The Brothers' War Part 14

"I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that those who support this system will be called to judgment."

"I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the country.

Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let the jobbers beware. 'To your tents, O Israel!'" July 29, 1856.

The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as Toombs said often, blinded the people to this great subject. Secession came, and his State--to him the only sovereign--called the solitary combatant away from the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, desperate, thrice-valiant stand. And the world should also remember that the clauses of the const.i.tution of the Confederate States, "prohibiting bounties, extra allowances, and internal improvements," came from him.[105]

The struggle that wins our deliverance from the monopolists now causing us to go hungry, cold, and unshod is yet to be. I cannot say when; but I know it will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As in that day Calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought out of its obscurity to add new l.u.s.tre to his fame, as I believe, so I believe also that the name of Robert Toombs will become an object of affectionate reverence to all his countrymen, and the weighty and eloquent sentences in which he sought to shield general industry from drones and rivals favored by government, and in which he advocated that the public burdens be reduced to the minimum, and then apportioned justly,--these stirring words will be quoted everywhere to receive at last their due audience and favor. And when no branch of our government either robs or gives to its citizens, Toombs's never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and gigantic endeavor to bring on this millennium ought to be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books. When we who fought the brothers' war completely forget and forgive, as we soon will, it will then be understood how much the sectional agitation impeded him, and that when he was caught away from the senate by the whirlwind of secession he was only fifty years old, and of such const.i.tutional vigor that he had the guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of undiminished activity. A fond imagination will inquire: Suppose the energy spent upon the Kansas discussion; the protection of slavery in the Territories; in the great speech of January 24, 1860, on the Invasion of States, and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his supreme effort, as most of his admirers claim, could have been saved for themes of Pan-American concern; and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing all other place, with increasing years loved the more by his people for his courageous fidelity to the right, age a.s.suaging his vehemence and softening his invective, ripening his judgment and bringing him charity and wisdom to the full,--to what a height and glory he would have grown!

If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the south would have been the leading and most prosperous part of the union, and that Toombs would have been the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. The longer he lived the more positive he became in believing that Toombs was superior in ability to each one of the three. I have heard him say often that he had never found anything to which he could compare the power of Toombs, discussing a great theme extempore, except Niagara.

Turning back from these unavailing conjectures, I must say a last word as to that part of Toombs's career in the senate which I have been discussing. Its exemplariness is not so much in single great achievements.

It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his place. Whether the particular duty impending was important or trivial, whether it was popular or not, it received from him at the proper time whatever effort was needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages so high in merit that I cannot find a like. No plodder ever kept more closely to the safe and beaten path. But he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully and fitly and find its true activity in the common round of affairs; how it can better, exalt, enn.o.ble, and beautify daily routine. I believe that if you will reflect over this, you will at last see that such are the greatest of men, and those that the world most needs.

I now take up Toombs's sectional career. The aggressive defence of slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun is within a few months of death, called for a leader who did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to everything but the justice and sanct.i.ty of the southern cause. Calhoun's last speech, that of March 4, 1850, was throughout an appeal to the north.

In that same session, and some while before that speech was delivered, the true apostle of secession begins the proclamation of his mission, and some time after Calhoun's death and before the end of the session that portentous proclamation was complete. Robert Toombs--then in his fortieth year, and having as yet attained but little conspicuousness in congress--is the man I mean. His appeal was really to the south.

Just after the new congress a.s.sembled in December, 1849, a caucus of the whigs, to which party Toombs then belonged, having met to nominate a candidate for speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the effect that congress ought not to put any restriction upon any State inst.i.tution in the Territories, nor abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and, the resolution being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a small number of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act any further with their party in the organization of the house. Toombs and his following declared their purpose to disregard former connections and side with whatever party accorded the south the guaranty demanded by the resolution above mentioned. As these southern whigs, and also fourteen northern democrats and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb, the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither one of the two nominees could muster the majority necessary under the rules for election.

Toombs's tactics were like those of the commons who would not vote the supplies until the king granted their wishes in other matters. At this time all the southern democrats and a majority of the southern whigs were opposed to his action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless advance. This is the beginning.

The next stage is when, after nine days of balloting for speaker without result, a resolution was introduced declaring Cobb, who had received a plurality, speaker, when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or free-soiler--only that he could not support a disunionist. This manifest reflection upon the whigs who had held themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he had theretofore kept.

He surprised everybody--perhaps himself--with an impromptu of powerful argument and burning eloquence. Note, in order to compare it with whatever utterance of Calhoun you please, these pa.s.sages:

"Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under the const.i.tution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the presence of the living G.o.d, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half of the States of this confederacy, _I am for disunion_; and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation."

"The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are met with the cry of 'Union, union!'"

"Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek will not be used to the injury of my const.i.tuents, then you have my co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'"

I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,--nearly three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,--and which goes great lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The _Globe_ mentions that the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present, says "it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries,"

and we can well believe his a.s.sertion that it "produced a profound sensation in the house and in the country."[106] Another eye-witness, Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at this time. He tells: "A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern members crowded about him."[107]

For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it Webster's words:

"True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ...

the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence--it is action, n.o.ble, sublime, G.o.dlike action."

The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly.

December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpa.s.sing endowment, as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas and nays being demanded, the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his attack on the resolution by the const.i.tution, the act of 1789, and the high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet, and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny, providence,--not himself nor other men,--was in this juncture revealing him to the south as her leader.

He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that he is an authority and ent.i.tled to p.r.o.nounce _ex cathedra_ upon the question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories.

Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of the admission of California--one far more elaborate and finished than his average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous words of Troup, "When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our arms."

One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned him as the leader of the south.

Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a little more than a third of the whole:

"We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in her const.i.tution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right to an equal partic.i.p.ation in the Territories of the United States. I claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my const.i.tuents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall strike for independence."

Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy witness, says that of all speeches which he heard during his congressional course, which covered the years 1843-1859, this produced the greatest sensation in the house.[108]

Its effect outside--that is, in the southern public--was widespread, deep, and permanent. The comparison with which it closed had been, I believe, used before; but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of December before showed, was beginning to come into consciousness in his section. It gave new impetus to the circulation of the other speeches. The young men of Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other southern States, read them over and over, reciting with pa.s.sionate emphasis the most stirring pa.s.sages. Especially did they delight to declaim the peroration of the Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, 1850, has always been called in Georgia. To the stump orators, the last mentioned and that of December 13 became examples which they emulated only to find in their despairing admiration that parallel was impossible. And even the retiring, quiet, and elderly people who care for nothing but their daily business caught the fire. Not long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle age in 1850, and who has been a stanch union man all his life, told me that he could not keep from reading these speeches over and over, and whenever he read one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist.

The part played by Toombs in the congressional session of 1849-50 seems to me one of the most wonderful exploits in all parliamentary annals. Since slavery is gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing to the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpressible. But I must ever hold that its defence was one of the n.o.blest efforts of the best of people. It will soon be understood by the whole world, and especially by our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that neither Greek nor Scot nor Swiss were more manly or heroic than southerners, and the supporters of the Lost Cause will be crowned with such l.u.s.tre and glory as magnify Hannibal succ.u.mbing to Rome, or Demosthenes unvailingly stirring up his country against Macedon. It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion to recall the many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at my side without a murmur. Our victories at the opening of the brothers' war; then the drawn battles; then the defeats; and the round of sickening disasters at the end,--all these come thronging back, and I can never be other than proud of the prowess and endurance of our out-numbered armies, the energy and untamable spirit of our people, and the devotion of our blessed women to the weal of our soldiers. I often look back over the track of what I have called the aggressive defence of slavery. Though it was disguised under various names, such as the threat of disunion in certain contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of the public domain between the sections called for by all parties in the south, and finally the demand for full protection of slavery in the Territories; and though it was now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from the day it set in was in reality one directly towards secession, and it kept on as steadily as the Propontic. And as I look back at the further edge of this retrospect, marking the beginning, towering above all who took high place later,--even above Lee and Jackson,--ever comes more plainly into view the majestic figure of Robert Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a thunderclap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he extorts wild acclamations of applause from the majority of southern whigs and all of the southern democrats, both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of congressional non-restriction; a few days later coercing an infuriated house trying to cry him down into wondering silence; and through the whole session upholding his cause with such might that the single champion proves an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against him, and he finally conquers preaudience and dictation upon the main southern theme.

I become more and more confident that future history will find the achievement of Toombs in the session of 1849-50 to be the exact point where the drift towards secession, which had before that been only latent and potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn of the Confederate States. The more I gaze at it the plainer and redder that dawn becomes.

We need not tell the rest of Toombs's sectional career with much detail.

The all-important part of it historically is its beginning, and how he vaulted into the lead of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope I have adequately told. From this time he showed in all that he did the quality which Mommsen glorifies in Julius Caesar,--ready insight into the possible and impossible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia, and also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, against the compromise measures, and especially against the admission of California with its const.i.tution prohibiting slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to consider what should be done, there was thorough discussion. An overwhelming majority of delegates opposing any resistance was elected. To this result Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he really shaped the platform finally promulgated by the convention. This--the Georgia Platform of 1850, as we always called it--is a most important doc.u.ment to the historian; for it was the weighed and solemn declaration of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal southern State.

The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of the southern people then called themselves, had mistaken Toombs's last-mentioned speeches in congress as declarations for immediate disunion in case California was admitted under her free const.i.tution; and when he supported the compromise measures, and also the Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a turncoat. In their blind fury they could not see, as everybody else did, that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly.

From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle cla.s.s of property owners--then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this cla.s.s the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took, but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, one of the most popular men of the State, the southern-rights candidate.

Toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party.

You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which providence had already ordered to be made.

In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every t.i.ttle of what he believed were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance. I want to give others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties, to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the inevitable. Then he would say substantially, "Had it not been for that administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one."

When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I believe the current sucked him in.

Just after Lincoln's election--an event which influenced nearly all of even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at once for a southern confederacy--he proposed that Stephens join with him in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention;[109] and later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise.

The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead--they are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would go elsewhere. And those of these leaders whose influence is the most potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be fighting much in advance of him.

He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made.

There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter keeps from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab gra.s.s to beef and b.u.t.ter, the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the incomparable melon, and cap the climax by a.s.serting persimmon beer to be more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas's resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy of Stephens and p.r.o.nounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, as Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide which is superior. He states his propositions thus:

"I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal const.i.tution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States.

Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary.

Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this organization are daily committing offences against the people and property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly committed similar acts."

The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the const.i.tution; the quotation from Mill's "Moral Sentiments," and that from Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every line; and, with the exception of a few overheated pa.s.sages, the entire speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last

"One blast upon her bugle horn Were worth a million men."

Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national cla.s.ses who have his respect by saying, "The union of all these elements may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its last a.n.a.lysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay the price and win the blessing. Is she ready?"

The last three sentences are the southern correlative of Webster's soaring when he magnified the union in his reply to Hayne. They were repeated over and over by everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel in my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became the war cry of Georgia.

The position taken in the very conclusion of this truly Periclean speech is especially to be attended to here. It is that in the event of the success of the republican party in the next presidential election the people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine years before in the Georgia Platform.

From this time on he is _facile primus_ of southern champions. Note his long and elaborate reply to Doolittle, February 27, 1860; the discussion with Wade, March 7, 1860,--both relating to his speech last noticed above; and his very able argument, May 21, 1860, on the duty of protecting slavery in the Territories.

During the presidential campaign of 1860 the Douglas men and the Americans in Georgia charged the supporters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion that would bring on war. The charge was generally denied. The truth is, hardly anybody was aware that the awful crisis was near. Those who really expected secession believed with Howell Cobb and his brother Thomas, and with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peaceable, and perhaps they were about a tenth; the rest followed Stephens, believing that the American people on each side of Mason and Dixon's line would, when it was demanded, rise up in resistless co-operation and make safe both southern inst.i.tutions and the union. Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs in forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the ma.s.ses. But while the former was too wise to consider even for one moment the probabilities of peaceable secession, he had a most un-American conviction that nothing good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace and the union that he could not believe his people would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs was here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only speaker in this presidential campaign that was disrespectful to the union, often calling it in derision "the gullorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to be to himself and alone, he was really the only one riding the waves of the undercurrent rising every day nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed the rival platforms, but the nearer election day approached the more potently he was preparing the people and himself for secession, though unawares to both. And when Lincoln was elected,--the man who had solemnly published his belief that this government could not endure permanently part slave and part free,--an occurrence which aroused the south throughout as the firing upon Fort Sumter afterwards aroused the north, Toombs drank in every accession to the emotion of his people, and towered more largely before them every day as the soul of the revolution now palpable in its coming to all. When secession was debated before the Georgia legislature, after enumerating what he declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, "I ask you to give me the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as G.o.d lives, I will take it myself." In his immortal eulogy of the union the next night, Stephens quoted these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered in a voice of thunder, "I will." The house rocked to and fro with frenzied applause. Long afterwards Stephens told me that this outburst was the first revealing sign to him that his people were rushing to war. He lost his breath while gasping out the awful word, and there was terror in his looks as if the direful ghost had risen again. Some ardent secessionists professed themselves ready to drink all the blood that would be spilled, but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already revelling in the joy of fighting for his people in this most sacred of causes. In one of his speeches he eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence of the south, giving them the requiem of sleeping forever where