must begin by suggesting his peculiar bent. It is clear that he chose as
his province commerce and industry, with the related themes of political
economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the tariff, the principles of
exchange and distribution, and so on.[104] He probably had the best
business insight of all our prominent statesmen, Calhoun even not
excepted. Though Hamilton and Webster--the former especially--evince
titanic comprehension of financial theory, yet we see from their lives and
poor money-saving success that commercial and business affairs were not to
them both practice and theory as they were to Toombs. Of all his peers he
was most at home in the ways and principles which dictate proper
legislation as to trade and business. To judge by his words, uttered year
in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly that there ought to be
no tariff, improvement, job, or any other pets of government. The latter
should not foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it always
will, living idly and luxuriously upon the public income, that is, upon
the labor and property of others. This class supplants the vigorous
products of natural selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always
raising their demands for support, and ever more and more clamorously
calling for the suppression of all self-supporting competition at home and
abroad. With the moral hardihood of Shakspeare, who shrinks not from
rudely shocking our feelings by making Henry V discard his old boon
companion Falstaff, Toombs never wearied of proclaiming the unpopular
truth that the government ought not to be the helper, guardian, patron,
protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of its citizens. Ponder
these stout-hearted and golden words of his, although the evil represented
therein is now established and magnified into dimensions far beyond what
he could conceive when they were said--an evil, to suppress which let us
hope all patriots will soon unite:
"Whenever the system shall be firmly established that the States are
to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local
appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest
representative of his State who can get for it the largest slice of
the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and
all the States are disgraced and degraded." February 27, 1857.
He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government
from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a
few. His text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed
legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. He
cares not that he makes no present effect. Just before Bell's bill for
improving the Cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its
companions: "These bills are passing _sub silentio_, and I suppose attempt
to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood that I do not assent to
their passage. I am opposed to all of them." February 24, 1855.
He sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses,
private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the
distribution of corn to the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere
are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party, against many of his
section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of Horatius keeping
the bridge against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted, he behaves
with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some one of the faithful few who
act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded.
His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people upon an issue
involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much
puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. These words contain the
motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career
in the senate:
"I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish
to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the
time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable
information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the
combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee
report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that
those who support this system will be called to judgment."
"I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country.
Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. 'To
your tents, O Israel!'" July 29, 1856.
The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as Toombs said often,
blinded the people to this great subject. Secession came, and his
State--to him the only sovereign--called the solitary combatant away from
the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long,
desperate, thrice-valiant stand. And the world should also remember that
the clauses of the constitution of the Confederate States, "prohibiting
bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements," came from
him.[105]
The struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us
to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. I cannot say when; but I know
it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As in that day
Calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add
new lustre to his fame, as I believe, so I believe also that the name of
Robert Toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his
countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to
shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and
in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum,
and then apportioned justly,--these stirring words will be quoted
everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. And when no
branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, Toombs's
never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this
millennium ought to be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books. When
we who fought the brothers' war completely forget and forgive, as we soon
will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded
him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of
secession he was only fifty years old, and of such constitutional vigor
that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of
undiminished activity. A fond imagination will inquire: Suppose the energy
spent upon the Kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the
Territories; in the great speech of January 24, 1860, on the Invasion of
States, and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his supreme
effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of
Pan-American concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing
all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his people for
his courageous fidelity to the right, age assuaging his vehemence and
softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity
and wisdom to the full,--to what a height and glory he would have grown!
If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the south would have
been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that Toombs
would have been the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Calhoun, and
Clay. The longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that
Toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. I have heard him
say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the
power of Toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except Niagara.
Turning back from these unavailing conjectures, I must say a last word as
to that part of Toombs's career in the senate which I have been
discussing. Its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements.
It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. Whether
the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was
popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort
was needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages so high in merit
that I cannot find a like. No plodder ever kept more closely to the safe
and beaten path. But he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight
years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find
its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better,
exalt, ennoble, and beautify daily routine. I believe that if you will
reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men,
and those that the world most needs.
* * * * *
I now take up Toombs's sectional career. The aggressive defence of
slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun is within a few months of death,
called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to
everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern cause. Calhoun's
last speech, that of March 4, 1850, was throughout an appeal to the north.
In that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the
true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some
time after Calhoun's death and before the end of the session that
portentous proclamation was complete. Robert Toombs--then in his fortieth
year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in
congress--is the man I mean. His appeal was really to the south.
Just after the new congress assembled in December, 1849, a caucus of the
whigs, to which party Toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a
candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the
effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any State
institution in the Territories, nor abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a
small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any
further with their party in the organization of the house. Toombs and his
following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side
with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the
resolution above mentioned. As these southern whigs, and also fourteen
northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb,
the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two
nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election.
Toombs's tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the
supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. At this
time all the southern democrats and a majority of the southern whigs were
opposed to his action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless
advance. This is the beginning.
The next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without
result, a resolution was introduced declaring Cobb, who had received a
plurality, speaker, when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing
for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler--only
that he could not support a disunionist. This manifest reflection upon the
whigs who had held themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he had
theretofore kept.
He surprised everybody--perhaps himself--with an impromptu of powerful
argument and burning eloquence. Note, in order to compare it with whatever
utterance of Calhoun you please, these passages:
"Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under
the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am
ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable
man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the
aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent
my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter
them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not,
then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the
presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to
drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased
by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery
in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon
half of the States of this confederacy, _I am for disunion_; and if my
physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of
right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its
consummation."
"The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You
are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the
territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment
by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have
made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust;
that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet
with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act
with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling
majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are
denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we
are met with the cry of 'Union, union!'"
"Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek
will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my
co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am
concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'"
I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,--nearly
three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,--and which goes great
lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The _Globe_ mentions that
the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present,
says "it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries,"
and we can well believe his assertion that it "produced a profound
sensation in the house and in the country."[106] Another eye-witness,
Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his
refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the
full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at
this time. He tells: "A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs
had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern
members crowded about him."[107]
For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds
all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely
forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they
deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it
Webster's words:
"True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in
the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ...
the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original,
native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is
eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something
greater and higher than all eloquence--it is action, noble, sublime,
godlike action."
The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and
not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly.
December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On
the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to
the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving
the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a
quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but
perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was
presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he
had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the
prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment,
as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge
them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the
resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house
had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf
to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his
purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was
raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas and nays being demanded,
the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs
held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his
attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of 1789, and the
high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk
calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could
so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to
interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet,
and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand
this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been
prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs
was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest
in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny,
providence,--not himself nor other men,--was in this juncture revealing
him to the south as her leader.
He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that
he is an authority and entitled to pronounce _ex cathedra_ upon the
question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories.
Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of
the admission of California--one far more elaborate and finished than his
average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous
words of Troup, "When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our
arms."
One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned
him as the leader of the south.
Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing
in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a
slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from
Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous
extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five
minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a
little more than a third of the whole:
"We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in
her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not
even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her
business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right
to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I
claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and
securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but
the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my
judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is
worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a
thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but
for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common
property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I
am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my
constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them
to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights,
and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every
part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall
strike for independence."
Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all
speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the
years 1843-1859, this produced the greatest sensation in the house.[108]
Its effect outside--that is, in the southern public--was widespread, deep,
and permanent. The comparison with which it closed had been, I believe,
used before; but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary
sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of December before
showed, was beginning to come into consciousness in his section. It gave
new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. The young men of
Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other southern States, read them
over and over, reciting with passionate emphasis the most stirring
passages. Especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the
Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, 1850, has always been called in
Georgia. To the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of December 13
became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing
admiration that parallel was impossible. And even the retiring, quiet, and
elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the
fire. Not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in
1850, and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he
could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he
read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist.
The part played by Toombs in the congressional session of 1849-50 seems to
me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. Since
slavery is gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing to
the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. But I must ever
hold that its defence was one of the noblest efforts of the best of
people. It will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by
our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that neither Greek nor
Scot nor Swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the
supporters of the Lost Cause will be crowned with such lustre and glory as
magnify Hannibal succumbing to Rome, or Demosthenes unvailingly stirring
up his country against Macedon. It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion
to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my
side without a murmur. Our victories at the opening of the brothers' war;
then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening
disasters at the end,--all these come thronging back, and I can never be
other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies,
the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our
blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. I often look back over the
track of what I have called the aggressive defence of slavery. Though it
was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in
certain contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of the public
domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and
finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the Territories; and
though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day
it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as
steadily as the Propontic. And as I look back at the further edge of this
retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place
later,--even above Lee and Jackson,--ever comes more plainly into view the
majestic figure of Robert Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a
thunderclap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he extorts wild
acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of
the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of
congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated
house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole
session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion
proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he
finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme.
I become more and more confident that future history will find the
achievement of Toombs in the session of 1849-50 to be the exact point
where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent
and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the
Confederate States. The more I gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn
becomes.
We need not tell the rest of Toombs's sectional career with much detail.
The all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he
vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope
I have adequately told. From this time he showed in all that he did the
quality which Mommsen glorifies in Julius Caesar,--ready insight into the
possible and impossible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia, and
also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, against the compromise
measures, and especially against the admission of California with its
constitution prohibiting slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to
consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. An
overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. To
this result Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really
shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. This--the
Georgia Platform of 1850, as we always called it--is a most important
document to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration
of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern State.
The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people
then called themselves, had mistaken Toombs's last-mentioned speeches in
congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case California was
admitted under her free constitution; and when he supported the compromise
measures, and also the Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a
turncoat. In their blind fury they could not see, as everybody else did,
that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from
perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after
the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of
right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you
meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly.
From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property
owners--then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern
society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this
class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent
question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took,
but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of
every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still
a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald,
one of the most popular men of the State, the southern-rights candidate.
Toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party.
You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected
on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to
resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which
providence had already ordered to be made.
In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the
United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated
secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared
with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed
were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able
opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more
advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance. I want to give
others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the
democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers
to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from
Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister,
otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed
the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties,
to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was
irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the
inevitable. Then he would say substantially, "Had it not been for that
administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be
working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not
right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I
agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one."
When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in
the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first;
although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far
the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I
believe the current sucked him in.
Just after Lincoln's election--an event which influenced nearly all of
even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at
once for a southern confederacy--he proposed that Stephens join with him
in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate
secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;[109] and
later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise.
The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead--they
are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would
go elsewhere. And those of these leaders whose influence is the most
potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never
really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the
session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his
people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be
fighting much in advance of him.
He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for
the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say
not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive
slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what
appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of
that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made.
There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still
larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of
everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the
south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have
explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their
hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and
magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as
blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was
often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The
courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the
purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all
public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his
section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a
woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter
keeps from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of
cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy
of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter,
the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the
incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be
more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in
the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in
his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into
Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made
him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas's
resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the
protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and
inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate
a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy
of Stephens and pronounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying
secession, as Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide
which is superior. He states his propositions thus:
"I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has
annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal
constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to
accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States.
Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people
of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal
rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded
by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal
government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this
result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary.
Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this
organization are daily committing offences against the people and
property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good
and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and
governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly
committed similar acts."
The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the
subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the
constitution; the quotation from Mill's "Moral Sentiments," and that from
Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the
Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans
to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that
there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every
line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire
speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people
arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are
paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the
south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which
especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last
"One blast upon her bugle horn
Were worth a million men."
Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they
seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national
classes who have his respect by saying, "The union of all these elements
may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be
done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is
safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its
last analysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay the price
and win the blessing. Is she ready?"
The last three sentences are the southern correlative of Webster's soaring
when he magnified the union in his reply to Hayne. They were repeated over
and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in
my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became the war cry of
Georgia.
The position taken in the very conclusion of this truly Periclean speech
is especially to be attended to here. It is that in the event of the
success of the republican party in the next presidential election the
people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the
Georgia Platform.
From this time on he is _facile primus_ of southern champions. Note his
long and elaborate reply to Doolittle, February 27, 1860; the discussion
with Wade, March 7, 1860,--both relating to his speech last noticed above;
and his very able argument, May 21, 1860, on the duty of protecting
slavery in the Territories.
During the presidential campaign of 1860 the Douglas men and the Americans
in Georgia charged the supporters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion
that would bring on war. The charge was generally denied. The truth is,
hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. Those who really
expected secession believed with Howell Cobb and his brother Thomas, and
with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were
about a tenth; the rest followed Stephens, believing that the American
people on each side of Mason and Dixon's line would, when it was demanded,
rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern
institutions and the union. Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs
in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses. But while the
former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of
peaceable secession, he had a most un-American conviction that nothing
good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he
could not believe his people would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs
was here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only speaker in this
presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling
it in derision "the gullorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal
from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and
alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent
rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward
upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed the rival platforms,
but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing
the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. And when
Lincoln was elected,--the man who had solemnly published his belief that
this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,--an
occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon Fort
Sumter afterwards aroused the north, Toombs drank in every accession to
the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day
as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. When
secession was debated before the Georgia legislature, after enumerating
what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, "I ask you to
give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will
take it myself." In his immortal eulogy of the union the next night,
Stephens quoted these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered in a
voice of thunder, "I will." The house rocked to and fro with frenzied
applause. Long afterwards Stephens told me that this outburst was the
first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. He lost
his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his
looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. Some ardent secessionists
professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled,
but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of
fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. In one of his
speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the
south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where
"Honor guards with solemn round
The silent bivouac of the dead."
I did not hear this, but a friend told me that the speaker's electric
recitative made the hackneyed words forever new and fresh to him.
I must go faster. January 7, 1861, Toombs made in the United States senate
his famous defence of secession. He presented in behalf of the south these
demands expressed in writing:
1. Any person to be permitted to settle in any Territory, with any of his
property, including slaves, and be protected in his property till such
Territory is admitted as a State on an equality with the other States,
with or without slavery as its people may determine.
2. Property in slaves to receive everywhere from the United States
government the same protection which under the constitution it can give
any other property, it being reserved to each State to deal with slavery
within its limits as it pleases.
3. Extradition of persons committing crimes against slave property, as
commanded by the constitution.
4. Extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by the same constitution.
5. Congress to pass efficient laws punishing all persons aiding or
abetting invasion of a State or insurrection therein, or committing any
other act against the law of nations that tends to disturb the
tranquillity of the people or government of the State.
It is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the
constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the
great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the
constitution, for every one of these demands. It is also as plainly
evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it
was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. The justice of his
demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law
of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and
children's children. And providence had really made each one of these
astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only
menace to the American union, even if the people so dear to Toombs must be
all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man
is fighting for his loved ones,--especially if he is fighting for his
country,--and he has the valor of Toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction
is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster
approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. Toombs's support of his
demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were
refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs:
"You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about
treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the rope around
their necks."
"You not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not
only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our
slaves and make them freemen to vote against us; but you seek to
bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and
politically, with our own people. The question of slavery moves not
the people of Georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult
their rights as a community. You abolitionists are right when you say
that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all
over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the
people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are
comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to
their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every
flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain
tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none
of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory
of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we
want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race
to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the
border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. We will
tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under
our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land
shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north.
That is the spirit of our freemen."
Here is the grand conclusion:
"This man, Brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. Who were
they? One who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and
laudator, is governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of that State
applauded Brown's heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt
lamented his ill success. Throughout the whole north, public meetings,
immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and
conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not
condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason?
Yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding State
proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, Lincoln
and his party say before the world, 'Here is a sedition law.' To carry
out the constitution, to protect States from invasion and suppress
insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the United States is
a 'sedition law,' and the chief of this party treats it with contempt;
yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted
this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of
nations. Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens
for meditating the invasion of foreign States; you have stopped
illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein
as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless
enemy. Under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of
Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By this alone are we empowered and
bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid,
money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation.
Foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse
off in the union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have
the protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among us;
raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings,
as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of Texas;
you may do what John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your
States you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up.
Therefore, we stand defenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed
'body of this death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations.
You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard
constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What,
then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are
freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have
recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into
power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands
of millions of our property from the common Territories, that it has
declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of
the law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect
us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the
constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise
fleets or armies for our defence. All these charges I have proved by
the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the
judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven
itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever may
be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have
appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have
refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them,
as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they
are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will
restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and
what, then? We shall ask you, 'Let us depart in peace.' Refuse that,
and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners
the glorious words 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood
of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity."
No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded
with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest
affections of humanity. They are not outvied by those of Patrick Henry
reported by Wirt, or those of John Adams reported by Webster, which the
world will ever treasure as all gold. O that he had corrected them! He
could not use the file, as we have already said.
Soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking
leave. March 14, 1861, that body passed a resolution reciting that the
seats before occupied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and Benjamin
had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from
the roll.
It was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active
defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the
choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the
Confederate States; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and Davis
was made president. I have always believed that Toombs regarded this as
the great miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his connection
with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from
his secretaryship of state. Read what his superiors say of him at
Sharpsburg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of the help he
afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and
efficiency in the service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to
doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. Pegasus did not show
more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this
stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink.
The collapse came, flight from America, return at last to his stricken
people, and disability for the rest of his life. Though he had something
of even a great career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for
the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then
faster and faster. As infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom
he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more
lonely. He had survived _his_ country. Such love as his for that loves but
once and always. The sacrifices that he had made for it became his
treasures. He hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. Our
gallant Gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. Not long
before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said
with the utmost firmness: "I regret nothing but the dead and the failure.
'Better to have struck and lost,
Than never to have struck at all.'"
What a fall! Greater by far than Lucifer's. Lucifer was rightfully cast
out because of heinous offence. But Toombs was cashiered because he had
been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose
dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our merely human view it is
the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with
hell pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least
send up sincere prayers that the Lord will yet give this Job of the old
south twice as much of fair fame as he had before.
If the defeated in the wars between England and Scotland and in the
English civil wars; and if Cromwell and the regicides who set up a
government that had to fall,--if all these have found respectful and fully
appreciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and Toombs look to
have the same after some years be passed? Trusting that such will come, I
close this sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be niched in
American history.
He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to Wendell Phillips.
There was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary
fluency of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere boy,
broke with Mrs. Grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were
ripe for it. While Toombs cared nothing for Mrs. Grundy, he always so
comported himself that he was her great authority. He was a very able
lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough
statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while Phillips
was reckless and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his
people. The more you balance him and Phillips against each other, the more
unlike you will find them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in
pairing Phillips and Yancey.
There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a southern opposite
corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has
not been proclaimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the
preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of secession. Their
missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his
nationality, Webster of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs of
the southern. All through the brothers' war their phrases were on the lips
and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling to fight for
the union, those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each was probably
the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the ablest debater to be
found. Each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust
commands of his constituents. And the last point which I think of is that
each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the
most majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the streets of all
sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either Webster or Toombs as
he passed, and admire. I never saw Webster. But I believe that from his
pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what I have
greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, I have an
almost perfect figure of him before my mind's eye. Toombs from my boyhood
I saw often. I will describe him as I observed him at the hustings just
before the war. His face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of
proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to
the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising
thundercloud. His flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow
like a lion's mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and gesture
there was a spontaneous and lofty grace--not the grace of the
dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. His face was
not Greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and
the utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal, kingly, even
godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain
to tell what they saw in him. He and just one other were the only men of
my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly
even to strangers. That other man was Lee. I noted, when we were near
Chambersburg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before the great
battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of
others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously
recognized Lee as soon as he came near. This publication of her chosen in
their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor
underprized. And so remember that Webster looked the greatest of all men
of the north, and Toombs the greatest of all men of the south.
To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and glory when I call Webster
the northern Toombs and Toombs the southern Webster.
* * * * *
I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with pain that the obloquy
against Toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in
the rising generation of the south--who do not know him at all--is surely
increasing. It is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every
charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon
complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character
and career. It is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered
friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in
the galaxy of America's best and greatest. I never knew a man of kinder or
more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness,
and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose
longing and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater;
nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also
the innocent wishes of everybody. The model men of the church, such as Dr.
Mell and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love.
The humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him
sincere adulation. Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom
Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day in a lively talk
with Toombs. As he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to
me: "Bob Toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big
as a hogshead." From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged in the same cases
with Toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and I saw a great
deal of him. It falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining
man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as he was original and
striking in speech. I am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered
higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his
able court conduct. And he led just as wisely and preeminently in the
politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south
to nullify the fifteenth amendment. Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful
republic should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877. That was
deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years--a constitution
made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of Ben
Hill, sprang at one bound from State prisons into the constitutional
convention, and some native deserters of the white race--the constitution
so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. The good work would
have remained undone for many years had not Toombs advanced $20,000 to
keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session
long enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad commission
established by that instrument is really his doing. This post-bellum
political career of his, in which he restored his stricken State to her
autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation.
If Toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action,
advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world
literature. It mattered not what he was talking about,--an affair of
business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an
experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest
merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,--his language
flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of
a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we learn to admire his
perpetual freshness and variety! But when we compare him with Catullus,
his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the
language is commonplace beside that of the other.[110] Toombs was even
more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and
his words always reflected, like those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise.
Perhaps a reader exclaims, "As I do not know Martial and Catullus your
comparison is nothing to me." Well, I tell him that I have read Shakspeare
from lid to lid more times than I can say, and that I have long been close
friends with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear, Othello,
Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom.
Surely with this experience it can be said of me, "The man has seen some
majesty." I have often tried, and that with the help of a few intimates
almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays
an equal to Toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite
prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. Samuel Barnett,
Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin,
and S. H. Hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. The end
of every effort would be our agreement that Shakspeare himself could
hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of Toombs.
The mental torture of the last three or four years of his life I must
touch upon again. The most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred
soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. I met him
only now and then. As I read his feelings--one eye quenched by cataract
and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political
arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking
under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the
thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and
exile in the spot which he had always called home,--though I was full of
increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness
at the promise of reunited America, my tranquillity would take flight
whenever he came into my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a
hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. To me his last
state was more tragic and pathetic than that of Oedipus.
Of course his powers were declining. I know that he would never have drank
too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor
reconstruction. His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have heard
him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. He always
disappointed his adversaries at the bar calculating that drink would
disable him at an important part of the conduct. Others as well as myself
can testify to this. Near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups
of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. With moderation he had more
assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, I
verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. He
lost his rare faculty of managing money. It was a shock of surprise to me
when the fire in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance of
his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly before. It was a
pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed
by his negro servant along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to
the place. During all this time he was dying by inches.
But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth
rays of the old glory. It was in May, 1883, during the session of the
superior court of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to wind up,
that I was last in his house. He had made invitations to dinner without
keeping account. At the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of
us were late. When we arrived many were compounding their drinks. He
hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing
room around the sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the
well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that
his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with
seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the
bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable
our host entered. In spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in
the situation with his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender
remonstrance to his niece, "O, I do not object to having more friends
than room; it is usually the other way in this world." And with despatch
and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes
moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation
of the only man I ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when
occasion called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, "Can any one
else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?"
The admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have
more than its old lustre and gleam.
In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and
he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from
his stupor and send across the State a bolt from the bow which no other
could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting of "prohibition fanatics."
"Do you know what is a fanatic?" he asked unexpectedly. "No," was replied.
"He is one of strong feelings and weak points," Toombs explained. And
overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the State
legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, "Send
for Cromwell!"
He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year.
If I have told the truth in this chapter,--and God knows I have tried my
utmost to tell it,--ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to
lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and
peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his
virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his
incomparable genius? May that power which incessantly makes for
righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate,
soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish!