RESIDENCE OF GENERAL TOOMBS, WASHINGTON, GA.
CHAPTER XX.
TOOMBS AND SECESSION.
On the 16th of January, the State Sovereignty convention met in Milledgeville, Ga. The election had taken place shortly after the delivery of Senator Toombs' farewell address, and Georgia had answered to his call in the election of delegates by giving a vote of 50,243 in favor of secession, and 39,123 against it. The convention was presided over by George W. Crawford, who had lived in retirement since the death of President Taylor in 1850, and who was called on to lend his prestige and influence in favor of the rights of his State. The convention went into secret session, and when the doors were opened, Hon. Eugenius A. Nisbet of Bibb offered a resolution, "That in the opinion of this convention, it is the right and duty of Georgia to secede from the Union." On the passage of this, the yeas were 165 and the noes 130. Mr. Toombs voted "yes," and Messrs. Hill, Johnson, and Stephens, "no." Next day the committee of seventeen, through Judge Nisbet, reported the Ordinance of Secession. It was short and pointed; it simply declared that the people of the State of Georgia, in convention assembled, repealed the ordinance of 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and adopted. The Union was declared dissolved, so far as the State of Georgia was concerned, and the State to be in full possession of all those rights of sovereignty that belonged to a free and independent State. On the passage of this ordinance, the yeas were 208, and the noes, 89. Messrs. Toombs and Hill "yes," and Mr. Stephens "no." At 2.15 p. m. on the 19th of January, a signal gun was fired, and the "Stars and Stripes" lowered from the State Capitol. One moment later, the white colonial flag of Georgia fluttered to the winds, and the State was in uproar. The news flashed to the utmost corners of the commonwealth. Guns were fired, bells rung, and men were beside themselves. The night only intensified this carnival of joy. There were some men who shook their heads and doubted the wisdom of this step, and there were women and little children who regarded these demonstrations with awe. They did not comprehend what was meant by "going out of the Union," and by some inscrutable instinct feared the result of such an act. The old Union sentiment was, perhaps, stronger in Georgia than in any other Southern State. Georgia was the youngest of the thirteen States, the last of the commonwealth to come into the national compact. Her charter from the Crown had originally barred slavery from her limits, but the success of the institution in Carolina, the progress of other States in subduing land and in cultivating indigo and tobacco in the Southern savannas, rendered white labor unavailable, and left Georgia a laggard in the work of the younger colonies. Finally, slaves were admitted, and commerce and agriculture seemed to thrive. But if the State had preserved its original charter restrictions, it is not certain that, even then, the Union sentiment would have prevailed. As Senator Toombs had declared: "The question of slavery moves not the people of Georgia one-half so much as the fact that you insult their rights as a community. Abolitionists are right when they say that there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in Georgia who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are but a few of them; but no part of our people is more loyal to race and country than our bold and hardy mountain population, and every flash of the electric wire brings me cheering news from our mountain-tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none of their countrymen in loyalty to their rights, the honor and glory of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question: we want no negro equality; no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own, and, as one man, they would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. They will tell you, 'When we choose to abolish this thing (slavery), it must be done under our direction, according to our will. Our own, our native land shall determine this question, and not the Abolitionists of the North.' That is the spirit of our freemen."
The spirit of the people was plainly manifested by the zeal and ardor of Thomas R. R. Cobb. He was a young man who went into the secession movement with lofty enthusiasm. He had all the ardor and religious fervor of a crusader. He had never held public office, and had taken no hand in politics until the time came for Georgia to secede. He was the younger brother of Howell Cobb. He declared that what Mr. Stephens said was the determining sentiment of the hour, that "Georgia could make better terms out of the Union than in it." The greater part of the people was fired with this fervor, which they felt to be patriotic. Gray-bearded men vied with the hot blood of youth, and a venerable citizen of Augusta, illuminating his residence from dome to cellar, blazoned with candles this device upon his gateway—"Georgia, right or wrong—Georgia!" Never was a movement so general, so spontaneous. Those who charged the leaders of that day with precipitating their States into revolution upon a wild dream of power, did not know the spirit and the temper of the people who composed that movement. Northern men who had moved South and engaged in business, as a general thing, stood shoulder to shoulder with their Southern brethren, and went out with the companies that first responded to the call to war. The South sacrificed much, in a material point of view, in going into civil conflict. In the decade between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the South had increased three billions of dollars, and Georgia alone had shown a growth measured by two hundred millions. Her aggregate wealth at the time she passed the Ordinance of Secession was six hundred and seventy-two millions, double what it is to-day. In one year her increase was sixty-two millions. Business of all kinds was prospering. But her people did not count the cost when they considered that their rights were invaded. Georgia was the fifth State to secede. South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida had preceded her. Of the six States which formed the Provisional Government, Georgia had relatively a smaller number of slaves than any, and her State debt was only a little more than two and a half millions of dollars. Her voting population was barely 100,000, but she furnished, when the test came, 120,000 soldiers to the Confederate army.
As a contemporary print of those times remarked, "The Secession convention of Georgia was not divided upon the subject of rights or wrongs, but of remedies." Senator Toombs declared that the convention had sovereign powers, "limited only by God and the right." This policy opened the way to changing the great seal and adopting a new flag. Mr. Toombs was made chairman of the committee on Foreign Relations and became at once Prime Minister of the young Republic. He offered a resolution providing that a congress of seceded States be called to meet in Montgomery on the 4th of February. He admonished the convention that, as it had destroyed one government, it was its pressing duty to build up another. It was at his request that commissioners were appointed from Georgia to the other States in the South. Mr. Toombs also introduced a resolution, which was unanimously adopted, "That the Convention highly approves the energetic and patriotic conduct of Governor Brown in seizing Fort Pulaski."
The Ordinance of Secession was, on the 31st of January, signed by all the members of the convention, in the open air, in the Capitol grounds. The scene was solemn and impressive. Six delegates entered their protests, but pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" in defense of Georgia against coercion and invasion.