Editing Robert Toombs (section)

==From Unionist to Confederate==
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Toombs fought to reconcile national policies with his personal and sectional interests. 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, though during the debate leading up to that compromise he had declared, "if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the Territories purchased by the common blood and treasure of the people, and to abolish slavery in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the States of this confederacy, I am for disunion, and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of right and duty I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation."<ref name="t739">{{cite web | last=Stovall | first=Pleasant A. | title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of Robert Toombs, by Pleasant A. Stovall. | website=Project Gutenberg | date=16 July 2008 | url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26069/26069-h/26069-h.htm | access-date=16 October 2024}}</ref> 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 was pragmatic; he thought secession was impractical.<ref>Thompson, p 58</ref>

From 1853 to 1861, Toombs served in the [[United States Senate]]. He reluctantly joined the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] when lack of interest among voters in other states doomed the [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]]. Toombs favored the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] of 1854, the admission of [[Kansas]] as a [[slave state]] under the [[Lecompton Constitution]], and the [[English Bill (1858)]]. However, his faith in the resiliency and effectiveness of the national government to resolve sectional conflicts waned as the 1850s drew to a close.

Toombs was present on May 22, 1856, when Congressman [[Preston Brooks]] beat Senator [[Charles Sumner]] with a cane on the Senate floor.<ref name="Scroggins">{{cite book |last= Scroggins |first=Mark |date=2011 |title=Robert Toombs: The Civil Wars of a United States Senator and Confederate General |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RDJxLEYVH0UC&pg=PA91 |location= Jefferson, NC |publisher=McFarland & Company |page=91 |isbn=978-0-7864-6363-3 |via= Google Books }}</ref> As Brooks thrashed Sumner, his House allies [[Laurence M. Keitt]] and [[Henry A. Edmundson]] prevented witnesses from coming to Sumner's aid, with Keitt brandishing a pistol to keep them at bay.<ref name="Scroggins"/> Senator [[John J. Crittenden]] attempted to intervene, and pleaded with Brooks not to kill Sumner.<ref name="Scroggins"/> Toombs interceded for Crittenden, begging Keitt not to attack someone who was not a party to the Brooks-Sumner dispute. Later Toombs suggested that he had no issue with Brooks beating Sumner, and in fact approved of it.<ref name="Scroggins"/>

On June 24, 1856, Toombs introduced the Toombs Bill, which proposed a constitutional convention in Kansas under conditions that were acknowledged by various anti-slavery leaders as fair. This marked the greatest concessions made by pro-slavery senators during the struggle over Kansas. But the bill did not provide for the submission of the proposed state constitution to popular vote, where, as the vote on the Lecompton Constitution showed, it would have been soundly defeated. The silence on this point of the territorial law, under which the Lecompton Constitution of Kansas was framed in 1857, was the crux of the Lecompton struggle.

According to historian 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."<ref>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]</ref>

Toombs decried what he saw as support in the North for [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]] in 1859. "The thousands of blind Republicans who do openly approve the treason, murder, and arson of John Brown, get no condemnation from their party for such acts. …It is vain, in face of these injuries, to talk of peace, fraternity, and common country. There is no peace; there is no fraternity; there is no common country; all of us know it." Toombs declared that the South should "Never permit this Federal Government to pass into the traitors' hands of the black Republican party. …The enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at your hearthstone; meet him at the door-sill, and drive him from the Temple of Liberty, or pull down its pillars and involve him in a common ruin."<ref name="t739"/>