Governor Brown was a young Democratic State Senator and General Toombs
was a Whig Congressman—then the idol of his party and the most eloquent
man in Georgia. They were then just such men physically as one who had
never seen them would imagine from reading their lives. General Toombs
was, as Governor Brown has told me, “the handsomest man he ever saw.”
His physique was superb, his grand head fit for a crown, his presence
that of a king, overflowing with vitality, his majestic face illumined
with his divine genius. Governor Brown was then pallid, uncomely—his
awkward frame packed closely with nerve and sinew, and fed with a
temperate flow of blood. They met next at Marietta, where Toombs had a
fiery debate with that rare master of discussion, the late Robert
Cowart. Governor Brown was deeply impressed with the power and genius of
that wonderful man, but General Toombs thought but little of the awkward
young mountaineer. For later, when in Texas, hearing that Joe Brown was
nominated for Governor, he did not even remember his name, and had to
ask a Georgia-Texan “who the devil it was.”
But the next time he met him he remembered it. Of course we all remember
when the “Know-Nothings” took possession of the Whig party, and Toombs
and Stephens seceded. Stephens having a campaign right on him, and being
pressed to locate himself, said he was neither Whig nor Democrat, but
“was toting his own skillet,” thus introducing that homely but
expressive phrase into our political history. Toombs was in the Senate
and had time for reflection. It ended by his marching into the
Democratic camp. Shortly afterward he was astounded at seeing the
standard of his party, upon the success of which his seat in the Senate
depended, put in the hands of Joe Brown, a new campaigner, while the
opposition was led by Ben Hill, then as now an audacious and eloquent
speaker, incomparable on the stump. Hill and Brown had had a meeting at
Athens, I believe, and it was reported that Brown had been worsted.
Howell Cobb wrote Toombs that he must take the canvass in hand at once,
at least until Brown could learn how to manage himself. Toombs wrote to
Brown to come to his home at Washington, which he did. General Toombs
told me that he was not hopeful when he met the new candidate, but after
talking to him awhile, found that he had wonderful judgment and
sagacity. After coquetting with Mr. Hill a while, they started on a tour
together, going to south Georgia. General Toombs has talked to me often
about this experience. He says that after two or three speeches Governor
Brown was as fully equipped as if he had been in public for forty years,
and he was amazed at the directness with which he would get to the
hearts of the masses. He talked in simple style, using the homeliest
phrases, but his words went home every time. There was a sympathy
between the speaker and the people that not even the eloquence of Toombs
could emphasize, or the matchless skill of Mr. Hill disturb. In Brown
the people saw one of themselves, lifted above them by his superior
ability, and his unerring sagacity, but talking to them common sense in
a sensible way. General Toombs soon saw that the new candidate was more
than able to take care of himself, and left him to make his tour
alone—impressed with the fact that a new element had been introduced
into our politics and that a new leader had arisen.
It is hard to say which has been the more successful of the two men.
Neither has ever been beaten before the people. General Toombs has won
his victories with the more ease. He has gone to power as a king goes to
his throne, and no one has gainsaid him. Governor Brown has had to fight
his way through. It has been a struggle all the time, and he has had to
summon every resource to carry his point. Each has made unsurpassed
records in his departments. As Senator, General Toombs was not only
invincible, he was glorious. As Governor, was not only invincible, he
was wise. General Toombs’s campaigns have been unstudied and careless,
and were won by his presence, his eloquence, his greatness. His canvass
was always an ovation, his only caucusing was done on the hustings. With
Governor Brown it was different. He planned his campaigns and then went
faithfully through them. His victories were none the less sure, because
his canvass was more laborious. His nomination as Governor, while
unexpected, was not accidental. It was the inevitable outcome of his
young life, disciplined so marvelously, so full of thought, sagacity and
judgment. If he had not been nominated Governor then, his time would
have come at last, just as sure as cause produces result. His record as
Governor proves that he was prepared for the test—just as his brilliant
record in the Senate proves that he is fitted for any sphere to which he
might be called.
To sum it up: Toombs is the embodiment of genius, and Brown is the
embodiment of common sense. One is brilliant, the other unerring; one is
eloquent, the other sagacious. Toombs moves by inspiration; Brown is
governed by judgment. The first is superb; the latter is sage. Despite
the fact that Governor Brown is by instinct and by inheritance a rebel,
he is prudent, conservative, and has a turn for building things up.
General Toombs, despite his love for kingliness and all that implies,
has an almost savage instinct for overturning systems and tearing things
down. It must not be understood that I depreciate General Toombs’s
wisdom. Genius often flies as true to its mark as judgment can go. The
wisest speech, and the ablest ever made by an American, in my opinion,
is Mr. Toombs’s speech on slavery, delivered in Boston about ten years
before the war. In that speech he showed a prescience almost divine, and
clad in the light of thirty years of confirmation, it is simply
marvelous. His leadership of the southern Whigs in the House during the
contest of 1850 was a masterpiece of brilliancy, and even his Hamilcar
speech, delivered after the most exasperating insults, was sublime in
its lofty eloquence and courage. Safer as a leader, Governor Brown is
more sagacious on material points—truer to the practical purposes of
government: but no man but Toombs could have represented Georgia as he
did for the decade preceding 1860.
Messrs. Brown and Toombs have disagreed since the war. That Governor
Brown may have been wiser in “reconstruction” than Mr. Toombs, many wise
men believe, and events may have proved. In that matter my heart was
with Mr. Toombs, and I have never seen reason to recall it. That
Governor Brown was honest and patriotic in his advice, my knowledge of
the man would not permit me to doubt. The trouble between these
gentlemen came very near resulting in a duel. While I join with all good
men that this duel was arrested, I confess that I have been wicked
enough to speculate on its probable result—had it occurred. In the first
place, General Toombs made no preparation for the duel. He went along in
his careless and kingly way, trusting, presumably, to luck and quick
shot. Governor Brown, on the contrary, made the most careful and
deliberate preparation. He made his will, put his estate in order,
withdrew from the church, and then clipped all the trees in his orchard
practicing with the pistol. Had the duel come off—which fortunately it
did not—General Toombs would have fired with his usual magnificence and
his usual disregard of rule. I do not mean to imply that he would not
have hit Governor Brown; on the contrary, he might have perforated him
in a dozen places at once. But one thing is sure—Governor Brown would
have clasped his long white fingers around the pistol butt, adjusted it
to his gray eye, and sent his bullet within the eighth of an inch of the
place he had selected. I should not be surprised if he drew a diagram of
General Toombs, and marked off with square and compass the exact spot he
wanted to hit.
General Toombs has always been loose and prodigal in his money matters.
Governor Brown has been precise and economical all his life, and gives
$50,000 to a Baptist college—not a larger amount probably than General
Toombs has dispensed casually, but how much more compact and useful!
This may be a good fact to stop on, as it furnishes a point of view from
which the two lives may be logically surveyed. Two great lives they are,
illustrious and distinguished—utterly dissimilar. Georgia could have
spared neither and is jealous of both. I could write of them for hours,
but the people are up and the flags are flying, and the journalist has
no time for moralizing or leisurely speculation.
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“_BOB_.”