Chapter XI: Toombs (3)

It is plainly evident to the unprejudiced that he had the warrant of the constitution, the law of nations, of the practice and professions of the great body of even northern citizens ever since the adoption of the constitution, for every one of these demands. It is also as plainly evident that every one was vital to each southern community, founded as it was from basement to roof, upon property in slaves. The justice of his demands could not be denied without repudiating the constitution, the law of nations, and the solemn compacts of the fathers, their children and children's children. And providence had really made each one of these astounding repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as the only menace to the American union, even if the people so dear to Toombs must be all cast out of their prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man is fighting for his loved ones,--especially if he is fighting for his country,--and he has the valor of Toombs, his not-to-be-shaken conviction is that providence is on his side, and the nearer great disaster approaches, the stouter becomes his heart. Toombs's support of his demands, and his defence of what he knew the south would do if they were refused, are the most earnest words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs:

"You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them about
treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the rope around
their necks."

"You not only want to break down our constitutional rights; you not
only want to upturn our social system; your people not only steal our
slaves and make them freemen to vote against us; but you seek to
bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and
politically, with our own people. The question of slavery moves not
the people of Georgia one half as much as the fact that you insult
their rights as a community. You abolitionists are right when you say
that there are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all
over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the
people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are
comparatively few of them; but no part of our people are more loyal to
their race and country than our brave mountain population; and every
flash of the electric wires brings me cheering news from our mountain
tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none
of their countrymen in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory
of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we
want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race
to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the
border, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. We will
tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done under
our direction, and according to our will; our own, our native land
shall determine this question, and not the abolitionists of the north.
That is the spirit of our freemen."

Here is the grand conclusion:

"This man, Brown, and his accomplices, had sympathizers. Who were
they? One who was, according to his public speeches, his defender and
laudator, is governor of Massachusetts. Other officials of that State
applauded Brown's heroism, magnified his courage, and no doubt
lamented his ill success. Throughout the whole north, public meetings,
immense gatherings, triumphal processions, the honors of the hero and
conqueror, were awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not
condemn the traitor; think you they abhorred the treason?

Yet ... when a distinguished senator from a non-slaveholding State
proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and insurrection, Lincoln
and his party say before the world, 'Here is a sedition law.' To carry
out the constitution, to protect States from invasion and suppress
insurrection therein, to comply with the laws of the United States is
a 'sedition law,' and the chief of this party treats it with contempt;
yet, under the very same clause of the constitution which warranted
this bill, you derive your power to punish offences against the law of
nations. Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens
for meditating the invasion of foreign States; you have stopped
illegal expeditions; you have denounced our citizens engaged therein
as pirates and commended them to the bloody vengeance of a merciless
enemy. Under this principle alone you protect our weaker neighbors of
Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. By this alone are we empowered and
bound to prevent our people from conspiring together, giving aid,
money, or arms to fit out expeditions against a foreign nation.
Foreign nations get the benefit of this protection; but we are worse
off in the union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have
the protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among us;
raids may be made; you may put the incendiary torch to our dwellings,
as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on the frontier of Texas;
you may do what John Brown did, and when the miscreants escape to your
States you will not punish them, you will not deliver them up.
Therefore, we stand defenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed
'body of this death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations.

You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard
constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What,
then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are
freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have
recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into
power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands
of millions of our property from the common Territories, that it has
declared us under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of
the law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect
us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection, and the
constitution denies to us in the union the right either to raise
fleets or armies for our defence. All these charges I have proved by
the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the
judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven
itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever may
be the event, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have
appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have
refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them,
as your court adjudges them to be just as our people have said they
are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will
restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and
what, then? We shall ask you, 'Let us depart in peace.' Refuse that,
and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners
the glorious words 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood
of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity."

No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of blood was ever heralded with words that were above these in appeal to the conscience and strongest affections of humanity. They are not outvied by those of Patrick Henry reported by Wirt, or those of John Adams reported by Webster, which the world will ever treasure as all gold. O that he had corrected them! He could not use the file, as we have already said.

Soon after making the speech he went away from the senate without taking leave. March 14, 1861, that body passed a resolution reciting that the seats before occupied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and Benjamin had become vacant, and directing that the secretary omit their names from the roll.

It was clear from his incomparable and faultless leadership of the active defence of the south, and his unique ability in affairs, that he was the choice of the directors of southern nationalization for president of the Confederate States; but these were overcome by stronger spirits, and Davis was made president. I have always believed that Toombs regarded this as the great miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his connection with the unbusinesslike conduct of the administration, and he retired from his secretaryship of state. Read what his superiors say of him at Sharpsburg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of the help he afterwards got from him in a dark hour, as specimens of his gallantry and efficiency in the service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets. Pegasus did not show more unsuited to the plow than he did to his inferior station in this stage of the great conflict which was his meat and drink.

The collapse came, flight from America, return at last to his stricken people, and disability for the rest of his life. Though he had something of even a great career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for the old south and discontent with the new increased, slowly at first, then faster and faster. As infirmity from age came on apace, and his wife whom he had always made his good angel went to heaven, every day he became more lonely. He had survived _his_ country. Such love as his for that loves but once and always. The sacrifices that he had made for it became his treasures. He hugged his disability as his most precious jewel. Our gallant Gordon was not more proud of the scars on his face. Not long before his mind and memory were failing, speaking of the past, he said with the utmost firmness: "I regret nothing but the dead and the failure.

'Better to have struck and lost,
Than never to have struck at all.'"

What a fall! Greater by far than Lucifer's. Lucifer was rightfully cast out because of heinous offence. But Toombs was cashiered because he had been the best, ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our merely human view it is the way of fiends to reward such supremacy in virtue and achievement with hell pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we survivors at least send up sincere prayers that the Lord will yet give this Job of the old south twice as much of fair fame as he had before.

If the defeated in the wars between England and Scotland and in the English civil wars; and if Cromwell and the regicides who set up a government that had to fall,--if all these have found respectful and fully appreciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and Toombs look to have the same after some years be passed? Trusting that such will come, I close this sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be niched in American history.

He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence to Wendell Phillips. There was nothing whatever in common between the two except extraordinary fluency of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere boy, broke with Mrs. Grundy by advocating abolition before his neighbors were ripe for it. While Toombs cared nothing for Mrs. Grundy, he always so comported himself that he was her great authority. He was a very able lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by practice, and a thorough statesman, when fate confided the southern lead to him; and while Phillips was reckless and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impossible with his people. The more you balance him and Phillips against each other, the more unlike you will find them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in pairing Phillips and Yancey.

There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a southern opposite corresponds in so many important particulars that it surprises me it has not been proclaimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of secession. Their missions were parallel in that each one was the foremost champion of his nationality, Webster of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs of the southern. All through the brothers' war their phrases were on the lips and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling to fight for the union, those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each was probably the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the ablest debater to be found. Each was of sublime courage in defying what he thought to be unjust commands of his constituents. And the last point which I think of is that each was of most complete and perfect physical development, and was the most majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the streets of all sorts and ranks always found time to look upon either Webster or Toombs as he passed, and admire. I never saw Webster. But I believe that from his pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and from what I have greedily read and heard of him in a fond lifelong contemplation, I have an almost perfect figure of him before my mind's eye. Toombs from my boyhood I saw often. I will describe him as I observed him at the hustings just before the war. His face, almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of proportion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of approval to the scowl of condemnation, darkening all around like a rising thundercloud. His flowing locks tossed to and fro over his massive brow like a lion's mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and gesture there was a spontaneous and lofty grace--not the grace of the dancing-master, but the ease and repose of native nobility. His face was not Greek, but in his total he looked the extreme of classic symmetry and the utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal, kingly, even godlike, were the words spontaneously uttered with which men tried in vain to tell what they saw in him. He and just one other were the only men of my observation whose greatness, without their saying a word, spoke plainly even to strangers. That other man was Lee. I noted, when we were near Chambersburg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before the great battle, that, while the natives would curiously inquire the names of others of our generals as they rode by, every one instantaneously recognized Lee as soon as he came near. This publication of her chosen in their mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted nor underprized. And so remember that Webster looked the greatest of all men of the north, and Toombs the greatest of all men of the south.

To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and glory when I call Webster the northern Toombs and Toombs the southern Webster.

* * * * *

I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with pain that the obloquy against Toombs in the north seems to increase, while that against him in the rising generation of the south--who do not know him at all--is surely increasing. It is, however, a growing consolation to me to note that every charge, currently made against him north or south, is founded either upon complete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding of his character and career. It is a duty of mine not only to him as my dead and revered friend, but a high duty to my country, to set him in his right place in the galaxy of America's best and greatest. I never knew a man of kinder or more benevolent heart; nor one who had more horror of fraud, unfairness, and trick; nor one whiter in all money transactions; nor one whose longing and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were greater; nor one who showed in his whole life more regard for the rights and also the innocent wishes of everybody. The model men of the church, such as Dr. Mell and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and cherishing love. The humblest and plainest men were attracted to him, and they gave him sincere adulation. Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day in a lively talk with Toombs. As he passed my seat while leaving the car he whispered to me: "Bob Toombs! his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big as a hogshead." From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged in the same cases with Toombs, either as associate or opposing counsel, and I saw a great deal of him. It falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as he was original and striking in speech. I am sure that his superiority as a lawyer towered higher in the consultation room just before the trial than even in his able court conduct. And he led just as wisely and preeminently in the politics of that day, when it was vital to the civilization of the south to nullify the fifteenth amendment. Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful republic should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877. That was deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of nine years--a constitution made by ignorant negroes, also criminals who, to use the words of Ben Hill, sprang at one bound from State prisons into the constitutional convention, and some native deserters of the white race--the constitution so made kept riveted around our necks by the bayonet. The good work would have remained undone for many years had not Toombs advanced $20,000 to keep the convention, which had exhausted its appropriation, in session long enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad commission established by that instrument is really his doing. This post-bellum political career of his, in which he restored his stricken State to her autonomy and self-respect, has not yet won its full appreciation.

If Toombs could but be delineated to the life in his extempore action, advice, and phrase he would soon attain a lofty station in world literature. It mattered not what he was talking about,--an affair of business or of other importance, communicating information, telling an experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself in the maddest merriment, as he often did after some great accomplishment,--his language flashed all the while with a planet-like brilliancy, and the matter was of a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we learn to admire his perpetual freshness and variety! But when we compare him with Catullus, his master, we note that while his epigram is always splendid, the language is commonplace beside that of the other.[110] Toombs was even more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and unhackneyed point, and his words always reflected, like those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise. Perhaps a reader exclaims, "As I do not know Martial and Catullus your comparison is nothing to me." Well, I tell him that I have read Shakspeare from lid to lid more times than I can say, and that I have long been close friends with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear, Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his immortal clowns at the bottom. Surely with this experience it can be said of me, "The man has seen some majesty." I have often tried, and that with the help of a few intimates almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as myself, to find in the dainty plays an equal to Toombs throwing away everywhere around him with infinite prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase. Samuel Barnett, Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin, and S. H. Hardeman, all of whom knew him well, were among these. The end of every effort would be our agreement that Shakspeare himself could hardly have made an adequately faithful representation of Toombs.

The mental torture of the last three or four years of his life I must touch upon again. The most active anti-slavery partisan and most scarred soldier of the union will compassionate if he but contemplate. I met him only now and then. As I read his feelings--one eye quenched by cataract and the other failing fast; his contemporaries of the bar and political arena dead; the wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever harrowed with the thought that his country was no more, and that he was a foreigner and exile in the spot which he had always called home,--though I was full of increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my people and gladness at the promise of reunited America, my tranquillity would take flight whenever he came into my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to pity. To me his last state was more tragic and pathetic than that of Oedipus.

Of course his powers were declining. I know that he would never have drank too much if there had been no sectional agitation, secession, war, nor reconstruction. His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have heard him call it, which impels one into delirium tremens. He always disappointed his adversaries at the bar calculating that drink would disable him at an important part of the conduct. Others as well as myself can testify to this. Near the end he deliberately chose to drain full cups of purpose to sweeten bitter memories. With moderation he had more assurance of longevity than any other of his generation; and he would, I verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his hundredth year. He lost his rare faculty of managing money. It was a shock of surprise to me when the fire in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance of his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly before. It was a pitiable sight to see him in his growing blindness and wasting frame armed by his negro servant along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to the place. During all this time he was dying by inches.

But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would now and then send forth rays of the old glory. It was in May, 1883, during the session of the superior court of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to wind up, that I was last in his house. He had made invitations to dinner without keeping account. At the hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of us were late. When we arrived many were compounding their drinks. He hospitably suggested to us new-comers that there was still some standing room around the sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the well-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed so suddenly that his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then keeping her room, had charged with seeing the table laid, was astounded to find she could not seat all of the bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make us uncomfortable our host entered. In spite of his infirmity and purblindness he took in the situation with his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender remonstrance to his niece, "O, I do not object to having more friends than room; it is usually the other way in this world." And with despatch and order he had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this was my last observation of the only man I ever knew whose fine acts and words never waited when occasion called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor, "Can any one else in the world do such a beautiful thing on the spur of the moment?" The admiring looks that followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have more than its old lustre and gleam.

In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping up his frame, and he had lost the sense of place and time, he would now and then start from his stupor and send across the State a bolt from the bow which no other could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting of "prohibition fanatics." "Do you know what is a fanatic?" he asked unexpectedly. "No," was replied. "He is one of strong feelings and weak points," Toombs explained. And overhearing another say that an unusually prolonged session of the State legislature had not yet come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, "Send for Cromwell!"

He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year.

If I have told the truth in this chapter,--and God knows I have tried my utmost to tell it,--ought not my brothers and sisters of each section to lay aside their angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the due reward of his virtues, his towering example, his wonder-striking achievements, and his incomparable genius? May that power which incessantly makes for righteousness, and which always in the end has charity to conquer hate, soon bring to us who really knew him our dearest wish!