Part 6 (2/2)

The Governor informed President Pierce that the laws were obstructed and openly resisted by bodies of armed men; that prisoners were rescued from the sheriffs, peaceable inhabitants murdered, and houses burned.

Another authority informed the President that an overwhelming force was crossing the border for the avowed purpose of invading Kansas and butchering the unoffending Free-State citizens. One side claimed protection from insurrection within, the other from invasion without.

As to the Emigrant Aid Societies, Mr. Toombs said, ”Whatever be their policy, whatever their tendency to produce strife, if they simply aid emigrants from Ma.s.sachusetts to go to Kansas to become citizens of that Territory, I am prepared to say that they violate no law; they have a right to do it, and every attempt to prevent their doing so violates the law and ought not to be sustained. But if they send persons there furnished with arms, with the intent to offer forcible resistance to the const.i.tuted authorities, they are guilty of the highest crime known to civil society, and are amenable to its penalties. I shall not undertake to decide upon their conduct. The facts are not before me, and I therefore pa.s.s it by.”

Mr. Toombs thought it would be difficult to imagine a case calling more loudly for the intervention of Federal power. Mr. Toombs favored the supremacy of the law in the Territories at any cost. ”If traitors seek to disturb the peace of the country, I desire that it shall be no sectional contest. I do not see the end of that. I prefer that the conflict shall be between the Federal Government and the lawless. I can see the end of that. The law will triumph and the evil stop.”

”We who pa.s.s this Kansas-Nebraska bill, both at the North and South, intend to maintain its principles. We do not intend to be driven from them by clamor nor by a.s.sault. We intend that the actual _bona fide_ settlers of Kansas shall be protected in the full exercise of all the rights of freemen; that, unawed and uncontrolled, they shall freely and of their own will legislate for themselves, to every extent allowed by the Const.i.tution, while they have a territorial government; and when they shall be in a condition to come into the Union and may desire it, that they shall come into the Union with whatever republican const.i.tution they may prefer and adopt for themselves; that in the exercise of their rights they shall be protected from insurrection from within and invasion from without.”

In answer to Senator Hale of New Hamps.h.i.+re, Senator Toombs agreed that the Territory of Kansas would certainly be a free State. Such, he thought would be its future destiny. ”The senator from New Hamps.h.i.+re,”

he said, ”was unable to comprehend the principles of the bill. The friends of the Kansas bill, North and South, supported the bill because it was right, and left the future to those who were affected by it. The policy of the Kansas bill wrongs no man, no section of our common country. We have never asked the government to carry by force, or in any way, slavery anywhere. We only demand that the inhabitants of the Territories shall decide the question for themselves without the interference of the government or the intermeddling of those who have no right to decide.”

Mr. Toombs and Senator Hale of New Hamps.h.i.+re seem to have been pitted squarely against each other in this great debate.

In 1854, during the progress of the Kansas debate, Mr. Toombs occupied Mr. Hale's desk, and alluded to the taunts which Mr. Hale had heaped upon the heads of senators who had sustained the compromise measures of 1850. He had predicted that they would be driven from their seats; that the mighty North would drive them from their benches. The distinguished senator from Michigan, Mr. Ca.s.s, was the especial object of these a.s.saults. ”But the result,” said Mr. Toombs, looking about him, ”is that the gentleman who made these declarations is not here.”

In 1856, however, Mr. Hale was returned to the Senate and met Mr.

Toombs in the Kansas debate, and the discussion was continued with the same acrimony.

”Let there be no legislative aggression on either side,” continued Mr.

Toombs. ”If the senator from New Hamps.h.i.+re is sincere, he will stand there. The common property is open to the common enjoyment of all. Let it remain so.”

Mr. Toombs charged Senator Hale with saying that the North had always been practically in a minority in the Senate, because the South bought up as many Northern men as it wanted. ”Sir, I stand here to-day in behalf of the North to repel the accusation.”

Mr. Hale: ”Who made it?”

Mr. Toombs: ”You said it. I have it before me in your printed speech. I heard it delivered, and you are correctly reported.”

In a letter to Mr. B. F. Hallet of Boston, in 1856, Mr. Toombs denied saying that he would ”call the roll of his slaves at the base of Bunker Hill Monument.” He charged Senator Hale with misrepresenting him to this extent.

No man was oftener misquoted by word of mouth or in public print. As bold as he was in speech and as free to speak out what was in his mind, he once remarked to an intimate friend, Dr. Steiner of Augusta, that he rarely ever saw his name in print that it was not attached to a lie.

We are not left to tradition or the dictum of political opponents to know how seriously Mr. Toombs regarded the question of war between the North and South. In this same debate with Senator Hale, Mr. Toombs said: ”He told us the North would fight. I believe that n.o.body ever doubted that any portion of the United States would fight on a proper occasion.

Sir, if there shall ever be civil war in this country, when honest men shall set about cutting each other's throats, those who are least to be depended upon in a fight will be the people who set them at it. There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections to fight.... No, sir, there is no question of courage involved. The people of both sections of the Union have ill.u.s.trated their courage on too many battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities, shoulder to shoulder, whenever their country has called upon them; but that they may never come in contact with each other in fratricidal war, should be the ardent wish and earnest desire of every true man and honest patriot.”

CHAPTER X.

THE ”KNOW-NOTHING” PARTY.

In the fall of 1854 the elections were generally adverse to the Democrats. The slavery agitation at the North, intensified by the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, resulted in a large number of Free-Soil candidates and ”anti-Nebraska” Whigs being elected to the House. In the West and South, the ”Know-nothing” movement had arisen as in a single night, and with secrecy and strength had a.s.serted itself on election day. The consequence was that the Democratic majority in the House which had been elected with Franklin Pierce now disappeared. The years of 1854-55 were full of uncertainty in Georgia. The old-line Whigs, who had broken away from their party a.s.sociates upon the nomination of General Scott for President, had not yet gone into full affiliation with the Democrats. Many of these men joined the ”American party,” which had arisen out of antagonism to the large foreign population flowing into the States and Territories. This party put out candidates for Congress and the State offices in Georgia.

To Alexander H. Stephens, more than to any other man, was due the honor of breaking up the Know-nothing movement in Georgia. Amazed at the rapidity with which this party organized and the completeness with which it worked; repudiating the principles which it held and the proscriptions which it enforced, Alexander Stephens announced, early in the day, that he would not be a candidate for reelection to Congress. He declared, in a letter, that, from the secrecy of the order, he was unable to know what they were doing, and, as political principles should come out in the open sunlight for inspection, he could not submit his candidacy to any such concern. He did not hesitate to condemn the practices and creed of the American party in public. Prominent leaders in his district who recognized his ability made it known that they were willing to support him, if he would not be so severe in his denunciations. Mr. Stephens promptly replied that the crisis required the knife, not the poultice. However, he did run for Congress and scored the secret order on every stump in the district. He declared, in a speech in Augusta, that he ”was not afraid of anything on the earth, above the earth, or below the earth, except to do wrong.” Mr. Stephens was elected. Religious fanaticism and race prejudice received a death blow in Georgia. ”It writhed in pain, and died among its wors.h.i.+pers.”

Mr. Toombs had already made himself felt in this campaign. He was in the shadow of a domestic affliction. His youngest daughter died in February of that year. This occurrence brought him to decide upon a trip abroad, which he had long antic.i.p.ated, but which his busy and eventful life had not allowed him to enjoy.

In April, 1855, he wrote his wife:

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