Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

Close friends of Mr. Toombs at that time believed he was not without his ambition to occupy the Executive chair. Never an office-seeker, he had gone easily to the front rank of national politics and had won his honors in Georgia in a kingly way. He realized, however, that he was not politic enough to gain support from Northern States. His convictions were overmastering passions; his speech was fervid and fearless; and his bold, imperturbable expression had placed him in a fierce white light, which barred him from the promotion of party conventions. While his enemies were accusing him of a desire to destroy the Union and embroil the sections, Robert Toombs was probably cherishing in his heart a vague hope that one day he might be called to the presidency of a common country.

Senator Toombs was very active in attending to his public duties. He was interested in every species of legislation. His remarks upon the different matters of national business exhibited versatility, study, and interest in everything that affected the public welfare. Those who believe him to have been a conspirator, using his high position to overthrow the government, have only to look over the debates in Congress to see how active and conscientious were his efforts to promote every real interest of the Union.

In the United States Senate, on July 31, 1854, Mr. Toombs gave an elaborate exposition of his views upon the policy of internal improvements. He said he had maintained opposition to this system as a fundamental principle. Since he entered public life, he had sustained President Polk's veto of the River and Harbor bill in 1847. He believed that Congress had no constitutional power to begin or carry on a general system of internal improvements. He wanted to know where this power of the Constitution could be found. Madison and Jefferson had opposed this system. Monroe, Jackson, and Clay had yielded to the popular pressure and sanctioned it. "Instead of leaving the taxes or the money in the pockets of the people," he said, "you have spent nine months in endeavoring to squander and arranging to have more to squander in the next Congress. I should like to use a polite term," said he, "for I am a good-natured man, but I think it is corruption.

"In this bill you offer me seventy thousand dollars for the Savannah river. Ships were sunk in that river for the common defense of the country during the Revolutionary War. You are bound to abate your nuisance at common law. You might offer me this Capitol full of gold, and I would scorn the gift just less than the giver. You ought to have removed these obstructions long ago. When we come and ask of you this act of justice, you tell me to go with you into your internal improvement bill and take pot-luck with you."

Mr. Toombs claimed that the power given to Congress to regulate commerce, simply meant to prescribe the rules by which commerce could be carried on, and nothing else. "The people of Maryland," he said, "had never asked that the harbor of Baltimore should be cleaned at the expense of the people of Georgia. They did not ask that other people should pay their burdens. They came here and asked the privilege of taxing their own commerce for their own benefit, and we granted it. I hold it to be a fundamental principle in all governments, and especially in all free governments, that you should not put burdens on the people whenever you can discriminate and put them on those who enjoy the benefits. You started with that principle with your post-office establishments.

"Senators, is it just? I tell you, as God lives, it is not just, and you ought not to do it. There is manhood in the people of the Mississippi Valley. Let them levy tonnage duties for their own rivers and ports and put up their own lighthouses, and charge the people who use them for the benefits conferred. Let the honest farmer who makes his hay, who gathers his cheese, who raises his meal in Vermont, be not taxed to increase your magnificent improvements of nature and your already gigantic wealth. Senators, it is unjust."

During the session of Congress of 1856-57, Senator Toombs again arraigned the whole system of internal improvements. He carefully differentiated between building a lighthouse and clearing out a harbor by the Federal Government. He said in course of the debate: "Where lighthouses are necessary for the protection of your navy, I admit the power to make them; but it must be where they are necessary, and not merely for the benefit and facilitation of commerce. Foreign and domestic commerce ought to be charged, as in England and France, for the benefit they receive. I would make the shipowners, the common carriers of this country, who are constantly using the power of this government to make money out of the products of honest industry and agriculture, submit to this rule.

"The power to found a navy is found in the only fountain of power in this country, the Constitution. The defense of one is the defense of all. The destruction of nationality is the destruction of the life of all.

"I say if you take away the property of one man and give it to a thousand, or if you take away the property of a million and give it to nineteen millions, you do not create national wealth by transferring it from the pockets of honest industry to other people's pockets. This is my principle. It is immovable. The more commerce there is on the Mississippi the more they are able and competent to pay the expenses of transporting it, and I only ask that they shall do it."

Mr. Toombs sustained the veto of President Pierce of the Mississippi River bill.