TOOMBS AS A LEGISLATOR.
Georgia had taken a leading hand in the momentous events. Alexander H.
Stephens had been prominently mentioned for President; so had Howell
Cobb. When Senator Toombs had attacked the doctrine of Mr. Douglas, the
followers of the latter charged that Mr. Toombs had deserted his old
ally, and was himself making a bid for the presidency. Especially was
this the case, they urged, as Mr. Toombs had recommended the seceding
delegates to go back to the Baltimore convention, and endeavor to effect
an honorable adjustment. The Augusta _Chronicle and Sentinel_, a leading
Union organ, took up the charge and asked: "What of it? He is certainly
as much entitled to it as any citizen in the republic. Were he elected,
he would be such a President as the country needs, giving no countenance
to corruption or fraud, but, with a will of his own, setting aside all
dictation and acting as President of all the people. We doubt if there
is a man that could arouse such a furor in his behalf, North or South,
as Robert Toombs."
Close friends of Mr. Toombs at that time believed he was not without his
ambition to occupy the Executive chair. Never an office-seeker, he had
gone easily to the front rank of national politics and had won his
honors in Georgia in a kingly way. He realized, however, that he was not
politic enough to gain support from Northern States. His convictions
were overmastering passions; his speech was fervid and fearless; and his
bold, imperturbable expression had placed him in a fierce white light,
which barred him from the promotion of party conventions. While his
enemies were accusing him of a desire to destroy the Union and embroil
the sections, Robert Toombs was probably cherishing in his heart a vague
hope that one day he might be called to the presidency of a common
country.
Senator Toombs was very active in attending to his public duties. He was
interested in every species of legislation. His remarks upon the
different matters of national business exhibited versatility, study, and
interest in everything that affected the public welfare. Those who
believe him to have been a conspirator, using his high position to
overthrow the government, have only to look over the debates in Congress
to see how active and conscientious were his efforts to promote every
real interest of the Union.
In the United States Senate, on July 31, 1854, Mr. Toombs gave an
elaborate exposition of his views upon the policy of internal
improvements. He said he had maintained opposition to this system as a
fundamental principle. Since he entered public life, he had sustained
President Polk's veto of the River and Harbor bill in 1847. He believed
that Congress had no constitutional power to begin or carry on a general
system of internal improvements. He wanted to know where this power of
the Constitution could be found. Madison and Jefferson had opposed this
system. Monroe, Jackson, and Clay had yielded to the popular pressure
and sanctioned it. "Instead of leaving the taxes or the money in the
pockets of the people," he said, "you have spent nine months in
endeavoring to squander and arranging to have more to squander in the
next Congress. I should like to use a polite term," said he, "for I am a
good-natured man, but I think it is corruption.
"In this bill you offer me seventy thousand dollars for the Savannah
river. Ships were sunk in that river for the common defense of the
country during the Revolutionary War. You are bound to abate your
nuisance at common law. You might offer me this Capitol full of gold,
and I would scorn the gift just less than the giver. You ought to have
removed these obstructions long ago. When we come and ask of you this
act of justice, you tell me to go with you into your internal
improvement bill and take pot-luck with you."
Mr. Toombs claimed that the power given to Congress to regulate
commerce, simply meant to prescribe the rules by which commerce could be
carried on, and nothing else. "The people of Maryland," he said, "had
never asked that the harbor of Baltimore should be cleaned at the
expense of the people of Georgia. They did not ask that other people
should pay their burdens. They came here and asked the privilege of
taxing their own commerce for their own benefit, and we granted it. I
hold it to be a fundamental principle in all governments, and especially
in all free governments, that you should not put burdens on the people
whenever you can discriminate and put them on those who enjoy the
benefits. You started with that principle with your post-office
establishments.
"Senators, is it just? I tell you, as God lives, it is not just, and you
ought not to do it. There is manhood in the people of the Mississippi
Valley. Let them levy tonnage duties for their own rivers and ports and
put up their own lighthouses, and charge the people who use them for the
benefits conferred. Let the honest farmer who makes his hay, who gathers
his cheese, who raises his meal in Vermont, be not taxed to increase
your magnificent improvements of nature and your already gigantic
wealth. Senators, it is unjust."
During the session of Congress of 1856-57, Senator Toombs again
arraigned the whole system of internal improvements. He carefully
differentiated between building a lighthouse and clearing out a harbor
by the Federal Government. He said in course of the debate: "Where
lighthouses are necessary for the protection of your navy, I admit the
power to make them; but it must be where they are necessary, and not
merely for the benefit and facilitation of commerce. Foreign and
domestic commerce ought to be charged, as in England and France, for the
benefit they receive. I would make the shipowners, the common carriers
of this country, who are constantly using the power of this government
to make money out of the products of honest industry and agriculture,
submit to this rule.
"The power to found a navy is found in the only fountain of power in
this country, the Constitution. The defense of one is the defense of
all. The destruction of nationality is the destruction of the life of
all.
"I say if you take away the property of one man and give it to a
thousand, or if you take away the property of a million and give it to
nineteen millions, you do not create national wealth by transferring it
from the pockets of honest industry to other people's pockets. This is
my principle. It is immovable. The more commerce there is on the
Mississippi the more they are able and competent to pay the expenses of
transporting it, and I only ask that they shall do it."
Mr. Toombs sustained the veto of President Pierce of the Mississippi
River bill.
In July, 1856, he said that he had for eleven years maintained the
vetoes of Mr. Polk. "I have perceived that this mischief is widespread,
this corruption greater, this tendency to the destruction of the country
is more dangerous. The tendency to place the whole government under the
money power of the nation is greater and greater. The danger may be all
of my imagination; but whether that be so, or whether I see in a bolder
light the evil that will grow by letting this sluice from the public
treasury and making it run by the will of the majority, I deem it so
important that it may be worth an empire. We are called on, upon the
idea of everybody helping everybody's bill, to vote for them all. There
certainly can be no greater abandonment of public principle than is here
presented."
Senator Toombs, while a member of the Georgia Legislature, opposed the
omnibus bill, granting State aid to railroads, and one of the first
devices to fall under his criticism was a scheme to build a road to his
own town. He was by nature progressive. He championed the cause of the
State railroad of Georgia. In general terms he believed that the States
and the people should carry out works of internal improvement. It is
said that the first office ever held by Mr. Toombs was that of
commissioner of the town of Washington, Ga. The election hinged upon a
question of public improvement, the question being "ditch or no ditch";
Toombs was elected commissioner, and the ditch was dug.
He was nothing of a demagogue. He did not attempt to belittle the public
service. He championed the provision for higher pay for the United
States Judges, and for increasing the stipend of army officers, although
he denounced the system of double rations as vicious. He did not
hesitate to hit an unnecessary expense in every shape. All overflowing
pension grabs found in him a deadly enemy. In December, 1856, while
speaking on the subject of claims, he said: "In 1828, when half a
century had passed over the heads of the men who fought your battles,
when their generation was gone, when Tories and jobbers could not be
distinguished from the really meritorious, the agents came here and
attempted to intimidate public men." He alluded to pension agents as men
who prowl about and make fortunes by peddling in the pretended
patriotism and sufferings of their fathers.
"It is," said he, "a poor pretext for an honorable man to come and tell
the government, 'My ancestor fought for his own and the public liberty;
he did not choose to be a slave to a foreign despotism; but with
manliness, and honor, and patriotism, he fought during the war; now pay
me for this. I want to be paid in hard dollars for the honor, and
chivalry, and patriotism of my ancestor.' I tell you, Mr. President, it
is not good money; it is bad money; it is dishonorable to the memory of
those who fought your battles."
In February, 1857, the electoral vote for President was counted by the
two Houses of Congress. The vote of the State of Wisconsin (five
ballots) had been cast on a day other than that fixed by the States for
the meeting of the Electoral College. If counted, it gave Fremont 114
votes; if omitted, Fremont would have 109.
In the debate which followed, Senator Toombs discussed very closely a
point which has since been the subject of sharp contention. He said:
"The duty of counting the vote for President devolves on the Senate and
House of Representatives. They must act in their separate capacities;
but they alone can determine it, and not the President of the Senate and
the tellers of the two Houses. It is a high privilege, a dangerous one
to the liberties and Constitution of this country. The Senate and House
must determine the votes to be counted, and the President of the Senate
can only announce those to be votes which are thus decided by competent
authority, and any attempt of the presiding officer to declare what
votes he may deem to be legal, or to decide which are the votes, no
matter whether it affects the result or not, or even to say that the
question shall not be decided, however highly I respect the chair, I
submit is not a power given to the presiding officer by the Constitution
and the laws."
In 1850 Senator Toombs found it necessary to oppose an appropriation for
an experiment with the Atlantic cable. He was not prepared to say that
the experiment would not be successful, but he boldly declared, despite
the importance of the work and the high character of the men who were
supporting it, that there was no power in the Federal Constitution for
such an appropriation. Because the government establishes post roads, it
could not be inferred that the government had the power to aid in
transmitting intelligence to all quarters of the globe. He did not
believe in going beyond the constitutional guarantees. He declared of
these questions, as he had in the debate upon the Kansas bill, that in
hunting for power and authority he knew but one place to go--to the
Constitution. When he did not find it there, he could not find it
anywhere.
Senator Toombs favored the purchase of Cuba, because he considered it
advantageous to the republic. "I will accept Canada as readily, if it
can be honestly and fairly done," he said. "I will accept Central
America and such part of Mexico as, in my judgment, would be
advantageous to the republic."
The question of the slave population of Cuba should not come into this
discussion, he declared. "I will not trammel the great constitutional
power of the Executive to deal with foreign nations, with our internal
questions; and I will not manacle my country, I will not handcuff the
energies of this mighty republic, by tying up our foreign diplomacy with
our internal dissensions. At least to the rest of the world, let us
present ourselves as one people, one nation." He spurned the idea that
he wanted Cuba to strengthen the slave power in Congress. He said, "Some
may think we go for it because by this means we shall have one more
slave State in the Union. I know that the senator from New York (Mr.
Seward) at the last session alluded to the comparative number of
slaveholding and non-slaveholding States; but I never considered that my
rights lay there; I never considered that I held my rights of property
by the votes of senators. It is too feeble a tenure. If I did, I have
shown by my votes that I have not feared them. Whenever any State,
Minnesota or Oregon, or any other, came, no matter from where, if she
came on principles which were sufficient in my judgment to justify her
admission into this great family of nations, I never refused her the
right hand of fellowship. I did not inquire whether you had seventeen or
eighteen free States. If you had fifty, it would not alter my vote. The
idea of getting one slave State would have no effect on me. But Cuba has
fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of
Mexico, and then the Carribean Sea, a _mare clausum_. Probably younger
men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float
there except by permission of the United States of America. That is my
policy. I rose more with a view to declare my policy for the future;
that development, that progress throughout the tropics was the true,
fixed, unalterable policy of the nation, no matter what may be the
consequences with reference to European powers."
Mr. Toombs believed that much bad legislation resulted from trusting too
much to committees. He rarely failed to question such reports, and never
voted unless he thoroughly understood the subject. He thought this whole
machinery was a means of "transferring the legislation of the country
from those into whose hands the Constitution had placed it to
irresponsible parties." He said it was a common newspaper idea that
Congress was wasting time in debating details. His opinion was that
nine-tenths of the time the best thing to be done in public legislation
was to do nothing. He thought Congress was breaking down the government
by its own weight in "pensioning all the vagrants brought here. All that
a man has to do is to make affidavit and get a pension."
In 1859 he refused to vote to appropriate $500,000 for the improvement
of Buffalo harbor, because he held he had no right to spend the money of
the whole Union for a particular locality; for this reason he voted to
abolish the mint at Dahlonega, in his own State.
Mr. Toombs opposed the policy of buying the outstanding debt at a
premium. He criticised Senator Simon Cameron for asking that the
government give employment to 50,000 laborers out of work. He said,
"Sir, government cannot do it and never did do it. There never was a
government in the world which did not ruin the people they attempted to
benefit by such a course. Governments do not regulate wages."
Senator Toombs contended that the Postal Department stood on a different
footing from the army and navy. Postal service, he thought, was no part
of the national duty. "It is of no more importance to the people of the
United States that this government should carry my letters than that it
should carry my cotton." He claimed that he had some old-fashioned
ideas, but they were innate. "I do not think it right, before God, for
me to make another man pay my expenses."
In discussing the financial report, he said, "You have as much time to
appropriate money intelligently as you have to give it lavishly. While
there is a general cry for retrenchment, when any practical movement is
made, the answer always is that this is not the right time or the right
place. I am afraid we shall never find the right time, or the right
place, until the popular revolution becomes strong enough to send here
men who will do the public business better than we have done it."