Chapter XI: Toombs (1)

Calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent, leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs's prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view of Calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Caesar, The Great. Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun.

It is much more necessary than I saw such a method was with Calhoun to deal first with what we may call the non-sectional parts of Toombs's career. And I wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts are exceptionally important and valuable not only to every American, but to all those anywhere who prize shining examples of private virtue and exalted teachers of good and honest government.

I was nearly ten years old when Toombs's congressional career commenced in December, 1845. Living only eighteen miles from him I heard him often mentioned. It was the delight of many people to report his phrases and repartees. By reason of their wisdom or wit and fineness of expression, the whole of each one lodged in the dullest memory. I never knew another whose sayings circulated so widely and far without alteration. As they serve to introduce you to his rare originality, I will tell here a few of them that I heard admired and laughed at in my boyhood.

He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming red hair: "Take your fire from under it, then," he answered.

In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow--one of Choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added tauntingly, "What do you say to that?" Toombs rejoined, "Well, I must have told a d--d lie."

A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The latter disposed of this by merely saying, "You should consider which will hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional absence from, the house."

In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and sustained his charge by producing the _Globe_; and he expressively exclaimed, "What do you think of that vote?" Toombs answered without any hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"I think it a d--d bad vote. There are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send _him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad one in mine."

In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had made his Hamilcar speech, to be told of fully after a while. In this he avowed his preference of disunion to exclusion of the south from the Territories so positively and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed him as their champion. But soon afterwards, with the great majority of the people of the State, he took his stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the Georgia Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a recession from the extreme ground he had taken in the speech. In 1851, a coalition of the whigs and democrats of Georgia nominated Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for him with great zeal. He had an appointment to speak, in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the county seat. There were quite a number of ardent southern rights men in the county, who held that the admission of California, really in southern latitude, with its anti-slavery constitution, called for far more decided action on the part of the south than was counselled in the Compromise and Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they regarded as a renegade, they plotted to humiliate him when he came to Lexington. As he never shrank from discussion they easily got his consent to divide time with--as the phrase goes--a canvasser for McDonald, their candidate for governor. Toombs was to consume a stated time in opening the stump debate; then the other was to be allowed a stated time; after which Toombs had a reply of twenty minutes--these were the terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural, stressed the compromise measures and set forth the advantages of preserving the union; and he fiercely inveighed against the men who could not be satisfied with the Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a great majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists. The other disputant took the Hamilcar speech of Toombs, made just the year before, as his text. Deliberately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the doctrine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech just made, and contrasting the two, he put them into glaring inconsistency. Southern rights stock rose and union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on. In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs's tergiversation with such effective severity it elicited wild applause from the men of his side. They had pushed themselves to the front. Toombs rose to reply. In their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker, they forgot the proprieties of the occasion; forgot that it was Toombs's meeting, as was said in common parlance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made all kinds of noises to drown his voice. Unabashed he looked upon them, smiling that grandest and blandest of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me long afterwards, his self-possession excited their curiosity. They wanted to hear if he could say anything to get out of the trap in which they had so cleverly caught him; and they became still. "It seems to me," he commenced, "that men like you meditating a great revolution ought first to learn good manners." At this condign rebuke of behavior which, according to stump usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been shown Toombs in his own house by guests accepting his hospitality, spontaneous cheers from the union men, who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the roof. In his highest and readiest style--for mob opposition always lifted him at once into that--he reminded his hearers that their whole duty was to decide whether they would approve the compromise and the Georgia Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what he had spoken last year before these measures were even thought of, was right or wrong, was to substitute for a transcendently important public question a little personal one of no concern to them whatever. "If there is anything in my Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the measures which I have supported here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses by his silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my abandoned errors, let him defend them."

How the union men cheered as he broke out of the trap, and caught the setters in it!

I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, when six years afterwards I settled in Lexington, to begin law practice. Over and over again the Union men told how their spirits fell, fell, fell as the southern rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark around; and then how the sun broke out in full splendor at the first sentence of Toombs's reply, and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute with anybody there you try to put him down by quoting his former contradictory utterances, he tells you that if you take up his abandoned errors you must defend them.

The interest excited in me by what is told in the foregoing was the beginning of my study of Toombs, which never at any time entirely ceased, and which will doubtless continue as long as I live. He has impressed me far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon after his return, in 1867, from his exile I resolved I would try to write his Life under the title, "Robert Toombs, as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker;" and for ten or fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the data. These had accumulated under each head--especially reports of his epigrams and winged phrases--far more considerably than was my expectation at first. I added to them very largely by copious notes of the record of his congressional life which I read attentively in course, commencing immediately after his death. In a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not found the times favorable for publication, and the MS. may perplex my literary executor. Of course my object in the too egotistic narrative just made is to inform you that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon the subject, hoping thus to draw your attention.

Robert Toombs was born July 2, 1810, on his father's plantation in Wilkes county, Georgia. He went to school at Washington, the county seat; then to the State university; which having left, he finished his collegiate course at Union. Next he spent a year at the law school of Virginia university. He never was a bookworm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen years of his life--when I was much with him--betrayed a smattering of the Roman authors commonly read at school, a much greater knowledge of the Latin quoted by Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and considerable familiarity with "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," and the Falstaff parts of "King Henry IV.," and "Merry Wives," Don Quixote, Burns, and the bible. But this man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep acquaintance with any literature. Erskine got the staple of his English from a long and fond study of Shakspeare and Milton; but Toombs must have drawn his only from the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get theirs, and then purified and refined it by a secret process that nobody else knew of,--not even himself, as I believe. If he had only corrected after utterance as assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would be much the finer.

The year before he came of age he was admitted to the bar by legislative act. In the same year he married his true mate and settled at Washington. For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge who, as there was no supreme court then, was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave every detail of preparation of his cases, had, in a year or two after his call, made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had received a good education both literary and professional, before he came south. Toombs, who had known the great American lawyers of his time, always said after his death in 1859 that Cone was the best of all. Lumpkin used to tell that during a visit to England he haunted the courts, but he never found a single counsel who spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as Cone. Another one of these was Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man that Georgia ever produced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was without Choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts of inspiration from the immortal fountains. A. H. Stephens admired Choate greatly. He heard the latter's reply to Buchanan. Often, at Liberty Hall--as Stephens called his residence--he would repeat with gusto the passage in which Choate roasts Buchanan for his inculcation of hate to England. Stephens contended that if all that education and art had done for each--Choate and Lumpkin--could have been removed, a comparison would, as he believed, show Lumpkin to be the stronger advocate by nature.

These three--Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs--were often on the same side. But whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the unremitted attentiveness of what we may call his subconscious observation, and a receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated all of Cone's law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy--that is, he had, as he did with the speech and language heard by him every day, transmuted them into the rare and precious staple peculiar to his own _sui generis_ self.

In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was as indistinct as if he had mush in his mouth, old men have told me. But after a year or two of practice he developed both power and attractiveness. In due time when Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself heard Lumpkin tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke by Toombs--then some twenty-seven years old--of the zeal with which the public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for murder. The junior--the evidence closed--was making the first speech for the defence. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with which he denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he ought to have done. Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a railing some four feet high separating him from these angry men, and chastised them as they merited. His invective culminated in denouncing them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst in innocent blood. These misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior, and with them admiration of the fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their hostility, and carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the accused over the entire community, and even into the jury box. And the narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest admirers, told with fond recollection how the popular billows were laid by the speech of his junior, and how he himself took heart and found the way to an acquittal which he feared he had lost.

This affair is illustrative of Toombs in two respects. In the first place it shows his extempore faculty and presence of mind. I have seen him so often in sudden emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent reflection pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in Napoleon's place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread around, he would have escaped in the same way, or in a better one. I do not believe that this can be said of any one else of the past or present. In the second place it is one of the many proofs extant that he could always vanquish the mob.

He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable more quickly, and declined them more resolutely than any one I ever knew. So free was he from illusion that he could not contend against plain infeasibility. It was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind him to the actual chances. For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed him in many _nisi prius_ trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared with others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or misanticipated the other. But now and then it would develop that the merits were decidedly against him. He would at once, according to circumstances, propose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very weak, toss the case away as if it was something unclean. When he had thus failed, his air of unconcern and majesty reminded of how the lion is said to stalk back to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his spring.

Stephens came to the bar some four years after Toombs did, and settled in an adjoining county. I need merely allude to their long and beautiful friendship, full details of which are to be found in the biographies of the former. I merely emphasize the importance of Stephens's help to Toombs's development in his early politics. The former got to congress two years before he did. Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagacity with which the other divined how a new question would take with the masses. On his return from a brief and bloodless service in the Creek war as captain of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State legislative career, which Mr. Stovall has creditably told.[97] I can stop only to say it was honorable, and contributed greatly to his political education.

When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he heard some of Randolph's stump speeches; and for a few years afterwards he often vouched passages from them as authority. Stephens would tell this; and then with affectionate mischief tell further that his friend, before he had finished in the Georgia legislature, had ceased entirely to support his contentions with anything else than his own reasons.

Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at the hustings. In 1840 he crossed the Savannah, and meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate is reported to have come off with the high opinion of all hearers, including his adversary.

Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to enter congress. He is the best lawyer in the State, except Cone, and fully his equal; while as a speaker he did not have Lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common men, yet with them he was almost the next, and he was far greater than Lumpkin in quelling the mob, convincing the honest judge that his law was right, and convincing also the better men of the jury and citizens present that the principles of justice involved in the issue of facts were to be applied as he claimed; he had acquired enough of property to be considered rich in that day, although he had always lived liberally; his legislative and political career had convinced the people that he was incomparably the best and ablest man of the district for their representative. It is to be especially emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest order. His plantation was a model of good management. His investments were always prudent and lucrative. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district of Taliaferro county--about ten miles distant--my maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan, lived on his plantation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed without an overseer. His father had been killed by the tories. His education had been so scant that he found reading the simplest English difficult, and to sign his name was the only writing I ever knew him to do. But his plantation management was the admiration of all his neighbors. His land was sandy and thin, but he made it yield more than ample support for his numerous family, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his blooded horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep, and goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The slaves loved sweet potatoes more than any other food, and they were a favorite food in the Big House. His supplies never failed, there being some unopened "banks or hills" when the new potatoes came. His hogs were his special attention. His fine horses required so much corn, and so much more of it was needed for bread, that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he developed a succession of peach orchards, with which he commenced their fattening in the summer. These were four in all; the first ripened in July and the last the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular one ripened at the same time, and he cared not how many different varieties there were. Whenever he tasted peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and there was a particular drawer labelled with the date, into which they were put. Whenever he had need to plant a tree whose fruit was desired at that particular time of the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nursery, whence after a year or two they transplanted the young trees; but my grandfather, as he told me, saved a year by his method. He was always replanting in place of injured trees and those he had found to be inferior. The "fattening" hogs--that is, those to be next killed for meat--were turned into the July orchard just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall; and they went on through the rest of the series. There was running water in each orchard. After peach-time, these hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for some two weeks before they were to be killed they were penned and given all the corn they would eat. What pride the good planter of that time took in keeping independent of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the main resource of his rural neighbors who did not save their own meat, as the phrase then was! Observing that his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept up. One of my earliest recollections is that of Old Lige driving them to the spring branch twice every Sunday. For a long while he tried in various ways to protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he had them "got up" every night in some enclosure he wished to enrich near enough to the Big House for his own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and he never had a sheep worried afterwards. The foregoing is enough to suggest the whole of the system. The management of its different trains and many separate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not superior in punctuality and due discharge of every duty. He lived well, entertained hospitably, and kept out of debt. Mr. Thomas E. Watson has lately given a graphic description of good plantation conduct,[98] which ought to be considered by all those who now believe that every planter was necessarily slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It was a good training school for the born business man. Let me give an example to show how extensive planting bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire insurance company--its principal office being at Athens, some forty miles distant from Toombs's home--at the beginning of the brothers' war had for some years almost driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to state that its competitors must content themselves with its leavings. The plan of this great company is a novel form of co-operative insurance--indeed, I may say, it is unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully worked forward into a success which is one of the wonders of the insurance world. The men who did this were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural business circles of the old south. A similar fact explains the mastery of money, banking, and related matters which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina, not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia. It also explains why Toombs, bred in the interior and far away from large cities, had perfectly acquired the commercial law; had complete knowledge of the principles and practice of banking, and those of all corporate business, and also a familiarity with the fluctuating values of current securities equalling that of experts.

He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator, and fully indoctrinated in the science of accounts.

Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress.

January 12, 1846, the United States house of representatives having under consideration a resolution of notice to Great Britain to abrogate the convention between her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, relative to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs made his congressional debut.

It is an able speech for a new member--especially for one grappling with a question peculiar to a part of the country so far away from his own. Convinced that the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause of offence, he will not yield anything to those who merely cry up the blessings of peace. The warlike note is deep and earnest. Then comes the most original part of the speech. Showing great familiarity with the facts and the applicable international law, he does his utmost to prove that the title of each country is bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He urges that the time has arrived when American settlers are ready to pour into Oregon. "Terminate this convention and our settlements will give us good title."

Of course I believe that Calhoun's policy, as I have explained it above, was the true one, and that we should have continued the convention as to joint occupancy as long as possible. Toombs was bred among the followers of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival for the presidency, and I doubt if he ever did neutralize this early influence enough to enable himself to do full justice to Calhoun. And as a further palliation, his combative temperament must be remembered, and also that he had inherited from a gallant Revolutionary father an extreme readiness to fight England.

July 1, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import duties in a long speech, carefully premeditated as is evident. He shows great familiarity with Adam Smith, economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading commodities, and the consequences of affecting legislation. Its main interest here is the detailed argument in its concluding passages against the expediency of free trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate.

January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase of the army is his next considerable effort. He denounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin, but he reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from the southern standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot proviso. Here is a passage characteristic of Toombs later on:

"The gentleman from New York [Grover] asked how the south could
complain of the proposed proviso accompanying the admission of new
territory, when the arrangement was so very fair and put the north and
south on a footing of perfect equality. The north could go there
without slaves, and so could the south. Well, I will try it the other
way. Suppose the territory to be open to all; then southerners could
go and carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not
this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] I will not answer for the
strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of the south
get. [Laughter.]"

Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating the necessity that exposed him to the disadvantage of contrast with a speech which had attracted so much attention and admiration. And Stephens praised the effort greatly.[99]

December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in the house, that neither the honor nor interest of the republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico, nor the annexation of any of her territory as an indispensable condition to the restoration of peace.

His Taylor speech of July 1, 1848, evinces warm whig partisanship.

In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a speaker. And one who studies his record in congress discerns that it is some two years before he commences to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches which I have mentioned above, with the solitary exception of that of January 8, 1847, are labored communication of cram rather than the peculiar language of the speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a few years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of strong thinking and fit expression extempore.

I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4, 1848, and February 20, 1849, he exhibits his inveterate hostility to maintaining and increasing an army in time of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congressional printing. Note what he says February 29, 1848, advocating reduction of salaries of patent examiners; and his denouncing the evil of congress's publishing agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March 20, 1848, the other January 18, 1849. These are short, but strong, and their forcible style gives sure promise that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly found his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards secession commenced, as I shall detail later. After that date he soon becomes one of the strongest and most influential members; and especially one whose speech greatly attracts audience. I must support this assertion by the record. With my limited space I must be very brief. My trouble is that the many examples which I could use are all so good it is hard to decide what must be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my statements can be checked by reference to the _Globe_, I need not confine myself strictly to the order of time.

His mastery of parliamentary law is a good subject to begin with.

January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-arms act as doorkeeper until one be elected. The chair decided that the question affected the organization of the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part played by Toombs:

"_Mr. Toombs._ I apprehend that the speaker has committed error. This
is not an office known to the law; it was created only by the rules of
the house. The office of speaker and clerk alone are known to the
law.... It is not every officer whom by their rules they may choose to
appoint, that is necessary to the organization of the house. Suppose
that by a rule they provided for the appointment of a bootblack; could
a resolution for his appointment be made a question of privilege to
arrest and override all other business?

Mr. Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule was not as
clearly obligatory upon the house as a law.

_Mr. Toombs._ It is; but its execution is not a question of
organization."

A reversal was the result.

The following took place February 20, 1851, and is a good illustration of his forcible way of putting things:

"_Mr. Toombs._ (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to
order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to
matters not immediately before it.

_The Chairman._ Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of
order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in
order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee.

_Mr. Toombs._ My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order
upon a pension bill.

_The Chairman._ I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been
invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on
the state of the union.

_Mr. Toombs._ The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong."

On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed.

Though Toombs--a whig--had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell Cobb--a democrat--he soon became to the latter, after his election as speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing.

The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me.

February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate evil:

"The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with
high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other--the
principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices
without regard to the species of labor required by each."

I append here a collection of short extracts from Toombs's speeches in the lower house, which illustrate his power to tickle the ear by striking presentation, epigram, and novel expression:

_Debate always Harmless._ "A little more experience will show the
gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence of discussion here
does not accelerate adjournment. The most harmless time which is spent
by the house, he will find, is that spent in discussion." February 17,
1852.

_Nominees of National Conventions._ "What are the fruits of your
national conventions?... They have brought you a Van Buren, a
Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor.... I mean no disparagement to
any one of these. All of them but one [Van Buren] have paid the last
debt of nature, and the one who survives, unfortunately for himself,
has survived his reputation." July 3, 1852.

_Two Classes of Economists._ "There is a class of economists who will
favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or extravagant
expenditures. But there is another class who are always preaching
economy--who are always ready to apply the rule of economy and get
economical in every case except that before the house." February 17,
1852.

_Principles of Banking._ "If we intend to regulate the business of
banking in this District, the bill does too little; if we do not, it
does too much, As it does not seek to control generally the business
of banking, but permits the issue of notes greater than five dollars,
it violates the principles of unrestrained banking, but does not go to
the extent of regulation by law. I think the public are more likely to
suffer, and to a greater extent, from bank issues above five dollars
than those under that amount." January 11, 1853.

_The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State._ "I believe the mints at
Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unnecessary.... I do not
desire to continue abuses in Georgia any more than in New York. I am
willing to pull up all abuses by the root.... I think the existing
mint is adequate to the wants of the country." February 17, 1853.

_Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations._ "I believe that
with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of appropriation
bills, we have never had personal explanations." February 21, 1850.

Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper house. He has grown in all directions in the qualifications and powers marking the good representative. There is no other man in the house, from either section, whose ability is superior or whose promise greater. Three days before his career in the United States senate begins, he made the following appeal, protesting against hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a model of matter and extemporaneous expression:

"In this bill the fortification bill is introduced; and provision made
for private wagon ways for Oregon and California. There is in it an
appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the discovery of ether.
You have a provision for a Pacific railroad; and you have job upon job
to plunder the government in the military bill;--and the
representatives of the people are called upon to vote on all these
grave questions under five minutes' speeches. You do gross injustice
to yourselves; you betray great interests of the people when you act
upon such important measures in this manner. Let the house reject the
amendments; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send
them to us to be acted upon deliberately; and then whichever way
congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do. But to
act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our powers, but to
abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these amendments and strike
them out." March 1, 1853.

Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill was from having heard it read. The instant apprehension and accurate statement, and the exhaustion of the subject in far shorter time than his small allowance--these recall what I often heard Stephens say, "No one else has ever made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs."

His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of his five minutes.

Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853, until the spring of 1861. His peculiarities must be suggested. Although he was perhaps the ablest lawyer in the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of first love, and had great cases with large fees offered him every day, he resolutely subordinated law practice to his congressional duties. He did much practice, but it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not seek office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a trace of any aspiration of his during his congressional career for other than the place of senator. If on a special committee, he worked energetically; but he avoided the standing committees. He says:

"It is only occasionally that I go to the committee meetings to make a
quorum to act on important business. I do not attend them one day more
than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure it is not my duty unless
charged with a certain subject. This whole machinery is a means of
transferring the legislation of the country from those to whose hands
the constitution commits it to irresponsible juntas.... I say general
standing committees, without any exception, are great nuisances, and
they ought to be abolished.... They are not proper bodies to exercise
legislative powers. They are not known in the country from which we
derive our institutions. The English have no standing committees. They
raise special committees on special objects."[100] February 18, 1859.

"The general business of the country," as he expressed it, January 10, 1859, that was his concern. Each subject requiring the action of the senate, whether important or trivial, received his industrious attention, as his course and language on the floor always show; and he evidently feels it his duty to furnish the body on all questions the utmost instruction and aid that he can possibly give. He had no ambition to be the author of novel measures--he was strenuous only to bestow upon every subject of current legislation the proper consideration. His premeditated efforts are but few. He never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. He takes part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several times the same day on the same subject. He is seldom lengthy, hardly ever away from the point needing explanation, and never, never dull. Generally he comes with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is seldom that his matter and words are not both impressive. I found it well in writing the Life mentioned above to present the most of his senatorial course by assorting his utterances under their proper heads, with the briefest possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically in the common way of biographers. In his speeches it is only now and then that he is steadily progressive as he was in the Iowa contested election case. His advocacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle, and from this principle--usually central and self-evident--the different passages radiate in aphorisms, self-supporting paragraphs, and detached arguments,--this common radiation being their only connection. Accordingly if you know what is the particular subject that is under discussion, a part taken at random anywhere from any of his extempore speeches is nearly always complete in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small space, an approximately full collection of the rich and varied teachings of his senatorial career, although our chrestomathy would appear to one putting it beside the unmutilated report of the _Globe_ as a beggarly and jejune abstract. I know of no other public man with whom this can be as satisfactorily done. Of course the compilation made by me, as just told, cannot be given here. He challenged every bad and defended every good measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting the nail on the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon every one. What he did in the house deserves close attention; but his actings and doings in the senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until shortly after his famous speech of January 7, 1861, when he left to go with his seceding State, are such that I challenge all students of history to produce a single example of such earnest grappling with and able handling of so many matters of importance in so short a time--not eight full years--by any member of ancient or modern parliaments.

Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some faint conception of Toombs's greatness as a senator in non-sectional matters, I must bring that greatness into fuller view, if I can. I therefore add to the foregoing catalogue the rough character sketch next following.

We begin with his devotion to his duties. One examining the _Globe_ will hardly find any other member who calls as often for the reading of the reports accompanying bills to pay private claims, and such other small matters; and he will always observe that his immediate comment shows that he has fully taken in what has been read. He said once, "I have been reproached half a dozen times within the last two days as being rather fractious because I desired to understand the business on which I was called to vote." August 3, 1854.

The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives every measure proposed seems superior to that of all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the many inquiries they make of him for information as to pending bills. Thus June 20, 1860, Green asks him where is the amendment? when was it adopted? has the house disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc., and every query is answered without hesitation. This but examples how the other senators very often made a convenience of Toombs's accurate note of what was passing.

He shows a like readiness upon facts of history--especially English and American--on clauses of the constitution, or statutes, or treaties, provisions of the law of nations, principles of political economy, institutions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations, and all such topics as may illustrate the pending question, however suddenly it may have risen. And so he discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with perfect grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness of knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained and over-ingenious reasoning. Plain and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon the palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most plainly applicable doctrines of reason and justice, he displayed an unparalleled power of formulating in intelligible and striking words the key principles of common affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with practical men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye ever open to principle, he is the very opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is practical, and always pushing business on, except when the bills depleting the treasury--to use his favorite name for them--are up and likely to pass because of the coalition between the opposition and the fishy democrats which he is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language. Only then he prefers to do nothing.

As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amendments--in short makes every concession which will gain him the substance of his desire.

We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He thus describes himself:

"I speak rapidly; but the idea which I intend to utter generally comes
out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of speech. What I say,
I mean; and the whole of what I mean generally gets out." July 30,
1856.

He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of written speeches:

"As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not fit to be
printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.... The
senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his already in type;
other gentlemen around me, on both sides of the house, from all
sections of the union, who think proper to write essays, bring them
here and read them to the senate.... I am not objecting to their
character, but I would rather read them in my room. Of course nobody
pays any attention to them here." April 22, 1858.

He did not habitually correct the report of his speeches, as he says May 13, 1858; at the same time entering a general disclaimer as to all that he does not report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too far. If you are familiar with the man you need not fear being led astray by the inaccuracies, the number of which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so unmistakable that you always know what is his. Extempore discussion was his forte. Therefore nearly all the quotations I use in the Life which I have written I intentionally take from his shorter, impromptu, and evidently unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it matters not how dry or small the particular theme may be, have generally the double merit of showing the true solution and refreshing with figure, apt illustration, or wit.[101]

In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest man in the senate. We will run over the leading ones:

July 28, 1854, a bill containing appropriations for places in nearly every one of the States came up. Through the long debate he evinces uncommon power and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too much gives the rein to invective.

In the two days' debate of the mail steamer appropriation--February 27, 28, 1855,--he distinguishes himself.

February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey, supports a resolution proposing the origination of appropriation bills in the Senate. Sumner and Seward take the other side. The argument of Seward is very elaborate, notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that he is wholly unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs in his most crushing style. Note, too, how accurate the latter is as to the proceedings of the constitutional convention, how familiar he is with the abuses of wild appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how graphically he depicts them.

July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation is the subject. All that he says is noticeable for power; especially his replies to interruptions by Pugh, Wade, and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his head, as you read the report you feel that his was the actual triumph.

July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor improvements. It is begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes the lead in support of the bill; Toombs joins discussion with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a while foils his adversary; but soon Toombs gets his feet firmly on the constitution, and still more firmly upon the injustice of extorting the support of commerce from other interests, and he is resistless. The disputants often put questions to one another. Toombs's promptness to answer every adverse position is a taking exhibition. It is to be noted that many sparkling sentences are struck out of him by the incessant hammering of the others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied or silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that this is no arena for a man who can make only written speeches.

August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of the Mississippi, Toombs urges that the valley is prosperous, and it should improve its river. The examination he gives the question is profoundly searching. Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the counter doctrine of Calhoun, in the report of latter to the Memphis convention, his reason being, as he says: "I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The senator from Georgia has treated the question with great ability; and I want the same vehicle that carries his remarks to the public to carry also the opinions and views of Mr. Calhoun, whose authority is vastly better than mine."

Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force exhibited by Toombs are wonderful even for him.

Consider all that he says of the proper management of the post-office, February 28, 1859.

January 30, 1860, there was an animated debate, which occupied the morning and was renewed in the evening. The vigorous blows which he deals the coalition passing the appropriations--ever the theme of his severest reprehension--and the review he makes of each item in the appropriation bill, taken all in all, are high feats.

His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested election manifests such rare courage against party and section for the right that it must be told at some length. We think it belongs with the more important matters just noticed rather than to its chronological place.