Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

When President Buchanan was inaugurated, he announced that a case was pending in the Supreme Court upon the occupation of the Territories. By this decision he would abide. The day after the inauguration the decision was announced. It was the celebrated Dred Scott case. It fell like a bomb into the antislavery camp. The great question involved was whether it was competent for Congress, directly or indirectly, to exclude slavery from the Territories of the United States. The Supreme Court decided that it was not. Six judges out of eight made this decision. The opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

This decision added to the fury of the storm. It was announced that the Chief Justice had announced the doctrine that "negroes had no rights that a white man was bound to respect"; a sentiment so atrocious that this official repelled it with indignation. Efforts were made to bury the Chief Justice in obloquy.

The struggle over the admission of Kansas into the Union was prolonged in Congress. But the situation in Kansas became warmer every year. The Eastern immigrant societies were met by inroads of Missouri and Southern settlers. A state of civil war virtually obtained in 1856-57, and throughout Buchanan's administration there was a sharp skirmish of new settlers and a sharp maneuver of parties for position. The Georgia State Democratic Convention of 1857 demanded the removal of Robert J. Walker, who had been appointed Governor of Kansas. He was a Southern man, but was regarded as favoring the antislavery party in its efforts to organize the Territory. The truth was, as Senator Toombs had clearly foreseen and expressed in his speech in the Senate in 1856, Kansas was destined to be a free State, and amid the violence of the agitation, confined to no one side, was marching steadily toward this destiny. The administration favored the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton Constitution, which was decidedly favorable to the proslavery men. Senator Douglas opposed this plan. He had become committed to the policy of squatter sovereignty during the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. He contended that the settlers of a Territory could determine the character of their institutions, a position which the Buchanan party denounced as inconsistent with Democratic principles. Mr. Douglas indorsed the Dred Scott decision, but maintained his position on popular sovereignty. He became at once unpopular with the rank and file of the Southern Democracy, with whom he had long been a favorite. He was also estranged from the administration, and it was evident that he would have no easy matter to be reëlected United States Senator. This election came off in the fall of 1858. It was clear to him that, to maintain his prominence in politics, he must carry Illinois. Unless he could save his own State his chance for President was gone. So he went into this memorable canvass with his own party divided and a determined opponent in the person of Abraham Lincoln. The young Republican party in Illinois had been gathering strength with each new phase of the slavery question.

The joint debate between Douglas and Lincoln was memorable. As a dexterous debater, Douglas had no equal in the Union. He was strong on the stump and incomparable in a popular assembly. Without grace or imagination, he was yet a plausible, versatile man, quick and ingenious, resolute and ready, with a rare faculty for convincing men. He was small and sinewy, with smooth face, bright eye, and broad brow, and his neighbors called him the "Little Giant." He could be specious, even fallacious; he employed an ad captandum kind of oratory, which was taking with a crowd and confusing to an adversary. The man who met him in these debates was a tall, impressive personage, rough, original, but direct and thoroughly sincere. In many points he was the opposite of Douglas.

He was rather an ill-ordered growth of the early West, a man who had toiled and suffered from his youth up. He was full of sharp corners and rough edges, and his nature was a strange mixture of patience and melancholy. As Mr. Stephens said, he regarded slavery "in the light of a religious mysticism," and believed that his mission to beat it down was God-ordained. And yet he was a statesman, a public man of breadth and prominence, a speaker of force and persuasion. He had the robust courage of a pioneer and the high purpose of a reformer. It was in this debate that Mr. Lincoln, at Freeport, Ill., asked Mr. Douglas that memorable question, on the stump: "Can the people of a Territory, in any lawful way, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution?" Mr. Douglas promptly answered, "Yes." This was his doctrine of popular sovereignty. But the answer cost him the Democratic nomination to the Presidency. The theory that a mass of settlers, squatting in a Territory, could fix and determine the character of the Territory's domestic institutions, was repugnant to a large portion of the Southern people. They claimed that under the Dred Scott decision, slavery already existed in the Territories, and must be protected by the Constitution; and that it was not competent for the people to determine for themselves the question of slavery or no slavery, until they formed a constitution for admission into the Union as a State.

The election in Illinois, in the fall of 1858, gave Stephen A. Douglas a majority of eight in the General Assembly over Abraham Lincoln, and Douglas was reëlected for the new term. In this contest he had been opposed by the Buchanan Democrats, who cast over 8000 votes in Illinois.

In the Senate, the debate on popular sovereignty was renewed. This time Jefferson Davis, a senator from Mississippi, attacked this position as incompatible with the Constitution and the laws. Mr. Davis was a skillful debater. His mind was singularly graceful and refined. He was eloquent, logical, and courageous. His career as soldier and statesman, as War Minister under Pierce, and as senator for Mississippi, made him a prominent figure. He was cultured, classical, and well rounded, equipped by leisure and long study for the career before him. He had vanquished Sergeant S. Prentiss in public discussion over the national bank, and contested, inch by inch, the domination of Henry S. Foote in Mississippi. His career in the Mexican war had been a notable one. Allied to Zachary Taylor by marriage, a West Pointer by training, a Southern planter by occupation, he was a typical defender of slavery as it existed. Davis was as slender and frail as Douglas was compact and sinewy. Like Lincoln, his mind grasped great principles, while Douglas was fighting for points and expedients.

Douglas declared that the territorial settler could determine whether slavery should exist, by his influence in providing or withholding police power; although he denied the constitutional right to legislate slavery out of the Territories, yet he believed the "popular sovereign" could, by means of "unfriendly legislation," bar out the Southern settler with his slaves. It was not difficult for Mr. Davis to impale him upon this plea.

Senator Douglas had saved his seat in the Senate, but his position in the Democratic party was weakened. The Lecompton Constitution passed the Senate in spite of Douglas's steady opposition.

Senator Toombs took no part in the subtleties of the Douglas-Davis debate. He listened to the refinements of that discussion with decided convictions of his own, but with clear appreciation of the fact that every point scored against Douglas was cleaving the Democratic party in twain. Mr. Toombs favored the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution, but when it was rejected by the House, he promptly accepted the English compromise, to refer the matter back to the people. Mr. Toombs had always been partial to Douglas. In the campaign of 1856 he declared, in Georgia, that "the man who condemned Senator Douglas needed watching himself." He viewed with some pain the Douglas departure over popular sovereignty; indeed he once declared that had he not been called away from the Senate for quite a time in 1856, Mr. Douglas would never have gone off on this tangent. When asked if Douglas were really a great man, Senator Toombs, in 1860, answered with characteristic heartiness and exaggeration, "There has been but one greater, and he, the Apostle Paul."