Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs ought to have been on the bench, complimenting his desire for justice and fairness as well as his legal ability.
The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evidenced by what he says June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and June 23, 1860.
Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of the great southern partisan by northern men during the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily strong proofs of his high character as well as great genius.
Of course the southern members showed their appreciation. Especially note what Bayard says March 21, 1860, and what Butler says January 6, 1857. I could give many more such; but I shall only add here how, February 14, 1860, by reason of the importunate urgency of some of these, evidently regarding him as the special southern champion, he is pushed into making an able rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to Toombs’s speech on the Invasion of States.
Toombs’s inflexible keeping to what he deemed the right course parallels the absolute fearlessness with which Julius Cæsar, when a young man, clung to the wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla commanded him to put away. The Sulla of America are the people in their unconscientious moments, and unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets almost all public men with torturing apprehension. And so there is in nearly every one some admixture of the trimmer. But Toombs never showed fear either of the people at large or of those of his own State and locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of land condemned for the government:
“It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the army, it seems to be considered better to be cheated by the owners of a site out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000 worth of property rather than trust a jury.” June 12, 1860.
When he uttered the following he knew it was extremely unpalatable to his section:
“The southern States from their sparseness of population do not pay all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of the south ought to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to put it on that ground.... I say the point to retrench is in the south.” February 28, 1859.
The following distasteful lesson he read his own State:
“I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighborhood were taken away, and I never was consulted about them, and I never thought it was the duty or business of the postmaster-general to consult me. I have not been to his office during this winter in regard to a single one; and I have been very much complained of, even in my own county and town, on account of it.... I have a word to say about the Isabel. She touches at Savannah; and I have received memorials from people, letters from interested people, from the Savannah chamber of commerce, and others, saying, ‘By all means keep up the Isabel; we want it.’ It is a very popular thing; it is a good ship, and has done its duty well. What have I to do but follow my uniform line of policy, and give them the same rules as everybody else? Sixteen years’ experience here—and I was here in 1847, when this steamship system commenced—have satisfied me that congressional contracts are always unwise, and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative corruption. Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity whatever.” May 28, 1860.