1. From a privileged background as a wealthy planter and slaveholder, Toombs embarked on a political career marked by effective oratory, although he acquired a reputation for hard living, disheveled appearance, and irascibility.
44 Facts About Robert Toombs
1. 2.
Robert Toombs was identified with Alexander H Stephens's libertarian wing of secessionist opinion, and in contradiction to the nationalist Jefferson Davis, Toombs believed a civil war to be neither inevitable nor winnable by the South.
3.
Robert Toombs was commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army and was wounded at the Battle of Antietam, where he performed creditably.
4.
Robert Toombs returned to the South to study law at the University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville.
5.
Shortly after his admission to the Georgia bar, on November 18,1830, Robert Toombs married his childhood sweetheart, Martha Juliann DuBose, daughter of Ezekiel DuBose and his wife of Lincoln County, Georgia.
6.
Robert Toombs died of complications of childbirth, together with her fifth child Julian.
7.
Robert Toombs was admitted to the Georgia bar and began his legal practice in 1830.
8.
Robert Toombs entered politics, gaining election to the Georgia House of Representatives, where he served in 1838.
9.
Robert Toombs won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1844, and would win re-election several times.
10.
Robert Toombs served several terms in the lower chamber until 1853.
11.
Robert Toombs increased his personal slave holdings as his wealth increased.
12.
Robert Toombs became a soldier and chaplain in the Union Army in 1862.
13.
William Gaines and Wesley John Gaines, former slaves of Robert Toombs, both became church leaders.
14.
From 1853 to 1861, Robert Toombs served in the United States Senate.
15.
Robert Toombs reluctantly joined the Democratic Party when lack of interest among voters in other states doomed the Constitutional Union Party.
16.
Robert Toombs was present on May 22,1856, when Congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor.
17.
Robert Toombs interceded for Crittenden, begging Keitt not to attack someone who was not a party to the Brooks-Sumner dispute.
18.
Later Robert Toombs suggested that he had no issue with Brooks beating Sumner, and in fact approved of it.
19.
On June 24,1856, Robert Toombs introduced the Robert Toombs Bill, which proposed a constitutional convention in Kansas under conditions that were acknowledged by various anti-slavery leaders as fair.
20.
Robert Toombs decried what he saw as support in the North for John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.
21.
Robert Toombs's influence was a powerful factor in inducing the "old-line Whigs" to support immediate secession.
22.
Unlike the crises of 1850, these events galvanized Robert Toombs and energized his ambitions of becoming the president of the new Confederate nation.
23.
Robert Toombs had a serious drinking problem which worried fellow delegates, leading him to not be selected.
24.
Robert Toombs had no diplomatic skills, but Davis chose him as the Secretary of State.
25.
Robert Toombs was the only member of Davis' administration to express dissent about the Confederacy's attack on Fort Sumter.
26.
Robert Toombs was commissioned as a brigadier general on July 19,1861, and served first as a brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac, and then in David R Jones' division of the Army of Northern Virginia.
27.
Robert Toombs commanded troops through the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Days Battles, Northern Virginia Campaign, and Maryland Campaign.
28.
Robert Toombs was wounded in the hand at the Battle of Antietam, where he commanded the defense of Burnside's Bridge.
29.
Robert Toombs returned to Georgia, where he became colonel of the 3rd Cavalry of the Georgia Militia.
30.
Robert Toombs subsequently served as a brigadier general and adjutant and inspector-general of General Gustavus W Smith's division of the Georgia Militia.
31.
Robert Toombs strongly criticized Davis and the Confederate government, opposing conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus.
32.
At the Battle of Columbus in 1865, Robert Toombs commanded the defense of the upper bridge.
33.
Robert Toombs escaped into Alabama, thence by boat to New Orleans and by steam to Europe.
34.
Robert Toombs's wife returned to Georgia in late 1866 following the death of their last surviving child, Sallie Toombs DuBose, in Washington County, Georgia.
35.
Robert Toombs went to help their widowed son-in-law care for several small children.
36.
Robert Toombs missed his wife and returned to Georgia in 1867, but refused to request a pardon from the president.
37.
Robert Toombs never regained his right to vote nor hold political office during the Reconstruction era.
38.
However, Toombs resumed his lucrative law practice, in connection with his son-in-law Dudley M DuBose.
39.
Robert Toombs funded and dominated the Georgia constitutional convention of 1877, in the year that federal troops were withdrawn from the South.
40.
Robert Toombs demonstrated the political skill and temperament that earlier had earned him a reputation as one of Georgia's most effective leaders.
41.
Robert Toombs gained a populist reputation for attacks on railroads and state investment in them.
42.
Robert Toombs was buried at Resthaven Cemetery in Wilkes County, Georgia with his wife, his daughter, and son-in-law.
43.
Georgia erected a historical marker in Clarkesville, Habersham County, Georgia concerning the Toombs-Bleckly House, which Toombs acquired as a summer residence in 1879 and sold to Georgia Supreme Court justice Logan E Bleckley five years later, although it burned down in 1897.
44.
The Liberty Ship SS Robert Toombs was launched in 1943 by the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation and served through World War II and after, eventually being sold for scrap.