Robert Toombs Part 10

"It is sometimes wise," said Mr. Toombs, "to accept a part of our just rights, if we can have the residue unimpaired and uncompromised, but nothing can justify a voluntary surrender of principle, indispensable to the safety and honor of the State.

"It is true we are surrounded with danger, but I do not concur in the opinion that the danger to the Union is even one of our greatest perils.

The greatest danger, to-day, is that the Union will survive the Const.i.tution. The body of your enemies in the North, who hate the Const.i.tution, and daily trample it under their feet, profess an ardent attachment to the Union, and I doubt not, feel such attachment for a Union unrestrained by a Const.i.tution. Do not mistake your real danger!

The Union has more friends than you have, and will last, at least, as long as its continuance will be compatible with your safety."

Prior to the rea.s.sembling of the Democratic convention, the resolutions introduced by the Hon. Jefferson Davis, containing the Southern exposition of principles, came up in the Senate. Mr. Toombs had opposed the policy of introducing those resolutions, but as they were then before the country, he said they should be met. He ridiculed the idea of popular sovereignty. He declared that Congress should protect slavery in the Territories. The Federal Government, he claimed, did protect its citizens, native and naturalized, at home and abroad, everywhere except on the soil of our own territory, acquired by common blood and treasure.

This speech of Senator Toombs marked an epoch in his career. It separated him entirely from Stephen A. Douglas, to whom he had been closely allied, in spite, as he said, of Douglas having wandered after strange G.o.ds. Douglas absented himself from the Senate when Toombs spoke. For the first time in twenty years, Toombs and Stephens took divergent paths. They were called in Georgia the "Siamese twins." From the election of Harrison to the Democratic split in 1860, they had been personal friends and firm political allies. Mr. Stephens was for Douglas and the Union; Mr. Toombs feared lest "the Union survive the Const.i.tution."

The Democratic party in Georgia met on June 4, and parted on the lines of the Charleston division. The Union element in Georgia was led by Herschel V. Johnson, a man of power and influence. He had been Governor of the State, was a man of learning, profound in thought and candid in expression. His wife was a niece of President Polk. His state papers were models of clear and cla.s.sical expression. Governor Johnson was, however, better fitted for the bench or the Cabinet than for a public leader.

Both wings of the Georgia convention appointed delegates to the Baltimore convention. That body admitted the delegation which had seceded from the Charleston convention. As the seceding delegates from the other States were rejected, the Georgia delegates refused to go in.

Missouri was the only Southern State which was represented entirely in the body, composed of 190 delegates. Ma.s.sachusetts withdrew and Caleb Cushing resigned the chair. Stephen A. Douglas was nominated for President of the United States. Governor Fitzpatrick of Alabama declined the vice presidency, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia was chosen for vice president. The seceders immediately organized a national convention, Mr. Cushing presiding. It was composed of 210 delegates. The majority or anti-Douglas platform of the Charleston convention was adopted. John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky was nominated for President, and Joseph C. Lane of Oregon for vice president. Mr. Breckenridge was at that time vice president of the United States, and Mr. Lane was a senator. Meanwhile, a Const.i.tutional Union party had been formed in Georgia, and had elected delegates to a convention of that party in Baltimore. This body nominated for President and vice president, John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Ma.s.sachusetts. Mr. Bell had been United States Senator at the time of the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854, and had been arraigned by Mr. Toombs for opposing the party policy. He was one of the thirteen who voted against it in the Senate.

The contest in Georgia waged with much vigor. Robert Toombs supported Breckenridge. He was a delegate to the Democratic State convention which put out a Breckenridge and Lane electoral ticket. He cut out the business of that convention, and declared that the Const.i.tution and equality of the States was the only bond of everlasting union. Mr.

Stephens headed the Douglas ticket. Senator Douglas himself came to Georgia and spoke during the campaign. The Bell and Everett ticket was championed by Benjamin H. Hill. The vote in Georgia was: Breckenridge, 51,893; Douglas, 11,580; Bell, 42,855.

Of these three Georgians, so strikingly arrayed against each other in this critical campaign, Mr. Vincent, a gifted Texan, thus wrote with dramatic power: "Hill, Stephens, Toombs--all eloquent, all imbued with the same lofty patriotism. They differed widely in their methods; their opinions were irreconcilable, their policies often diametrically opposite. Hill was quick, powerful, but unpersistent; Stephens, slow, forcible and compromising; Toombs, instantaneous, overwhelming, and unyielding. Hill carried the crowd with a whirlwind of eloquence; Stephens first convinced, then moved them with accelerating force; Toombs swept them with a hurricane of thought and magnetic example.

Hill's eloquence was in flights, always rising and finally sublime; Stephens' was argumentative with an elegant smoothness, often flowing in sweeping, majestic waves; Toombs' was an engulfing stream of impetuous force, with the roar of thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close a campaign; Stephens' to manage it; Toombs' to originate it. In politics as in war, he sought, with the suddenness of an electric flash, to combat, vanquish, and slay.

Hill's eloquence exceeded his judgment; Stephens' judgment was superior to his oratorical power; in Toombs these were equipollent. Hill considered expediency; Stephens, policy; Toombs, principle always; Hill would perhaps flatter, Stephens temporize, Toombs neither--never. At times Hill would resort to the arts of the dialectician; Stephens would quibble over the niceties of construction; Toombs relied on the impregnability of his position, the depth of his thought, the vigor of his reasoning. Hill discussed with opponents; Stephens debated with them; Toombs ignored them. Hill refuted and vanquished his adversaries; Stephens persuaded and led them; Toombs magnetized them, and they followed him. Their enemies said that Hill was treacherous in politics; Stephens selfishly ambitious; and that Toombs loaned like a prince and collected like a Shylock.

"In those days Georgia did not put pygmies on pedestals. Hill will be remembered by his 'Notes on the Situation'; Stephens by his 'War between the States'; Toombs had no circ.u.mstantial superiority. He is immortal, as the people are eternal."

CHAPTER XVII.

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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sions; 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 const.i.tutional power to begin or carry on a general system of internal improvements. He wanted to know where this power of the Const.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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 Const.i.tution. 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 pa.s.sed 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 Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution 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 const.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tution 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 G.o.d, 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."

CHAPTER XVIII.

ELECTION OF LINCOLN.

In the election of November, 1860, Mr. Lincoln received 1,857,610 votes, and the combined opposition 2,787,780 votes, the successful candidate being in a minority of nearly a million votes. The new House of Representatives was Democratic, and the Senate had not been won over to the antislavery party. But the trend of Northern politics was unmistakably toward the extinction of slavery. As Mr. Lincoln said in his letter to Mr. Stephens: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. There, I suppose, is the rub." Mr. Buchanan's message to Congress was full of conservative counsel, but the Northern pressure was too strong. His Cabinet was soon dissolved, and the places of Southern men were taken by Northern representatives, whose influence was not a.s.suring to Southern people.

Just before his departure for Congress Mr. Toombs, in response to an invitation, wrote a conservative letter to his const.i.tuents in Danburg, Wilkes County, Ga. It bore date of December 13, 1860. The General a.s.sembly of Georgia had unanimously pa.s.sed a resolution calling for a State convention to meet on January 16, 1861. Mr. Toombs took the ground that separation, sooner or later, was inevitable. The time when the remedy was to be applied was the point of difference. He opposed delay longer than March 4, but declared that he would certainly yield that point "to earnest and honest men who are with me in principle but are more hopeful of redress from the aggressors than I am. To go beyond March 4, we should require such preliminary measures to be taken as would, with reasonable certainty, lead to adequate redress, and in the meantime, we should take care that the delay gives no advantage to the adversary." Mr. Toombs declared that he believed the policy of Mr.

Lincoln was to ultimately abolish slavery in the States, by driving slavery out of the Territories, by abrogating Fugitive-slave laws, and by protecting those who stole slaves and incited insurrections. The only way to remedy these evils, in the Union, was by such const.i.tutional amendments as can be neither resisted nor evaded. "If the Republican party votes for the amendments, we may postpone final action. This will be putting planks where they are good for something. A cartload of new planks in the party platform will not redress one wrong nor protect one right."

As strong and unmistakable as this letter seemed, the great body of the people of Georgia did not think it sufficiently aggressive. Secession now amounted to a furor. It was not the work of leaders, but the spirit which pervaded the ranks of the people, who clamored because events did not move fast enough. The "minute-men" declared Mr. Toombs' letter was a backdown. They called him a traitor, and wanted to vote him a tin sword.