In 1859 he refused to vote to appropriate $500,000 for the improvement of Buffalo harbor, because he held he had no right to spend the money of the whole Union for a particular locality; for this reason he voted to abolish the mint at Dahlonega, in his own State.
Mr. Toombs opposed the policy of buying the outstanding debt at a premium. He criticised Senator Simon Cameron for asking that the government give employment to 50,000 laborers out of work. He said, "Sir, government cannot do it and never did do it. There never was a government in the world which did not ruin the people they attempted to benefit by such a course. Governments do not regulate wages."
Senator Toombs contended that the Postal Department stood on a different footing from the army and navy. Postal service, he thought, was no part of the national duty. "It is of no more importance to the people of the United States that this government should carry my letters than that it should carry my cotton." He claimed that he had some old-fashioned ideas, but they were innate. "I do not think it right, before God, for me to make another man pay my expenses."
In discussing the financial report, he said, "You have as much time to appropriate money intelligently as you have to give it lavishly. While there is a general cry for retrenchment, when any practical movement is made, the answer always is that this is not the right time or the right place. I am afraid we shall never find the right time, or the right place, until the popular revolution becomes strong enough to send here men who will do the public business better than we have done it."
CHAPTER XVIII.
ELECTION OF LINCOLN.
In the election of November, 1860, Mr. Lincoln received 1,857,610 votes, and the combined opposition 2,787,780 votes, the successful candidate being in a minority of nearly a million votes. The new House of Representatives was Democratic, and the Senate had not been won over to the antislavery party. But the trend of Northern politics was unmistakably toward the extinction of slavery. As Mr. Lincoln said in his letter to Mr. Stephens: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. There, I suppose, is the rub." Mr. Buchanan's message to Congress was full of conservative counsel, but the Northern pressure was too strong. His Cabinet was soon dissolved, and the places of Southern men were taken by Northern representatives, whose influence was not assuring to Southern people.
Just before his departure for Congress Mr. Toombs, in response to an invitation, wrote a conservative letter to his constituents in Danburg, Wilkes County, Ga. It bore date of December 13, 1860. The General Assembly of Georgia had unanimously passed a resolution calling for a State convention to meet on January 16, 1861. Mr. Toombs took the ground that separation, sooner or later, was inevitable. The time when the remedy was to be applied was the point of difference. He opposed delay longer than March 4, but declared that he would certainly yield that point "to earnest and honest men who are with me in principle but are more hopeful of redress from the aggressors than I am. To go beyond March 4, we should require such preliminary measures to be taken as would, with reasonable certainty, lead to adequate redress, and in the meantime, we should take care that the delay gives no advantage to the adversary." Mr. Toombs declared that he believed the policy of Mr. Lincoln was to ultimately abolish slavery in the States, by driving slavery out of the Territories, by abrogating Fugitive-slave laws, and by protecting those who stole slaves and incited insurrections. The only way to remedy these evils, in the Union, was by such constitutional amendments as can be neither resisted nor evaded. "If the Republican party votes for the amendments, we may postpone final action. This will be putting planks where they are good for something. A cartload of new planks in the party platform will not redress one wrong nor protect one right."