Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
ROBERT TOOMBS, AT THE AGE OF 75 YEARS.
HIS CAREER IN CONGRESS AND ON THE HUSTINGS—HIS WORK IN THE COURTS—HIS RECORD WITH THE ARMY—HIS LIFE AT HOME
The blood which mingled at Cowpens and at Eutaw cannot be kept at enmity forever. — Toombs.
NEW YORK CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 Fourth Avenue
Copyright, 1892, BY CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.
TO ROBERT TOOMBS DU BOSE, WHOSE INTEREST AND AID WERE INVALUABLE, AND WITHOUT WHOSE COÖPERATION THE BIOGRAPHY COULD NOT HAVE BEEN PREPARED, THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections to fight. There is no question of courage involved. The people of both sections of this Union have illustrated their courage on too many battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities shoulder to shoulder whenever their country has called upon them; but that they may never come in contact with each other in fratricidal war, should be the ardent wish of every true man and honest patriot. — Robert Toombs, Speech in U. S. Senate , 1856.

Gabriel Toombs was one of General Braddock's soldiers who marched against Fort DuQuesne in 1755. He was a member of the sturdy Virginia line which protested against the dangerous tactics of the British martinet, and when the English regulars were ambushed and cut to pieces, Gabriel Toombs deployed with his men in the woods and picked off the savages with the steady aim and unerring skill of the frontiersman. Over one hundred years later Robert Toombs, his grandson, protested against the fruitless charge at Malvern Hill, and obliquing to the left with his brigade, protected his men and managed to cover the retreat of his division.
This was a family of soldiers. They were found in the old country fighting Cromwell's army of the rebellion.
Robert Toombs of Georgia was fond of tracing his lineage to the champions of the English king who defended their sovereign at Boscobel. But the American family was made up of lovers of liberty rather than defenders of the King. It was one of the anomalies in the life of the Georgia Toombs, who resisted all restraint and challenged authority in every form, that he should have located his ancestry among the sworn royalists of the seventeenth century.