Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

In answer to the argument that those States which had given the selection of judges to the people liked it, General Toombs replied that this did not prove that it was right or best. "It is easy to take the road to hell, but few people ever return from it." General Toombs prevailed in this point. He was also the author of the resolution authorizing the legislature to levy a [tax] to furnish good substantial artificial limbs to those who had lost them during the war.

General Toombs declared frequently during the debate that one of his main objects in going to the convention, and for urging the people to vote for the call, was to place a clause in the new law prohibiting the policy of State aid to railroads and public enterprises. He had seen monstrous abuses grow up under this system. He had noticed that the railroads built by private enterprise had proven good investments; that no railroad aided by the State had paid a dividend. He declared that Georgia had never loaned her credit from the time when Oglethorpe landed at Yamacraw up to 1866, and she should never do it again. He wanted this license buried and buried forever. His policy prevailed. State aid to railroads was prohibited; corporate credit cannot now be loaned to public enterprises, and municipal taxation was wisely restricted. General Toombs declared with satisfaction that he had locked the door of the treasury, and put the key into the pocket of the people.

During the proceedings of this convention an effort was made to open the courts to review the cases of certain outlawed bonds, which the legislature had refused to pay, and which the people had repudiated by constitutional amendment. Impressed by the conviction that certain classes of these bonds should be paid, the venerable president of the convention surrendered the chair and pled from his place on the floor for a judicial review of this question.

No sooner was this solemn and urgent appeal concluded than General Toombs bounded to the floor. He declared with energy that no power of heaven or hell could bind him to pay these bonds. The contract was one of bayonet usurpation. Within a few days the legislature had loaded the State down with from ten to fifteen millions of the "bogus bonds."

The term "repudiation" was distasteful to many. The bondholders did not relish it; but he thought it was a good honest word. No one was bound by these contracts, because they were not the acts of the people. "I have examined all the facts pertaining to these claims," said Toombs, "and looking to nothing but the State's integrity, I affirm that the matter shall go no further without my strenuous opposition. The legislature has again and again declared the claims fraudulent. The people have spoken. Let the bonds die." The convention agreed with Toombs.

On the 16th of August the convention, then in the midst of its labors, confronted a crisis. The appropriation of $25,000 made by the legislature to meet the expenses of the convention had been exhausted, and the State Treasurer notified the president that he could not honor his warrants any further. This was a practical problem. The work mapped out had not been half done. Many of the delegates were poor men from the rural districts and were especially dependent upon their per diem during the dull summer season. To proceed required about $1000 per day. To have crippled this body in its labors would have been a public calamity. To check upon the public treasury beyond the limit fixed by law involved a risk which the State Government, not too friendly toward the convention at best, declined to assume. To raise the money outside by a private loan presented this risk, that in the case of the rejection of the constitution, then in embryo, the lender might find himself the holder of an uncertain claim. The convention, however, was not left long in doubt. With a heroic and patriotic abandon, General Toombs declared that if Georgia would not pay her debts, he would pay them for her. Selling a dozen or two United States bonds, he placed the proceeds to the credit of the president of the convention, who was authorized in turn to issue notes of $1000 each and deposit them with General Toombs. The act was spontaneous, whole-souled, dramatic. It saved the convention and rehabilitated the State with a new constitution. By a rising and unanimous vote General Toombs was publicly thanked for his public-spirited act, and the old man, alone remaining in his seat in the convention hall, covered his face with his hands, and shed tears during this unusual demonstration.

When the convention had under review the bill of rights, General Toombs created a breeze in the proceedings by proposing a paragraph that the legislature should make no irrevocable grants of special privileges or immunities. The proposition received a rattling fire from all parts of the house. Governor Jenkins assailed it on the floor as dangerous to capital and fatal to public enterprise. It was argued that charters were contracts, and that when railroads or other interests were put upon notice that their franchise was likely to be disturbed, there would be an overthrow of confidence and development in Georgia. This was the first intimation of the master struggle which General Toombs was about to make, an advance against the corporations all along the line. It was the picket-firing before the engagement.

General Toombs had made a study of the whole railroad question. He was a master of the law of corporations. He maintained a peculiar attitude toward them. He never invested a dollar in their stock, nor would he accept a place at their council boards. He rarely ever served them as attorney. When the General Assembly resolved to tax railroads in Georgia, the State selected General Toombs to prosecute the cases. In 1869 he had argued the Collins case against the Central Railroad and Banking Company, in which the court had sustained his position that the proposed action of the Central Road in buying up the stock of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad, to control that road, was ultra vires. He had conducted the case of Arnold DuBose against the Georgia Railroad for extortion in freight charges.

The principles he had gleaned from this laborious record made him resolve to place restrictions upon corporate power in the new constitution. The time was ripe for this movement. The Granger legislation in the West had planted in the organic law of Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri the policy of government control over the railroads. The statutes of Pennsylvania also reflected the same principles, and the Supreme Court of the United States had decided this great case on the side of the people. General Toombs was master of the legislation on this subject in England, and had studied the American reports on the right and duty of the state to regulate railroad companies. He declared, in proposing this new system, that these laws had been adopted by the most enlightened governments of the world. "From the days of the Roman Empire down to the present time," said Toombs, "it has never been denied that the state has power over the corporations."