TOOMBS
Calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the
abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his
death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence
of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of
his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this
aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent,
leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus
he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to
himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the
Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any
one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs's
prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will
follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view
of Calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his
death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural.
Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Caesar, The Great.
Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet
dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun.
It is much more necessary than I saw such a method was with Calhoun to
deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of Toombs's
career. And I wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts
are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every American, but
to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and
exalted teachers of good and honest government.
I was nearly ten years old when Toombs's congressional career commenced in
December, 1845. Living only eighteen miles from him I heard him often
mentioned. It was the delight of many people to report his phrases and
repartees. By reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression,
the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. I never knew another
whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. As they
serve to introduce you to his rare originality, I will tell here a few of
them that I heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood.
He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a
spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was
haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform
on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his
pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming
red hair: "Take your fire from under it, then," he answered.
In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used
certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow--one of
Choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him
say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added
tauntingly, "What do you say to that?" Toombs rejoined, "Well, I must have
told a d--d lie."
A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little
ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him
to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the
courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The
latter disposed of this by merely saying, "You should consider which will
hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional
absence from, the house."
In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so
and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and
sustained his charge by producing the _Globe_; and he expressively
exclaimed, "What do you think of that vote?" Toombs answered without any
hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"I think it a d--d bad vote. There
are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has
evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send
_him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it
will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad
one in mine."
In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had made his Hamilcar
speech, to be told of fully after a while. In this he avowed his
preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the Territories so
positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as
their champion. But soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people
of the State, he took his stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the
Georgia Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a recession
from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. In 1851, a coalition
of the whigs and democrats of Georgia nominated Howell Cobb, a democrat,
for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal.
He had an appointment to speak, in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the
county seat. There were quite a number of ardent southern rights men in
the county, who held that the admission of California, really in southern
latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided
action on the part of the south than was counselled in the Compromise and
Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they
plotted to humiliate him when he came to Lexington. As he never shrank
from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with--as the
phrase goes--a canvasser for McDonald, their candidate for governor.
Toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the
other was to be allowed a stated time; after which Toombs had a reply of
twenty minutes--these were the terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural,
stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of
preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could
not be satisfied with the Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a
great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. The other
disputant took the Hamilcar speech of Toombs, made just the year before,
as his text. Deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the
doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and
contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. Southern
rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on.
In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs's tergiversation with
such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his
side. They had pushed themselves to the front. Toombs rose to reply. In
their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot
the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was Toombs's meeting, as
was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and
even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made all kinds of noises
to drown his voice. Unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest
and blandest of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me long
afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. They wanted to
hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so
cleverly caught him; and they became still. "It seems to me," he
commenced, "that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to
learn good manners." At this condign rebuke of behavior which, according
to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown Toombs
in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers
from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the
roof. In his highest and readiest style--for mob opposition always lifted
him at once into that--he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was
to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the Georgia
Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year
before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to
substitute for a transcendently important public question a little
personal one of no concern to them whatever. "If there is anything in my
Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which I have
supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his
silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my
abandoned errors, let him defend them."
How the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the
setters in it!
I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years
afterwards I settled in Lexington, to begin law practice. Over and over
again the Union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the
southern rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around;
and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of
Toombs's reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That
sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute with
anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory
utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must
defend them.
The interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the
beginning of my study of Toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased,
and which will doubtless continue as long as I live. He has impressed me
far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon after his return, in
1867, from his exile I resolved I would try to write his Life under the
title, "Robert Toombs, as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker;" and for ten or
fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the data. These had
accumulated under each head--especially reports of his epigrams and winged
phrases--far more considerably than was my expectation at first. I added
to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional
life which I read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his
death. In a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not found the
times favorable for publication, and the MS. may perplex my literary
executor. Of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is
to inform you that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon the
subject, hoping thus to draw your attention.
Robert Toombs was born July 2, 1810, on his father's plantation in Wilkes
county, Georgia. He went to school at Washington, the county seat; then to
the State university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course
at Union. Next he spent a year at the law school of Virginia university.
He never was a bookworm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen
years of his life--when I was much with him--betrayed a smattering of the
Roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the
Latin quoted by Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and
considerable familiarity with "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," and the Falstaff
parts of "King Henry IV.," and "Merry Wives," Don Quixote, Burns, and the
bible. But this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the
street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any
literature. Erskine got the staple of his English from a long and fond
study of Shakspeare and Milton; but Toombs must have drawn his only from
the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get theirs, and then
purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,--not
even himself, as I believe. If he had only corrected after utterance as
assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the
finer.
The year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative
act. In the same year he married his true mate and settled at Washington.
For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the
circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge who, as
there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him
favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old
dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his
own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave
every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his
call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of
these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had received a good education
both literary and professional, before he came south. Toombs, who had
known the great American lawyers of his time, always said after his death
in 1859 that Cone was the best of all. Lumpkin used to tell that during a
visit to England he haunted the courts, but he never found a single
counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as Cone.
Another one of these was Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man
that Georgia ever produced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was
without Choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration
from the immortal fountains. A. H. Stephens admired Choate greatly. He
heard the latter's reply to Buchanan. Often, at Liberty Hall--as Stephens
called his residence--he would repeat with gusto the passage in which
Choate roasts Buchanan for his inculcation of hate to England. Stephens
contended that if all that education and art had done for each--Choate and
Lumpkin--could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show
Lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature.
These three--Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs--were often on the same side. But
whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always
in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the unremitted
attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a
receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated
all of Cone's law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy--that is, he had, as he
did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them
into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own _sui generis_ self.
In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as
if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. But after a year or two
of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. In due time when
Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he
was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself heard Lumpkin
tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke
by Toombs--then some twenty-seven years old--of the zeal with which the
public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for
murder. The junior--the evidence closed--was making the first speech for
the defence. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with
which he denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the
spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent
came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he
ought to have done. Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a
railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and
chastised them as they merited. His invective culminated in denouncing
them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent
blood. These misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with
them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their
hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the
accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. And the
narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest admirers, told with fond
recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his
junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal
which he feared he had lost.
This affair is illustrative of Toombs in two respects. In the first place
it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. I have seen him so
often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent
reflection pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in Napoleon's
place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread around, he would have escaped
in the same way, or in a better one. I do not believe that this can be
said of any one else of the past or present. In the second place it is one
of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob.
He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and
declined them more resolutely than any one I ever knew. So free was he
from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. It
was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the
actual chances. For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed
him in many _nisi prius_ trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared
with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated
the other. But now and then it would develop that the merits were
decidedly against him. He would at once, according to circumstances,
propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak,
toss the case away as if it was something unclean. When he had thus
failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said
to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring.
Stephens came to the bar some four years after Toombs did, and settled in
an adjoining county. I need merely allude to their long and beautiful
friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of
the former. I merely emphasize the importance of Stephens's help to
Toombs's development in his early politics. The former got to congress two
years before he did. Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity
with which the other divined how a new question would take with the
masses. On his return from a brief and bloodless service in the Creek war
as captain of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State
legislative career, which Mr. Stovall has creditably told.[97] I can stop
only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political
education.
When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he heard some of Randolph's
stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages
from them as authority. Stephens would tell this; and then with
affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished
in the Georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions
with anything else than his own reasons.
Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. In 1840
he crossed the Savannah, and meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate
is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers,
including his adversary.
Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. He
is the best lawyer in the State, except Cone, and fully his equal; while
as a speaker he did not have Lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common men,
yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than Lumpkin
in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right,
and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that
the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be
applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered
rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative
and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the
best and ablest man of the district for their representative. It is to be
especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order.
His plantation was a model of good management. His investments were always
prudent and lucrative. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred
by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district of Taliaferro
county--about ten miles distant--my maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan,
lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed
without an overseer. His father had been killed by the tories. His
education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest English
difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing I ever knew him to
do. But his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors.
His land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support
for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his
blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and
goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The slaves loved sweet
potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the
Big House. His supplies never failed, there being some unopened "banks or
hills" when the new potatoes came. His hogs were his special attention.
His fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed
for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he developed
a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in
the summer. These were four in all; the first ripened in July and the last
the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular one ripened at the
same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were.
Whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not
from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a
particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put.
Whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that
particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the
tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nursery, whence after
a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he
told me, saved a year by his method. He was always replanting in place of
injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. The "fattening"
hogs--that is, those to be next killed for meat--were turned into the July
orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on
through the rest of the series. There was running water in each orchard.
After peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the
corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for some two weeks before
they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would
eat. What pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent
of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural
neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was!
Observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away
from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept up. One of my
earliest recollections is that of Old Lige driving them to the spring
branch twice every Sunday. For a long while he tried in various ways to
protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he had them "got up"
every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the Big
House for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he
never had a sheep worried afterwards. The foregoing is enough to suggest
the whole of the system. The management of its different trains and many
separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in
punctuality and due discharge of every duty. He lived well, entertained
hospitably, and kept out of debt. Mr. Thomas E. Watson has lately given a
graphic description of good plantation conduct,[98] which ought to be
considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily
slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It was a good training school for
the born business man. Let me give an example to show how extensive
planting bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire insurance
company--its principal office being at Athens, some forty miles distant
from Toombs's home--at the beginning of the brothers' war had for some
years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still
such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its
competitors must content themselves with its leavings. The plan of this
great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance--indeed, I may
say, it is unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked
forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world.
The men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional
talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of
the old south. A similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and
related matters which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina,
not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia. It also explains why
Toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly
acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and
practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a
familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling
that of experts.
He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully
indoctrinated in the science of accounts.
Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress.
January 12, 1846, the United States house of representatives having under
consideration a resolution of notice to Great Britain to abrogate the
convention between her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, relative
to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs made his congressional debut.
It is an able speech for a new member--especially for one grappling with a
question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own.
Convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of
offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the
blessings of peace. The warlike note is deep and earnest. Then comes the
most original part of the speech. Showing great familiarity with the facts
and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the
title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He
urges that the time has arrived when American settlers are ready to pour
into Oregon. "Terminate this convention and our settlements will give us
good title."
Of course I believe that Calhoun's policy, as I have explained it above,
was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to
joint occupancy as long as possible. Toombs was bred among the followers
of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and I
doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable
himself to do full justice to Calhoun. And as a further palliation, his
combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited
from a gallant Revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight England.
July 1, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long
speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. He shows great familiarity
with Adam Smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading
commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. Its main
interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against
the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate.
January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next
considerable effort. He denounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin,
but he reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from the southern
standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot proviso. Here is a passage
characteristic of Toombs later on:
"The gentleman from New York [Grover] asked how the south could
complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new
territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and
south on a footing of perfect equality. The north could go there
without slaves, and so could the south. Well, I will try it the other
way. Suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could
go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not
this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] I will not answer for the
strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south
get. [Laughter.]"
Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that
exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had
attracted so much attention and admiration. And Stephens praised the
effort greatly.[99]
December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither
the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico,
nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition
to the restoration of peace.
His Taylor speech of July 1, 1848, evinces warm whig partisanship.
In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. And one
who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years
before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches
which I have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of
January 8, 1847, are labored communication of cram rather than the
peculiar language of the speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a
few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking
and fit expression extempore.
I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4, 1848, and February 20,
1849, he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing
an army in time of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high
salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. Note
what he says February 29, 1848, advocating reduction of salaries of patent
examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress's publishing
agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March 20, 1848, the
other January 18, 1849. These are short, but strong, and their forcible
style gives sure promise that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly
found his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards secession
commenced, as I shall detail later. After that date he soon becomes one of
the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose
speech greatly attracts audience. I must support this assertion by the
record. With my limited space I must be very brief. My trouble is that the
many examples which I could use are all so good it is hard to decide what
must be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my statements
can be checked by reference to the _Globe_, I need not confine myself
strictly to the order of time.
His mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with.
January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper
until one be elected. The chair decided that the question affected the
organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an
appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part played by Toombs:
"_Mr. Toombs._ I apprehend that the speaker has committed error. This
is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of
the house. The office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the
law.... It is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to
appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. Suppose
that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could
a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to
arrest and override all other business?
Mr. Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule was not as
clearly obligatory upon the house as a law.
_Mr. Toombs._ It is; but its execution is not a question of
organization."
A reversal was the result.
The following took place February 20, 1851, and is a good illustration of
his forcible way of putting things:
"_Mr. Toombs._ (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to
order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to
matters not immediately before it.
_The Chairman._ Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of
order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in
order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee.
_Mr. Toombs._ My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order
upon a pension bill.
_The Chairman._ I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been
invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on
the state of the union.
_Mr. Toombs._ The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong."
On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed.
Though Toombs--a whig--had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell
Cobb--a democrat--he soon became to the latter, after his election as
speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be
confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing
something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him
intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized
by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing.
The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me.
February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices,
the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its
compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate
evil:
"The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with
high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other--the
principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices
without regard to the species of labor required by each."
I append here a collection of short extracts from Toombs's speeches in the
lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking
presentation, epigram, and novel expression:
_Debate always Harmless._ "A little more experience will show the
gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here
does not accelerate adjournment. The most harmless time which is spent
by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion." February 17,
1852.
_Nominees of National Conventions._ "What are the fruits of your
national conventions?... They have brought you a Van Buren, a
Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor.... I mean no disparagement to
any one of these. All of them but one [Van Buren] have paid the last
debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself,
has survived his reputation." July 3, 1852.
_Two Classes of Economists._ "There is a class of economists who will
favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant
expenditures. But there is another class who are always preaching
economy--who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get
economical in every case except that before the house." February 17,
1852.
_Principles of Banking._ "If we intend to regulate the business of
banking in this District, the bill does too little; if we do not, it
does too much, As it does not seek to control generally the business
of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars,
it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to
the extent of regulation by law. I think the public are more likely to
suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars
than those under that amount." January 11, 1853.
_The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State._ "I believe the mints at
Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unnecessary.... I do not
desire to continue abuses in Georgia any more than in New York. I am
willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... I think the existing
mint is adequate to the wants of the country." February 17, 1853.
_Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations._ "I believe that
with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation
bills, we have never had personal explanations." February 21, 1850.
Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. He has grown
in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good
representative. There is no other man in the house, from either section,
whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. Three days before his
career in the United States senate begins, he made the following appeal,
protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a
model of matter and extemporaneous expression:
"In this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made
for private wagon ways for Oregon and California. There is in it an
appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the discovery of ether.
You have a provision for a Pacific railroad; and you have job upon job
to plunder the government in the military bill;--and the
representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these
grave questions under five minutes' speeches. You do gross injustice
to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act
upon such important measures in this manner. Let the house reject the
amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send
them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way
congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. But to
act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to
abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these amendments and strike
them out." March 1, 1853.
Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having
heard it read. The instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the
exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small
allowance--these recall what I often heard Stephens say, "No one else has
ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs."
His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes.
Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853, until the spring of
1861. His peculiarities must be suggested. Although he was perhaps the
ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of
first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he
resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. He did
much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not
seek office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a trace of any
aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place
of senator. If on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he
avoided the standing committees. He says:
"It is only occasionally that I go to the committee meetings to make a
quorum to act on important business. I do not attend them one day more
than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure it is not my duty unless
charged with a certain subject. This whole machinery is a means of
transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands
the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... I say general
standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and
they ought to be abolished.... They are not proper bodies to exercise
legislative powers. They are not known in the country from which we
derive our institutions. The English have no standing committees. They
raise special committees on special objects."[100] February 18, 1859.
"The general business of the country," as he expressed it, January 10,
1859, that was his concern. Each subject requiring the action of the
senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention,
as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently
feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost
instruction and aid that he can possibly give. He had no ambition to be
the author of novel measures--he was strenuous only to bestow upon every
subject of current legislation the proper consideration. His premeditated
efforts are but few. He never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty.
He takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times
the same day on the same subject. He is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away
from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. Generally he
comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom
that his matter and words are not both impressive. I found it well in
writing the Life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial
course by assorting his utterances under their proper heads, with the
briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the
common way of biographers. In his speeches it is only now and then that he
is steadily progressive as he was in the Iowa contested election case. His
advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from
this principle--usually central and self-evident--the different passages
radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached
arguments,--this common radiation being their only connection. Accordingly
if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a
part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly
always complete in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have
him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an
approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his
senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting
it beside the unmutilated report of the _Globe_ as a beggarly and jejune
abstract. I know of no other public man with whom this can be as
satisfactorily done. Of course the compilation made by me, as just told,
cannot be given here. He challenged every bad and defended every good
measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on
the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. What he did in
the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the
senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until shortly after his
famous speech of January 7, 1861, when he left to go with his seceding
State, are such that I challenge all students of history to produce a
single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many
matters of importance in so short a time--not eight full years--by any
member of ancient or modern parliaments.
Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of
Toombs's greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, I must bring
that greatness into fuller view, if I can. I therefore add to the
foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following.
We begin with his devotion to his duties. One examining the _Globe_ will
hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the
reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small
matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that
he has fully taken in what has been read. He said once, "I have been
reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather
fractious because I desired to understand the business on which I was
called to vote." August 3, 1854.
The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed
seems superior to that of all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the
many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. Thus
June 20, 1860, Green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted?
has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and
every query is answered without hesitation. This but examples how the
other senators very often made a convenience of Toombs's accurate note of
what was passing.
He shows a like readiness upon facts of history--especially English and
American--on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties,
provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy,
institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all
such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it
may have risen. And so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with
perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness of
knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained and over-ingenious
reasoning. Plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling
them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon the
palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable
doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of
formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of
common affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with practical
men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye ever open to
principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is
practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting
the treasury--to use his favorite name for them--are up and likely to pass
because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats
which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. Only
then he prefers to do nothing.
As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments--in short
makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire.
We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He thus describes himself:
"I speak rapidly; but the idea which I intend to utter generally comes
out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. What I say,
I mean; and the whole of what I mean generally gets out." July 30,
1856.
He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches:
"As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be
printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... The
senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his already in type;
other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all
sections of the union, who think proper to write essays, bring them
here and read them to the senate.... I am not objecting to their
character, but I would rather read them in my room. Of course nobody
pays any attention to them here." April 22, 1858.
He did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says May
13, 1858; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he
does not report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too far. If
you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the
inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so
unmistakable that you always know what is his. Extempore discussion was
his forte. Therefore nearly all the quotations I use in the Life which I
have written I intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and
evidently unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it matters not
how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double
merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt
illustration, or wit.[101]
In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate.
We will run over the leading ones:
July 28, 1854, a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every
one of the States came up. Through the long debate he evinces uncommon
power and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the
rein to invective.
In the two days' debate of the mail steamer appropriation--February 27,
28, 1855,--he distinguishes himself.
February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey, supports a resolution
proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the Senate. Sumner and
Seward take the other side. The argument of Seward is very elaborate,
notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly
unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs in his most crushing style. Note,
too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the
constitutional convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild
appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he
depicts them.
July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation is the subject. All
that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to
interruptions by Pugh, Wade, and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his
head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph.
July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor improvements. It is
begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; Toombs
joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a
while foils his adversary; but soon Toombs gets his feet firmly on the
constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the
support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. The
disputants often put questions to one another. Toombs's promptness to
answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. It is to be noted
that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant
hammering of the others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied or
silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that this is no arena for a
man who can make only written speeches.
August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of the Mississippi,
Toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its
river. The examination he gives the question is profoundly searching.
Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the counter doctrine of
Calhoun, in the report of latter to the Memphis convention, his reason
being, as he says: "I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The
senator from Georgia has treated the question with great ability; and I
want the same vehicle that carries his remarks to the public to carry
also the opinions and views of Mr. Calhoun, whose authority is vastly
better than mine."
Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by Toombs
are wonderful even for him.
Consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office,
February 28, 1859.
January 30, 1860, there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning
and was renewed in the evening. The vigorous blows which he deals the
coalition passing the appropriations--ever the theme of his severest
reprehension--and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation
bill, taken all in all, are high feats.
His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested election manifests
such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be
told at some length. We think it belongs with the more important matters
just noticed rather than to its chronological place.
Harlan, a republican, had been sitting for some time as a senator from
Iowa. There was no contestant. The adverse report was grounded upon a
protest of the Iowa senate, stating that that body did not participate in
the so-called joint convention which had affected to elect Harlan. It
appeared that both houses of the Iowa legislature had met in joint
convention, had balloted without result, and the convention had adjourned
to meet at 10 A. M. the next day. On this day the senate--the majority of
its members manifestly being democrats and opposed to the sense of the
joint majority--met in their own chamber and adjourned before the hour
appointed for the assembling of the convention. But a majority of the
senate were present in the convention when it made the election--several
of them having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and who protested
that they did not act in the proceedings. In the United States senate the
democrats were in a majority, but Toombs, who was always above mere party
considerations, supported the cause of Harlan, saying afterwards, "I
maintained his title, black Republican though he was, because I believed
it stood on right." February 15, 1858. The decision was against Harlan;
but I do not think that an unbiased man who regards mere technical rules
as no more than the instruments of justice, will fail to concur with
Toombs. His treatment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining.
Every material fact is given prominence; every important distinction
taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no
legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was
not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the
legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his
position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the
election as long as it had a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-like
and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and
exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of
statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a
monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the
majority of the Iowa senate from the convention. Note especially the many
questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and
satisfactoriness of his answers.[102] It is all in all one of the best
samples of Toombs's dispassionate debate to which I can refer. Very
probably the democrats would have done right by Harlan had it not been for
Bayard's argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made
of the case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States senate by
the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it was this: There being a
majority of one in the Delaware house of representatives in favor of the
opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint
balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the
democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority
to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas Wright, of New
York. The latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid.
Whereupon Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator for two
years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had considered the subject and
bottomed it on true principle, as Toombs afterwards did, Bayard would have
settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in concert
would have forced their fellow-democrats of the United States senate into
doing justice to an opponent.
Many have been superior to Toombs in making perfect orations, but it is
hard to find in any deliberative body a match for him as a debater.
Charles Fox was a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the
never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration,
wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling, and reason--in
short, the complete supply and command of all resources that marked Toombs
as foremost in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. It ought to add
inexpressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no triumphs except
those of justice and good policy. He was far more than a mere logician in
debate. His brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor,
and flashing wit--all these did their part as effectively in winning favor
and working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs
in convincing. He was too prone to use harsh language towards the other
side. There are many places in his speeches where I wish he had used soft
instead of bitter words. That he could observe perfect parliamentary
propriety there are proofs in the _Globe_. Especially would I refer to his
behavior in the Harlan debate, spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion
of the Indiana senatorial election, June 11, 1858. Note the last
especially (belonging volume, 2943-2947) for his moderation, courtesy, and
invitation of question while he is most ably supporting the central
proposition he had before urged in the Iowa case.
Yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimonious language, he
seems to have the respect and regard of even his most decided political
opponents. Wade and he recognize each the great merit of the other. Once
after applauding his honesty and frankness, Toombs says of him: "He and I
can agree about everything on earth until we get to our sable population,
I do believe." March 22, 1858.
Wade had already said this of Toombs: "I commend the bold and direct
manner in which the senator from Georgia always attacks his opponents."
February 28, 1857.
February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, "I am very happy to get that admission
from the senator from Georgia. It is made with his customary frankness and
clearness."
Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs ought to
have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness
as well as his legal ability.
The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what
he says June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and June 23, 1860.
Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan
by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily
strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius.
Of course the southern members showed their appreciation. Especially note
what Bayard says March 21, 1860, and what Butler says January 6, 1857. I
could give many more such; but I shall only add here how, February 14,
1860, by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently
regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making
an able rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to Toombs's
speech on the Invasion of States.
Toombs's inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels
the absolute fearlessness with which Julius Caesar, when a young man, clung
to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla commanded him to
put away. The Sulla of America are the people in their unconscientious
moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets
almost all public men with torturing apprehension. And so there is in
nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. But Toombs never showed
fear either of the people at large or of those of his own State and
locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned
for the government:
"It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it
seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site
out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000 worth of property rather
than trust a jury." June 12, 1860.
When he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his
section:
"The southern States from their sparseness of population do not pay
all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of the south ought
to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to put it on that ground....
I say the point to retrench is in the south." February 28, 1859.
The following distasteful lesson he read his own State:
"I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken
away, and I never was consulted about them, and I never thought it was
the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. I have
not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one;
and I have been very much complained of, even in my own county and
town, on account of it.... I have a word to say about the _Isabel_.
She touches at Savannah; and I have received memorials from people,
letters from interested people, from the Savannah chamber of commerce,
and others, saying, 'By all means keep up the _Isabel_; we want it.'
It is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty
well. What have I to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give
them the same rules as everybody else? Sixteen years' experience
here--and I was here in 1847, when this steamship system
commenced--have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always
unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative
corruption. Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity
whatever." May 28, 1860.
February 22, 1859, though Iverson, his companion from Georgia, was the
other way, he advocated abolishing the mint at Dahlonega in that State,
and the mint also in North Carolina.
The last instance we cite is his declaration, April 25, 1856, that he had
always voted against a claim of the daughter of Governor Irvin of Georgia.
And to this proud independence he was without spot of corruption. This was
never questioned but once. May 13, 1858, he was taunted for having
supported the Galphin claim. When at last he sees that the charge is
seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an explanation. A
disclaimer of reflection upon his character being made, he gives a
detailed account of the claim, his steady support of it, and a complete
justification of George W. Crawford in the affair. At its close, Hammond
of South Carolina, who was familiar with all the details, bestowed upon it
his unqualified voucher. The lofty spirit and just indignation informing
this statement of Toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that of
one who has kept out of dark places and walked so purely in the light that
accusation is far more of a surprise than insult.[103]
He never showed any symptom of the presidential fever, which, to say
nothing of its many other victims, enfeebled each one of the great
trio,--Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Fully content with his place in the
senate, he did not look elsewhere. Taking popularity at its exact worth;
candid and frank to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his
judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or party and his own
private interest; in no bargains with men nor smirching connections with
women, doing nothing in secret which, if published, would bring a blush;
elevated above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever
championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the weak and
unpopular,--as exampled in his maintaining the claims of certain persons
in Louisiana to the Houmas land against the formidable opposition of the
two senators from that State, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for
the naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to
have his party seat the republican Harlan; incorruptible and really
consistent forever and always,--when he is scrutinized as a public man his
character rises into a grandeur of unselfishness, firmness of high
purpose, honesty, and power to show and do the right almost superhuman. It
stands by itself awe-striking and imposing.