“The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling majority—when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future—we are denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are met with the cry of ‘Union, union!’”
“Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am concerned, ‘let discord reign forever.’”
I must emphasize the effect of this speech made December 13, 1849,—nearly three months before that of Calhoun last mentioned,—and which goes great lengths beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The Globe mentions that the speaker was loudly applauded several times. Stephens, who was present, says “it received rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries,” and we can well believe his assertion that it “produced a profound sensation in the house and in the country.”[106] Another eye-witness, Hilliard of Alabama, a southern whig who was not in sympathy with his refusal to act with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly rose upon the house at this time. He tells: “A storm of applause greeted this speech. Mr. Toombs had left his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the southern members crowded about him.”[107]
For completeness and height, and for sudden surprise, this speech exceeds all impromptus on record. To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely forerunning the future uprising of southerners as one man in what they deemed the holiest of causes. When you do this you can adapt to it Webster’s words:
“True eloquence ... does not consist in speech.... It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.... It comes ... like ... the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous original, native force.... Then patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent.... This, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence—it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.”
The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which show that Toombs and not Calhoun was the apostle of secession, can now be told very briefly.
December 14, 1849, debate in the house was prohibited by resolution. On the 22d the whigs and democrats, in order to organize without agreeing to the demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the person receiving the largest vote on a certain ballot, if it should be a majority of a quorum, should be speaker. This was a palpable violation of the rules, but perhaps authorized by the great emergency. When the resolution was presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent any organization until he had secured the guaranty he was standing for, in defiance of the prohibition of debate, made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, as compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile mob and scourge them into respectful audience. He adroitly led Staunton, introducing the resolution, to yield the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-tenths of them deaf to him, deeming him the cause of their failure to organize. Announcing his purpose of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of order was raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas and nays being demanded, the clerk began to call the roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombs held on, denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, supporting his attack on the resolution by the constitution, the act of 1789, and the high authority of John Q. Adams, challenging the right of the clerk calling the names, and indignantly inquiring of the house how they could so permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected with them to interrupt their proceedings. At the last he forced the house into quiet, and completed the argument he had risen to make. You will not understand this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do, to have been prompted by the pride of ostentation and the rage of turbulence. Toombs was thinking only of securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest in this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And destiny, providence,—not himself nor other men,—was in this juncture revealing him to the south as her leader.
He now begins to be conscious of his coming leadership, and to feel that he is an authority and entitled to pronounce ex cathedra upon the question of southern equality in the disposition of the Territories. Consequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech on the subject of the admission of California—one far more elaborate and finished than his average efforts. Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous words of Troup, “When the argument is exhausted, we will stand by our arms.”
One other exploit of Toombs during this session must be told. It crowned him as the leader of the south.
Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a little more than a third of the whole: