General Toombs was not a trained soldier, but he had some fine points of a great commander. He was the soul of energy and common sense. He was bold, dashing, magnetic. He had the quality of infusing his spirit into his men. His quick mind seized the points of a campaign, and his intellect was broad and overmastering. It is related of him that one day in Virginia he hurried to the rear for a conference with Jefferson Davis, to which the President had summoned him, upon some point of civil administration. This business over, he dashed back to the front, where he had an engagement with General Lee over a plan of attack. General Longstreet said Toombs had the kindling eye and rare genius of a soldier, but lacked the discipline of a military man. This was the serious flaw in his character. He had what General Johnston declared was the great drawback about the Southern soldier, "a large endowment of the instinct of personal liberty," and it was difficult to subordinate his will to the needs of military discipline. He had been accustomed to priority, and in whatever company, under whatever conditions he found himself, his had been the part to lead and to rule. As Colonel Thomas W. Thomas had said of him, "Toombs has always been the big frog in the pond." Men conceded to him this prestige. Under the cast-iron rule of the army he found himself subordinated to men intellectually beneath him, but trained and skilled in the art of war. He was swift to detect error, and impatient in combating blunder. The rule of mediocrity, the red tape of the service, the restraints of the corps, the tactics of the field galled his imperious spirit. He commanded his brigade as he had represented his State in the Senate--as a sovereign and independent body, and like the heroic Helvetian had blazoned on his crest, "No one shall cross me with impunity." Robert Toombs made a mistake in sinking himself in the routine of a brigade commander. He should have taken the War Department, or, like Pitt, have pushed the war from the floor of the Senate. Swinton says that Abraham Lincoln brought the habits of a politician to military affairs, in which their intrusion can only result in confusion of just relations. There is ineradicable antagonism between the maxims which govern politics and those which govern war.