The Life of Robert Toombs , by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips , Ph. D., Professor of American History in the University of Michigan. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913. Pp. xi., 281. $2.00.)

A good life of Robert Toombs has long been needed, partly because too little has been known of the man who, from the death of Calhoun to 1860, was the foremost representative of southern interests in Congress, and partly because a study of his career reveals so much of interest to the student of the ante-bellum conditions and problems of the South. It is, therefore, gratifying that the task of revealing Toombs has been undertaken by one so competent as Professor Phillips. Disclaiming any leaning toward heroworship, Professor Phillips has endeavored “to use the career of Toombs as a central theme in describing the successive problems which the people of Georgia and the South confronted and the policies which they followed in their efforts at solving them.”

Beginning with a brief but interesting account of conditions in “Middle Georgia” in the early nineteenth century, the author traces Toombs's early career through college, the beginnings of his law practice, and his entry into politics as a Whig member of the state legislature, where he became conspicuous as a leader who was more concerned with sound policy than with party advantage. The chapter entitled “A Southern Whig in Congress” contains a most excellent account of the difficult position of the party which stood as the champion of the planting interest when Toombs became a member of Congress in 1844. The next four chapters—“The Proviso Crisis and the Compromise of 1850,” “The Georgia Platform,” “A Senator in the Fifties,” and “Toombs on the Slave-holding Regime”—carry us to 1860. These chapters set forth clearly the very conspicuous part taken by Toombs in Congress and in the affairs of his state during this momentous period, and they also reveal the true quality of the man. The popular estimate of Toombs at that time and afterwards would hardly include conservatism as one of his marked characteristics, yet Professor Phillips has shown that, fundamentally, the great Georgia tribune was conservative. It was the natural result of his habit of looking carefully into the facts of the case and of his clear-sighted appreciation of what were the facts. His excessive natural ardor often led him into intemperate expressions that gave a superficial appearance of radicalism.

The election crisis of 1860 and the stroke for Southern independence were the beginning of the undoing of Toombs. The election of Jefferson Davis, instead of Toombs, as President of the new Confederacy, Professor Phillips thinks was due to “bungling.” As Secretary of State to Davis, Toombs was in an impossible situation; as a brigadier general in the field, he was impatient, captious, a failure. After his resignation from the army and his failure of election to the Confederate Senate, he lapsed more and more into the caustic but helpless critic of the administration, particularly of its financial policies.

Threatened with arrest and imprisonment after the break up of the Confederacy, he fled to Paris, but returned in 1867 and was unmolested. He regained his leadership of the Georgia bar, and took a prominent part in rescuing the state from radical misrule, but never again held office.

In some respects this little volume is a model of what a biography should be. Professor Phillips has adhered faithfully to his idea of making the career of Toombs the central theme of a much broader study, the problems of the cotton-producing, ante-bellum South. Though his Southern sympathies are very much in evidence throughout the book, they are based upon a close study of Southern conditions; and the point of view which he sets forth is so generally unappreciated, that the reviewer feels no desire to criticise.

Much of the material is drawn from the correspondence of Toombs, Stephens and Howell Cobb, edited by Professor Phillips, and appearing since the publication of the biography as Volume II of the 1911 Report of the American Historical Association. The book seems typographically perfect and the index is good.

Chas. W. Ramsdell .

How to cite:
Ramsdell, Charles W., "The Life of Robert Toombs", Volume 017, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 428 - 429. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v017/n4/review_18.html
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