Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

Senator Toombs admitted that the North had the power to reject the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. They had a majority in the House and Senate. Aristides had said, "True, you can do it; you have got the power; but, Athenians, it is unjust."

ROBERT TOOMBS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM GEORGIA, 1855.

Senator Toombs was a bold man. When he adopted a line of argument, he was willing to follow wherever its conclusions led. He did not hesitate, in this speech, to admit that "if you yield to the people the right to mold their institutions, the establishment of polygamy may result legitimately therefrom." This point had been made in debate to fight the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Said Senator Toombs: "It is just what they have a right to do. When the people of Utah make their organic law for admission to the Union, they have a right to approximate, as nearly as they please, the domestic manners of the Patriarchs. Connecticut may establish polygamy to-morrow. The people of Massachusetts may do the same. How did they become possessed of greater rights, in this or any other respect, than the people of Utah? The right in both cases has the same foundation—the sovereignty of the people."

Senator Toombs adverted to the fact that Henry Clay had denied that he framed the Missouri Compromise; that it did not originate in the House, of which he was a member; that he did not even know if he voted for it. Senator Toombs held the Act of 1820 to be no compact—binding upon no man of honor; but, on the contrary, a plain and palpable violation of the Constitution and the common rights of the citizens, and ought to be immediately abrogated and repealed. He declared that it had been rejected by the North when passed, and rejected when Arkansas was admitted, when Oregon was formed, when California was received as a State. If the Kansas bill was settled upon sound and honest principles, he maintained that it should be applied to territory ceded from France just as elsewhere. He contended that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was not a compromise in any sense of the term, but an unconstitutional usurpation of power. "When we look into the Constitution, we find no antislavery power planted in that instrument. On the contrary, we find that it amply provides for the perpetuity and not for the extinction of slavery."

Senator Toombs closed his first speech in the Senate with these words: "The senator from New York asks where and when the application of these principles will stop. He wishes not to be deceived in the future, and asks us whether, when we bring the Chinese and other distant nations under our flag, we are to apply these principles to them? For one, I answer yes; that wherever the flag of the Union shall float, this republican principle will follow it, even if it should gather under its ample folds the freemen of every portion of the universe."

The Kansas-Nebraska bill reopened the whole question of slavery. In the North, it was a firebrand. Mr. Buchanan, in his book, written after his retirement from the presidency, said that the South was for the first time the aggressor in this legislation. Mr. Fillmore declared that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was "the Pandora Box of Evil." Mr. Douglas was reviled by his opponents and burned in effigy at the North. His leadership in this fight was ascribed to his overweening ambition to reach the presidency. The clergymen of New England and of Chicago flooded the Senate with petitions crying against this "intrigue." On May 26, 1854, at one o'clock in the morning, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 31 to 13. The "nays" were Messrs. Allen, Bell, Chase, Clayton, Fish, Foote, Gillet, Hamlin, James, Seward, Sumner, Wade, and Walker.

The enactment of this measure into a law did not settle the question. It resulted in a strife in the Territories themselves. For two years Kansas was in a state of civil war. The Emigrant Aid Societies of New England raised large sums of money to send to the Territories Free-Soil settlers and other agitators. A counter-stream of agitators set in from Missouri, in sympathy with the slavery men, and the result was a long series of bloody disorders. In February, 1856, Mr. Toombs made a speech upon the message of the President in regard to the lawless condition of Kansas. The Governor informed President Pierce that the laws were obstructed and openly resisted by bodies of armed men; that prisoners were rescued from the sheriffs, peaceable inhabitants murdered, and houses burned. Another authority informed the President that an overwhelming force was crossing the border for the avowed purpose of invading Kansas and butchering the unoffending Free-State citizens. One side claimed protection from insurrection within, the other from invasion without.

As to the Emigrant Aid Societies, Mr. Toombs said, "Whatever be their policy, whatever their tendency to produce strife, if they simply aid emigrants from Massachusetts to go to Kansas to become citizens of that Territory, I am prepared to say that they violate no law; they have a right to do it, and every attempt to prevent their doing so violates the law and ought not to be sustained. But if they send persons there furnished with arms, with the intent to offer forcible resistance to the constituted authorities, they are guilty of the highest crime known to civil society, and are amenable to its penalties. I shall not undertake to decide upon their conduct. The facts are not before me, and I therefore pass it by."

Mr. Toombs thought it would be difficult to imagine a case calling more loudly for the intervention of Federal power. Mr. Toombs favored the supremacy of the law in the Territories at any cost. "If traitors seek to disturb the peace of the country, I desire that it shall be no sectional contest. I do not see the end of that. I prefer that the conflict shall be between the Federal Government and the lawless. I can see the end of that. The law will triumph and the evil stop."