IN THE LOWER HOUSE.
Robert Toombs took his seat in the twenty-ninth Congress in December,
1845. The Democrats organized the House by the election of John W. Davis
of Indiana, Speaker. The House was made up of unusually strong men, who
afterward became noted in national affairs. Hannibal Hamlin was with the
Maine delegation; ex-President John Quincy Adams had been elected from
Massachusetts with Robert C. Winthrop; Stephen A. Douglas was there from
Illinois; David Wilmot from Pennsylvania; R. Barnwell Rhett and
Armistead Burt from South Carolina; Geo. C. Droomgoole and Robert M. T.
Hunter of Virginia, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, were members, as were
Henry W. Hilliard and W. L. Yancey of Alabama, Jefferson Davis and Jacob
Thompson of Mississippi, and John Slidell of Louisiana. Toombs,
Stephens, and Cobb were the most prominent figures in the Georgia
delegation.
The topics uppermost in the public mind of that day were the Oregon
question, Texas, and the ubiquitous tariff. It looked at one time as if
war with Great Britain were unavoidable. President Polk occupied an
extreme position, and declared in his message to Congress that our title
to the whole of Oregon was clear. The boundary of the ceded territory
was unsettled. The Democrats demanded the occupation of Oregon, with the
campaign cry of "fifty-four forty or fight."
Mr. Toombs did not accept President Polk's position. His first speech in
the House was made January 12, 1846, and at once placed him in the front
rank of orators and statesmen. He said that it was not clear to him that
our title was exceptional up to 54 deg.40'. Our claim to the territory north
of the Columbia River was the Spanish title only, and this had been an
inchoate right.
Mr. Toombs wanted the question settled by reason. He impetuously
declared that "neither the clamors within nor without this hall, nor the
ten thousand British cannon, floating on every ship, or mounted on every
island, shall influence my decision in a question like this." He was for
peace--for honorable peace. "It is the mother of all the virtues and
hopes of mankind." No man would go further than he to obtain honorable
peace; but dishonorable peace was worse than war--it was the worst of
all evil.
War was the greatest and the most horrible of calamities. Even a war for
liberty itself was rarely compensated by the consequences. "Yet the
common judgment of mankind consigned to lasting infamy the people who
would surrender their rights and freedom for the sake of a dishonest
peace."
"Let us," cried the speaker, turning to his Southern colleagues, "let us
repress any unworthy sectional feeling which looks only to the
attainment of sectional power."
His conclusion was an apotheosis of Georgia as a Union State. He said:
"Mr. Speaker, Georgia wants peace, but she would not for the sake of
peace yield any of her own or the nation's rights. A new career of
prosperity is now before her; new prospects, bright and fair, open to
her vision and lie ready for her grasp, and she fully appreciates her
position. She has at length begun to avail herself of her advantages by
forming a great commercial line between the Atlantic and the West. She
is embarking in enterprises of intense importance, and is beginning to
provide manufactures for her unpaid laborers. She sees nothing but
prosperity ahead, and peace is necessary in order to reveal it; but
still, if war must come, if it has been decreed that Oregon must be
consecrated to liberty in the blood of the brave and the sufferings of
the free, Georgia will be found ready with her share of the offering,
and, whatever may be her sacrifice, she will display a magnanimity as
great as the occasion and as prolonged as the conflict."
Mr. Toombs indorsed the conservative action of the Senate, which forced
President Polk from his extreme position and established the parallel of
49 deg. as the northern boundary.
The tariff bill of 1846 was framed, as President Polk expressed it, in
the interest of lower duties, and it changed the basis of assessment
from specific, or minimum duties, to duties _ad valorem_.
Mr. Toombs made a most elaborate speech against this bill in July, 1846.
If his Oregon speech had shown thorough familiarity with the force and
effect of treaties and the laws of nations, his tariff speech proved him
a student of fiscal matters and a master of finance. His genius, as
Jefferson Davis afterward remarked, lay decidedly in this direction. Mr.
Toombs announced in his tariff speech that the best of laws, especially
tax laws, were but approximations of human justice. He entered into an
elaborate argument to controvert the idea that low tariff meant
increased revenue. The history of such legislation, he contended, had
been that the highest tariff had raised the most money. Mr. Toombs
combated the _ad valorem_ principle of levying duty upon imports.
Mr. Toombs declared to his constituents in September, 1846, that the
President had marched his army into Mexico without authority of law.
"The conquest and dismemberment of Mexico, however brilliant may be the
success of our arms," said he, "will not redound to the glory of our
republic."
The Whigs approached the Presidential campaign of 1848 with every chance
of success. They still hoped that the Sage of Ashland might be the
nominee. George W. Crawford, ex-Governor of Georgia, and afterward
member of the Taylor Cabinet, perceiving that the drift in the West was
against Mr. Clay, offered a resolution in the Whig convention that
"whatever may have been our personal preferences, we feel that in
yielding them at the present time, we are only pursuing Mr. Clay's own
illustrious example." Mr. Toombs stated to his constituents that Clay
could not be nominated because Ohio had declared that no man who had
opposed the Wilmot Proviso could get the vote of that State. The Whigs,
who had opposed the Mexican war, now reaped its benefits by nominating
one of its heroes to the Presidency, and Zachary Taylor of Louisiana
became at once a popular candidate. Millard Fillmore of New York was
named for vice president, and "Rough and Ready" clubs were soon
organized in every part of Georgia. The venerable William H. Crawford
headed the Whig electoral ticket in Georgia, while Toombs, Stephens, and
Thomas W. Thomas led the campaign.
The issue of the campaign in Georgia was the Clayton compromise which
the Georgia senators had sustained, but which Stephens and Toombs had
defeated in the House. This compromise proposed that all questions
concerning slavery in the governments of the ceded territory be referred
to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Toombs declared that the
Mexican law prohibiting slavery was still valid and would so remain;
that Congress and not the courts must change this law.
The Clayton compromise, Mr. Toombs said, was only intended as "the
Euthanasia of States' Rights. When our rights are clear, security for
them should be free from all ambiguity. We ought never to surrender
territory, until it shall be wrested from us as we have wrested it from
Mexico. Such a surrender would degrade and demoralize our section and
disable us for effective resistance against future aggression. It is far
better that this new acquisition should be the grave of the republic
than of the rights and honor of the South--and, from present
indications, to this complexion it must come at last."
Mr. Toombs demanded that what was recognized by law as property in the
slaveholding States should be recognized in the Mexican territory. "This
boon," he pleaded, "may be worthless, but its surrender involves our
honor. We can permit no discrimination against our section or our
institutions in dividing out the common property of the republic. Their
rights are not to be abandoned, or bartered away in presidential
elections."
So Toombs and Stephens were central figures in this national campaign.
It was during this canvass that Mr. Stephens became embroiled with Judge
Francis H. Cone, a prominent lawyer of Georgia and a near neighbor. Mr.
Stephens heard that Judge Cone had denounced him as a traitor for moving
to table the Clayton compromise. Stephens had retorted sharply that if
Cone had said this he would slap his face. After some correspondence the
two men met in Atlanta, September 4, 1848. The trouble was renewed;
Judge Cone denounced Mr. Stephens, who rapped him over the shoulders
with a whalebone cane. Mr. Stephens was a fragile man, and Judge Cone,
with strong physique, closed in and forced him to the floor. During the
scuffle Mr. Stephens was cut in six places. His life for a while was
despaired of. Upon his recovery he was received with wild enthusiasm by
the Whigs, who cheered his pluck and regarded his return to the canvass
as an omen of victory.
Shortly afterward he wrote to Mrs. Toombs, thanking her for her interest
and solicitude during his illness. He managed to write with his left
hand, as he could not use his right. "I hope," he says, "I will be able
to take the stump again next week for old Zach. I think Mr. Toombs has
had the weight of the canvass long enough, and though he has done
gallant service, this but inspires me with the wish to lend all aid in
my power. I think we shall yet be able to save the State. My faith is as
strong as Mr. Preston's which, you know, was enough to move mountains. I
got a letter the other day from Mr. C----, who gives it as his opinion
that Ohio would go for General Taylor. If so, he will be elected. And
you know how I shall hail such a result."
During Mr. Stephens' illness Mr. Toombs canvassed many of the counties
in the Stephens district. Both men were reelected to Congress, and
Zachary Taylor received the electoral vote of Georgia over Lewis Cass of
Michigan, and was elected President of the United States.
The Democrats, who put out a candidate this year against Mr. Toombs,
issued an address which was evidently not inspired by the able and
deserving gentleman who bore their standard, but was intended as a sharp
rebuke to Mr. Toombs. It is interesting as showing how he was regarded
by his friends, the enemy.
"Of an age when life's illusions have vanished," they said of the
Democratic candidate, "he has no selfish aspirations, no vaulting
ambition to carry him astray: no vanity to lead where it is glory enough
to follow." They accorded to Mr. Toombs "a very showy cast of
talent--better suited to the displays of the stump than the grave
discussions of the legislative hall. His eloquence has that sort of
splendor mixed with the false and true which is calculated to dazzle the
multitude. He would rather win the applause of groundlings by some silly
tale than gain the intelligent by the most triumphant course of
reasoning." Mr. Toombs carried every county in the district and was
returned to Congress by 1681 majority.
When Mr. Toombs returned to Washington he had commanded national
prominence. He had not only carried his State for Zachary Taylor, but
his speech in New York, during a critical period of the canvass, had
turned the tide for the Whig candidate in the country. Toombs and
Stephens naturally stood very near the administration. They soon had
reason to see, however, that the Taylor Cabinet was not attentive to
Southern counsels.
During the fight over the compromise measure in Congress the Northern
papers printed sensational accounts of a rupture between President
Taylor and Messrs. Toombs and Stephens. According to this account the
Georgia congressmen called on the President and expressed strong
disapprobation of his stand upon the bill to organize the Territory of
New Mexico. It was said that they even threatened to side with his
opponents to censure him upon his action in the case of Secretary
Crawford and the Golphin claim. The President, the article recited, was
very much troubled over this interview and remained despondent for
several days. He took his bed and never rallied, dying on the 9th of
July, 1850. Mr. Stephens published a card, promptly denying this
sensation. He said that neither he nor his colleague Mr. Toombs had
visited the President at all during or previous to his last illness, and
that no such scene had occurred.
Toombs and Stephens, in fact, were warm personal friends of George W.
Crawford, who was Secretary of War in Taylor's Cabinet. He had served
with them in the General Assembly of Georgia and had twice been Governor
of their State. The Golphin claim, of which Governor Crawford had been
agent, had been collected from the Secretary of the Treasury while
Governor Crawford was in the Cabinet, but President Taylor had decided
that as Governor Crawford was at the head of an entirely different
department of the government, he had been guilty of no impropriety.
After the death of President Taylor, Governor Crawford returned to
Augusta and was tendered a public dinner by his fellow-citizens,
irrespective of party. He delivered an eloquent and feeling address. He
made an extensive tour abroad, then lived in retirement in Richmond
County, enjoying the respect and confidence of his neighbors.