Robert Toombs Part 4

Confusion increased. Members called out to encourage Mr. Toombs, and others to put him down. In the midst of this babel he continued to speak, his black hair thrown back, his face flushed, and his eyes blazing like suns. His deep voice could be heard above the shouts like a lion's roar. Members shouted to the clerk to call the roll for the yeas and nays.

Toombs continued: "If you seek by violating the common law of parliament, the laws of the land, and the Const.i.tution of the United States, to put me down ["order, order, call the roll"], you will find it a vain and futile attempt. ["Order."] I am sure I am indebted to the ignorance of my character on the part of those who are thus disgracing themselves ["order, order"], if they suppose any such efforts as they are now making will succeed in driving me from the position which I have a.s.sumed. I stand upon the Const.i.tution of my country, upon the liberty of speech which you have treacherously violated, and upon the rights of my const.i.tuents, and your fiendish yells may be well raised to drown an argument which you tremble to hear. You claim and have exercised the power to prevent all debate upon any and every subject, yet you have not as yet shown your right to sit here at all. I will not presume that you have any such right ["order, order"]. I will not suppose that the American people have elected such agents to represent them. I therefore demand that they shall comply with the Act of 1789 before I shall be bound to submit to their authority." (Loud cries of "order.")

The Act to which Mr. Toombs referred recited that the oath must be administered by the Speaker to all the members present, and to the clerk, previous to entering on any other business. This he tried to read, but cries of "order" drowned his voice.

Throwing aside his manual Mr. Toombs walked further out into the aisle and a.s.sumed a yet more defiant position.

"You refuse," he said, "to hear either the Const.i.tution or the law.

Perhaps you do well to listen to neither; they all speak a voice of condemnation to your reckless proceedings. But if you will not hear them the country will. Every freeman from the Atlantic to the Pacific sh.o.r.e shall hear them, and every honest man shall consider them. You cannot stifle the voice that shall reach their ears. The electric spark shall proclaim to the freemen of this republic that an American Congress, having conceived the purpose to violate the Const.i.tution and the laws to conceal their enormities, have disgraced the record of their proceedings by placing upon it a resolution that their representatives shall not be heard in their defense, and finding this illegal resolution inadequate to secure so vile an end, have resorted to brutish yells and cries to stifle the words of those they cannot intimidate."

The clerk continued to call the roll, and Mr. Toombs with splendid audacity turned upon him. Pointing his finger at the _loc.u.m tenens_, he cried with scorn: "I ask by what authority that man stands there and calls these names. By what authority does HE interfere with the rights of a member of this House. [The clerk continued to call.] He is an intruder, and how dares he to interrupt members in the exercise of their const.i.tutional rights. Gentlemen, has the sense of shame departed with your sense of right, that you permit a creature, an interloper, in no wise connected with you, to stand at that desk and interrupt your order?"

Mr. Toombs continued, amid these boisterous scenes, his alternate role of argument, of appeal, of denunciation. He contended that a power delegated to the House must be used by a majority of the House. He concluded:

"I therefore demand of you before the country, in the name of the Const.i.tution and the people, to repeal your illegal rule, reject the one on your table, and proceed to the discharge of your high duties, which the people have confided to you, according to the unvarying precedents of your people and the law of the land."

This performance was denounced by Northern restrictionists as menacing and insolent. Mr. Stephens, in his "War Between the States," contended that it should rather be considered in the light of a wonderful exhibition of physical as well as intellectual prowess--in this, that a single man should have been able, thus successfully, to speak to a tumultuous crowd and, by declamatory denunciations combined with solid argument, to silence an infuriated a.s.sembly.

The noise during the delivery of this speech gradually ceased. The clerk stopped calling the roll, all interruptions were suspended and "every eye," says Mr. Stephens, "was fixed upon the speaker." It was a picture worthy of ranking with Lamartine's great speech to the revolutionists in France.

On the 29th of February Mr. Toombs addressed the House upon the general territorial question. He said:

"We had our inst.i.tutions when you sought our allegiance. We were content with them then, and we are content with them now. We have not sought to thrust them upon you, nor to interfere with yours. If you believe what you say, that yours are so much the best to promote the happiness and good government of society, why do you fear our equal compet.i.tion with you in the Territories? We only ask that our common government shall protect us both, equally, until the Territories shall be admitted as States into the Union, then to leave their citizens free to adopt any domestic policy in reference to this subject which in their judgment may best promote their interest and their happiness. The demand is just.

Grant it, and you place your prosperity and ours upon a solid foundation; you perpetuate the Union so necessary to your prosperity; you solve the problem of republican government. If it be demonstrated that the Const.i.tution is powerless for our protection, it will then be not only the right but the duty of the slaveholding States to resume the powers which they have conferred upon this government and to seek new safeguards for their future protection.... We took the Const.i.tution and the Union together. We will have both or we will have neither. This cry of Union is the masked battery behind which the rights of the South are to be a.s.saulted. Let the South mark the man who is for the Union at every hazard and to the last extremity; when the day of her peril comes he will be the imitator of that character, the base Judas, who for thirty pieces of silver threw away a pearl richer than all his tribe."

On the 15th of June, 1850, while the compromise measures were s.h.i.+fting from House to House, the question was put to some of the advocates of the admission of California, whether they would under any circ.u.mstances admit a slave State into the Union. They declined to say.

Mr. Toombs arose and declared that the South did not deny the right of a people framing a State const.i.tution to admit or exclude slavery. The South had uniformly maintained this right.

"The evidence is complete," he said. "The North repudiated this principle."

"I intend to drag off the mask before the consummation of the act. We do not oppose California on account of the antislavery clause in her const.i.tution. It was her right, and I am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her business: but I stand upon the great principle that the South has the right to an equal partic.i.p.ation in the Territories of the United States. I claim the right for her to enter them with all her property and security to enjoy it.

She will divide with you if you wish it: but the right to enter all, or divide, I will never surrender. In my judgment this right, involving, as it does, political equality, is worth a dozen such Unions as we have, even if each were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but for myself. Deprive us of this right, and appropriate this common property to yourselves; it is then your government, not mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will then, if I can, bring my children and my const.i.tuents to the altar of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the Union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and, for one, I will strike for independence."

Mr. Stephens declared that this speech produced the greatest sensation he had ever seen in the House. "It created a perfect commotion."

These heated arguments of Mr. Toombs were delivered under the menace of the Wilmot Proviso, or slavery restriction. When this principle was abandoned and the compromise measures pa.s.sed, Mr. Toombs uttered, as we shall see, far different sentiments.

In the Senate Mr. Clay, the Great Pacificator, had introduced his compromise resolutions to admit California under the government already formed, prohibiting slavery; to organize territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico without slavery restrictions; to pa.s.s a fugitive-slave law, and to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. Webster delivered his great Union speech, in which for the first time he took strong grounds against congressional restriction in the Territories. It created a profound sensation. It was on the 4th of March that Senator Mason read for Mr.

Calhoun the last speech that the latter ever prepared. It was a memorable moment when the great Carolinian, with the stamp of death already upon him, reiterated his love for the Union under the Const.i.tution, but declared, with the prescience of a seer, that the only danger threatening the government arose from its centralizing tendency.

It was "the sunset of life which gave him mystical lore."

Debate continued through the spring and summer with increasing bitterness. On the 31st of July Mr. Clay's "Omnibus Bill," as it was called, "went to pieces," but the Senate took up the separate propositions, pa.s.sed them, and transmitted them to the House.

Here the great sectional contest was renewed. Mr. Toombs offered an amendment that the Const.i.tution of the United States, and such statutes thereof as may not be locally inapplicable, and the common law, as it existed in the British colonies of America until July 4, 1776, shall be the exclusive laws of said Territory upon the subject of African slavery, until altered by the proper authority. This was rejected by the House. On September 6 the Texas and New Mexico bill, with the Boyd amendment, pa.s.sed by a vote of 108 to 97--and the anti-restrictionists, as Mr. Stephens said, won the day at last. This was the great compromise of that year, and the point established was that, since the principle of division of territory between the North and South had been abandoned, the principle of congressional restriction should also be abandoned, and that all new States, whether north or south of 36 30', should be admitted into the Union "either with or without slavery as their const.i.tution might prescribe at the time of their admission."

During this memorable contest Mr. Toombs was in active consultation with Northern statesmen, trying to effect the compromise. He insisted that there should be no congressional exclusion of slavery from the public domain, but that in organizing territorial governments the people should be allowed to authorize or restrict, as they pleased. Until these principles were settled, however, he would fight the admission of California. Into this conference Mr. Stephens and Howell Cobb were admitted, and at a meeting at the house of the latter an agreement was reached between the three Georgians and the representatives from Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, that California should be admitted: that the Territories should be organized without restriction, and that their joint efforts should be used to bring this about as well as to defeat any attempt to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Here was the essence of the compromise, built upon the great measures of Henry Clay, and finally ripening into the legislation of that session. Here was the agreement of that compact which formed the great "Const.i.tutional Union Party" in Georgia, and which erected a bulwark against disunion, not only in Georgia, but on the whole Southern seaboard. The disunion movement failed in 1850. "At the head of the States which had the merit of stopping it," said Thomas H. Benton, "was Georgia, the greatest of the South Atlantic States." And that Georgia stood steadfast in her place, and declined every overture for secession, was because of the united prestige and splendid abilities of Howell Cobb, Alexander H.

Stephens, and Robert Toombs.

During this stormy session Mr. Toombs' heart continually yearned for home. He was a model husband and a remarkable domestic character. The fiery scenes of the forum did not ween him from his family. On the 29th of August, 1850, he wrote to his wife:

We have before us the whole of the territorial questions, and shall probably pa.s.s or reject them in a few days or at most in a week. I am greatly in hopes that we will not pa.s.s over them without final action of some sort, and if we can get rid of them I shall have nothing to prevent my coming home at the time appointed. I begin to be more anxious to see you than to save the republic. Such is a sweet woman's fascination for men's hearts. The old Roman Antony threw away an empire rather than abandon his lovely Cleopatra, and the world has called him a fool for it. I begin to think that he was the wiser man, and that the world was well lost for love.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GEORGIA PLATFORM.

When Mr. Toombs came home in the fall of 1850 he found the State in upheaval. Disunion sentiment was rife. He was confronted by garbled extracts of his speeches in Congress, and made to pose as the champion of immediate secession. He had aided in perfecting the great compromise and was resolved that Georgia should take her stand firmly and unequivocally for the Union and the Const.i.tution. Governor Towns had issued a call for a State convention; Mr. Toombs took prompt issue with the spirit and purpose of the call. He declared that the legislature had endangered the honor of the State and that the Governor had put the people in a defile. "We must either repudiate this policy, or arm," he said. "I favor the former measure."

Mr. Toombs issued a ringing address to the people. It bore date of October 9, 1850. He proclaimed that "the first act of legislative hostility was the first act of Southern resistance." He urged the South to stand by the Const.i.tution and the laws in good faith, until wrong was consummated or the act of exclusion placed upon the statute books.

Mr. Toombs said that the South had not secured its full rights. "But the fugitive-slave law which I demanded was granted. The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and proscription in the Territories were defeated, crushed, and abandoned. We have firmly established great and important principles. The South has compromised no right, surrendered no principle, and lost not an inch of ground in this great contest. I did not hesitate to accept these acts, but gave them my ready support."

Addressing himself to the disunionists he said: "They have abandoned their errors, but not their object. Being bent upon the ruin of the republic they use truth or error for its accomplishment, as best suits the exigencies of the hour. If these people are honest in their convictions, they may find abundant consolation in the fact that the principle is neither conceded, compromised, nor endangered by these bills. It is strengthened, not weakened by them, and will survive their present zeal and future apostasy."

Mr. Toombs called on all men of integrity, intellect, and courage to come into the service of the State and prove their devotion to the Const.i.tution and the Union. "With no memory of past differences," he said, "careless of the future, I am ready to unite with any portion or all my countrymen in defense of the integrity of the republic."

Mr. Toombs took the stump, and his words rang out like an alarm bell.

Men speak to-day of his activity and earnestness in that great campaign, as with "rapid and prompt perception, clear, close reasoning, cutting eloquence, and unsparing hand he rasped the follies of disunion and secession." A prominent journal of that day, speaking of his speech in Burke County, Ga., declared that "his manly eloquence has shaken and s.h.i.+vered to the base the pedestal upon which the monument of American ruin was to be erected."

In November of that year a convention of delegates from Southern States was held at Nashville. Ex-Governor Charles J. McDonald represented Georgia. That meeting protested against the admission of California with slavery restriction; charged that the policy of Congress had been to exclude the Southern States from the Territories, and plainly a.s.serted that the powers of the sovereign States could be resumed by the States separately. On November 3 the election of delegates to the Georgia convention was held. Toombs had already turned the tide. A great majority of Union men were chosen. Whigs and Democrats united to save the State. Toombs stood convicted before many of his old followers of "unsoundness on the slavery question"--but he was performing his greatest public work.

Among the delegates elected by the people to the Georgia convention, which met at Milledgeville, December 10, 1850, were Toombs and Stephens and many of the best men in the State.

The work of the distinguished body was memorable. They adopted the celebrated "Georgia Platform," whose utterances were talismanic. Charles J. Jenkins reported the resolutions. They recited, first, that Georgia held the American Union secondary in importance to the rights and principles it was bound to perpetuate. That as the thirteen original colonies found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of this day will yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy, to preserve the Union. That Georgia had maturely considered the action of Congress (embracing the compromise measures) and--while she does not wholly approve it--will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy. That the State would in future resist, even to the disruption of the Union, any act prohibiting slavery in the Territories, or a refusal to admit a slave State. The fifth plank declared for a faithful execution of the Fugitive-slave bill.

Upon this platform the Union men selected Howell Cobb as their candidate for Governor. The Southern Rights men selected Charles J. McDonald.

This party claimed that the South was degraded by the compromise measures. Their platform was based upon the Virginia and Kentucky resolution. It a.s.serted the right of secession and maintained the const.i.tutionality and necessity of intervention by Congress in favor of admitting slavery into the Territories. The distinct doctrine of the compromise measures was non-intervention.

Howell Cobb was a born leader of men. Personally he was the most popular man in the State. Entering public life at an early age he had been a congressman at twenty-eight. He had been leader of the Southern party, and was chosen Speaker, as we have seen, in 1849, when only thirty-four years old. He had been known as a strong friend of the Union, and some of the extreme States' Rights men called him a "consolidationist."

In his letter accepting the nomination for Governor, he alluded to the long-cherished doctrine of non-intervention. The Wilmot Proviso had been withdrawn and the Union saved. The people had been awarded the right to determine for themselves in the Territories whether or not slavery was to be a part of their social system.

No man was so tireless or conspicuous in this campaign as Mr. Toombs.

Although expressing a desire that someone else should go to Congress from his district, he accepted a renomination to a.s.sert his principles.

He did not, however, confine his work to his district. He traveled from one end of the State to the other. He recognized that party organization in Georgia had been over-thrown and party lines shattered in every State in the Union. He boldly declared that a continuance of the Union was not incompatible with the rights of every State. He a.s.serted that the animating spirit of his opponents, the States' Rights party, was hostility to the Union. Some of the members still submitted to the humiliation of raising the cry of "the Union," he said, but it was a "masked battery," from which the very Union was to be a.s.sailed. Mr.

Toombs announced on the stump that "the good sense, the firmness, the patriotism of the people, would s.h.i.+eld the Union from a.s.sault of our own people. They will maintain it as long as it deserves to be maintained."

Mr. Toombs admitted that the antislavery sentiment of the North had become more violent from its defeat on the compromise measures.

"What did this party demand, and what did it get?" he asked on the stump. "It was driven from every position it a.s.sumed. It demanded the express prohibition of slavery, the Wilmot Proviso, in the Territories.

It lost it. It demanded the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and the slave trade between the States. It lost both. It demanded the affirmance of the oft-repeated declaration that there should be no more slave States admitted into the Union. Congress enacted that States hereafter coming into the Union should be admitted with or without slavery, as such States might determine for themselves.

It demanded a trial by jury for fugitives at the place of arrest. It lost this also. Its acknowledged exponent is the Free-Soil party. The Whig party has succ.u.mbed to it. It is thoroughly denationalized and desectionalized, and will never make another national contest. We are indebted to the defeat of the policy of these men for the existence of the government to-day. The Democratic party of the North, though prostrated, is not yet destroyed. Our true policy is to compel both parties to purge themselves of this dangerous element. If either will, to sustain it. If neither will, then we expect to preserve the Union. We must overthrow both parties and rally the sound men to a common standard. This is the only policy which can preserve both our rights and the Union."