Robert Toombs

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Robert Toombs bigraphy, stories - Confederate Army general and First Confederate States Secretary of State

Robert Toombs : biography

July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885

Robert Toombs Robert Augustus Toombs (July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885) was an American and Confederate political leader, Whig Party senator from Georgia, a founding father of the Confederacy, its first Secretary of State, and a minor Confederate general in the Civil War. He feuded bitterly with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. According to Jacob S. Clawson, he was "a bullish politician whose blend of acerbic wit, fiery demeanor, and political tact aroused the full spectrum of emotions from his constituents and colleagues….[he] could not balance his volatile personality with his otherwise keen political skill."Jacob S. Clawson, "A Georgia Firebrand in the Midst of the Sectional Crisis" (H-CivWar March 2012) [https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=34777 online]

Early life

Born near Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, Robert Augustus Toombs was the fifth child of Catherine Huling and Robert Toombs. He was of English descent.Robert Toombs, statesman, speaker, soldier, sage: his career in Congress and … By Pleasant A. Stovall page 2 His father died when he was five, and he entered Franklin College at the University of Georgia in Athens when he was just fourteen. During his time at Franklin College he was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society, which honors him as one of its most legendary alumni to this day. After the university chastised him for unbecoming conduct in a card-playing incident, Toombs continued his education at Union College, in Schenectady, New York, from which he graduated in 1828. Toombs went on to study law at the University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Shortly after his admission to the Georgia bar, he married his childhood sweetheart, Julia Ann DuBois; they had three children.

Army general

Within months of his cabinet appointment, a frustrated Toombs stepped down to join the Confederate States Army. He received a commission as a brigadier general on July 19, 1861, and served first as a brigade commander in the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, and then in David R. Jones’s division of the Army of Northern Virginia through the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Days Battles, Northern Virginia Campaign, and Maryland Campaign. He was wounded in the hand at the Battle of Antietam. He resigned his CSA commission on March 3, 1863, to become Colonel of the 3rd Cavalry of the Georgia Militia, and subsequently served as a brigadier general and adjutant and inspector-general of General Gustavus W. Smith’s division of Georgia militia. Denied a military promotion, he resigned his commission in March 1863. He then launched a major attack on Davis and the government, opposed conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus, as newspapers warned that he verged on treason. As the war ended he fled to Europe.Chesson 2000

From Unionist to Confederate

Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Toombs fought to reconcile national policies with sectional interests. He had opposed the Annexation of Texas but vowed to defend the new state once it was annexed late in 1845. He also opposed the Mexican-American War, President Polk’s Oregon policy, the Walker Tariff of 1846 and the Wilmot Proviso, first introduced in 1846. In common with Alexander H. Stephens and Howell Cobb, he defended Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 against southerners who advocated secession from the Union as the only solution to sectional tensions over slavery. He denounced the Nashville Convention, opposed the secessionists in Georgia, and helped to frame the famous Georgia platform (1850). His position and that of Southern Unionists during the decade 1850–1860 has often been misunderstood. They disapproved of secession, not because they considered it wrong in principle, but because they considered it inexpedient.

Toombs objected to halting the spread of slavery into the territories of California and New Mexico and even the abolishment of what John C. Calhoun had called the "peculiar institution" in Washington, D.C. He took the view that the territories were the common property of all the people of the United States and that Congress must insure equal treatment to both slaveholder and non-slaveholder. If the rights of the South were violated, Toombs declared, "Let discord reign forever."Thompson, p 58