The life of Robert Toombs

Preface

AT the inception of this work it was intended to be a joint product by the late Colonel John C. Reed, of Atlanta, and myself. Colonel Reed, who was in his early manhood a captain in the Confederate army and in his later years when I knew him a genial and high-hearted veteran, was a life-long adorer of Robert Toombs. He had assembled a mass of his hero's correspondence, had collected a quantity of the humorous and epigrammatic sayings in which Toombs was remarkably prolific whether in public or private speech, had made Toombs the leading figure in his excellent book. The Brothers' War, and had looked forward to writing his full biography. He at first cordially accepted my overtures for a joint biography; but soon afterward bethought him that the labor would be too great for his declining strength, and determined to confine himself to the preparation of a slender independent work on Toombs's "winged words." He thereupon most generously handed over to me his treasured Toombs letters with the understanding that I was to decipher them and send him copies and that each of us should thereupon use the material at discretion. Colonel Reed unfortunately died, in January, 1910, before he had made any progress with his task. He had appointed me his literary executor, but no papers of importance were found among his effects. It happens that I am neither a hero-worshipper nor a collector of pithy sayings — that my interest, indeed, lies more in social history than in biography. But Toombs is as interesting to me as a type and product as he was to Colonel Reed viii PREFACE

as an individual. And he was so clear in his analyses and so telling in his expressions that, though I have relied little upon his traditional sayings, I have quoted his authentic speeches more abundantly than is common in brief biographies. Whenever his words are given, the phrase is Hkely to be found both pointed and sparkling. There have been few Americans who habitually spoke and wrote as interestingly and tellingly as he.

Toombs's favorite character in literature was FalstaflF; and he himself more or less unconsciously showed certain Falstaffian characteristics. But his braggadocio was combined with matter-of-fact-ness and high purpose; his comedy was mingled with tragedy; his self-indulgence stopped short at conviviality; and in public affairs he was among the most austere of men. When he quoted, as he often did, FalstafPs request to Prince Henry, "Rob me the exchequer," he invariably put the words into the mouths of the plunderers whom he was opposing. Colonel Reed was fond of discussing Toombs's Falstaffian phases, and his book would have been rich in humor. Something of these qualities in Toombs will doubtless appear in my narrative, but most of it must be read between the lines. I have been chiefly concerned with his incisive criticism of public issues and his now moderate, now headlong championship of public programmes. With little manifest mirth at his antics or fellow-feeling in his grief, I have endeavored to use his career as a central theme in describing the successive problems which the people of Georgia and the South confronted and the policies which they followed in their efforts at solving them. In regard to the personal career of Toombs, my narrative probably demonstrates, what my studies have made plain to me, that Toombs was primarily an American statesman with nation-wide interests and a remarkable talent for public finance, but the stress of the sectional quarrel drove him, as it had driven Calhoun before him.

PREFACE IX

into a distinctly Southern partisanship at the sacrifice of his American opportunity.

The location of all important documents quoted or referred to is given in the footnotes except in the case of numerous letters written by or to Toombs, Stephens or Howell Cobb. Virtually all of these, where no other indications are given, are embodied in a collection which I have edited for publication as volume two of the Report of the American Historical Association for 191 1, which will be issued during the current year by the U. S. Government Printing Office.

Numerous persons have given willing and courteous assistance in my pursuit of materials. Aside from Colonel Reed the chief ones of these have been Mr. W. J. DeRenne, of Wormsloe, near Savannah, who is the hospitable proprietor of the best private library yet assembled on the history of Georgia, Mr. William Harden, the librarian of the Georgia Historical Society at Savannah, Mrs. A. S. Erwin of Athens, Ga., Miss Julia A. Flisch of Augusta, Ga., Dr. J. F. Jameson of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mr. Gaillard Hunt of the Library of Congress, and Mr. Worthington C. Ford of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Miss Gertrude Byrne of New Orleans and others of my students in the historical seminary at Tulane University during my residence there kindly afforded me the use of such of their notes as bore upon Toombs's career. My wife has given valuable criticism and zealous aid in the preparation of the book.

ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS

Ann Arbor, Michigan, April, 1913.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Country, the People, and the Politics of Middle

Georgia 3

Chapter I The Country, The People And The Politics Of Middle Georgia

THE life and opinions of Robert Toombs are of interest on their own account as those of a vigorous, clear-cut and true-hearted leader in public affairs, advocating moderation where feasible and heroic remedies where necessary. His career, however, derives its chief significance from his typifying the life and demonstrating the problems, views and purposes of the community from which he sprang. He was striking as a man; he is illuminating as a representative.

The piedmont region in the South had many talented spokesmen in Toombs's generation. The community while sturdy and self-trustful was conscious of its problems, alert to receive the opinions of its public men, eager to support their approved policies and to praise their worthy services. It is not strange that such a condition should produce in a single neighborhood not fifty miles square, in the Savannah drainage basin of the piedmont, Calhoun and McDuffie on the Carolina side of the river and Stephens and Toombs in Georgia.

In ante-bellum parlance "Middle Georgia" was not the central portion of the state, but was the piedmont tract alc/ng the eastern boundary. The name originated about the time of the achievement of American independence, when the settlements in Georgia formed a slender line along the Savannah river. The upper portion of this line lay in the rugged and unfruitful mountains, the lower portion mainly comprised the sandy flats of the pine-barrens, while its middle stretches spread over the pleasant and fertile piedmont. No wonder it grew endeared to its people as "Middle Georgia." It lies as a rolling plateau, sloping from about a thousand feet above sea-level on the northwest down to a third of that elevation on its south-eastern edge at the fall-line of its rivers. Its hills and dales have a soil varying from red clay to gray sand, all made from the weathering of the underlying granite and similar rocks. Without prairies or extensive swamps, the country when white men entered it was covered with oak and hickory forests interspersed with tracts of pines; and this forest growth flourishing through the preceding centuries had covered the land with a layer of rich mold which rejoiced the hearts of the farmers in their clearings, but which needed careful husbanding to prevent its being washed away by the heavy rains common in the region. The soil and climate are suitable for producing with moderate success all the crops which flourish in temperate zones; but their special aptitude is for cotton, and the district's epoch of marked prosperity did not begin until the establishment of cotton production upon a substantial scale at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ever since that time cotton growing has continued to be the chief industry, although in recent decades cotton manufacturing has flourished as well.

Toombs's father. Major Robert Toombs, had commanded a force of Virginia troops operating against the British in Georgia at one time during the Revolution, and in reward was granted a tract of three thousand acres in Wilkes county about five miles from Fort Washington, which was then giving place to the town of Washington. On this tract he made his home in 1783. The earliest settlers in the district had preceded him by barely a decade. The farms were still nothing more than clearings, and the social regime

THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 5

was for the most part as crude as upon the average American raw frontier. It happens that we have a glimpse of conditions at and about the village of Washington, written in 1787 by Sarah Hillhouse, a bride recently arrived from New England, in a letter to her father:

"There are a few, and a very few, Worthy good people in the country, near us, but the people in general are the most prophane, blasphemous set of people I ever heard of. They make it a steady practice (if they have money) to come to town every day if possible, and as Mr. Hillhouse is the only person who keeps Liquors, we have the whole throng around us, as many as fifty at a time, take one day with another, and sometimes when any public business is done, which is often, fourteen or sixteen hundred standing so thick that they look like a flock of Blackbirds, and perhaps not one in fifty but what we call fighting drunk. . . . They have spent in our cellar for liquor in one day Thirty Pounds Stg., and not a drop carried i rod from the store, but sit on a log and swallow it as quick as possible." *

At that time Wilkes county was a backwoods settlement, largely comprised of disbanded Revolutionary troops, officers and men, who had been granted land by the state. That the rank and file should be rough-mannered was quite natural; but it is not to be assumed that everyone in the county flocked with the crowd which Mrs. Hillhouse described. The officers were likely to hold aloof, as were also the men of old families from Virginia and the Carolinas, who were beginning to enter the district in search of fresh lands to replace those which had been worn out by excessive tobacco cropping.

With passing years conditions rapidly improved. In 1790 the Indian boundary which till then had lain within twenty miles of Washington was moved a score of miles westward, and was again moved about forty miles further

* The Alexander Letters, 1787-igoo. Savannah, Ga.. 1910 (privatelyprinted), pp. 16, 17.

west in 1 802-1 804, Wilkes county was thus relieved of alarms from Indian forays and was likewise relieved of the roughest element of its own population, which drifted west behind the retreating Creeks and Cherokees. Meanwhile Whitney invented his gin in 1793; successful experiments in producing cotton in "Middle Georgia" upon a commercial scale in the later nineties brought brilliant profits, and the country promptly became a Mecca for well-to-do Virginians and Carolinians and their plantation forces. The hardships of the frontier and their replacement by easier conditions are indicated by Major Toombs's domestic fortunes. During his early years in Wilkes county he married and lost two wives in rapid succession; but his third wife, Catherine Huling, lived to a ripe age and reared six strong children. The fifth of these, born July 2, 18 10, was Robert Augustus, who dropped his middle name in early manhood, and who in his prime and ever after was endeared to all Georgians as "Bob Toombs."

At the time of his birth the sparse clearings had been broadened and multiplied, and Wilkes county had become settled by a fairly dense population as American standards of density went in that generation; the rough manners had become softened, and the small farms were interspersed with plantations. Squads of negro slaves worked the broader fields, and their total number came to comprise a little more than half the population. Some of the earlier pioneers drew free lands in the lottery distribution of the new Indian cessions acquired by the state, and sold their Wilkes holdings to the incoming planters. Some of the yeomen prospered modestly and bought from the traders a few slaves to help them in their field work; and some continued as non-slaveholders to till their own fields unaided except by their wives and sons and daughters. As for the slave squads, most of them comprised from five to twenty laborers, and not three planters could be found in a day's journey

THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 7

who owned above fifty slaves each. With the very poor traffic facilities prior to the building of railroads, the freighting of supplies from the seaboard was of course confined mostly to such essential supplies as could not be produced by domestic labor. All industry was rural, for the few widely separated villages were inhabited in the main only by merchants, court-house officials, lawyers and physicians. A small cotton factory was established in Wilkes county in 181 1 because of the restraint then imposed upon foreign trade, and it doubtless prospered moderately during the war of 1 812; but the return of high cotton prices after that war again enlisted all available capital in plantation operations, and for the rest of the ante-bellum period industrial energies were almost wholly devoted to agriculture. In normal times homespun comfort was the common reward of thrift, though little that savored of luxury prevailed. In manners there was fair sobriety, marked probity, frankness and vigor, pronounced individualism, general kindliness and occasional courtliness. It was the most wholesome community in the sturdy commonwealth. Major Toombs was one of the well-to-do planters, and young Robert, reared among the best advantages which the countryside afforded, acquired the views and customs which prevailed around him, including the current opinions upon public questions. For example, the discussion of impressments which he heard in childhood gave him an enduring belief in British tyranny, and the struggle in his boyhood between Georgia and the United States government imbued him with a devotion to state rights.

During the eighteen-twenties Alabama and Mississippi began to flood the market with their cotton and to depress its price, while in the Carolinas and "Middle Georgia'* the land was losing its fertility and crops were growing more meager. At the same time the people of the middle and eastern states were striving to increase the tariff protectlon on the goods which they were selling to the cotton belt and to increase the federal expenditure for internal improvements in their own region. Indian lands, banking and slavery furnished additional issues. During the earlier decades of the century the people of Georgia had indulged in local faction-fighting at the expense of their attention to federal policy. The new issues in the later twenties and the thirties required the turning of attention afresh to congressional affairs, whereupon it was found that the old leaders were outworn and a new supply was necessary. The young men who responded to the call bore much the same stamp and largely maintained the traditions of those whose mantles had fallen upon them, except that they based their issues more upon measures than upon personalities. The previous generation had comprised men of marked strength, such as James Jackson, Abraham Baldwin, William H. Crawford, John and Elijah Clarke, and George M. Troup. Some of these were rough, some of them polished; some were shortsighted partisans, some longsighted champions of sound statecraft; some headlong, some prudent, but all were vigorous, indomitable, high-spirited, plain in life and plain of speech, incorruptible, and devoted to the commonwealth of Georgia. Of these the Clarkes had been mere faction leaders without constructive policy; and Baldwin, a constructive statesman, had been cut off by an untimely death. Jackson, Crawford and Troup, the successive leaders of the faction later known as the State Rights party and then merged with the Whigs, shaped the political traditions of the state. Jackson in his speeches and Troup in his state-papers were ardent, even headlong advocates, sometimes suffering defeat by very reason of their violence, but oftener succeeding in their purpose of overwhelming their opponents. Crawford was more quiet, more genial and more versatile, succeeding sometimes by stalwart argument, sometimes by more ingratiating persuasion; but suffering final defeat

THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 9

in his ambition for the Presidency by letting it appear that he relied rather upon secret scheming than upon his merits as a sound and vigorous public servant. Crawford in fact rendered splendid service in Congress and the Cabinet until about 1816 when he unfortunately began a long resting upon his oars which had not ended when he was stricken with paralysis. As regards policies, Jackson, Crawford and Troup were all champions of state rights, Indian expulsion, low tariff, conservative finance, and the safeguarding of all Southern interests.

Jackson died in 1807, Crawford was paralysed in 1824, and Troup retired from public life in 1833. To fill their places a number of aspirants came forward possessing a variety of qualities but none of whom for a decade or two were at once talented and vigorous enough to establish a definite ascendency. George R. Gilmer and Wilson Lumpkin, of plain manners and ordinary ability, were zealous champions of Georgia in the Cherokee struggle; John Forsyth and John M. Berrien were polished gentlemen and brilliant speakers, but were opportunists in policy. The former a diplomat, the latter a constitutional lawyer, both were so much engrossed with forms and methods that they were disqualified for initiating and resolutely maintaining policies through good and evil fortune. Augustin S. Clayton was public-spirited enough to launch a cotton factory at his home at Athens in 1858, and to declare in Congress a few years later that his profits in manufacturing were unreasonably great under the tariff, and was sufficiently staunch a judge on the Georgia bench to assert in defiance of the United States Supreme Court in the Cherokee issue: "I only require the aid of public opinion and the arm of the executive authority, and no court on earth besides our own shall ever be troubled with this question"; but he destroyed his availability as a leader by his enthusiastic endorsement of nullification in sympathy with the excited South Carolinians but against the more moderate judgment of the bulk of the Georgia people. On the whole, during the thirties Georgia was relatively devoid of spokesmen except in regard to the Cherokee struggle. There were new issues pressing to be formulated, vital causes demanding champions, and a people eager to welcome any leaders who should ring true. In response to this demand there emerged into public life Robert Toombs and his fellows of the group reaching their prime in the forties and fifties and making Georgia the pivotal state of the South in the secession movement.

Chapter II

AS boy and as man Toombs differed from the standard manly product of the plantation regime only in being unusually vigorous, talented and self-confident. The freedom from care in which planters' sons were reared, the abundant opportunity for indoor pranks and outdoor sports, the affectionate and indulgent admiration of the slaves, the camaraderie of the neighbors' children, added their influence to the fond care of parents, the devotion of brothers and sisters and the somewhat capricious discipline of primitive schoolmasters in the stamping of character. Maturing with normal speed, young Toombs was active and alert, fun-loving and fond of striking situations whether of his own or of others' making. The rollicking boy was father to the boyish man with his great faculty for hilarious laughter, and his occasional failure while controlling others to control himself.

From his plantation home young Toombs went at the age of fourteen to the University of Georgia, then more commonly known as Franklin College, at Athens. There his fellow-students, only a few score in number, were nearly all planters' sons like himself, liberty-loving and not too studiously inclined; the faculty was meager, the resources scant, the curriculum unalluring and the discipline stringent. Moses Waddell, the president, had had a long, successful career as a master of a private academy, and carried academy methods into the conduct of the college. Alonzo Church, the young professor of mathematics, was a willing administrator of Waddell's rules. Thirty years later when Church was himself president of the college he required of his professors the same dormitory espionage over the students which he had performed under Waddell, and the brothers, John and Joseph LeConte resigned their chairs and pursued in more congenial surroundings their brilliant careers as scientists. Some of the most talented teachers have in all ages refused to be taskmasters and policemen; and thousands of youths at college have maintained that if they were not to be led, they would not be driven. Alexander H. Stephens, who attended Franklin College a few years later than Toombs, lived in Dr. Church's own household during his whole course without any friction; but Stephens was a frail, sober and conscientious youth, while Toombs was fullblooded, self-indulgent and flamboyant. In their prime these twain were wonderfully congenial and kindred in their outlook, but in youth they were radically unlike. Stephens, painfully introspective, would take a certain gloomy pleasure in what savored of martyrdom, while in Toombs dry textbooks, dull drillmasters, and stringent regulations could inspire neither dread nor loyalty, nor gain long submission. In his first and second years he probably followed the fixed routine, keeping up with the classwork easily and finding large leisure to romp with his fellows and apparently also to get acquainted with a few favorite characters in literature, particularly Falstaff^ and Don Quixote, and to exchange views with any with whom he might upon current questions of politics. By his third year, when he was sixteen years old, he had mastered the ins and outs of college life, pierced the foibles of his professors, developed a precocious talent in oratory, and acquired a nonchalance which proved the ruin of his career at Franklin College.

While records of Toombs as a student are scant, the college community at Athens treasures a number of traditions concerning him, of which two relate to the manner of his leaving college. The first runs to the eflFect that near the end of his third year, after several previous conflicts with the authorities, he was about to be reported by a proctor for a breach of the rules, whereupon Toombs hurried to the president in advance of the proctor and obtained an honorable dismissal from the college. Then when later in the day Dr. Waddell meeting him on the campus began to chide him, the youth informed the president with hauteur that he was addressing one not under his authority but a free-born American citizen. The second legend runs that after this Toombs stayed on at Athens till commencement, biding his time for a culminating escapade. The college chapel of that day, standing on the site of the present one which dates from 1832, was a small structure of boards whose furthest interior could easily be reached by a strong voice from without the building, particularly in the warm August commencement season when all the windows and doors were thrown open. Directly in front of the chapel and not twenty yards from its door stood a giant oak whose spreading branches would shade a throng of listeners. And the story runs that, mounting an improvised rostrum under the tree at the hour when his fellows approved by the faculty had begun their programme of speeches in the chapel, young Toombs began an address in such vigorous tones, with such eloquent phrasing and such telling humor that the audience within began to quit their seats and drift out of the building to enjoy the novel occasion; and Toombs did not conclude his harangue till the speakers inside had been left with but empty benches before them. Whether this tale be true in its details no man may say, but for many years before the disappearance of the old tree it was pointed out as the "Toombs Oak," the showpiece of the campus, and as such it was held in affectionate regard by the quickly succeeding generations of students. In the present writer's undergraduate days there in the middle eighteen-nineties its top had broken ofF and its middle was hollow with decay. As the seasons passed it then lost branch after branch until but a stump remained; and now one of the classes has placed a marble sun-dial to mark the spot where flourished the oak and the rebel Toombs.

The self-willed youngster had doubtless received more impress from affairs without than within the classroom during his residence at the college. The board of trustees comprised the leading politicians of the state, and at their meetings, as was commonly known at the time, there was more discussion of party slates than of college administration. During the decade of the twenties in fact the annual meeting of the trustees at commencement served as the official caucus of the Troup or State Rights party. The citizens of Athens, furthermore, were alert in political matters and occasionally held massmeetings to discuss the issues confronting the state. These meetings were held in the college chapel, where of course many of the students were interested listeners. The students also had flourishing debating societies of their own, whose weekly discussions were by no means confined to classical topics. In 1828, for example, the students adopted a resolution to appear at the commencement exercises in homespun garments as a protest against the protective tariff; the board of trustees officially commended their patriotic demonstration; and under Augustin S. Clayton's leadership the citizens held a great anti-tariff massmeeting in the chapel. Toombs had taken his leave before this time, but he had been present during the earlier developments which led up to this climax, and doubtless had political ambition and state-rights predilections indelibly stamped upon him by the regime.

After his exit from Athens, Toombs was sent by his guardian to Union College, New York, from which he was graduated in 1828. He then studied law at the University of Virginia, and returning home was admitted to the bar in March, 1830, after examination in open court at Eiberton by William H. Crawford who was spending his declining years as a circuit judge, though still dreaming of presidential honors. Toombs married Miss Julia DuBose in the same year and began the practise of law in the town of Washington while still but twenty years of age. For the next six or seven years his professional life was that of the average promising and rising young lawyer. He read law assiduously, rode the circuit of the neighboring counties regularly, listened attentively to the arguments of his elders at the bar, handled his own cases with energy, and sought out and remedied his own shortcomings. He relieved the monotony of the lawyer's life by occasional speeches on the hustings in support of the candidates of the State Rights party, and once when there was an alarm of war with the Creeks he plunged into the organization of a company of volunteers and as its captain reached the scene of hostilities only to find that peace had been restored and his company must be disbanded. In his domestic life the only events in these years were the births of his three children. With a true mate in his wife and a friend-in-need in his brother Gabriel, Toombs was adored and adoring in his family circle, as radiant in its tranquillity as he was in the most exhilarating strife at the bar or in the forum. His domestic felicity was in these years and long afterwards a spur in his labors and an anchor against recklessness in public policy and private conduct. He was throughout life also a kindly master to his slaves, a prudent manager, a cordial neighbor, an eager host, a firm friend and a guileless foe. His blemishes were an occasional too great impetuousness and a fondness for strong drink which he held in check until the defeat of his patriotic policies, the death of his last remaining daughter and the chronic illness of his wife in the closing years of his life broke his power of resistance.

The story of Toombs's progress at the bar has been told by the late Colonel John C. Reed who began practise in the same circuit in the fifties and adopting Toombs as his hero, began early to gather data on his career. His account, though not as full as he hoped to write, can hardly be improved by a layman writing in the twentieth century: *

" For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the judge of the circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction, and the judge . . . gave him favor from the first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The old dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share in his own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent attention that he gave every detail of preparation of his cases had in a year or two after his call made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of these was Francis T. Cone, a native of Connecticut. . . . Toombs, who had known the great American lawyers of his time always said after his death in 1859 that Cone was the best of them all. . . . Another of these was [Joseph Henry] Lumpkin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man that Georgia ever produced. . . . Whether Toombs had them as associates or as adversaries, they were always in these early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With . . . unremitted attentiveness . , . and a receptivity always active and greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated all of Cone's law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy. ... In due time when Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed forward, young as he was, into some important place in court conduct. I myself have heard Lumpkin tell that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke by Toombs — then some twenty-seven years old — of the zeal with which the public urged on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial for murder. The junior — the evidence closed — was making the first speech for the defense. As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with which he denied all merit to the case for the state angered the spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstration of dissent came from some of them, which the presiding judge did not check as he ought to have done. Toombs