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 constitution 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 lustre 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 constitutional 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 assuaging 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, ennoble, 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 sanctity 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 assembled 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 institution 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 passages:
“Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under the constitution 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 God, 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.”