Robert Toombs: Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, SageStovall, Pleasant A.
History
Robert Toombs: Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage
Stovall, Pleasant A.
Toombs, Robert Augustus, 1810-1885
All the old Whigs here have joined the Know-nothings, and
keep very shy of me, as I have spoken not softly of the
miserable wretches who expect to govern a great country
like this with imbecility, if they can only cover it with
secrecy. I have been greatly beset not to go to Europe this
summer, as the political campaign is likely to be hot. I
shall go, and the rather that I may avoid such an event,
and take that leisure and repose with my family in foreign
countries which I seem to be totally incapable of getting
at home.
Mr. Toombs left no doubt as to how he regarded the American party. In a
speech on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he had declared that the country
could assimilate the foreigners from Europe and the Chinamen from Asia,
and gather under the ample folds of the American flag every nation on
earth.
It is related that in the early part of Mr. Toombs' political career he
was accused of having subscribed to build a Catholic church in Georgia.
The charge was repeated secretly from ear to ear until it came to his
friends. It was on the eve of an election in Wilkes County, and a
delegation, in spite of the lateness of the hour, went to Mr. Toombs'
residence, awoke him, and asked for an authoritative denial of what they
considered a damaging charge. Mr. Toombs listened to the delegation, and
then declared with emphasis, not free from profanity, that it was so. "I
have responded to their calls just as I have those of other
denominations. You can tell the people that the distribution of my
money is none of their business."
This bold and prompt reply did not prevent his reelection to the
legislature the next day.
No man was more liberal in matters of religion and conscience than Mr.
Toombs. In 1851 he wrote his wife in reply to a letter informing him
that his daughter wanted to join the Methodist Church:
I am content if she desires, and you wish it. My opinions
about revivals, to which you refer, have been long formed
and much strengthened by my experience in the world, but I
am not at all desirous that they should be the rule of
anybody's conduct but my own. I have therefore endeavored
to stand upon the Protestant principle in matters of
conscience, of judging for myself and allowing others to do
the same. The Judge of the Earth will do right at the final
hearing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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