Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

In July, 1856, he said that he had for eleven years maintained the vetoes of Mr. Polk. "I have perceived that this mischief is widespread, this corruption greater, this tendency to the destruction of the country is more dangerous. The tendency to place the whole government under the money power of the nation is greater and greater. The danger may be all of my imagination; but whether that be so, or whether I see in a bolder light the evil that will grow by letting this sluice from the public treasury and making it run by the will of the majority, I deem it so important that it may be worth an empire. We are called on, upon the idea of everybody helping everybody's bill, to vote for them all. There certainly can be no greater abandonment of public principle than is here presented."

Senator Toombs, while a member of the Georgia Legislature, opposed the omnibus bill, granting State aid to railroads, and one of the first devices to fall under his criticism was a scheme to build a road to his own town. He was by nature progressive. He championed the cause of the State railroad of Georgia. In general terms he believed that the States and the people should carry out works of internal improvement. It is said that the first office ever held by Mr. Toombs was that of commissioner of the town of Washington, Ga. The election hinged upon a question of public improvement, the question being "ditch or no ditch"; Toombs was elected commissioner, and the ditch was dug.

He was nothing of a demagogue. He did not attempt to belittle the public service. He championed the provision for higher pay for the United States Judges, and for increasing the stipend of army officers, although he denounced the system of double rations as vicious. He did not hesitate to hit an unnecessary expense in every shape. All overflowing pension grabs found in him a deadly enemy. In December, 1856, while speaking on the subject of claims, he said: "In 1828, when half a century had passed over the heads of the men who fought your battles, when their generation was gone, when Tories and jobbers could not be distinguished from the really meritorious, the agents came here and attempted to intimidate public men." He alluded to pension agents as men who prowl about and make fortunes by peddling in the pretended patriotism and sufferings of their fathers.

"It is," said he, "a poor pretext for an honorable man to come and tell the government, 'My ancestor fought for his own and the public liberty; he did not choose to be a slave to a foreign despotism; but with manliness, and honor, and patriotism, he fought during the war; now pay me for this. I want to be paid in hard dollars for the honor, and chivalry, and patriotism of my ancestor.' I tell you, Mr. President, it is not good money; it is bad money; it is dishonorable to the memory of those who fought your battles."

In February, 1857, the electoral vote for President was counted by the two Houses of Congress. The vote of the State of Wisconsin (five ballots) had been cast on a day other than that fixed by the States for the meeting of the Electoral College. If counted, it gave Frémont 114 votes; if omitted, Frémont would have 109.

In the debate which followed, Senator Toombs discussed very closely a point which has since been the subject of sharp contention. He said: "The duty of counting the vote for President devolves on the Senate and House of Representatives. They must act in their separate capacities; but they alone can determine it, and not the President of the Senate and the tellers of the two Houses. It is a high privilege, a dangerous one to the liberties and Constitution of this country. The Senate and House must determine the votes to be counted, and the President of the Senate can only announce those to be votes which are thus decided by competent authority, and any attempt of the presiding officer to declare what votes he may deem to be legal, or to decide which are the votes, no matter whether it affects the result or not, or even to say that the question shall not be decided, however highly I respect the chair, I submit is not a power given to the presiding officer by the Constitution and the laws."

In 1850 Senator Toombs found it necessary to oppose an appropriation for an experiment with the Atlantic cable. He was not prepared to say that the experiment would not be successful, but he boldly declared, despite the importance of the work and the high character of the men who were supporting it, that there was no power in the Federal Constitution for such an appropriation. Because the government establishes post roads, it could not be inferred that the government had the power to aid in transmitting intelligence to all quarters of the globe. He did not believe in going beyond the constitutional guarantees. He declared of these questions, as he had in the debate upon the Kansas bill, that in hunting for power and authority he knew but one place to go—to the Constitution. When he did not find it there, he could not find it anywhere.

Senator Toombs favored the purchase of Cuba, because he considered it advantageous to the republic. "I will accept Canada as readily, if it can be honestly and fairly done," he said. "I will accept Central America and such part of Mexico as, in my judgment, would be advantageous to the republic."

The question of the slave population of Cuba should not come into this discussion, he declared. "I will not trammel the great constitutional power of the Executive to deal with foreign nations, with our internal questions; and I will not manacle my country, I will not handcuff the energies of this mighty republic, by tying up our foreign diplomacy with our internal dissensions. At least to the rest of the world, let us present ourselves as one people, one nation." He spurned the idea that he wanted Cuba to strengthen the slave power in Congress. He said, "Some may think we go for it because by this means we shall have one more slave State in the Union. I know that the senator from New York (Mr. Seward) at the last session alluded to the comparative number of slaveholding and non-slaveholding States; but I never considered that my rights lay there; I never considered that I held my rights of property by the votes of senators. It is too feeble a tenure. If I did, I have shown by my votes that I have not feared them. Whenever any State, Minnesota or Oregon, or any other, came, no matter from where, if she came on principles which were sufficient in my judgment to justify her admission into this great family of nations, I never refused her the right hand of fellowship. I did not inquire whether you had seventeen or eighteen free States. If you had fifty, it would not alter my vote. The idea of getting one slave State would have no effect on me. But Cuba has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico, and then the Carribean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of the United States of America. That is my policy. I rose more with a view to declare my policy for the future; that development, that progress throughout the tropics was the true, fixed, unalterable policy of the nation, no matter what may be the consequences with reference to European powers."

Mr. Toombs believed that much bad legislation resulted from trusting too much to committees. He rarely failed to question such reports, and never voted unless he thoroughly understood the subject. He thought this whole machinery was a means of "transferring the legislation of the country from those into whose hands the Constitution had placed it to irresponsible parties." He said it was a common newspaper idea that Congress was wasting time in debating details. His opinion was that nine-tenths of the time the best thing to be done in public legislation was to do nothing. He thought Congress was breaking down the government by its own weight in "pensioning all the vagrants brought here. All that a man has to do is to make affidavit and get a pension."