W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C.S.A.
“Mr. President,” said Toombs, “in my European migrations I have made it a rule when arriving in a city to call first and pay my respects to the Chief of Police.”
The result was a most agreeable hour and an invitation to dinner. Not long after this at the hospitable board of a Confederate general, then an American senator, Toombs began to prod Lamar about his speech in the House upon the occasion of the death of Charles Sumner. Lamar was not quick to quarrel, though when aroused a man of devilish temper and courage. The subject had become distasteful to him. He was growing obviously restive under Toombs’ banter. The ladies of the household apprehending what was coming left the table.
Then Lamar broke forth. He put Toombs’ visit to Grant, “crawling at the seat of power,” against his eulogy of a dead enemy. I have never heard such a scoring from one man to another. It was magisterial in its dignity, deadly in its diction. Nothing short of a duel could have settled it in the olden time. But when Lamar, white with rage, had finished, Toombs without a ruffle said, “Lamar, you surprise me,” and the host, with the rest of us, took it as a signal to rise from table and rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Of course nothing came of it.
Toombs was as much a humorist as an extremist. I have ridden with him under fire and heard him crack jokes with Minié balls flying uncomfortably about. Some one spoke kindly of him to old Ben Wade. “Yes, yes,” said Wade; “I never did believe in the doctrine of total depravity.”
But I am running ahead in advance of events.
VI
There came in 1853 to the Thirty-third Congress a youngish, dapper and graceful man notable as the only Democrat in the Massachusetts delegation. It was said that he had been a dancing master, his wife a work girl. They brought with them a baby in arms with the wife’s sister for its nurse—a mis-step which was quickly corrected. I cannot now tell just how I came to be very intimate with them except that they lived at Willard’s Hotel. His name had a pretty sound to it—Nathaniel Prentiss Banks.