When Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun were waging their "irrepressible conflict," the county of Wilkes in the State of Georgia was nursing discordant factions. Just across the river in Carolina lived the great Nullifier. The Virginia settlers of Wilkes sided with him, while scores of North Carolinians, who had come to live in the county, swore by "Old Hickory." This political difference gave rise to numerous feuds. The two elements maintained their identity for generations, and the divisions became social as well as political. The Virginians nursed their State pride. The sons of North Carolina, overshadowed by the Old Dominion, clung to the Union and accepted Andrew Jackson, their friend and neighbor, as oracle and leader. The earliest political division in Georgia was between the Clarke and Crawford factions. General John Clarke, a sturdy soldier of the Revolution, came from North Carolina, while William H. Crawford, a Virginian by birth and a Georgian by residence, led the Virginia element. The feud between Clarke and Crawford gave rise to numerous duels. Then came George M. Troup to reËnforce the Crawford faction and defend States' Rights, even at the point of the sword. Troup and Clarke were rival candidates for Governor of Georgia in 1825, and the Toombs family ardently fought for Troup. Young Toombs was but fifteen years of age, but politics had been burnt into his ardent soul. Wilkes had remained a Union county until this campaign, when the Troup and Toombs influence was too strong for the North Carolina faction. Wilkes, in fact, seemed to be a watershed in early politics. It was in close touch with Jackson and Calhoun, with Clarke and Crawford, and then with Clarke and Troup. On the one side the current from the mountain streams melted into the peaceful Savannah and merged into the Atlantic; on the other they swept into the Tennessee and hurried off to the Father of Waters.

Robert Toombs cast his first vote for Andrew Jackson in 1832. He abandoned the Union Democratic-Republican party, however, after the proclamation and force bill of the Administration and joined the States' Rights Whigs. When young Toombs was elected to the General Assembly of Georgia in October, 1837, parties were sharply divided. The Democrats, sustained by the personal popularity of "Old Hickory," were still dominant in the State. The States' Rights Whigs, however, had a large following, and although not indorsing the doctrines of Calhoun, the party was still animated by the spirit of George M. Troup. This statesman, just retired from public life, had been borne from a sick-bed to the United States Senate Chamber to vote against the extreme measures of President Jackson. The Troup men claimed to be loyal to the Constitution of their country in all its defined grants, and conceded the right of the Chief Magistrate to execute the office so delegated, but they resisted what they believed to be a dangerous latitude of construction looking to consolidated power. Robert Toombs was not a disciple of Calhoun. While admiring the generalities and theories of the great Carolinian, the young Georgian was a more practical statesman. The States' Rights Whigs advocated a protective tariff and a national bank. They believed that the depreciation of the currency had caused the distress of the people in the panic of 1837, and no man in this stormy era more vigorously upbraided the pet-bank and sub-treasury system than Robert Toombs. He introduced a resolution in the legislature declaring that President Van Buren had used the patronage of the government to strengthen his own party; that he had repudiated the practices and principles of his patriotic antecedents, and "had sought out antiquated European systems for the collection, safe keeping, and distribution of public moneys—foreign to our habits, unsuited to our conditions, expensive and unsafe in operation." Mr. Toombs contended, with all the force that was in him, that a bank of the United States, properly regulated, was "the best, most proper and economical means for handling public moneys." Robert Toombs would not have waited until he was twenty-seven years of age before entering public life, had not the sentiment of his county been hostile to his party. Wilkes had been a Union county, but in 1837 it returned to the lower house two Democrats, and Robert A. Toombs, the only Whig. Nothing but his recognized ability induced the people to make an exception in his favor. Besides his reputation as an orator and advocate, Toombs had just returned from the Creek war, where he had commanded a company and served under General Winfield Scott in putting down the insurrection of Neahmatha, the Indian chief. He now brought to public life the new prestige of a soldier. After this, "Captain Toombs" was never defeated in his county. He was returned at the annual elections in 1839, 1840, 1842, and 1843—and succeeded in preserving at home an average Whig majority of 100 votes. He did not care for the State Senate, preferring the more populous body, then composed of 200 members. Parties in the State were very evenly balanced, but Mr. Toombs preserved, in the varying scale of politics, a prominent place in the house. He was made chairman of the Judiciary Committee by his political opponents. He served as a member of the Committee on Internal Improvements, as chairman of the all-important Committee on Banking, chairman of the Committee on State of the Republic, and in 1842 received the vote of the Whig minority in the house for Speaker. In 1840 the Whigs gained control of the government. The Harrison tidal wave swept their best men to the front in State and national councils. Charles J. Jenkins of Richmond was elected speaker of the house, and Mr. Toombs, as chairman of the Banking Committee, framed the bill which repealed the law authorizing the issue of bank bills to the amount of twice their capital stock. He went right to the marrow of honest banking and sound finance by providing for a fund to redeem the outstanding bills, and condemned the course of the State banks in flooding the State with irredeemable promises to pay.

It was at this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Toombs displayed the skill and sagacity of a statesman in fearlessly exposing a seductive scheme for popular relief. He was called upon to confront public clamor and to fight in the face of fearful odds, but he did not falter.

Just before the General Assembly of 1840 adjourned, Governor McDonald sent an urgent message to both houses calling upon them to frame some means for the speedy relief of the people. The situation in Georgia was very distressing. The rains and floods of that year had swept the crops from the fields, and there was much suffering among the planters. Coming upon the heel of the session, the Whig members of the legislature looked upon the message as a surprise, and rather regarded it as a shrewd political stroke. Mr. Toombs was equal to the emergency. He quickly put in a resolution asking the Governor himself to suggest some means of popular relief—throwing the burden of the problem back upon the executive. But Governor McDonald was armed. He drew his last weapon from his arsenal, and used it with formidable power. He sent in an elaborate message to the houses recommending that the State make a large loan and deposit the proceeds in bank, to be given out to the people on good security. The Senate committee, in evident sympathy with the scheme for relief, reported a bill authorizing the issue of two million six-year eight-per-cent. bonds to be loaned to private citizens, limiting each loan to one thousand dollars, and restricting the notes to three years, with eight per cent. interest.

The report of the House Committee was prepared by Robert Toombs. It was the most admirable and statesmanlike document of that day. Mr. Toombs said that deliberation had resulted in the conviction that the measure suggested by His Excellency should not be adopted. While his committee was duly sensible of and deeply regretted the pecuniary embarrassment of many of their fellow-citizens, he felt constrained by a sense of public duty to declare that he deemed it unwise and impolitic to use the credit, and pledge the property and labor of the whole people, to supply the private wants of a portion only of the people. The use of the public credit, he went on to say, was one of the most important and delicate powers which a free people could confide in their representatives; it should be jealously guarded, sacredly protected, and cautiously used, even for the attainment of the noblest patriotic ends, and never for the benefit of one class of the community to the exclusion or injury of the rest, whether the demand grew out of real or supposed pecuniary difficulties. To relieve these difficulties by use of the public credit would be to substitute a public calamity for private misfortune, and would end in the certain necessity of imposing grievous burdens in the way of taxes upon the many for the benefit of the few. All experience, Mr. Toombs went on to declare, admonish us to expect such results from the proposed relief measures, to adopt which would be to violate some of the most sacred principles of the social compact. All free governments, deriving their just powers from, and being established for the benefit of, the governed, must necessarily have power over the property, and consequently the credit, of the governed to the extent of public use, and no further. And whenever government assumed the right to use the property or credit of the people for any other purpose, it abused a power essential for the perfection of its legislative duties in a manner destructive of the rights and interests of the governed, and ought to be sternly resisted by the people. The proposed measures, he contended, violated these admitted truths, asserted the untenable principle that governments should protect a portion of the people, in violation of the rights of the remainder, from the calamities consequent on unpropitious seasons and private misfortunes.

He must have been an indifferent or careless spectator of similar financial schemes, Mr. Toombs declared, who could persuade himself that this plan of borrowing money, to lend again at the same rate of interest, could be performed without loss to the State. That loss must be supplied by taxation, and to that extent, at least, it will operate so as to legislate money from the pocket of one citizen to that of another. The committee declared that it knew of no mode of legislative relief except the interposition of unconstitutional, unwise, unjust, and oppressive legislation between debtor and creditor, which did not need their condemnation.

The argument was exhaustive and convincing. Never were the powers of the State or the soundness of public credit more strongly set forth. The whole scheme of relief was abandoned, and the General Assembly adjourned.

The relief measures, however, had a great effect upon the campaign. Rejected in the legislature under the rattling fire and withering sarcasm of Toombs, they were artfully used on the hustings. "McDonald and Relief" was the slogan. Men talked airily about "deliverance and liberty." Mr. Toombs declared that "humbuggery was reduced to an exact science and demonstrated by figures." The Act compelling the banks to make cash payments was represented as an unwise contraction of the currency and a great oppression to the people. Governor McDonald was consequently reËlected over William C. Dawson, the Whig nominee.

Robert Toombs was not a candidate for reËlection in 1841. He worked hard at the polls for the Whig ticket, and although his candidate for Governor received a majority of one in Wilkes County, the Whigs were defeated for the legislature. When he returned to the Assembly in 1842 he still found Governor McDonald and the Democrats supporting a central bank and the sub-treasury. They clamored to restore public finances to the old system. The Democrats held the legislature and elected to the United States Senate Walter T. Colquitt over Charles J. Jenkins. Although a member of the minority party, Mr. Toombs was appointed chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Here his high character and moral courage shone conspicuously. He proved a stone wall against the perfect flood of legislation designed for popular relief. To use his own words: "The calendar was strong with a heterogeneous collection of bills proposing stay-laws." He reported as "unwise, inexpedient, and injurious," proposed Acts "to protect unfortunate debtors"; "to redeem property in certain cases"; also a bill to "exempt from levy and sale certain classes of property." He held with Marshall the absolute inviolability of contracts; he believed in common honesty in public and private life; he was strict in all business obligations; he denounced the Homestead Act of 1868, and declared in his last days that there was "not a dirty shilling in his pocket." Mr. Toombs was nothing of the demagogue. He was highminded, fearless, and sincere, and it may be said of him what he afterward declared so often of Henry Clay, that "he would not flatter Neptune for his trident or Jove for his power to thunder." He was called upon at this session to fight the repeal of the law he had framed in 1840, to regulate the system of banking. He declared in eloquent terms that the State must restrict the issue of the banks and compel their payment in specie. The experiment of banking on public credit had failed, he said. It had brought loss to the government, distress to the people, and had sullied the good faith of Georgia.

It was at this session of the legislature that the Democrats proposed a vote of censure upon John McPherson Berrien, United States Senator from Georgia, for his advocacy of a national bank. Mr. Toombs ardently defended Senator Berrien. He said that the State legislature was not the custodian of a senator's conscience, and held that the people of Georgia sanctioned the expediency and utility of a national bank. When the resolution of censure came up in the house, the Whigs refused to vote, and raised the point of "no quorum." Speaker pro tem. Wellborn, who presided, counted a quorum and declared the resolutions adopted. Mr. Toombs fired up at this unusual decision. He threw himself before the Speaker with impetuous appeal and called for a reversal of the decision. But it was a Democratic house, and the Speaker was sustained by a vote of 96 to 40.

The craze for internal improvements now swept over the country. The Whigs were especially active, and we find resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, calling on the Federal Government to create ports of entry and to build government foundries and navy yards on the Southern seaboard. Mr. Toombs was chairman of the Committee of Internal Improvements, but his efforts were directed toward the completion of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. These enterprises had overshadowed the waterways, and the railway from Charleston, S.C., to Augusta, Ga., one of the very first in the country, had just been completed. Already a company had embarked upon the construction of the Georgia Railroad, and on May 21, 1837, the first locomotive ever put in motion on the soil of Georgia moved out from Augusta. A local paper described the event in sententious terms:

This locomotive started beautifully and majestically from the depository and, following the impetus given, flew with surprising velocity on the road which hereafter is to be her natural element.