In the State election of December, 1877, the new constitution was overwhelmingly adopted, and will remain for generations the organic law of the Empire State of the South.
CHAPTER XXIX.
DOMESTIC LIFE OF TOOMBS.
There never was a public man in America whose home life was more beautiful or more tender than that of Robert Toombs. As great as were his public virtues, his lofty character, and abilities, his domestic virtues were more striking still. He was a man who loved his family. In 1830 he was married to Julia A. Dubose, with whom he lived, a model and devoted husband, for more than fifty years. She was a lady of rare personal beauty, attractive manners, and common sense. She shared his early struggles, and watched the lawyer grow into the statesman and the leader with unflagging confidence and love. There was never a time that he would not leave his practice or his public life to devote himself to her. His heart yearned for her during his long separation in Washington, when, during the debate upon the great Compromise measures of 1850, he wrote that he would rather see her than "save the State." He considered her in a thousand ways. He never disappointed her in coming home, but, when traveling, always returned when it was possible, just at the time he had promised. During the exciting scenes attending his first election to the United States Senate, he writes that he feels too little interest in the result perhaps for his success, and longs to be at home. Political honors did not draw him away from his devotion to this good woman. He never neglected her in the smallest way. His attentions were as pointed and courtly in her last days as when they were bright-faced boy and girl, lovers and cousins, in the twenties. During his labors in the constitutional convention of 1877, he one day wore upon his lapel a flower she had placed there, and stopping in his speech, paid fitting tribute to the pure emblem of a woman's love. A man of great deeds and great temptations, of great passions and of glaring faults, he never swerved in loyalty to his wedded love, and no influence ever divided his allegiance there. Writing to her on May 15, 1853, while he was United States Senator, he says:
My Dear Julia:
This is your birthday, which you bid me remember, and this letter will show you that I have not forgotten it. To-day Gus Baldwin and Dr. Harbin dropped in to dinner, and we drank your good health and many more returns in health and happiness of the 15th of May. I did not tell them that you were forty, for it might be that some time or other you would not care to have them know it, and I am sure they would never suspect it unless told. In truth I can scarcely realize it myself, as you are the same lovely and loving, true-hearted woman to me, that you were when I made you my bride, nearly twenty-three years ago. There is no other change except the superior loveliness of the full blown over the budding rose. I have thrown my mind this quiet Sunday evening over that large segment of human life (twenty-three years) since we were married, and whatever of happiness memory has treasured up clusters around you. In life's struggle I have been what men call fortunate. I have won its wealth and its honors, but I have won them by labor, and toil, and strife, whose memory saddens even success; but the pure joys of wedded love leave none but pleasant recollections which one can dwell upon with delight. These thoughts are dearer to me than to most men, because I know for whatever success in life I may have had, whatever evil I may have avoided, or whatever good I may have done, I am mainly indebted to the beautiful, pure, true-hearted little black-eyed girl, who on the 18th of November, 1830, came trustingly to my arms, the sweetest and dearest of wives. You need not fear, therefore, that I shall forget your birthday. That and our bridal-day are the brightest in my calendar, and memory will not easily part with them.
Yours,
Toombs.
So well known was this domestic trait of Mr. Toombs that Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, in delivering his funeral sermon, declared that "no knight, watching his sword before the altar, ever made a holier, truer, or purer vow than when Robert Toombs stood at the marriage altar more than fifty years ago. The fire that burned upon the altar of his home remained as pure and unfailing as the perpetual offering of Jerusalem."