[97] The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 (New York, Cassell Pub. Co.).
[98] Bethany, A Story of the Old South, 10 sq.
[99] Johnston and Browne’s Life of A. H. Stephens, 218.
[100] Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by Woodrow Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov. 58-192, and in other places.
[101] What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a good example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. Stephens often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless they were made, as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of congress to protect slavery in the Territories, and his justification of secession, January 7, 1861, under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the mark. And I wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, following the example of Cicero, Erskine and Webster, who habitually corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. He does not seem to have given his good speeches—the extemporaneous ones—any systematic correction. Of all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard of, he has used the file the least. It is my belief that he did not know how to use it. Had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; his most important utterances under various heads of internal improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic struggle in vain with his own party to keep Harlan seated—what a find they would be for the school speech books of the future! His lecture on slavery, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859,—a good copy of which is given by Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. 625-647)—is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his deliberate style. If I may make such a distinction, it was carefully revised, but never corrected. The reader will find it, I believe, the very ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south.
Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the compromise of 1850, “He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the reporter’s notes of his speeches, for correction,” with a French play in the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamilcar speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such a novel movement as he then was—it will be fully explained a little later on—he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs, sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit.
[102] Third Session, 240-244.
[103] Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the Galphin claim).
[104] See his argument, May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of 1857, Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 466, 467, 470. For his mastery of trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp. 2832-2834.
[105] Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338.