Robert Toombs. Pleasant A. Stovall
not deny the right of a people framing a State constitution to admit or exclude slavery. The South had uniformly maintained this right.
"The evidence is complete," he said. "The North repudiated this principle."
"I intend to drag off the mask before the consummation of the act. We do not oppose California on account of the antislavery clause in her constitution. It was her right, and I am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise—that is her business: but I stand upon the great principle that the South has the right to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I claim the right for her to enter them with all her property and security to enjoy it. She will divide with you if you wish it: but the right to enter all, or divide, I will never surrender. In my judgment this right, involving, as it does, political equality, is worth a dozen such Unions as we have, even if each were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but for myself. Deprive us of this right, and appropriate this common property to yourselves; it is then your government, not mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will then, if I can, bring my children and my constituents to the altar of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the Union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and, for one, I will strike for independence."
Mr. Stephens declared that this speech produced the greatest sensation he had ever seen in the House. "It created a perfect commotion."
These heated arguments of Mr. Toombs were delivered under the menace of the Wilmot Proviso, or slavery restriction. When this principle was abandoned and the compromise measures passed, Mr. Toombs uttered, as we shall see, far different sentiments.
In the Senate Mr. Clay, the Great Pacificator, had introduced his compromise resolutions to admit California under the government already formed, prohibiting slavery; to organize territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico without slavery restrictions; to pass a fugitive-slave law, and to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. Webster delivered his great Union speech, in which for the first time he took strong grounds against congressional restriction in the Territories. It created a profound sensation. It was on the 4th of March that Senator Mason read for Mr. Calhoun the last speech that the latter ever prepared. It was a memorable moment when the great Carolinian, with the stamp of death already upon him, reiterated his love for the Union under the Constitution, but declared, with the prescience of a seer, that the only danger threatening the government arose from its centralizing tendency. It was "the sunset of life which gave him mystical lore."
Debate continued through the spring and summer with increasing bitterness. On the 31st of July Mr. Clay's "Omnibus Bill," as it was called, "went to pieces," but the Senate took up the separate propositions, passed them, and transmitted them to the House.
Here the great sectional contest was renewed. Mr. Toombs offered an amendment that the Constitution of the United States, and such statutes thereof as may not be locally inapplicable, and the common law, as it existed in the British colonies of America until July 4, 1776, shall be the exclusive laws of said Territory upon the subject of African slavery, until altered by the proper authority. This was rejected by the House. On September 6 the Texas and New Mexico bill, with the Boyd amendment, passed by a vote of 108 to 97—and the anti-restrictionists, as Mr. Stephens said, won the day at last. This was the great compromise of that year, and the point established was that, since the principle of division of territory between the North and South had been abandoned, the principle of congressional restriction should also be abandoned, and that all new States, whether north or south of 36° 30', should be admitted into the Union "either with or without slavery as their constitution might prescribe at the time of their admission."
During this memorable contest Mr. Toombs was in active consultation with Northern statesmen, trying to effect the compromise. He insisted that there should be no congressional exclusion of slavery from the public domain, but that in organizing territorial governments the people should be allowed to authorize or restrict, as they pleased. Until these principles were settled, however, he would fight the admission of California. Into this conference Mr. Stephens and Howell Cobb were admitted, and at a meeting at the house of the latter an agreement was reached between the three Georgians and the representatives from Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, that California should be admitted: that the Territories should be organized without restriction, and that their joint efforts should be used to bring this about as well as to defeat any attempt to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Here was the essence of the compromise, built upon the great measures of Henry Clay, and finally ripening into the legislation of that session. Here was the agreement of that compact which formed the great "Constitutional Union Party" in Georgia, and which erected a bulwark against disunion, not only in Georgia, but on the whole Southern seaboard. The disunion movement failed in 1850. "At the head of the States which had the merit of stopping it," said Thomas H. Benton, "was Georgia, the greatest of the South Atlantic States." And that Georgia stood steadfast in her place, and declined every overture for secession, was because of the united prestige and splendid abilities of Howell Cobb, Alexander H. Stephens, and Robert Toombs.
During this stormy session Mr. Toombs' heart continually yearned for home. He was a model husband and a remarkable domestic character. The fiery scenes of the forum did not ween him from his family. On the 29th of August, 1850, he wrote to his wife:
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