IN THE LEGISLATURE.
When Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun were waging their "irrepressible
conflict," the county of Wilkes in the State of Georgia was nursing
discordant factions. Just across the river in Carolina lived the great
Nullifier. The Virginia settlers of Wilkes sided with him, while scores
of North Carolinians, who had come to live in the county, swore by "Old
Hickory." This political difference gave rise to numerous feuds. The two
elements maintained their identity for generations, and the divisions
became social as well as political. The Virginians nursed their State
pride. The sons of North Carolina, overshadowed by the Old Dominion,
clung to the Union and accepted Andrew Jackson, their friend and
neighbor, as oracle and leader. The earliest political division in
Georgia was between the Clarke and Crawford factions. General John
Clarke, a sturdy soldier of the Revolution, came from North Carolina,
while William H. Crawford, a Virginian by birth and a Georgian by
residence, led the Virginia element. The feud between Clarke and
Crawford gave rise to numerous duels. Then came George M. Troup to
reenforce the Crawford faction and defend States' Rights, even at the
point of the sword. Troup and Clarke were rival candidates for Governor
of Georgia in 1825, and the Toombs family ardently fought for Troup.
Young Toombs was but fifteen years of age, but politics had been burnt
into his ardent soul. Wilkes had remained a Union county until this
campaign, when the Troup and Toombs influence was too strong for the
North Carolina faction. Wilkes, in fact, seemed to be a watershed in
early politics. It was in close touch with Jackson and Calhoun, with
Clarke and Crawford, and then with Clarke and Troup. On the one side the
current from the mountain streams melted into the peaceful Savannah and
merged into the Atlantic; on the other they swept into the Tennessee and
hurried off to the Father of Waters.
Robert Toombs cast his first vote for Andrew Jackson in 1832. He
abandoned the Union Democratic-Republican party, however, after the
proclamation and force bill of the Administration and joined the States'
Rights Whigs. When young Toombs was elected to the General Assembly of
Georgia in October, 1837, parties were sharply divided. The Democrats,
sustained by the personal popularity of "Old Hickory," were still
dominant in the State. The States' Rights Whigs, however, had a large
following, and although not indorsing the doctrines of Calhoun, the
party was still animated by the spirit of George M. Troup. This
statesman, just retired from public life, had been borne from a sick-bed
to the United States Senate Chamber to vote against the extreme measures
of President Jackson. The Troup men claimed to be loyal to the
Constitution of their country in all its defined grants, and conceded
the right of the Chief Magistrate to execute the office so delegated,
but they resisted what they believed to be a dangerous latitude of
construction looking to consolidated power. Robert Toombs was not a
disciple of Calhoun. While admiring the generalities and theories of the
great Carolinian, the young Georgian was a more practical statesman. The
States' Rights Whigs advocated a protective tariff and a national bank.
They believed that the depreciation of the currency had caused the
distress of the people in the panic of 1837, and no man in this stormy
era more vigorously upbraided the pet-bank and sub-treasury system than
Robert Toombs. He introduced a resolution in the legislature declaring
that President Van Buren had used the patronage of the government to
strengthen his own party; that he had repudiated the practices and
principles of his patriotic antecedents, and "had sought out antiquated
European systems for the collection, safe keeping, and distribution of
public moneys--foreign to our habits, unsuited to our conditions,
expensive and unsafe in operation." Mr. Toombs contended, with all the
force that was in him, that a bank of the United States, properly
regulated, was "the best, most proper and economical means for handling
public moneys." Robert Toombs would not have waited until he was
twenty-seven years of age before entering public life, had not the
sentiment of his county been hostile to his party. Wilkes had been a
Union county, but in 1837 it returned to the lower house two Democrats,
and Robert A. Toombs, the only Whig. Nothing but his recognized ability
induced the people to make an exception in his favor. Besides his
reputation as an orator and advocate, Toombs had just returned from the
Creek war, where he had commanded a company and served under General
Winfield Scott in putting down the insurrection of Neahmatha, the Indian
chief. He now brought to public life the new prestige of a soldier.
After this, "Captain Toombs" was never defeated in his county. He was
returned at the annual elections in 1839, 1840, 1842, and 1843--and
succeeded in preserving at home an average Whig majority of 100 votes.
He did not care for the State Senate, preferring the more populous body,
then composed of 200 members. Parties in the State were very evenly
balanced, but Mr. Toombs preserved, in the varying scale of politics, a
prominent place in the house. He was made chairman of the Judiciary
Committee by his political opponents. He served as a member of the
Committee on Internal Improvements, as chairman of the all-important
Committee on Banking, chairman of the Committee on State of the
Republic, and in 1842 received the vote of the Whig minority in the
house for Speaker. In 1840 the Whigs gained control of the government.
The Harrison tidal wave swept their best men to the front in State and
national councils. Charles J. Jenkins of Richmond was elected speaker of
the house, and Mr. Toombs, as chairman of the Banking Committee, framed
the bill which repealed the law authorizing the issue of bank bills to
the amount of twice their capital stock. He went right to the marrow of
honest banking and sound finance by providing for a fund to redeem the
outstanding bills, and condemned the course of the State banks in
flooding the State with irredeemable promises to pay.
It was at this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Toombs displayed
the skill and sagacity of a statesman in fearlessly exposing a seductive
scheme for popular relief. He was called upon to confront public clamor
and to fight in the face of fearful odds, but he did not falter.
Just before the General Assembly of 1840 adjourned, Governor McDonald
sent an urgent message to both houses calling upon them to frame some
means for the speedy relief of the people. The situation in Georgia was
very distressing. The rains and floods of that year had swept the crops
from the fields, and there was much suffering among the planters. Coming
upon the heel of the session, the Whig members of the legislature looked
upon the message as a surprise, and rather regarded it as a shrewd
political stroke. Mr. Toombs was equal to the emergency. He quickly put
in a resolution asking the Governor himself to suggest some means of
popular relief--throwing the burden of the problem back upon the
executive. But Governor McDonald was armed. He drew his last weapon from
his arsenal, and used it with formidable power. He sent in an elaborate
message to the houses recommending that the State make a large loan and
deposit the proceeds in bank, to be given out to the people on good
security. The Senate committee, in evident sympathy with the scheme for
relief, reported a bill authorizing the issue of two million six-year
eight-per-cent. bonds to be loaned to private citizens, limiting each
loan to one thousand dollars, and restricting the notes to three years,
with eight per cent. interest.
The report of the House Committee was prepared by Robert Toombs. It was
the most admirable and statesmanlike document of that day. Mr. Toombs
said that deliberation had resulted in the conviction that the measure
suggested by His Excellency should not be adopted. While his committee
was duly sensible of and deeply regretted the pecuniary embarrassment of
many of their fellow-citizens, he felt constrained by a sense of public
duty to declare that he deemed it unwise and impolitic to use the
credit, and pledge the property and labor of the whole people, to supply
the private wants of a portion only of the people. The use of the public
credit, he went on to say, was one of the most important and delicate
powers which a free people could confide in their representatives; it
should be jealously guarded, sacredly protected, and cautiously used,
even for the attainment of the noblest patriotic ends, and never for the
benefit of one class of the community to the exclusion or injury of the
rest, whether the demand grew out of real or supposed pecuniary
difficulties. To relieve these difficulties by use of the public credit
would be to substitute a public calamity for private misfortune, and
would end in the certain necessity of imposing grievous burdens in the
way of taxes upon the many for the benefit of the few. All experience,
Mr. Toombs went on to declare, admonish us to expect such results from
the proposed relief measures, to adopt which would be to violate some
of the most sacred principles of the social compact. All free
governments, deriving their just powers from, and being established for
the benefit of, the governed, must necessarily have power over the
property, and consequently the credit, of the governed to the extent of
public use, and no further. And whenever government assumed the right to
use the property or credit of the people for any other purpose, it
abused a power essential for the perfection of its legislative duties in
a manner destructive of the rights and interests of the governed, and
ought to be sternly resisted by the people. The proposed measures, he
contended, violated these admitted truths, asserted the untenable
principle that governments should protect a portion of the people, in
violation of the rights of the remainder, from the calamities consequent
on unpropitious seasons and private misfortunes.
He must have been an indifferent or careless spectator of similar
financial schemes, Mr. Toombs declared, who could persuade himself that
this plan of borrowing money, to lend again at the same rate of
interest, could be performed without loss to the State. That loss must
be supplied by taxation, and to that extent, at least, it will operate
so as to legislate money from the pocket of one citizen to that of
another. The committee declared that it knew of no mode of legislative
relief except the interposition of unconstitutional, unwise, unjust, and
oppressive legislation between debtor and creditor, which did not need
their condemnation.
The argument was exhaustive and convincing. Never were the powers of the
State or the soundness of public credit more strongly set forth. The
whole scheme of relief was abandoned, and the General Assembly
adjourned.
The relief measures, however, had a great effect upon the campaign.
Rejected in the legislature under the rattling fire and withering
sarcasm of Toombs, they were artfully used on the hustings. "McDonald
and Relief" was the slogan. Men talked airily about "deliverance and
liberty." Mr. Toombs declared that "humbuggery was reduced to an exact
science and demonstrated by figures." The Act compelling the banks to
make cash payments was represented as an unwise contraction of the
currency and a great oppression to the people. Governor McDonald was
consequently reelected over William C. Dawson, the Whig nominee.
Robert Toombs was not a candidate for reelection in 1841. He worked hard
at the polls for the Whig ticket, and although his candidate for
Governor received a majority of one in Wilkes County, the Whigs were
defeated for the legislature. When he returned to the Assembly in 1842
he still found Governor McDonald and the Democrats supporting a central
bank and the sub-treasury. They clamored to restore public finances to
the old system. The Democrats held the legislature and elected to the
United States Senate Walter T. Colquitt over Charles J. Jenkins.
Although a member of the minority party, Mr. Toombs was appointed
chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Here his high character and moral
courage shone conspicuously. He proved a stone wall against the perfect
flood of legislation designed for popular relief. To use his own words:
"The calendar was strong with a heterogeneous collection of bills
proposing stay-laws." He reported as "unwise, inexpedient, and
injurious," proposed Acts "to protect unfortunate debtors"; "to redeem
property in certain cases"; also a bill to "exempt from levy and sale
certain classes of property." He held with Marshall the absolute
inviolability of contracts; he believed in common honesty in public and
private life; he was strict in all business obligations; he denounced
the Homestead Act of 1868, and declared in his last days that there was
"not a dirty shilling in his pocket." Mr. Toombs was nothing of the
demagogue. He was highminded, fearless, and sincere, and it may be said
of him what he afterward declared so often of Henry Clay, that "he would
not flatter Neptune for his trident or Jove for his power to thunder."
He was called upon at this session to fight the repeal of the law he had
framed in 1840, to regulate the system of banking. He declared in
eloquent terms that the State must restrict the issue of the banks and
compel their payment in specie. The experiment of banking on public
credit had failed, he said. It had brought loss to the government,
distress to the people, and had sullied the good faith of Georgia.
It was at this session of the legislature that the Democrats proposed a
vote of censure upon John McPherson Berrien, United States Senator from
Georgia, for his advocacy of a national bank. Mr. Toombs ardently
defended Senator Berrien. He said that the State legislature was not the
custodian of a senator's conscience, and held that the people of Georgia
sanctioned the expediency and utility of a national bank. When the
resolution of censure came up in the house, the Whigs refused to vote,
and raised the point of "no quorum." Speaker _pro tem_. Wellborn, who
presided, counted a quorum and declared the resolutions adopted. Mr.
Toombs fired up at this unusual decision. He threw himself before the
Speaker with impetuous appeal and called for a reversal of the decision.
But it was a Democratic house, and the Speaker was sustained by a vote
of 96 to 40.
The craze for internal improvements now swept over the country. The
Whigs were especially active, and we find resolutions adopted by the
General Assembly, calling on the Federal Government to create ports of
entry and to build government foundries and navy yards on the Southern
seaboard. Mr. Toombs was chairman of the Committee of Internal
Improvements, but his efforts were directed toward the completion of the
Western and Atlantic Railroad. These enterprises had overshadowed the
waterways, and the railway from Charleston, S. C., to Augusta, Ga., one
of the very first in the country, had just been completed. Already a
company had embarked upon the construction of the Georgia Railroad, and
on May 21, 1837, the first locomotive ever put in motion on the soil of
Georgia moved out from Augusta. A local paper described the event in
sententious terms:
This locomotive started beautifully and majestically from
the depository and, following the impetus given, flew with
surprising velocity on the road which hereafter is to be
her natural element.
The General Assembly decided that these rail lines should have an outlet
to the West. This great road was finally built and operated from Atlanta
to Chattanooga, and is still owned by the State, a monument to the
sagacity and persistency of Toombs and his associates in 1840. The great
possibilities of these iron highways opened the eyes of the statesmen
of that day, Mr. Calhoun seemed to drop for a time his philosophical
studies of States and slavery and to dream of railroads and commercial
greatness. He proposed the connection of the Atlantic Ocean with the
Mississippi River and the great West, through Cumberland Gap--a
brilliant and feasible scheme. Governor Gilmer of Georgia declared in
his message that these projected roads "would add new bonds to the
Union." But King Cotton, with his millions in serfdom, issued his
imperial decrees, and not even this great railroad development could
keep down the tremendous tragedy of the century.
One of the measures to which Mr. Toombs devoted great attention during
his legislative term was the establishment of a State Supreme Court.
This bill was several times defeated, but finally in 1843 passed the
house by a vote of 88 to 86. It was the scene of many of his forensic
triumphs. He also introduced, during the sessions of 1842 and 1843,
bills to abolish suretyship in Georgia. This system had been severely
abused. In the flush times men indorsed without stint, and then during
the panic of 1837 "reaped the whirlwind." Fortunes were swept away,
individual credit ruined, and families brought to beggary by this
reckless system of surety. What a man seldom refused to do for another,
Mr. Toombs strove to reach by law. But the system had become too firmly
intrenched in the financial habits of the people. His bill, which he
distinctly stated was to apply alone to future and not past contracts,
only commanded a small minority of votes. It was looked upon as an
abridgment of personal liberty. Mr. Toombs exerted all of his efforts in
behalf of this bill, and it became quite an issue in Georgia. It is not
a little strange that when Robert Toombs was dead, it was found that his
own estate was involved by a series of indorsements which he had given
in Atlanta to the Kimball House Company. Had he maintained the activity
of his younger days, he would probably have turned this deal into a
profitable investment. The complication was finally arranged, but his
large property came near being swept away under the same system of
surety he had striven to abolish.