Robert
Toombs was born in Wilkes County, Georgia on 2nd July, 1810. Toombs
graduated from Union College in New York
in 1828. He became a lawyer and wealthy plantation owner.
In 1837 Toombs was elected to the Georgia legislature where he became
a strong defender in slavery. A member
of the Democratic Party he also served
in the House of Representatives (1846-1852) and the Senate (1853-61).
In 1861 Toombs led Georgia to secession. During the American
Civil War President Jefferson Davis
appointed Toombs as his Secretary of State but in July, 1861 he resigned
to join the Confederate Army. A brigadier
general, Toombs was seriously wounded at Antietam
in 1862. Disappointed by not being promoted, Toombs resigned from
the army but joined the Georgia militia when William
Sherman was advancing on Atlanta
in 1864.
After the war Toombs fled to Cuba and then moved to England. Toombs
returned to Georgia in 1867 where he once again established a successful
law practice. Robert Toombs, who had a serious drink problem in his
later years, died on 15th December, 1885.
(1)
Robert Toombs, speech in the Georgia legislature (13th November, 1860)
In
1790 we had less than 800,000 slaves. Under our mild and humane administration
of the system, they have increased about 4 million. The
country had expanded to meet the growing want; and Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Missouri have received this increasing tide of African labor; before
the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the
Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to 11 million
persons. What shall be done with them?
We must
expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to
accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial
question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory
without the African slave trade are both death and blind to the history
of the last sixty years. For twenty years the Abolition societies,
by publications made by them, by the public press, through the pulpit
and their own legislative halls, and every effort - by reproaches,
by abuse, by vilification, by slander - to disturb our security, our
tranquillity - to excite discontent between the different classes
of our people, and to excite our slaves to insurrection. No nation
in the world would submit to such conduct from any other nation. I
will not willingly do so from this Abolition Party.
Mr. Lincoln's Republican Party all speak with one voice, and speak
trumpet-tongued their fixed purpose to outlaw $4 billion of our property
in the territories, and to put it under the ban of the empire in the
states where it exists. They declare their purpose to war against
slavery until there shall not be a slave in America, and until the
African is elevated to a social and political equality with the white
man. Lincoln endorses them and their principles, and in his own speeches
declares the conflict irrepressible and enduring, until slavery is
everywhere abolished.
My countrymen, "if you have nature in you, bear it not."
Withdraw yourselves from such a confederacy; it is your right to do
so - your duty to do so. I know not why the Abolitionists should object
to it, unless they want to torture and plunder you. If they resist
this great sovereign right, make another war of independence, for
that then will be the question; fight its battles over again - reconquer
liberty and independence. as for me, I will take any place in the
great conflict for rights which you may assign. I will take none in
the federal government during Mr. Lincoln's administration.
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