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Of these three Georgians, so strikingly arrayed against each other in this critical campaign, Mr. Vincent, a gifted Texan, thus wrote with dramatic power: "Hill, Stephens, Toombs all eloquent, all imbued with the same lofty patriotism. They differed widely in their methods; their opinions were irreconcilable, their policies often diametrically opposite.
Carlyle declared with dyspeptic acrimony that the Civil War was the foulest chimney of the century, and should be allowed to burn out. Secretary Toombs had issued credentials to commissioners to the unseceded Southern States. On the 17th of April Virginia seceded; on the 28th of May North Carolina went out of the Union; these were followed by Tennessee and Arkansas.
Toombs, a young minister, who had been settled six or seven years, and loved the commandments of religion much better than the creed of theology, entered into it at once, and promised to come, and not wear his white cravat. His wife, Sally Wilkins that used to be, took to it with all her might. So all things were made ready.
This was in July, 1857. The letter announced that the Democratic State Convention in Georgia had adjourned, after nominating for Governor Joseph E. Brown. Senator Toombs read the letter and, looking up in a dazed way, asked, "And who in the devil is Joe Brown?" There was a good deal of significance in the inquiry. There was a hot campaign ahead.
Linton Stephens, in a strong letter to General Toombs at that time, called attention to the fact that since the war began neither side had made any effort to stop the effusion of blood. He believed that the professional soldiers and West Point generals would never permit the cessation of hostilities. Such men, he thought, would not, in human nature, desire peace.
Lincoln's Cabinet took this position and, by a vote of five to two, favored the abandonment of Sumter. The commissioners were apprised of this feeling, and in a dispatch to Secretary Toombs, on the 20th of March, declared that there was no change in the status. "If there is any faith in man," they wrote, "we may rely on the assurances we have as to the status.
A faintness overwhelmed her so that she could hardly find strength with which to tear open the missive. When she finally did so, she read: "Come at once, much trouble," scrawled in Mrs Trivett's writing. Mavis, scarcely knowing what she was doing, reached for her hat, the while Miss Toombs watched her with sympathetic eyes.
Richard Peters's Reports of Cases Argued in the Supreme Court and B. C. Howard's continuation of this series supply the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court. U. B. Phillips's Correspondence of Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, in the Reports of the American Historical Association , is a valuable contribution to the sources of the period.
South Carolina seceded, five days later, and then we knew what was coming, albeit, we saw only the dim shadow of that mighty struggle that was to shake the earth for nearly five years. The Printer grew highly irritable those days and spoke of Buchanan and Davis and Toombs in language so violent it could never have been confined in type.
The Whigs were especially active, and we find resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, calling on the Federal Government to create ports of entry and to build government foundries and navy yards on the Southern seaboard. Mr. Toombs was chairman of the Committee of Internal Improvements, but his efforts were directed toward the completion of the Western and Atlantic Railroad.
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